Jack of Harts

Texas achieved independence long after the First Republican Party rose and fell in the 1790s and 1820s. And the Second Republican Party, commonly known as the National Republicans, fell in 1834, shortly before Texas gained its independence. So when Texas joined the Union in the 1840s, and incorporated themselves into America’s larger economy and political structure throughout the 1850s, there was no major Republican Party. Texas was officially a Slave State, with most of their slaves in the oldest colonies of Central and North Eastern Texas. With that rich power base to operate from, the Pro-Slavery Democrats held impressive political power in Texas. Therefore it was the Third Republican Party, founded in 1854, that was a threat to the established Texas power structure of the time. The Republicans promoted stopping the expansion of Slavery into the American Territories, and held the less public mission of helping slaves escape from Slave States. So when the Republicans surprised everyone by winning both Houses of Congress and the Presidency in 1860, the Democrats in control of Texas did not react well.

Once the American military had secured the Mexican capital, a diplomatic mission was sent to deal with the mutual misunderstanding of where the border was. Texas, all the way to the Rio Grande. And now that they had been forced to go through all this fighting and occupation, America was going to keep New Mexico and California. America was happy to buy all that territory at a fair price, and Mexico would be happy to sell them at a fair price. It turned out that Mexico was not necessarily happy to sell a third of their territory at half the price per acre the Americans had offered before the war, but they were willing to, in exchange for a treaty of peace and an end to the occupation. At which point, the Americans turned around, marched back north of the Rio Grande, and happily washed their hands of Mexican lands for the next two centuries. Mexico, not nearly so happy about the whole ordeal, spent the next two centuries dreaming of the day they could get their conquered and rebellious regions back.

Mexico and America found themselves in a standoff after the Texas Annexation. Texas had a signed treaty that recognized their borders out to the Rio Grande River. Mexico declared that treaty null and void due to Santa Anna being a captive at the time he signed it. Furthermore, even if this self-proclaimed Texas was independent, which it was not, the Nueces River was the border of the rebellious Province of Tejas, not the Rio Grande. America sent a diplomatic mission to Mexico seeking to deal with the mutual misunderstanding of the where the border was the old fashioned way. Money. America would buy the disputed territory at what it considered a fair market value. The Mexicans sent the diplomatic mission away with a message to stay out of Mexican lands or risk war. America, with their typical respect for the demands of others, gave Mexico the proverbial middle finger, and promptly went down to the mouth of the Rio Grande to build a border fort on the Texas side of the river.