I found the letter ‘A closer look at heroes” (May 2) to be interesting reading, but as is so often the case with the retelling of history, a good portion of the story of Texas and the Alamo was left unsaid.
Starting with why did the Anglos moving into Texas in the 1830s feel the need to create a new country in 1835 rather than just staying a part of Mexico? The answer lies largely in the fact that Mexico had abolished slavery in 1829 and many of the Anglos moving in were bringing slaves with them. The Texans were to conclude, as they did again 16 years later, that they would rather fight than lose their chattel.
At this point in the discussion, it is usually pointed out that slavery was an accepted economic fact of life at the time, but a look at the record reveals that the first anti-slavery in the U.S. was published in 1688 (before there actually was a USA) and that anti-slavery sentiment was well known throughout the country despite the fact that abolitionism was illegal in the South, and in 1835 President Andrew Jackson banned the U.S. Postal Service from delivering any publications that supported the movement.
By the time of the Alamo, pretty much everyone had been exposed to the idea that slavery was a morally corrupt institution, but this was trumped in many places by the fact that its implementation was profitable. And who were the American (actually, Texan) heroes who died at the Alamo? There was James Bowie, slave owner, smuggler and slave trader; Davy Crockett, slave owner; William “Buck” Travis, slave owner; and lest we forget the leaders of the Texas independence movement, there was Sam Houston, who “owned slaves throughout his life” and Stephen Austin, a slave owner who wrote in 1833 that ”Texas must be a slave country.” For the people who would deny the significance of these facts, you are the erasers and cancelers of our history.
