Bryan Burrough and Jason Stanford call Texas "the most militant slave nation in history" and relegate The Alamo to "confederate monument" status. Cue the iconoclasts...
A few points if I may...
First, most Alamo defenders didn't own slaves. So how could slavery be the underlying cause? Had I been an Alamo defender and Colonel William Travis told me "this fight is about slavery" I would've walked out the front gates and surrendered to Santa Anna.
Second and as the authors admit, Texas wasn't the only Mexican state to revolt in 1834. As you know slavery was illegal in Mexico despite the Tejano's workaround. So how could slavery be the underlying cause of the revolt?
The authors admit the Texas Revolt was "precipitated by ham-handed Mexican attempts to exercise control over its territory" and yet still maintain it was all about slavery. I'm sorry but such contradiction wouldn't pass muster in a graduate school thesis. Give it a grade of 'F'.
Abolitionists are fundamentalists and as such, tend to view things in absolute terms. John Quincy Adams used abolition to keep us out of war with Mexico, a war we would fight anyway ten years after the Alamo's fall. So using the authors' logic did we fight the Mexican-American war to preserve slavery. Of course not. We fought it to expand our territory.
There's no denying had the Texas Revolt failed then slavery would've come to a quicker end. But slavery wasn't the primary motivation. If there's a lesson to be learned from The Alamo it is this: it was a revolt against an increasingly centralized and authoritarian government, which is precisely what Washington, DC has become.
I thank you and let's keep it real.
A few points if I may...
First, most Alamo defenders didn't own slaves. So how could slavery be the underlying cause? Had I been an Alamo defender and Colonel William Travis told me "this fight is about slavery" I would've walked out the front gates and surrendered to Santa Anna.
Second and as the authors admit, Texas wasn't the only Mexican state to revolt in 1834. As you know slavery was illegal in Mexico despite the Tejano's workaround. So how could slavery be the underlying cause of the revolt?
The authors admit the Texas Revolt was "precipitated by ham-handed Mexican attempts to exercise control over its territory" and yet still maintain it was all about slavery. I'm sorry but such contradiction wouldn't pass muster in a graduate school thesis. Give it a grade of 'F'.
Abolitionists are fundamentalists and as such, tend to view things in absolute terms. John Quincy Adams used abolition to keep us out of war with Mexico, a war we would fight anyway ten years after the Alamo's fall. So using the authors' logic did we fight the Mexican-American war to preserve slavery. Of course not. We fought it to expand our territory.
There's no denying had the Texas Revolt failed then slavery would've come to a quicker end. But slavery wasn't the primary motivation. If there's a lesson to be learned from The Alamo it is this: it was a revolt against an increasingly centralized and authoritarian government, which is precisely what Washington, DC has become.
I thank you and let's keep it real.
Last edited:
