Edited sentence: Even more gaulling to Mexico was the rapidly growing number of illegal American immigrants staking claims on land in East Texas based solely on the belief that the United States was going to buy it soon.Mexican attempts to enforce anti-slavery laws ran into violent and extreme opposition from the mostly white, slave-owning American settlers, not all of whom were even legally in the country.Mexico abhorred slavery as it was practiced in the United States  The seeds of Texas independence were planted the moment Mexico made its first attempts to enforce its rule of law in the territory regarding the abolishment of legal slavery.Mexico realized just how dependent the settlers were on slave labor, and the decree and active enforcement of anti-slavery laws was designed to hinder their plans to separate from Mexico.The birth of Texas as an independent nation can best be summerized as the result of Mexico declaring slavery illegal.The inability of the national Mexican Government to enforce anti-slavery laws was all that was needed to fan the flames of rebellion among the settlers, and in a matter of few years after the passage of the anti-slavery laws the Republic of Texas, a nation's whose driving force was the right to own slaves, ruled by and for the benefit of free white settlers, was born.This was partly true, for prior to the decision, Mexico had decided the American settlers could not be trusted as they refused to obey Mexican laws, learn Spanish, or become Catholic as required of them when they were granted permission to settle in the Territory.To the rghteous American settler's the law declaring slavery illegal was -theft of legally purchased propery, their slaves, by a dictatorial government bent on driving them out