The Rogue States of Texas

 In 1836, after the loss at the Alamo, American settlers regrouped to drive the Mexican army under Santa Ana out, then established the independent Republic of Texas.  Two years later, Texas president Mirabeau Lamar was envisioning a western empire to rival the United States.  That proved to beyond their resources, and the republic joined the Union by annexation in 1845.  By 1861 they had changed course again, seceding to join the Confederacy.  

But there were several previous attempts to free Texas from Mexico, and the instigators were rascals all, whom Fess Parker would never have portrayed in a heroic film retelling.

The James Long Expedition flag

 

It starts in 1819, after the Adams-Onis Treaty between Spain and the U.S. defined the previously vague border of the Louisiana Purchase, ceding Florida to the latter and most of Texas to the former.  This did not suit Dr. James Long, a plantation owner from Vicksburg or other Mississippians at all.  He led an expedition of 300 men into Texas to declare a slave-holding republic independent of both nations.  But to no avail.  They had to soon surrender, Dr. Long being taken to Mexico City as a prisoner.  He was later shot by a guard.

Galveston rebel state's flag

With no higher ideals than those slavery proponents, French privateer Louis-Michel Aury set himself up as the ruler of Galveston Island, claiming to be a "republican," on the shaky authority of Mexican independence rebel Jose de Herrera who appointed Aury commissioner.  What he was actually about was, however, establishing a smuggling and piracy base under that   cover.   There was a skeleton government, but while he was away in 1817 pirate Jean Laffite moved  and Aury had to find a new occupatuion harassing the Spanish Empire around Florida.

After three years lobbying the Mexican government, another American planter, Haden Edwards,  secured a land grant in 1825 to bring settlers in and establish some going concerns.  What he really set about doing immediately was expelling the settlers already there, Spanish and American, in order to bring in slave-holding planters like himself.  Edwards along with his brother declared the Republic of Fredonia, raising its flag in Nacodoches.  His uprising did not last long after Steven Austin's Texans and a Mexican force arrived in 1827; Edwards fled back to Louisiana, his new state only lasting 40 days.

  
Fredonia's odd flag

  

As if all this were not absurd enough, Groucho Marx played Rufus T. Firefly, the president of the small, bankrupt country of Freedonia in the movie Duck Soup, which ends with a fruit fight.  Almost as crazy as what history records.