A good book, providing a chronological history of Texan independence from Mexico and the politics of becoming a U.S. state. The author, historian H. W. Brands, describes the settling of Texas by American immigrants, the gradual movement towards separation from Mexico, the chaotic fighting for independence, and the convoluted politics surrounding Texas's path to statehood. The book emphasizes the close connections between contemporary American political movements and Texas independence, illustrating how broader political forces and events shaped the region's transformation. Brands centers the story on the key historical figures who were often pulled along by events rather than driving them, offering a nuanced perspective on the interplay between individual agency and historical currents. A great book for understanding the complexities of the Texan path to statehood and the influence of American politics on its independence movement.

One of the best written history books I've read in some time. It reads a lot like a novel and has some great insights into American, Mexican life in early 19th century and beyond! If you love Texas, early American history you will love this!

This readable history tells the story of how Texas got settled, was part of Mexico and became an independent country. It concludes with a short summary of statehood. The author puts the pieces together in an interesting and informative way.

Having lived in San Antonio for 6 months, I marveled at how the colonists could make a go of homesteading. While the land is very flat it is also very dry. It did not look fertile to me. There is little to sustain life while waiting for crops to grow. Heat is a huge factor in any endeavor. Brands refers to plentiful game, which had to be the case or no one would survive, but is hard to imagine with such limited water and plant life.

There are two areas needing more elaboration. The big area is slavery the other, less consequential, but important is the portrait of Sam Houston.

There are many who feel the Texas rebellion was totally about slavery. Brands discusses the turmoil in Mexico, Santa Anna's shredding of the constitution and cultural/religious differences between the "Anglo" north and its Spanish government as the causes of this rebellion. It seemed that the Texans, while frustrated, were working within the system to change it. Brands does not show how these issues trump slavery. While he mentions slavery he does not at all discuss it as a cause. Because this is a common opinion, Brands needs a better discussion of the role of slavery in this fight.

The portrait of Houston is very engrossing but learning towards the end that he had 8 children is a surprise. Fatherhood had hardly been mentioned up to that point. It isn't that the story hangs on this, but it implies he had roots. Where were the children and their mother(s?) living? Were they in a town of settlers? Living with a migrating or settled tribe? In American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett"American Legend" Crockett is shown to be enabled by spouse operating independently of him (but not his debts which she was stuck paying off). Was this true for Houston as well? The back story is needed to get a full measure of this man.

I wonder how much flack this Texas based author caught for his portraits of William Travis and Jim Bowie. They are considered heroes in Texas. Their lives before the Alamo, as told by Brands, were not the stuff of heroes. While I have toured the Alamo, and read its literature and came away from it knowing that Houston put a low priority on defending the Alamo, I don't remember learning that his strategy (ignored by the Alamo defenders) was to abandon it... in fact they were to blow it up to deprive Santa Anna of its use. This makes the story of the Alamo a story of a renegade operation. Given that Texas needed militias for defense, there was nothing Houston could do about it. I wonder how all this sat (and continues to sit) in Texas that adores its heroes and its Alamo legend.

I came to this from having finished the Brands' Pulitzer Prize nominated 'Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt which is clearly the better book. Lone Star Nation" is good, and if you're interested in this ten year or so window, it is a must read, otherwise, read the FDR.

(Audiobook) For me, this was a review of my 7th grade Texas History class. The saga of how a former Spanish buffer territory became its own independent nation is quite a tale even among the 50 other states in the Union. Of course, this is not a middle school textbook, but an adult history book, one that looks to dispel just as many myths as tell the history. It is primarily focused on Texas from Mexican Independence to Texas independence and its eventual entry into the US as a state. Many of the Texas “heroes” are not quite the virtuous figures my 7th grade history class made them out to be. Scalawags, ruffians, and near criminals seem to be better labels for men such as Travis and Bowie. Crockett and Houston were once rising Tennessee political stars, but their stocks fell hard and Texas as a chance for resurrection. For Houston, his political fortunes did improve, albeit after a near-run victory. Crockett did not rise again in life, but he became arguably the biggest martyr from the Alamo. Of course, all tales much have a villain, and for Texas, that is Santa Anna. While not the pure devil of 7th grade history, he was not that virtuous, more akin to the dictators of Europe and of other eras.

