You keep posting stuff like this, over and over:
Their great contribution to geopolitical history, apart from the fact that John Wayne was one of them, seems to have been an unremitting insistence on the perpetuation of slavery. Which Mexico didn't practice, BTW.
1. Cortes himself took slaves from the moment he landed in Mexico -- what's the matter with you, don't you read? He branded them, too, with the letter "c", for "captive". Just to mark them, mind you.
Later on, the Indians groaned under their native caciques and, under the encomienda system, the corregidores, in labor levies that were not chattel slavery but rather like the labor corvees of ancient Egypt. The difference won't have mattered much to Indians who died in the silver mines.
In 1835, Texas contained about 30,000 American and perhaps 4,000 Spanish colonists (colonists had stopped coming from Mexico and Spain before Moses Austin made his pitch to Governor Martinez -- it was the reason for suggesting American colonists -- and so the number of "Mexican" colonists in Texas was nil; they had all been Spanish, Irish, and Canary Islanders). Of the American population, perhaps 10% were black slaves. Moses Austin, a Connecticut Yankee, had brought a couple of slaves with him when he originally migrated to Spanish Missouri in 1796, to open a lead mine and smelter.
2. But if Opie wants to tell the true story of these Texans (i.e., that they weren't fighting for any particularly just cause, or that they weren't even Americans) cut him some slack. I always prefer real history to the John Wayne version.
He won't "tell the true story" by listening to people who've been poisoned by Texas-hating Hollywood moviemakers (Tombstone was a classic of hate propaganda) and Marxist-revisionist theories about the "real" history of Texas.
Nice history lesson. I *love* the way Bravo Sierra is nearly always instantly revealed as such, by hordes of truly knowledgeable members here on FreeRepublic. There's nothing else like it in the online world. Thank you.
Well done, sir or madam.
For my small contribution to this history lesson, I want to observe that the Texas Revolution started over the issue of gun control. You've got to love a people that seceded from their country at least partially over the issue of gun control.
"The first shot of the Texas revolution was on Oct. 2, 1835, and took place near Gonzales."
How about responding to my understanding of the actual battle of the Alamo: Travis was a hotdog. He had been ordered not to put up a fight there by Houston, but he was a glory hound who assumed Houston would bail him out if it came to it. It was only that Santa Ana was an even worse commander than Travis that made the stand heroic in restrospect. If Santa Ana (did that man ever win a battle other than the Alamo?) had simply left a small screen around the mission to keep 'em inside and moved on, he would have denied Houston the time he needed to get his army into shape. But he insisted on deploying his whole force and conducting a siege against a hundred guys in an adobe mission.
Thanks for a little additional perspective, insulting though it may be in tone. But much of what you've said still fails to refute my central thesis: The fact that Cortez took slaves in the 16th Century (for God's sake!) is irrelevant to the fact that Mexico did not allow it. The fact that "only" 10% of Texans were slaves does not minimize this stain on their political culture. The fact that there was this little thing called The Civil War, of which I certainly have "heard" does speak well of the Union, but not so well of Texas, which fought for the Confederacy, despite NOT even having the excuse of "economic neccessity" that the states to the east had. In any case I thank you for much of the information: I really wasn't spoiling for a fight (or for a stream of abuse). And no, I've never been jilted by a buxom Texas blonde.