The Treaties of Velasco were two documents signed at Velasco, Texas, (which is now Freeport, Texas) on May 14, 1836, between Antonio López de Santa Anna of Mexico and the Republic of Texas, in the aftermath of the Battle of San Jacinto (April 21, 1836). The signatories were Interim President David G. Burnet for Texas and General Santa Anna for Mexico. The Treaties were intended, on the part of the Texans, to provide a conclusion of hostilities between the two belligerents and offer the first steps toward the official recognition of the breakaway Republic's independence. However, there was a public treaty and a secret treaty, and neither treaty was ratified by the Mexican government. Moreover, the documents were not even called "treaties" until so characterized by U.S. President James K. Polk in his justifications for war some ten years later, as was pointed out by Congressman Abraham Lincoln in 1848. [1]
Contents |
The public treaty consisted of ten articles, and was to be published immediately.
The secret treaty was not to be made public until the terms of the public treaty had been met in full.
Although Gen. Vicente Filisola began troop withdrawals on May 26, the government of President José Justo Corro in Mexico City resolved, on May 20, to disassociate itself from all undertakings entered into by Santa Anna while he was held captive. Mexico's position was that Santa Anna had no legal standing in the Mexican government to agree to those terms or negotiate a treaty; Santa Anna's position was that he had signed the documents under coercion as a prisoner, not as a surrendering general in accordance with the laws of war. In fact, he had no authority under the Mexican Constitution to make a treaty, and in any case, the treaty was never ratified by the Mexican government.
Santa Anna was not given passage to Veracruz. He was kept as a prisoner of war ("clapped in irons for six months", he later claimed) in Velasco and, later, in the Orozimbo plantation, before being taken to Washington, D.C., in the United States to meet with President Andrew Jackson (ostensibly to negotiate a lasting peace between Mexico and Texas, with the USA acting as mediator). Sailing on the frigate USS Pioneer, the guest of the U.S. Navy, he did not arrive in Veracruz until February 23, 1837.
Because the provisions of the public treaty were not met, the terms of the secret agreement were not released until much later. Although a fait accompli since mid-1836, neither the independence of Texas nor its later annexation by the U.S. was ever formally recognized by Mexico until the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War that resulted from the annexation and also recognized the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) as the Mexico – United States border.
|
||||||||||||||