Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, the Struggle for Texas by Sam W. Haynes

Abstract

Reviewed by: Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, the Struggle for Texas by Sam W. Haynes Gregg Cantrell Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, the Struggle for Texas. By Sam W. Haynes. (New York: Basic Books, 2022. Pp. 447. Illustrations, notes, index.) The Texas Revolutionary era is experiencing something of a moment. In the wake of last year's controversial journalistic treatment of the Revolution, Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth (Penguin) by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford, the Texas legislature passed two laws regulating how public educators can discuss the history of racism. At the same time, the lawmakers launched the 1836 Project to promote "patriotic education," the title clearly intended to serve as a counterweight to the New York Times's 1619 Project, which emphasized the centrality of slavery in American history. Sam Haynes's new scholarly treatment of the era, then, comes at a fortuitous time, and it does not fail to deliver on its promise to give us a new, state-of-the-art history of this contentious period. The book's title foreshadows the main theme of this boldly revisionist book. Texas in the early years of the nineteenth century was truly an "unsettled land," not in the sense that it was unpopulated but rather that it was a crazily complex cultural mosaic. Instead of the armed conflict of 1835–36 as the culmination of the Anglo-versus-Mexican political struggle for Texas, Haynes argues that the true Texas "revolution" took place [End Page 269] over a longer period, and it involved much more than simply the secession of Texas from Mexico and the founding of the Lone Star Republic. As the introduction explains, "Anglo Americans were not the only inhabitants of Texas to experience the upheaval of revolution. For a large segment of the population, independence from Mexico meant the loss of freedom, a fact that only became evident in the years that followed, as the Lone Star Republic moved aggressively to expel Indians, marginalize Mexicans, and tighten its grip on the enslaved. Thus the revolution was far from over in 1836. The work of creating a new society, radically different from anything Texas had known under Mexico, had only just begun" (7). Over the ensuing 366 pages, the author makes a compelling case for this thesis. From the start, the book turns the conventions of Texas Revolutionary historiography on their heads. It begins not with Stephen F. Austin and his colony on the lower Brazos and Colorado but rather in East Texas. Figures such as the Cherokee leaders Richard Fields and Chief Bowls play leading roles rather than the bit parts usually assigned to them. Indeed, this is the first general history of the era, truly, to give Indians their due. The book does the same for free Blacks like William Goyens and Tejanos like Vicente Córdova. Without downplaying the importance of Austin, Houston, Crockett, et al., Haynes offers penetrating analysis of other important Anglos, such as Jared Groce and William Wharton. Perhaps the book's greatest strength is its masterful integration of the events in Texas into the flow of Mexican history. Haynes brings the training and insights of an academically trained Mexicanist to his task, and it shows. Particularly revealing are the central roles played by Lorenzo de Zavala and José Antonio Mexía, two Mexican federalists whose views and interests in Texas clashed with those of Antonio López de Santa Anna. Haynes also vividly portrays the plight of those most caught in the crossfire of the conflict, the Tejanos, revealing the wrenching decisions that men like Juan Seguín and José Antonio Navarro made, or had forced upon them. Likewise, Haynes explains how the memory of the American Revolution led the actions of the Anglo revolutionaries "to take on a weirdly performative character," making the Texan soldiers "for all intents and purposes, historical re-enactors in a struggle against tyranny and military despotism" (144). By extending the story of Texas (and Mexico) up through the Republic years, Haynes does much to historicize and contextualize the events of 1836. The story he tells is a devastating one if considered from the perspective...