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Post by Kevin Young on Feb 21, 2010 22:42:10 GMT -5
Well, that is pretty conviencing. Again, I guess there many have been some interesting discussions in the Alamo.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Feb 21, 2010 23:08:07 GMT -5
Yup. Some high class discussin'.
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Post by Hiram on Feb 21, 2010 23:09:04 GMT -5
Once you mentioned Lundy, it rang a bell. A friend of mine had read the journal and noted Lundy's mention of Pollard.
Lundy was seeking a place to relocate former slaves after they had been liberated through abolition. But sanctuary for those liberated would not have been found in an independent Texas, and Pollard was certainly for independence. Having said that, Lundy obviously considered Pollard like-minded.
Parenthetically, I do wonder if perhaps ol' Amos was agreeing with Lundy just to get rid of him.
On a more serious note, I think many enlightened individuals, such as Stephen F. Austin, struggled with the issue of slavery. They viewed it as essential to an agrarian-based economy, and yet struggled with justifying it through moral argument.
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Post by Kevin Young on Feb 21, 2010 23:35:20 GMT -5
Once you mentioned Lundy, it rang a bell. A friend of mine had read the journal and noted Lundy's mention of Pollard.
Lundy was seeking a place to relocate former slaves after they had been liberated through abolition. But sanctuary for those liberated would not have been found in an independent Texas, and Pollard was certainly for independence. Having said that, Lundy obviously considered Pollard like-minded.
Parenthetically, I do wonder if perhaps ol' Amos was agreeing with Lundy just to get rid of him.
On a more serious note, I think many enlightened individuals, such as Stephen F. Austin, struggled with the issue of slavery. They viewed it as essential to an agrarian-based economy, and yet struggled with justifying it through moral argument. Having just look at the actual quote, it is the briefest of references and could be subject to some interpretation or taken at face value. It does make me wonder still...Lundy certainly was not pro Texas after its independence....
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Post by stuart on Feb 22, 2010 9:23:18 GMT -5
The best way I was ever able to sum up the slavery/states rights issue in relation to the American Civil war was that the southern states seceded in order to preserve their individual rights to determine those issues closely affecting them; the most urgent of which was slavery.
As to Texas, as I’ve argued before, slavery was only one of a number of quite disparate issues. There is no doubt that a number of individuals and associations and in particular the New Orleans Mob saw an independent Texas as an opportunity to strengthen their peculiar institution; not least because it was already being heavily used as a conduit for the clandestine importation of slaves from the Caribbean.
While its suggested that the acquisition of Texas would have been a valuable addition to the roll of pro-slavery states, especially if it were subdivided into a whole clutch of new states, it was arguably more valuable as an independent country since the importation of slaves was not illegal and it was consequently a whole lot easier to bring them ashore in Texas and them move them more or less clandestinely over the Sabine into the US.
This is why Britain was so keen to secure abolition in Texas, not because it was widespread within the state, but because it served as this conduit.
Now, that being said, while the New Orleans Mob (aka the friends of Texas) were keen to encourage and support the Texas Revolution by raising and equipping volunteers and forwarding supplies, it would be quite wrong to suppose that they were responsible for it just because they had a few fingers in the pie. The colonists, legitimate and otherwise, obviously had their own issues, while on the other side were Grant and the Federalistas, trying to include Texas in a breakaway Republic of Northern Mexico/Rio Grande.
What’s interesting here is that although I’m not aware of his discussing slavery, Grant was brought up in the same evangelical circle in London that doubled as William Wilberforce’s Anti-Slavery Society. His cousin, the Colonial Secretary, Lord Glenelg, was a prominent abolitionist who would oversee the final dismantling of slavery in the British West Indies and its difficult therefore not to see his attempt to frustrate American annexation by tying Texas into a Mexican revolution as furthering both the British government’s policy of frustrating American expansion, and its (and his) own policy of frustrating slavery.
The point is that while an independent Texas was better than an American Texas, a Northern Mexican Texas would make life a lot more difficult for the slavers – which is why the New Orleans Mob ratted on Mexia.
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Post by stuart on Feb 22, 2010 10:51:20 GMT -5
Returning to Benjamin Lundy; as I recall he (and Grant’s associate Ogilvie) were looking at obtaining a land grant in Tamaulipas rather than in Texas, albeit in the Nueces Strip
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Post by Hiram on Feb 22, 2010 12:39:29 GMT -5
This is why Britain was so keen to secure abolition in Texas, not because it was widespread within the state, but because it served as this conduit. Which leads to the crux of the matter in terms of England's interest in Texas, particularly prior to the annexation agreement with the United States. In Merck's Slavery and the Annexation of Texas, it is quite clear that the immovable obstacle for any formal joining of Texas and Great Britain was the institution of slavery.
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Post by Kevin Young on Feb 22, 2010 12:55:53 GMT -5
So, Grant would have created an non-slave state while Houston and company created a pro-slave one?
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Post by Hiram on Feb 22, 2010 13:14:32 GMT -5
I think that's a logical conclusion. I find it interesting that we're discussing this on the anniversary of the 1819 Adams-Onis Treaty. Far from ending the United States' interest in Texas, it just went "dormant" for a few years.
JQA despised freemasonry and the idea of Texas joining the Union (at least post-1835.) And I quote:
"The day passes, and leaves scarcely a distinct trace upon the memory of anything, and precisely because, among numberless other objects of comparative insignificance, the heaviest calamity that ever befell myself and my country was this day consummated."
