Mexican Prison Stint Changed Stephen F. Austin

1834 opened with the arrest of Stephen F. Austin for treason as a result of an inflammatory letter he had written in October 1833 while in Mexico City petitioning the federal government on behalf of the Texan colonists. Arrested in Saltillo, Austin was then transported back to Mexico City where he was imprisoned in an old Spanish Inquisition prison. Although originally placed in solitary confinement with limited access to the outside world, Stephen F. Austin’s prison correspondence and journals reveal much about the political climate in Mexico and the state of Texas in the year leading up to the revolution. By the time Austin returned to Texas in September 1835 the political situation in Mexico had changed dramatically and Texas was on the brink of war.