Overall, a very readable history of the critical times in Texas history. It does not gloss over the role of slavery in the founding of the Texas Republic, nor does it whitewash it when it comes to why Texas could not immediately join the Union. It shows that Sam Houston was extremely luck on the field of battle and that Santa Anna made some major mistakes with his campaign. One or two things change, Texas may yet have remained part of Mexico, and perhaps, Juneteenth does not happen in Texas, but in another part of the US. Worth at least one read, but would be interesting to get a take from someone who was not raised in Texas.

Informative and Engaging

I loved this book, and will be getting a physical copy for my library. Brands grabbed my attention and never let it go. Coving the history of Texas, from the formation of the land through the end of the Civil War, this was a thorough book that covered many different perspectives, people, and political manuverings that made Texas. Highly recommend this enjoyable history.

This is the best account of Texas history I've read. It's informative (with numerous "why was I never taught this in school?" moments) and surprisingly engaging for a chronological history book.

A good narrative of the story of the Texas fight for independence and the path to statehood. Fairly informative but not dry.

The book give a good history of the settlement of East Texas by American adventurers, the 15-year rush to populate Texas with American "Anglos", and the contentious showdown with Santa Anna and the Mexican army. There are many familiar characters, now legendary personalities, like Bowie, Crockett, and Houston, and the author introduces a dozen more individuals who were probably just as ornery and colorful.

But I found the political history to be the most interesting and compelling part of the book. Moses Austin, followed by his son Stephen, became Mexican citizens in order to realize their dream of establishing permanent settlements in the Mexican state of "Coahuilla y Tejas" north of the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo). Other Americans likewise swore allegiance to Mexico in order to move to the fertile farm ground along the banks of the Colorado, San Antonio, Brazos, and Trinity Rivers. But 20 years before someone coined the term "manifest destiny" Americans were already bent on taking over foreign possessions in North American by the power of immigration. "Becoming Mexican" seems to have been a big joke to the settlers.

When the new Mexican republic started to falter, Austin made a good-faith effort to keep the state of Coahuila y Tejas together under the new president, Santa Anna, but the obvious conclusion was going to be one of two alternatives: an independent Republic of Texas, or Texas as a new holding of the U.S. Having no background at all in the history of the Lone Star State, I was really intrigued to learn about Texas' ambiguous position between Mexico and the U.S. When "Tejanos" began to experience growing tension with the local Comanches, Mexican neighbors to the south, or the Mexican government, President Andrew Jackson offered no consolation, feeling no responsibility to defend or protect Americans who had willingly emigrated to the foreign territory of Spanish, then Mexican, Texas.

While Austin is portrayed as an earnest, loyal, if somewhat vulnerable speaker of the Texas settlers, Sam Houston is an enigma. He is by turn bullish with patriotism, drunken coward, egomaniacal rabble-rouser, and flake par excellence. As Texas struggled with its identity, Houston would disappear for days, months, even years, only to return in a blaze of rhetoric and bombast.

The character of the Texas army is similarly enigmatic. These guys were total mavericks unwilling to follow a command unless it suited them. Everything seems like it was totally disorganized and haphazard. The deaths of Bowie, Crockett and hundreds others at the Alamo seems to be the result of this insistence of a small band of men to go-it-alone. And when Houston finally got his act together, showed up, and was given command by the newly formed Texas Republic, the soldiers only listened to him when they felt like it.

The author shows how, at one crucial point just before Houston and the Texans achieved victory of Santa Anna and the Mexicans, Houston steered the troops into a semi-controlled situation, then appeared to let them make the decision on when, where, and what to do. The old drunk had some shrewd moves when the need arose.

Houston beat Santa Anna and Texas was free of Mexico. But what to do next? Jackson and his Secretary of State, J.Q. Adams, didn't want them at first, so Texans formed their own independent nation in 1836. But, as was the tacit understanding from the beginning, Texans themselves wanted to be part of the Union. There was finally agreement in Washington D.C., but then a major financial crisis put the country in a tizzy and Texas had to wait almost 10 years before being incorporated.

Another fascinating political development was, when Texas was still independent, the British were making moves to forge close economic relations (and maybe offers of incorporation with the Empire?) to gain a position from which to trade with the Caribbean.

