In 1821 at the conclusion of the Mexican War of Independence, Texas was included in the new nation.[16] That year, the American Stephen F. Austin was granted permission to bring Anglo settlers into Texas.[17] Most of the settlers Austin recruited came from the southern slave-owning portions of the United States.[11] Under Austin's development scheme, each settler was allowed to purchase an additional 50 acres (20 ha) of land for each slave he brought to the territory.[17] At the same time, however, Mexico offered full citizenship to free blacks, including land ownership and other privileges. The province continued to attract free blacks and escaped slaves from the Southern United States. Favorable conditions for free blacks continued into the 1830s.[10]

In 1823, Mexico forbade the sale or purchase of slaves, and required that the children of slaves be freed when they reached age fourteen.[11] By 1825, however, a census of Austin's Colony showed 1,347 Anglo-Americans and 443 people of African descent, including a small number of free Negroes.[17] In 1827, the legislature of Coahuila y Tejas outlawed the introduction of additional slaves and granted freedom at birth to all children born to a slave.[11]

In 1829 Mexico abolished slavery, but it granted an exception until 1830 to Texas. That year Mexico made the importation of slaves illegal.[11] Anglo-American immigration to the province slowed at this point, with settlers angry about the changing rules. To circumvent the law, numerous Anglo-American colonists converted their slaves to indentured servants, but with life terms. Others simply called their slaves indentured servants without legally changing their status.[18] Slaveholders trying to enter Mexico would force their slaves to sign contracts claiming that the slaves owed money and would work to pay the debt. The low wages the slave would receive made repayment impossible, and the debt would be inherited, even though no slave would receive wages until age eighteen.[19] In 1832 the state passed legislation prohibiting worker contracts from lasting more than ten years.[20]

Many slaves who escaped from masters in Texas or in the United States joined various East Texas Indian tribes. Although not considered equals in the tribes, they were generally treated well. Many former slaves fought with the Cherokee against the Texan army that drove the tribe from East Texas in 1838.[21] Slaves often fought against the Comanche tribe, however. The Comanche indiscriminately killed slaves and their white masters during raids. The Comanche sold any captured slaves to the Cherokee and Creek in Indian Territory, as they were both slave-holding tribes.[22]

By the 1800s, most slaves in Texas had been brought by slaveholders from the United States.[18] A small number of slaves were imported illegally from the West Indies or Africa. In the 1830s, the British consul estimated that approximately 500 slaves had been illegally imported into Texas.[23] By 1836, there were approximately 5,000 slaves in Texas.[24]

Exportation in the slave-owning areas of the state surpassed that of the non-slave-owning areas. A survey of Texas in 1834 found that the department of Bexar, which was mostly made up of Tejanos, had exported no goods. The Brazos department, including Austin's colonies and those of Green DeWitt, had exported 600,000 pesos worth of goods, including 5,000 bales of cotton.[25] The department of Texas, which included the eastern settlements, expected to export 2,000 bales of cotton and 5,000 head of cattle.[26]

The abolition of slavery created tensions between the Mexican government and slave-holding settlers from the United States. These tensions came to a head in the Anahuac Disturbances. In August 1831, Juan Davis Bradburn, the military commander of the custom station on Upper Galveston Bay, gave asylum to two men who had escaped from slavery in Louisiana. The slave owner hired William Barret Travis, a local lawyer, in an attempt to retrieve the men. When Bradburn arrested Travis on suspicion of plotting an insurrection, settlers rebelled. The disturbances were resolved through a combination of arms and political maneuvering. One result was the Turtle Bayou Resolutions, which were an explanation of the grievances that had led to the disturbances. One of the resolutions challenged Bradburn for "advising and procuring servants to quit the service of their masters, and offering them protection; causing them to labor for his benefits, and refusing to compensate them for the same."