{"id":360867,"date":"2026-07-04T10:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T10:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/360867\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T10:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T10:26:08","slug":"texas-and-the-american-revolution-4-surprising-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/360867\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas and the American Revolution: 4 surprising facts"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the American Revolution<\/a>, almost exactly 250 years ago, Texans did not think much about the independence of the American colonies.<\/p>\n

“In Spanish Texas, July 4, 1776 was just another day,\u201d says Mike Cox, veteran Texas historian and former Statesman journalist. \u201cFor one thing, since news spread no quicker than the fastest sailing ship or the fastest horse, no one in Texas would have known that anything special had gone on that day in Philadelphia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Texas that distant summer, the only issues were dealing with the heat and guarding against Native Americans<\/a>, who weren’t too keen on being Christianized by Spanish missionaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

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To those who conceive of Texas today as a sort of super America, it\u2019s helpful to remember that during the 1770s, the region was barely a blip on the American radar. Even useful maps of the area were hard to come by, because the Spanish considered\u00a0maps military secrets<\/a>, and they often left the details blank.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet the American Revolution left its mark in the long run.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In tandem with America’s semisquincentennial, we asked historians, authors and other experts to propose four hidden facts about Texas during the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

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\u2018Imaginary frontier\u2019: The Spanish Empire claimed but did not control Texas<\/p>\n

\"1771,<\/p>\n

1771, Bonne Map of Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and Florida, Rigobert Bonne 1727 \u00d0 1794, one of the most important cartographers of the late 18th century.<\/p>\n

Sepia Times\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n

A mounting stack of evidence, especially from distinguished historian Pekka H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4inen<\/a>, makes it clear that while countless maps show Texas as part of the Spanish Empire, the government never controlled any land outside of its widely scattered and lightly populated presidios, missions and villages. Even those enclaves, during the 18th century, came under periodic attack from Native Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time of the American Revolution, the Comanche<\/a> incursion into Texas was approaching full tide, and Spanish influence was ebbing,\u201d says Stephen Harrigan, author of the justly popular book, \u201cBig Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas.\u201d \u201cTexas was still a distant region of New Spain, and after almost two and a half centuries of trying to dominate it, Spain had deliberately drawn back and consolidated its presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A Spanish officer on an inspection tour even concluded that Texas\u2019s isolated forts, part of an indistinct and often sleepy backwater, were only guarding an \u201cimaginary frontier.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were only about 3,000 Spanish citizens in Texas, clustered mostly in San Antonio and what would become Goliad and Nacogdoches,\u201d Harrigan says. \u201cTexas wouldn\u2019t be tranquil for long, though.\u201d<\/p>\n

French Empire out of the Texas picture<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The French ship, La Belle, and its related artifacts are crucial parts of “Becoming Texas,” a revamp of the oldest material at the Bullock Texas State History Museum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prior to the second half of the 18th century, Spanish leaders did not just worry about Native Americans in Texas. They feared that the French would absorb Texas as part of their enormous Louisiana colony along the Mississippi River watershed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Some background: In February 1685, Ren\u00e9-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle planted a fort and colony<\/a> on Matagorda Bay, thinking it was near the mouth of the Mississippi (remember those maps shorn of crucial details).<\/p>\n

Due to the hostile Karankawa \u2014 as well as internal dissent that led to the murder of La Salle by a member of his own crew \u2014 the colony at Fort Saint Louis did not survive past 1688.<\/p>\n

Yet its fate did not satisfy the leadership of New Spain in Mexico City. As part of Spain\u2019s most extensive attempt to settle Texas, officials responded by ordering a fresh set of presidios, forts and towns that arced from the Rio Grande beyond the Sabine River.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By the 1760s, not too long before the American Revolution, however, the French threat had faded.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe only bright spot for Spain was that even though the Comanches were a growing threat, it no longer had to worry about France,\u201d Harrigan says. \u201cFor almost a hundred years, ever since La Salle\u2019s disastrous attempt to establish a colony near Matagorda Bay, the Spanish had been paranoid about the French muscling in on Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the Seven Years War, which ended in 1763, had brought Spain and France together as allies.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Spain acquired Louisiana from France.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the threat of French invasion into Mexico gone, the need for Spain to have defensive positions in Louisiana and East Texas against its former imperial rival was no longer.\u201d says Steven Gonzales, executive director of El Camino Real de Tejas <\/a>National Historic Trail Association. \u201cBy the late 1760s, King Charles III ordered the Marqu\u00e9s de Rub\u00ed to inspect all Spanish forts, known as presidios, on the northern frontier of New Spain and to ensure that they were fiscally sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

