What actions by the Mexican government increased tensions between it and American colonists living in Texas? allowing religious freedom and conscription of American colonists into the Mexican army declaring war on the United States and arresting Stephen Austin abolishing slavery in Mexico and restricting immigration from the United States killings hundreds of Texas militiamen at Goliad and declaring Texas a Mexican state

Some of those South American people who took their African-American slaves to the west. Many of the captives, realizing that in 1829 Mexico abolished slavery, moved southward to the Rio Grande, exacerbating relations with their masters. Thousands fled South of the border to newfound independence. There were only 4,000 colonists in all of Texas in 1820; there were five times as many over the next decade, facilitated over permissive Mexican immigration rules. Stephen F. Austin alone brought 1,200 families of settlers into the region.