Stephen F. Austin, the “Father of Texas,” wrote an impassioned letter to the President to the United States, Andrew Jackson, at the height of the Texas Revolution, appealing for financial and military aid. The letter documents the high drama and desperation of the separatist cause during the Mexican Army’s 1836 invasion of Texas.
Though Jackson declined to intervene—the Texans eventually won their independence without official U.S. assistance—he later arranged to diplomatically recognize Texas, a key step toward legitimizing and stabilizing the fragile new republic.
This article includes the full text of Austin’s letter, scans of the original, and historical context.
The Texas Revolution was brief but dramatic, pitting a small number of U.S.-born settlers against the more numerous Mexican Army. Led by Antonio López de Santa Anna, the new dictator of Mexico, the Mexican Army invaded Texas in February 1836, aiming to crush the uprising. The Texan separatists mobilized for war and issued pleas for armed volunteers, writing letters, advertising in U.S. newspapers, and sending envoys to cities throughout the western and southern United States.
Stephen F. Austin, the founding empresario of the Anglo colonies in Texas, previously had tried to maintain good relations with Mexican authorities, but his attitude shifted after a long imprisonment in Mexico City, and the authoritarian shift in Mexican politics. He joined the resistance, called for the raising of militias, and traveled to the eastern United States to appeal for funds, political support, and armed volunteers.
On April 15, 1836, Austin wrote an appeal to U.S. President Andrew Jackson, his vice president Martin Van Buren (who was soon to become president), and the entire cabinet. He asked for funds to support the Texan cause and for military intervention to halt the Mexican invasion.
Austin’s letter was written about a month after the fall of the Alamo, during Santa Anna’s offensive into east Texas. At the time, the situation looked grim for the Texans. However, just a week later, on April 21, 1836, the separatists would win the Battle of San Jacinto and capture Santa Anna, dramatically shifting the political and military situation.
For his part, President Jackson viewed the war as an internal Mexican affair. Though it involved U.S.-born settlers, it had erupted in response to political developments inside Mexico, particularly the abrogation of the 1824 constitution. Therefore, though sympathetic to the Texan plight, Jackson viewed the settler rebellion as rash, likely doomed to fail, and outside the scope of his responsibility.
After reading Austin’s letter, Jackson penned a comment on the back of it (possibly before passing it to an aide or member of his cabinet), affirming U.S. neutrality:
“The writer does not reflect that we have a treaty with Mexico, and our national faith is pledged to support it. The Texians before they took the step to declare themselves Independent, which has aroused and united all Mexico against them ought to have pondered well, it was a rash and premature act, our neutrality must be faithfully maintained.”
Jacksons attitude would shift after the Battle of San Jacinto, which made the independence of Texas almost certain (and its prospective annexation by the U.S. a real possibility). Nevertheless, he still endeavored to maintain good relations with Mexico, and used his position of neutrality to broker the release of the captured Mexican President, Santa Anna, whom many Texans wanted to execute.
Note: Spellings have been modernized.
To Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, R. M. Johnson, J. Forsyth, Lewis Cass, T. H. Benton, and to every Member of Cabinet or Congress of all parties and all sections of the United States.
New York, April 15, 1836.
Pardon me for this intrusion upon your valuable time. I address you as individuals, as men, as Americans, as my countrymen. I obey an honest, though perhaps excited impulse. We have recent dates from Mexico by the packet. It appears that Santana [Gen. Santa Anna] has succeeded in uniting the whole of the Mexicans against Texas by making it a national war against heretics, that an additional Army of 8,000 men is organizing under Gen. Cortazar in Mexico to march to Texas and exterminate the heretic Americans.
Santana is now in Texas, as we all know, with about 7,000 men fighting under the bloody flag of a pirate, he is exciting the Comanches and other Indians, who know nothing of lines, or political divisions of territory, massacres have been committed on Red River within the U.S. This is a war of barbarism against civilization, of despotism against liberty, of Mexicans against Americans.
Ah my countrymen, the warmhearted, chivalrous impulsive west and south are up and moving in favor of Texas. The calculating and more prudent, though not less noble minded north are aroused. The sympathies of the whole American people en masse, are with the Texians. This people look to you, the guardians of their rights and interests and principles, will you, can you turn a deaf ear to the appeals of your fellow citizens in favor of their and your countrymen and friends, who are massacred, butchered, outraged in Texas at your very doors?
Are not we, the Texians, obeying the dictates of an education received here, from you, the American people, from our fathers, from the patriots of “76”, the republicans of 1836? Have not we, been stimulated to obey the dictates of this noble education by the expression of opinions all over these United States and by all parties, that we ought to resist and throw off the yoke of Mexican usurpation, and are we now to be abandoned or suffered to struggle alone, and single-handed, because the cold calculations of policy or of party have first to be consulted?
Well, you reply, what can we do. In answer I say, let the president and cabinet and congress, come out openly and at once, and proclaim to the public their opinions, let Texas have some of the $37,000,000, now in the national treasury, let the war in Texas become a national war above board, and thus respond to the noble feelings of the American people.
Who can deny that it is a national war in reality? A war in which every free American, who is not a fanatic abolitionist, or a cold-hearted recreant to the interest, and honor, and principles of his country and countrymen, who is not an icicle in soul and in practice, is deeply, warmly, ardently interested. In short it is now a national war sub-rosa.
This will not do. This state of the matter cannot, ought not to continue. make it at once, and above board and boldly, what it is in fact, a national war in defense of national interests, and principles, and of Americans. Let the Administration and Congress take this position at once, and the butcheries in Texas will cease, humanity will no longer be outraged by a war of extermination against liberty and maintained on the southwestern frontier of this nation.
And the government of the U.S. will then occupy that open, and elevated stand which is due to the American people and worthy of Andrew Jackson, for it will occupy above board, the position, which this nation as a people now occupy in heart, and in feeling, and in wishes; a position which they are now defending, in obedience to the noblest impulses of the heart, by acts and with their blood, as warm hearted, noble spirits always do.
Respectfully your native countryman and Obt. Servt.
S.T. Austin of Texas
[Indorsement in Jackson’s handwriting:] The writer does not reflect that we have a treaty with Mexico, and our national faith is pledged to support it. The Texians before they took the step to declare themselves Independent, which has aroused and united all Mexico against them ought to have pondered well, it was a rash and premature act, our neutrality must be faithfully maintained. A.J.