THEN, when Texas was finally annexed by the U.S., Santa Anna and the Mexicans came back for one or a few more stabs at regaining control of land north of the River. This prompted the U.S. to go to war with Mexico, which resulted in the acquisition of New Mexico and California. A year later, gold was discovered near Sacramento, and Washington was all ready to make Cali a state.

All in all, a well-written story of a territory swept up in a feverish land-grab, inspired to cry for freedom, and cornered like a pawn in an intriguing, complex, and nuanced political struggle.

The story of Texas is a good one... and this book brings legends like Sam Houston and Davy Crockett to life. Funny. Well-researched and balanced.

I never clearly understood Stephen F. Austin's role as the "Father of Texas." Why was he a Mexican citizen? What was he doing in jail for so long? What made him turn his back on his American citizenship? After reading this book, I understand. Not only that, but the Alamo and San Jacinto now make much more sense, set in context. This is a great read. Highly recommended.

This book by Brands has a great deal in common with the one I read on California a few months ago. The politics of admitting both Texas and California to the Union became a battleground for the slavery issue, as did, I presume, the political history of every other state admitted in the decades before the Civil War. Texas and California were just bigger and destined to be influential. I was disappointed when the California book left the gold rush—which was my primary interest in reading it—and got into the politics of slavery, but I ended up interested enough to think those decades before the Civil War were a lot more interesting than I’d assumed.
Lone Star Nation doesn’t get to the slavery issue until the end, after Texas won its independence and sought to join the Union. Then former president John Quincy Adams led the opposition to Texas statehood on the grounds that it would be a backward stop to admit such a big state as a slave state. Adams was also offended, on moral grounds, that Texas had admitted slave owners with their slaves—illegally—even as a part of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. (Mexico had outlawed slavery in the 1820s.) I had not known that the last public act of Sam Houston, then governor of the state of Texas, was to refuse to sign the papers officially transferring Texas to the Confederacy. He resigned and died before the Civil War was over and slavery defeated and the Union restored.
Brands’ story is a heroic one—rag-tag settlers, mostly from the US, who tried to get along as a state of Mexico but failed. Stephen F. Austin, the founder of Texas, tried very hard to make Texas work as a Mexican state and before joining those agitating for complete independence from Mexico had advocated Texas statehood within Mexico separate from Coahuila. At one point he spent a year in Mexico City trying to move the government on behalf of Texas and when he returned in a last ditch effort to negotiate a deal with Mexico, he was imprisoned as the traitor he wasn’t at the time—but would become.
The story of defeat and death at the Alamo and Goliad were familiar from an earlier read; Houston’s victory at San Jacinto is familiar because I’ve visited the battlefield and memorial many times and knew at least the barebones of the story. I enjoyed reading about the heroics of men who had been before only the names of downtown streets.
Brands perpetrates the legend of ragtag and fiercely independent Texans. Houston’s army had no discipline at all, though Houston was trained under Andrew Jackson and knew something about military discipline. He wanted to fight a defensive war with Santa Anna’s superior forces (and he had ordered the abandonment and destruction of the Alamo), but his men made their own decisions, first to defend the Alamo and then forcing his hand at San Jacinto.
One scene I had not known about though was the mass exodus of the civilian population that spring of war. Following the defeats at the Alamo and Goliad, settlers—often just wives and children—sought to leave, bunched up on the roads, abandoning goods and vehicles that couldn’t deal with the roads and piling up trying to cross first the flood-swollen Trinity and then the Sabine. Knowing something of “evacuation” from recent hurricanes I was duly horrified at their predicament.
I didn’t grew up in Texas but one thing I’ve learned from living here is that Texas is proud of being the only state that was once an independent nation, but that’s really twisting history. The years after victory at San Jacinto which ended the fighting and sent the army back to Mexico were years of trying to get adopted by the American union and treating with other countries (particularly Britain) in case that did not work out. And while Santa Anna, the President when he led the Mexican army to Texas, but soon deposed when he was captured, was willing to recognize Texas independence, official Mexico was not. The tensions led the Mexican war which finally paved the way for Mexico to recognize the annexation of Texas to the United States as well as to cede California and New Mexico. That’s the next period I need to read up on….

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