December 29: On this day in 1845, six months after the congress of the Republic of Texas accepted U.S. annexation of the territory, Texas was admitted into the United States as the 28th state.
The Republic of Texas (Spanish: República de Texas) was an independent sovereign nation in North America that existed from March 2, 1836, to February 19, 1846. It was bordered by the nation of Mexico to the southwest, the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast, the two US states of Louisiana and Arkansas to the east and northeast, and the United States territories encompassing the current US states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico to the north and west. The citizens of the republic were known as Texians.
When Texas won independence from Mexico, the citizens of the independent Republic of Texas elected Sam Houston president but also endorsed the entrance of Texas into the Union.
The intent of Texas joining the Union as a slave state delayed any formal action by the U.S. Congress for more than a decade.
In 1844, Congress finally agreed to annex the territory of Texas. On December 29, 1845, Texas entered the United States as a slave state, thereby broadening the growing friction among the United States over the issue of slavery and setting off the Mexican-American War (1846 to 1848) over borders of the new state.
War After Statehood
This description of the conflict following Texas statehood appears in the book, The Evolution of a State or Recollections of Old Texas Days by Noah Smithwick of Austin, Texas published in 1900:
As was anticipated, the annexation of Texas again involved us in a war with Mexico, but how different from those that had preceded it! Instead of a few hundred poorly armed men, there was General Taylor, “Old Rough and Ready,” who “never surrendered,” and stern old General Winfield Scott, who won his first honors at Lundy’s Lane thirty-five years before, and with them Grant and Lee and many others who developed into able commanders during the civil war, together with their thousands of soldiers equipped with all the latest appliances of war, and above this imposing array, not one lone, lonely star, but a glittering constellation of twenty-eight flashed defiance to all foes.
But Texas did not stand aloof while the United States fought her battles. The requisition made upon her for troops was promptly responded to, many being bitterly disappointed because the ranks were filled before they got in. Governor Henderson, assisted by Jack Hays, Ben McCulloch and Walter P. Lane, all of whom subsequently rose to distinction, took the field at the head of two regiments of cavalry and two of infantry, joining General Taylor, who had been ordered to Corpus Christi immediately after the passage of the annexation act, Mexico having previously warned the United States that such an act would be considered casus belli. Captain Ad Gillespie, killed in the storming of the fortifications on El Obispado, led the scaling party up the almost perpendicular steep and was the first man to mount the parapet surrounding the bishop’s castle which crowned the summit, receiving his death wound in the act. Captain Samuel Walker was killed at Huamantla.
TL;DR Civics 
After your previous Texas related post I did some reading about the early migration into the area by neighboring Americans. I was struck by some similarities with various migrations around Southern Africa by Afrikaners from about the late 1700s to the late 1800.
Not so much the Voortrekkers who were part of a large organized movement. But smaller groups and individual families in search of more land and greater independence from authority.
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That picture of the Alamo reminds me of a conversation I once had with a guy from San Antonio.
He said that when tourists see it for the first time their reaction is usually: “It’s so small!”
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