Page:History of the War between the United States and Mexico.djvu/46

34 Mexican Congress, together with a petition for their admission into the Union.

No attention was paid to the petition, and Austin wrote home to his friends to organize a government, notwithstanding the refusal to ratify the proceedings of the convention. His letter was intercepted, and he himself for a long time detained in confinement. The Texans were indignant; but remonstrated in vain. While matters were in this situation, Santa Anna declared in favor of centralism. The northern provinces of Mexico refused to concur in the establishment of a consolidated government, until, one by one, they were forced to yield to the dictator. Zacatecas and Durango stood out nobly, but they, too, were overcome. by superior numbers. Having completed, as be supposed, the work of subjugation in the northern provinces, Santa Anna detached General Cos into Texas, with an armed force, to secure obedience to the central government, to compel the observance of the act of 1830, and to secure the person of one Lorenzo de Zavala who had proposed a law in the Mexican Congress levelled against the monopoly of property by the clergy. He was also directed to deprive the people of their arms, in accordance with a decree of the general Congress made in 1834. The Mexican general dissolved the legislature of Coahuila and Texas at the point of the bayonet, and arrested all the officers of the government.

One of the most sacred rights secured to the citizens of the United States by their constitution, is that of bearing arms; and the act to disarm the population of Texas, in connection with the overthrow of the federal government, very naturally created a desire for producing a revolution. The standard of revolt was at once raised. 0n the 28th of September they