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Jump to navigationJump to searchExodus From the Alamo by Phillip Thomas Tucker (view source)
Revision as of 15:20, 8 January 2012
, 15:20, 8 January 2012no edit summary
Let's look at the plus side first. This is a well-researched piece of history. As well as quoting liberally (if not always favourably) from most of the key works about the Alamo, Tucker has clearly also gone back to the source documents: contemporary letters, newspaper reports, battle reports, and testimony from both sides of the war. Testimony from the Texan side of the actual battle is obviously limited given how few survivors there were, but more of them that you might suppose if you've fallen for the legend.
What is established without doubt is what the war was about. This wasn't Texans fighting for liberty. The Mexicans had done that. When they threw off the Spanish yoke they set up a constitution that guaranteed freedom to people of all colours and creeds. This caused a bit of a problem in Texas. Many of the incoming settlers, settlers initially encouraged by Mexico it must be admitted, were from slave owning families. These Anglo-Celts as Tucker insists on calling them saw in Texas, good, cultivable land that could be profitably farmed – given enough hands to work it. At the time ""''enough hands"" '' meant slaves. Texas is huge. A lot of the land is good farming land, but if you want to crop it rather than stock it, you need an awful lot of people. If you have an awful lot of land-owning people (something which won't happen overnight anyway) you by definition reduce the per capita return. If you ship in a load of unpaid labour, that problem goes right away.
""The right to own slaves"" was one of the driving forces behind the Texan bid for independence from Mexico. When the Mexican constitution was drafted, it Texas won a reprieve in that it could keep its peculiar institution of slavery for a time at least. That was increasingly becoming a bone of contention however. Mexicans, who as a nation are as gloriously mixed-race as any on the planet, were increasingly unhappy with this anomaly, and the Texans felt their prerogative under threat. Of course, by the mid-1800s there was anti-slavery pressure from elsewhere as well.
