The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 81, July 1977 - April, 1978 Page: 454
521 p. : ill. (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Along with the picture he sent the following account of how Mexico
acquired so advanced a warship.
The years 1841-1844 brought most difficult days to the Republic that
had named itself the United States of Mexico-Estados Unidos de Mdfico.
The odious General Santa Anna was again its despotic dictator. Even worse
than that, the disintegration of the Nation was being accelerated. Guate-
mala had rejected the Constitution of i824 and had gone her separate way.
In 1836, Texas had underwritten her Declaration of Independence with the
stunning victory at San Jacinto and the capture of El Presidente, Santa Anna
himself.
Santa Anna knew that his "Treaty of Velasco," recognizing Texan inde-
pendence had been signed under duress and, therefore, was as worthless as
the orders he had also sent to his Generals Filisola, Urrea, and Gaona to
withdraw at once from Texas. Those other Mexican generals realized that
a prisoner of war, regardless of rank, is without authority from the moment
of his capture. They did withdraw, however, because their horses and men
were starving. The expected supply ships along the coast had not material-
ized. The little improvised Texan squadron under Commodore Hawkins
had captured just enough to frighten many others from the coast. Moreover,
the withdrawing generals had to assume that such a crushing defeat as that
at San Jacinto meant a vastly larger army confronting them than actually
existed.
The "Treaty," however, was a marvelous propaganda document through-
out the North American frontier, and Texan successes in the organization
of a Republic of its own, complete with an army and a navy larger than those
that had won the victory, were causing other Estados de Mdjico to look
yearningly toward similar secessions. There were whisperings of a Republic
of the Rio Grande to be composed of dissident northern Mexican states. In
YucatAn an independence army had been fielded. Ships were being armed.
Tabasco's jungles precluded Federal access to YucatAn by land. Santa Anna
knew enough about tactics and strategy to know he could not prevent fur-
ther disintegration of his Republic without naval control of the Gulf of
Mexico. Given that and victory in YucatAn, he might successfully invade
Texas again.
Meanwhile, he had no navy at all. President Bustamante's silly little Pastry
War in 1838 had given the French full reason to take away every armed ship
Mexico had, including the revenue cutters. Santa Anna had no choice but to
buy and hire a fleet. In a similar situation in 1826 President Victoria had
done exactly that by hiring the courtmartialled and unhappy Commodore
David Porter and his followers to abate a nuisance blockade maintained by
a Spanish fleet based at Havana. This Porter had done, though his payrolls
were not fully met.
Santa Anna resolved to do the same, but his agents found no unhappy
commodore in the United States. His agents in England, however, found
readily available two of the most modern warships in the world. Seasoned
naval officers and seamen were also available to man them. The prices were454
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 81, July 1977 - April, 1978, periodical, 1977/1978; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101205/m1/510/: accessed April 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.