Reports of Edwards’s ill behavior eventually reached the desk of the president of Mexico, Guadalupe Victoria, who revoked his empresario grant and ordered Saucedo to expel the American from Mexico. A disgruntled Edwards responded by riding into Nacogdoches in December 1826 at the head of a dozen armed men, who promptly took over the town. Edwards and his posse then launched a rebellion, declaring Texas to be the independent “Republic of Fredonia” and promising to throw off Mexican rule as “the yoke of an imbecile, faithless, and despotic government, miscalled a Republic.”
