the Laredo area, however, by conducting an "impartial" proceeding, which resulted in all the Tejano families retaining their landholdings. In the rest of the state, however, the commission was less favorable to the land-owning claims of the Tejanos. In areas of Southwest Texas, fewer than half of all land grants were recognized as legitimate by the commission, and many of the ones which were recognized as legitimate were already owned by Anglo Texans. Violence In addition to using legalistic maneuvers to seize economic and political control, American settlers also used physical violence as a tactic to control the conquered Mexican American population. In California, Mexican Americans were driven out of their homes, forced out of mining camps in gold-rich areas, barred from testifying in court, and gradually segregated into barrios. There was resistance to this violence, as men like Tiburcio Vásquez turned to banditry to resist the domination of the Anglos. As a method to keep Mexicans in their place, the American settlers lynched Mexicans. Between 1848 and 1860, at least 163 Mexicans were lynched in California alone. Between 1848 and 1879, Mexican Americans across the United States were lynched at an unprecedented rate of 473 per 100,000 of population. Most of these lynchings were not instances of "frontier justice"— out of 597 total victims, only 64 were lynched in areas which lacked a formal judicial system. The majority of lynching victims were denied access to a trial while others were convicted in unfair trials. Mexican Americans had no avenues for justice in the early-American period. As a result, many of the folk heroes of this period were considered to be outlaws: robbers, social bandits, and freedom fighters. In Texas, Mexican Americans also resisted the violence of the U.S. settlers. Juan Cortina began the First Cortina War in 1859 when he shot the Brownsville town Marshall, Robert Shears, for brutalizing Cortina's former employees. Cortina raided and occupied the town with a squad of armed men. They held the city for several months, until they were attacked by a joint effort between the Texas Rangers and U.S. Army, led by John Ford and Samuel Heintzelman. The final battle was fought in March 1860, when Cortina was defeated. Late-19th century Civil War Mexican Americans played a major role in the American Civil War (1861-1865). Texas, which was home to a significant portion of the nation's Mexican American population, seceded from the Union