The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 55, July 1951 - April, 1952 Page: 394

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

A )Notc o1 ereral tscokedo i rexas
FRANK A. KNAPP, JR.
ADETAILED study on the relation of Texas to independent
Mexico apparently has discouraged any competent schol-
ar who may have contemplated tackling the fascinating
topic. Of course, it is scarcely necessary to mention that Texas,
as a province of New Spain, an area of Anglo-Saxon colonization,
an independent nation, and a state within the Republic of the
North, has a history with a colorful thread all its own, thoroughly
exploited by skilled writers. Yet beyond annexation to the United
States, Texas played a prominent, almost integral r61le in Mexican
history, not solely as a region of international border friction
and a resented blot on Mexican national honor but also as a
tolerant haven and hinterland for political exiles and discontents
seeking to overthrow the constituted central authorities of Mex-
ico by revolution, the normal Mexican process of rotation in
office during the nineteenth century.
The theme is not an original one and, in fact, has been elabo-
rated previously in regard to the twentieth-century revolutionary
activities in Texas against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.1 The
present article, however, applies to an earlier epoch and also
seeks to introduce one of the many national figures of Mexican
history who had a relatively important connection with Texas-
General Mariano Escobedo.
Escobedo's residence and revolutionary plottings in Texas
(1877-1878) necessarily date back to 1876 which witnessed the
unique Rutherford B. Hayes-Samuel J. Tilden electoral contest
in the United States and a similar embarrassment in Mexico,
where the trouble was somewhat less abnormal. The Mexican
president, SebastiAn Lerdo de Tejada, had managed to accomplish
his re-election in the face of the stereotyped protests of fraud,
violence, illegality, and unconstitutionality on the part of the
opposition. But the bitterness went beyond mere verbiage, and
suddenly President Lerdo found himself involved in a compli-
cated revolution in which two other national figures were claim-
iCharles C. Cumberland, "Mexican Revolutionary Movements from Texas, 1906-
1912," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, LII, 301-324.

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