Diary entry of 28 February, 1845
Sufficient to say, the Grand Lodge of the State of Texas, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, does not endorse this view.
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Post by jesswald on Feb 22, 2010 16:40:42 GMT -5
In the aftermath of the OJ Simpson murder trial, polls showed that a majority of black people honestly believed that he was innocent, while a majority of white people honestly believed he was guilty. And they were all exposed to the same media hype. None of them had actual knowledge of any of the facts. I wonder if historians are subject to the same human biases. Are northern historians more likely to emphasize slavery as the cause of the Civil War, while southern historians tend to talk about states' rights. In a prior entry under "Joe?", (which may be the thread Allen was looking for, btw) I recounted that near the state house in Austin some years ago I found a monument to Confederate Soldiers which had a discussion of the Civil War which made no mention of slavery. Not a word. I have also seen monuments in Charleston, SC and New Haven, CN, both commemorating the siege of Charleston, but you'd never know they were talking about the same event. Those of us who know and love the Alamo story don't want to believe that the defenders were foolishly wasting their lives, don't want to believe that a major factor in the Texas Revolution was the expansion or preservation of slavery, don't want to believe that Crockett surrendered, don't want to believe that there was an Exodus during the battle. This may skew our appreciation of the facts, right? I agree with Stuart that if the Civil War was fought over states' rights and not slavery, then just what states' right was the bone of contention? How come the split in the country happens to have been right along the Mason Dixon line, with slave states on one side and free states on the other? Why was states' rights a peculiarly southern ideal? Southerners of good faith, particularly in the years following emancipation, didn't want their cause to be linked indissolubly with the peculiar institution, so they convinced themselves that the war was not fought primarily over slavery. But there was a subtext. Is it possible that Lundy was right, and that the Texas Revolution had more to do with slavery than we are willing to admit? Jesse Waldinger
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Post by Paul Sylvain on Feb 22, 2010 18:24:37 GMT -5
I don't think you can single out a single cause for the Texas Revolution. Slavery may very have been part of the agenda for some. But how about the desire for land? Others merely desired a Texas free of Mexico for whatever reason. "Freedom" might have been enough for many.
Like most things related to the Alamo, the answers are often more complex than they might seem on the surface.
Paul
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Post by Allen Wiener on Feb 22, 2010 18:33:34 GMT -5
That sounds like a good interpretation to me. Although there was a long-standing debate over states' rights, it was emphasized a lot more by southern than northern states and I believe that was because an expansion of federal power was automatically a threat to slavery, which was a threat to the southern economy. Even though more enlightened slave-owners, like Jefferson, foresaw the inevitable end to slavery, they could not figure out a way to bring it about without wrecking the southern economy. South Carolina came very close to seceding over the issue of nullification during Jackson's administration. Although S. Carolina's argument was framed as a states' rights issue, it was clearly motivated by the implicit threat to slavery that federal authority carried. For the same reason, the south was nervous about western expansion, which would bring more non-slave states into the union and make the south (i.e. the slave-owning states) a progressively smaller minority. Hence, the compromise that mandated a new slave state for each free state.
I don't know if this is a fair comparison, but I lived in the south during the early-mid 1960s, when the civil rights movement was growing and finally exploding. I rarely heard southern friends refer to federal intervention as a racial issue, but rather as a matter of states' rights. However, these were the states that were maintaining strict Jim Crow segregationist laws, which always seemed to me to be the real issue. Nonetheless, that doesn't completely "nullify" the issue of states' rights. From the earliest days of the republic, up to today, there has been a debate over the proper size and roles of the federal and state governments. Initially, fear of large or strong central government was primarily motivated by a fear of a return to monarchism and despotism. Opponents of Andrew Jackson, including Crockett, often cited this as their primary objection to his presidency.
Allen
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Post by Paul Sylvain on Feb 22, 2010 18:57:32 GMT -5
I found this interesting article on the issue of state sovereignty online. Certainly the slave issue was close to the heart of the southern states, but this read makes it clear that there were a number of events that led to the split. Here's the link: www.civilwarhome.com/statesrights.htm
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Post by Hiram on Feb 22, 2010 19:14:18 GMT -5
Paul,
Nice link. I'm familiar with that site myself. Interesting quote from the link you posted:
"It was a strife between the principles of Federation, on the one side, and Centralism, or Consolidation, on the other"...
Sounds a bit like Tex Rev to me!
I think we all agree that slavery was one of the issues at hand in both conflicts. The question is, how much weight does it bear in each war?
There are many (and I am one of those) who believe that the War Between the States was fought by the North initially to preserve the Union, but became a war fought over the primary question of slavery after the Emancipation Proclamation.
For me, that was a masterful stroke applied by Lincoln, who waited for the tide to turn before issuing the Proclamation, a document which in reality, freed no slaves to speak of, most assuredly those unfortunate ones who were in servitude in areas controlled by the G.A.R. or in northern states.
And for the slaves freed from secessionist areas not at the time controlled by the G.A.R., it was for all practical purposes, a draft notice.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Feb 22, 2010 19:19:50 GMT -5
There are many (and I am one of those) who believe that the War Between the States was fought by the North initially to preserve the Union, but became a war fought over the primary question of slavery after the Emancipation Proclamation.That's pretty much the agreed-upon analysis, from what I've read, although I'm not as up on the CW as many of you.
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