the Affairs of Texas. In this document, he explained that Texas wanted to be a separate state, not an independent nation. He discussed the grievances against the Texas justice system and justified the conventions of 1832 and 1833 as "'an exercise of the right to petition that belongs to every free people'". He was finally released from prison and had returned to Texas, by August. He changed his mind in prison about the future of Texas and issued a call to arms, announcing that Texas should be "'forever free of any Mexican control'". After the Mexican Congress elected Antonio López de Santa Anna as President of Mexico in 1833, he appointed Valentín Gómez Farías as his vice president and turned over much of the governing of Mexico to him. However, the Vice President began implementing reforms, particularly impacting the Mexican Army and the Catholic Church. These reforms angered the powerful centrist forces, who urged Santa Anna to abandon his semi-retirement. Santa Anna agreed and led the reaction against liberalization, forcing Gómez Farías and his Federalist supporters, including Mexican General José Antonio Mexía, to flee into exile in the United States. Some went to New Orleans, where they planned to resist the Centralist government. Although the United States government remained officially neutral in the Mexican struggle between Santa Anna's Centralists and Gomez Farias' Federalists, there was much political sympathy favoring the separation of Texas from Mexico. A number of men, known as "filibusters", were attracted to militia-type organizations such as the New Orleans Greys, preparing to go fight for Texas independence. General Mexia soon found financing in New Orleans and began raising an expedition to attack the important Mexican port of Tampico. He persuaded influential people in New Orleans that seizing the port would aid the Texian cause. However, the "Tampico Expedition" that he began on November 6, 1835, failed. In 1835 Juan Seguin, Plácido Benavides, Manuel Leal, and Salvador Flores began raising companies of volunteers from the San Antonio and Victoria areas to support the federalist cause. By the end of the year over 100 Tejanos had joined the Federal Army of Texas to defend the Constitution of 1824 against the centralists. The political chief of the Nacogdoches region told the militias to take arms against the Mexican troops in July 1835 and asked the rest of the citizens to form a volunteer army. "Texas committees" in cities such as