ABSTRACT
In Texas, as in other societies, religion was an important institution. By constitution and law, Roman Catholicism was the religion of Mexico, to the exclusion of any other. For the people of Mexico in general and of Texas in particular, the end of Spanish rule was much more of a beginning than it was an end. In the new nation, the uneasy alliance of conservative ricos, middle-class criollos, and liberal pobres soon and predictably fell apart. One of the early empresario grants led to a clash between Mexican officials and certain Anglo-American colonists in Texas. The dispute had its beginning in 1825 when Haden Edwards secured an empresario grant that permitted him to locate colonists in a large area of eastern Texas. Local government, however, was a peculiar mixture of Mexican institutions and Anglo-American practices. Although the constitution of Coahuila and Texas required the establishment of schools in each town, there was no system of public education in colonial Texas.
