Lawless Spirits

Emigrant rights shaped life in North America’s borderlands for decades by the 1830s. This chapter explores two borderlands rebellions in which insurgents asserted their emigrant rights in armed conflicts to overthrow Mexican authority in Texas and British authority in Lower and Upper Canada. Citizens of the United States asserted emigrant rights of their own in order to justify their participation in the Texas Revolution and the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-1838. The governments of Mexico, the United States, and Canada equally took steps to end these rebellions through law and diplomacy aimed at restraining emigrant rights. These rebellions had different outcomes – one resulting in Texas independence while the other failed to create a Republic of Canada – that reconfigured sovereignty in North America.