James Long (9 February 1793 – 8 April 1822) was a US Army soldier who led a failed filibuster expedition to create an independent state of Texas in 1819.
Biography[]
James Long was born in Culpeper County, Virginia on 9 February 1793, and he served as a US Army surgeon during the War of 1812. After the Battle of New Orleans and the end of the war in 1815, Long settled in Mississippi, becoming a plantation owner in Vicksburg in 1817. In 1819, he decided to lead a group of American and French settlers to take over Texas from Spain, taking advantage of the discontent caused by the Adams-Onis Treaty to create a new republic. Long captured Nagodoches and became the President of Texas for just one month, but a Spanish Army expedition crushed the uprising. In 1820, he led a second expedition to Texas, but he was captured and executed by a soldier in a Mexican military prison in 1822.