TEXMEX-By the mid-1830s there were enough white settlers in Texas to force the Mexican issue. The Mexican, Catholic, Spanish-speaking population numbered in the low thousands, but there were approximately twenty thousand white Protestant settlers. The Texas Revolution of 1835–36 drove the Mexicans out, but it was a close-run thing, and had the settlers lost then, the Mexican army would have been in a position to march on New Orleans and control the southern end of the Mississippi. It is one of the great what-ifs of modern history.

By the mid-1830s there were enough white settlers in Texas to force the Mexican issue. The
Mexican, Catholic, Spanish-speaking population numbered in the low thousands, but there were
approximately twenty thousand white Protestant settlers. The Texas Revolution of 1835–36 drove the
Mexicans out, but it was a close-run thing, and had the settlers lost then, the Mexican army would
have been in a position to march on New Orleans and control the southern end of the Mississippi. It
is one of the great what-ifs of modern history.