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From 1766 to 1768, Rub\u00ed toured presidios all the way from the Gulf of California to the Gulf of Mexico, including outliers in places such as Los Adaes in present-day Louisiana, San Antonio and Santa Fe. He determined that with the French threat no more, as well as to save money for the Spanish crown, some of the presidios and other Spanish frontier institutions, were no longer necessary, beyond what he considered to be a defensible frontier.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsequently, in 1772, a few years after the Marqu\u00e9s had submitted his report to the king, Spain issued the Reglamento de 1772, also known as the Regulations of 1772,\u201d Gonzales says. \u201cThose regulations formed the Provincias Internas, or Internal Provinces, on the northern frontier, which included places such as Texas, New Mexico, Coahuila and Nuevo Le\u00f3n.\u201d<\/p>\n

The capital of Texas moved from Los Adaes<\/a> to San Antonio, and all missions and presidios withdrew from East Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Texas portion of that presidial line stretched from the eastern-most fort, Presidio la Bah\u00eda in Goliad, to Presidio San Antonio de B\u00e9xar, then to Presidio San Juan Bautista, San Vicente and San Carlos along the Rio Grande in Mexico.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Farther west, the line extended to Presidio del Norte near Presidio, Texas, and Presidio San Elizario in El Paso.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe presidial line envisioned by Rub\u00ed comes close to approximating the present-day border between the U.S. and Mexico,” Gonzales says. \u201cThings that happened centuries ago in Spanish Texas have made a long-lasting impact on Texas and the Southwest as we know them today!”<\/p>\n

Distant Tejano supporters of the American Revolution<\/p>\n

\"Jo<\/p>\n

Jo Ann Herrera and Yolanda Benitez, descendants of Tejano patriot Jos\u00e9 Santiago Seguin, honor their ancestor, whose name was among those added to the American Revolution monument at the Texas State Cemetery. Along with Jos\u00e9 Pl\u00e1cido Hern\u00e1ndez, Joaqu\u00edn Leal, Marcos Zepeda and other ranchers, Seguin provided Texas cattle to supply forces fighting the British during the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

Michael Barnes\/American-Statesman<\/p>\n

One place where Spanish culture did take wide and permanent hold is in South Texas, especially on the ranches where longhorns produced not only food and hides, but wealth and stability for the Tejano families who settled the Spanish land grants.<\/p>\n

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Some of those dynasties, with names such as Seguin, Ru\u00edz<\/a>, Zavala and Navarro, made a permanent impression on Texas, not just on place names.<\/p>\n

In fact, some of them contributed to the American revolutionary cause, albeit indirectly, by driving cattle and horses from South Texas to Spanish Louisiana, where they supported efforts to fight the British in what was at first a secret alliance with the Americans. Early on, the Spanish supplied medicine, guns, gunpowder and uniforms to the revolutionaries before they themselves took arms against the British in Spanish Florida.<\/p>\n

In September 2021, with much pomp and circumstance<\/a>, the Texas Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution gathered at the Texas State Cemetery to honor four Tejano patriots, whose names were newly added to the American Revolutionary War obelisk. The group had first dedicated the monument in 2009, and then updated the list of patriots who died in Texas in 2014, 2017 and 2021<\/p>\n

“We always knew about them,” Lynn Forney Young, honorary president general of the DAR, says about the Tejanos who provided distant support during the American Revolution. “We wanted to make sure their story is told.”<\/p>\n

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As reported in the Statesman, nobleman Bernardo de G\u00e1lvez, namesake for Galveston, served as colonial governor of Spanish Louisiana from 1777 to 1783.\u00a0<\/p>\n

G\u00e1lvez, who had earlier fought the Apache along the Pecos River, directly confronted the British once Spain declared war in 1779. Based in New Orleans, he fought them along the Gulf Coast to Florida and eventually the Bahamas.<\/p>\n

Along with G\u00e1lvez and his soldiers came herds of cattle and horses rounded up by Tejanos based especially in the Texas strongholds of San Antonio and La Bah\u00eda. Those citizens included the increasingly wealthy Canary Islanders who had been introduced there as colonists by the Spanish in 1731.<\/p>\n

