Don't you just love it when people OUTSIDE of Texas try to teach us our OWN history? :)
Yep, and they all try to do it. The yankees try to teach it to us. The Mexicans try to teach it to us. Hollywood tries to teach it to us. And the version they teach is always something that reflects favorably on them and unfavorably on us, whatever the tactic or angle they use may be. Sadly, they never seem to learn what most intelligent people from elsewhere in the country quickly learn - never get into an historical argument with a native Texan about Texas because it's one you will simply never win.
As far as Lincoln goes, I am of the firm belief that the people and state of Texas have absolutely no business whatsoever celebrating him for any reason. He was never President over Texas. His troops, try as they might, never successfully invaded Texas. He never set foot in Texas. He never produced anything of any form that benefited Texas. Heck, he didn't even free the slaves in Texas so whatever claim some may give him to being an emancipator here is false - ending slavery here was done two months after Lincoln's death by a general when Andrew Johnson was President!
If one looks at the whole of Lincoln's position towards Texas dating back to his term in Congress there is not one single thing he did that is redeeming or in the interest of our state. In 1846 when a war was brewing on the Texas border he stood up on the floor of the House and publicly espoused the equivalent of giving away Texas' land between the Nueces and Rio Grande to Mexico! In the same speech he also made a not so subtle allegation against the legal validity of the Treaty of Velasco that Santa Anna signed giving Texas its independence - and all of this smack dab in the middle of a war when US Troops were lining up on the Rio Grande to defend the border from the same invading Mexicans raiders who had been constantly and wantonly thrusting their way across the Rio Grande and into the Republic of Texas and newly formed State of Texas for the previous decade (Talk about a John Kerry for the 19th century!). As far as I'm concerned, the state of Texas owes NOTHING to the image or memory of Abraham Lincoln today, never has, and never will. And I cite as my authorities on that position the concurring votes of Sam Houston, David G. Burnet, Mirabeau B. Lamar, Jose Antonio Navarro, Albert Sydney Johnston, Bernard Elliot Bee, Hamilton Bee, James W. Throckmorton, John "Rip" Ford, and additional Texas Declaration of Independence signers who were delegates to the Secession Convention including Edwin Waller, Sterling Robertson, and William Clark.
free the southland,sw