The Texas Revolution is often remembered through military reports, political documents, letters, and newspapers. Yet some of the most vivid insights into the conflict come from civilian witnesses. One popular firsthand account comes from Dilue Rose Harris, a young girl living in Texas with her family during the turbulent years of the revolution. Written in 1899 when she was seventy-four, her recollections combine her father’s journal, stories from refugees, and her own memories.
Although the Mexican Law of April 6, 1830, made further U.S. immigration to Texas illegal, Dilue’s family arrived in Harrisburg in late April 1833. They settled at Stafford’s Point, building a house and planting corn, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, sugarcane, and cotton. In her reminiscences beginning April 28, 1833, eight-year-old Dilue recalled frontier hardships, including wolves, buzzards, hostile Native Americans, and deep loneliness and fear. Despite these challenges, the family found enjoyment in community celebrations and their financial success. Dilue remembered that after her father bought red shoes for her and her sister, they were so happy they could not sleep.
Dilue’s reminiscences also reflected broader political tensions. During the summer of 1835, she recalled hearing that Andrew Briscoe had been prevented from trading goods at Anahuac because “Captain Tenorio, the Mexican custom-house officer, would not allow him to sell goods without a permit from the custom house.” Briscoe opposed the irregular collection of duties and refused to pay, resulting in his arrest. Three years earlier, William B. Travis and Patrick C. Jack had been arrested there for deceiving a Mexican official while attempting to recover runaway enslaved people. In another instance, Dilue recalled Mr. Stafford saying his stepmother intended to return to the United States after hearing “…through the papers that it was the intention of the Mexican government to garrison every town in Texas and liberate the slaves.” Dilue’s family also felt disillusioned. A year after arriving, Dilue remembered her father returning from San Felipe: “He had found the land office closed and could not transact any business.” Nearly another year later, she recalled that “…if it had not been for the uncertainty of the Mexican laws father could have located land and got a home. Mother was very much dissatisfied.”
To an extent, the settlers’ fears and dissatisfaction were not exaggerated. They had been alarmed by the Law of April 6, 1830, which responded to perceived expansionist ambitions and the repeated defiance of Mexican authority by the American colonists. Though the law encouraged settlement by Mexican citizens and European immigrants, it also heavily increased Mexican oversight by placing a federal commissioner over new empresario contracts and expanding forts, customs houses, and Mexican troop garrisons throughout the region.
More controversial provisions banned American immigration to Texas and prohibited the further importation of enslaved people. Mexican officials believed these measures were justified. The Fredonian Rebellion of 1826, settlers’ disregard for Mexican law, the growing number of American settlers to Mexican residents, and repeated U.S. attempts to purchase Texas had heightened Mexican suspicions.
Empresario Stephen F. Austin gained some exemptions and the law’s eventual repeal but was arrested for inciting insurrection, treason, and sedition after writing to the ayuntamiento at Béxar advocating separate statehood without national approval. Soon after, President Santa Anna replaced the liberal Constitution of 1824 with the Siete Leyes, dissolving state legislatures and establishing a new Centralist government. The collection of duties and garrisoning of federal troops began shortly thereafter. The response from American settlers was predictable, though not universal. After William B. Travis and twenty-five-armed volunteers disarmed the garrison at Anahuac in June 1835, Dilue recalled that the move “…was not approved by the older citizens. Those who had families with all they possessed in Texas wished rather to pay duties to Mexico than to fight.”
As the year inched closer to fall, Dilue remembered that after Mexico received news that Anahuac had surrendered to armed Texans, “…an order was issued to Colonel Ugartechea to arrest seven Texans and send them to San Antonio to be tried by court martial.” She remembered it being “more than the people could bear…. [and] a convention was called to meet at San Felipe the 12th of September.”
Settlers increasingly believed their livelihoods, institutions, and aspirations depended on the whims of Mexican politics, which, as the last two decades had shown, were anything but stable. Combined with deep social and cultural differences that heightened Mexican suspicion, President Santa Anna’s turn towards authoritarianism would be the spark that fully ignited the revolution in the fall of 1835.