Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History)

by Andrew J. Torget

And so, without approval from the Texas Congress, Lamar outfitted a 320-man expedition of soldiers, traders, newspapermen, and adventurers who began an arduous overland trek toward New Mexico in June 1841. New Mexicans, however, had no interest in joining Texas, and Governor Manuel Armijo placed the entire Texas delegation under arrest four months later when it finally straggled into Santa Fe. The Texas prisoners were then put on a forced march to Mexico City (several dying along the way), as the entire debacle became an international political embarrassment for the Republic and sparked outrage in both Texas and the United States.