The answer is Spanish Texas, the republic of Texas, reconstruction, era of reform.
After gaining its independence from Spain in 1821, the young Republic of Mexico attempted to take control of its northern regions, which had served as a sizable and largely vacant bulwark against advance by rival French and British empires to the north while they were still ruled by Spain. The Apache and Comanche Native American tribes predominated in that northern region, which later became the states of Coahuila and Texas under the federal structure established by the Mexican constitution of 1824.
Few Mexicans lived there. The Mexican government encouraged Americans and other foreigners to settle there because the majority of Mexicans were reluctant to go there (Spain had opened the region to Anglo-American settlement in 1820). Additionally, for a period of seven years, Mexico exempted the settlers from various tariffs and taxes the January 1823 Imperial Colonization Law. Furthermore, despite Mexico's 1829 ban on slavery, American immigrant slaveholders were nonetheless permitted to continue employing the labor of enslaved individuals.
Green Dewitt and Moses Austin, two Americans endowed with the title of empresario by being awarded vast areas of land on which to create colonies of hundreds of people, were among those who made the most of the opportunity to settle in Texas. Austin passed away before he could start that project, but his son Stephen Austin carried out his father's dream and rose to prominence as possibly the most important Texan. The Freedonian Rebellion was an early attempt by settlers in the region of Nacogdoches to secure independence from Mexico. The rebellion was largely the result of a conflict between the original settlers and those who had arrived as part of the grant to empresario Hayden Edwards. In fact, a militia led by Austin actually assisted the Mexican military in suppressing the rebellion in 1826.