“From Presidio La Bah\u00eda, the assembly point, Texas rancheros and their vaqueros trailed these herds to Nacogdoches<\/a>, Natchitoches and Opelousas for distribution to G\u00e1lvez’s forces,” the Handbook of Texas Online instructs us. “Providing escorts for these herds were soldiers from Presidio San Antonio de B\u00e9xar, Presidio La Bah\u00eda and El Fuerte del C\u00edbolo, and several hundred horses were also sent along for artillery and cavalry purposes. Fueled in part by Texas beef, G\u00e1lvez, with 1,400 men, took to the field in the fall of 1779 and defeated the British in minor engagements at Manchac, Baton Rouge and Natchez.”<\/p>\n

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Be careful: Revolutions tend to produce revolutions<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836 secured Texas’ independence and effectively ended the Texas Revolution.<\/p>\n

Universal History Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

If they had lived long enough, the Spanish leadership might have eventually rued their encouragement of the Americans during the 1770s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe American Revolution would spark similar uprisings all over the world, including in Mexico, which won its independence from Spain in 1821,\u201d Harrigan says. \u201cAnd of course in Texas itself, which tore away from Mexico in 1836. In that sense, the Republic of Texas was a result of what began at Lexington and Concord in 1775.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Quickly, the American Revolution helped to inspire the French Revolution in 1789 and the Haitian Revolution in 1791. It also informed a Mexican revolt in the 1810s that played out significantly in Texas, including the Battle of Medina, the bloodiest on Texas soil. Some historians believe that the\u00a0Guti\u00e9rrez\u2013Magee Expedition\u00a0 \u2014 or Texan Revolt of 1812\u20131813 \u2014 was the beginning of the Texas Revolution. (The book to read is James Alan Bernsen’s “The Lost War for Texas,” Texas A&M University Press, 2024).<\/p>\n

During the 1830s phase of the Texas Revolution, the Anglo-Americans frequently, almost universally, cited the ideals embedded in America’s founding documents during their break with Mexico. Since many of them had immigrated from the South, they additionally preserved some of the American founders\u2019 deepest flaws regarding slavery and attitudes toward the Indigenous people whose ancestors had been here for tens of thousands of years.<\/p>\n

Historian Benjamin Johnson, whose concise, critical \u201cTexas: An American History\u201d is in some ways a short companion to Harrigan\u2019s \u201cBig Wonderful Thing,\u201d writes that some of those rhetorical similarities between writings of the American and Texas revolutions evolved even long after either event.<\/p>\n

In his book, Johnson describes the ceremonial reburial of Stephen F. Austin’s remains at the Texas State Cemetery in 1910.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMany of the speakers framed the Texas Revolution of 1836 as a kind of second act of the American Revolution of 1776 \u2014 a similar struggle for freedom against a similar tyranny,\u201d Johnson wrote in notes for a speech in San Angelo. \u201cSince Austin\u2019s settling of American colonists in Texas set 1836 in motion, he was the state\u2019s key founder. Austin was, as the speakers at the services repeated over and over again, \u2018the father of Texas.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Austin was cast as a Texas version of America\u2019s George Washington, despite the fact that he remained loyal to Mexico until it was absolutely insupportable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Austin was not always so widely understood as the \u201cfather\u201d of Texas,\u201d Johnson writes. After the Battle of San Jacinto, he was never as popular as Sam Houston, and he even put down an earlier rebellion against Mexico. In fact, Mexico had \u201cheld out promises of freedom impossible to find in the United States,\u201d Johnson writes.<\/p>\n

That, for African Americans, included Mexico\u2019s start-and-stop-and-start efforts to outlaw slavery.<\/p>\n

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Still, the American revolutionary experience dominated the Texan rhetoric.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn March 2, 1836 with the Alamo still under siege, elected delegates announced that they were now fighting for independence,\u201d Johnson reminds us. \u201cTheir declaration was modeled closely after the 1776 U.S. Declaration of Independence. It indicted the Mexican government for failing to live up to its promises to colonists and for violating its own constitution. It asserted the right of people to form their own government, and the importance of explaining their reasons to people across the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of those attitudes might have been discussed by actual veterans of the American Revolutionary War who later lived in Texas, but not always in the direct manner that some legends claim.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAfter another revolution ended Spain’s presence in Texas, several score combat veterans of the American Revolution settled in Texas,\u201d Cox says, \u201cbut it’s a myth that any of the old soldiers signed the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico on March 2, 1836.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the American Revolution, almost exactly 250 years ago, Texans did not think much about the independence of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-360867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}