• PugJesus@piefed.socialOPM
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    4 days ago

    Explanation: In the 1820s, many American Southerners, seeking new lands that hadn’t been ruined by wasteful and primitive farming techniques (as were practiced by American Southerners of the time), emigrated into the Mexican holding of Texas. The thing is, they often brought their slaves with them - and Mexico would outlaw slavery in 1829 (and then American immigration in 1830).

    It didn’t stop the influx of American emigrants, slaver and non-slaver alike, who saw Texas as prime unexploited farmland. In their defense, Mexico saw it that way too, and was less concerned about American settlers increasing the tax base, and more concerned about… well, what would eventually happen - American settlers eventually clashing with the dictates of the government.

    The spark that lit the eventual revolt of Texas was actually nationwide - Mexico had devolved into civil war over the issue of centralized power vs. federalism. Texans (‘Texians’, at the time) sided with the Federalists, and initially things seemed like they might resolve favorably for Mexico, with the Anglo-American Texian settlers mollified by the Federalist reforms proposed. However, when the Mexican general Santa Anna couped the Federalist government and instituted a Centralist dictatorship in its place, new Federalist revolts rose up across Mexico. Santa Anna’s government managed to repress all of them, except Texas - in no small part because of Anglo-Americans having economic connections across the border to the USA they could leverage, and because Anglo-Americans outnumbered Mexican settlers in Texas by that time.

    Texas would declare independence, and a decade later, be annexed by the USA by their own request. Mexico was not happy about this, and this dispute started the Mexican-American War - wherein the USA invaded and eventually annexed much more of Mexico than just Texas, and which many in the US (and Mexico, almost certainly) would come to regard as an imperialist war, an unprincipled grab for land, regardless of whether they thought annexing Texas itself was legitimate.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Yup, well put and nicely detailed.

      Texas was so into slavery that both of their constitutions mandated it, and even went so far as to specify that slaveowners could NOT emancipate their own slaves.

      Texas NEVER teaches this history in schools, I took two semesters of Texas history in high school and one semester of Texas history in college, not once did they even mention slavery outside the context of the US civil war, and even then it was mostly about juneteenth and not their own miserable slaver loving history.

      And the Alamo? Haha, they’ll never admit that was caused directly by their refusal to give up their slaves. It’s hilariously ignorant.

    • Danquebec@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      I think you meant “immigrants” instead of “emigrants”. Emigrants would be people leaving, not coming.

      • PugJesus@piefed.socialOPM
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        4 days ago

        Emigrated from the USA. It depends on whether the emphasis is supposed to be on the location they’re leaving from, or arriving to.

        I did write “banned emigration” where I meant “banned immigration” though, lmao, fixed.

    • mkwt@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      The Anglo-American Texian settlers also wanted to continue to own chattel slaves from Africa, but the central Mexican government was fixing to force abolition on the Mexican states. That was a big part of it in 1832.

      • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        perhaps, but he wasn’t a slaver. so compared to the slave owners resisting mexican rule for the explicit purpose of keeping humans in bondage, I dunno man, I think the assholes at the Alamo were total dicks.

        • protist@retrofed.com
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          4 days ago

          While slavery was definitely one contributing factor to the Texas Revolution, it wasn’t the primary reason for the revolution, like it was for the US South in the Civil War. The Texas Revolution only kicked off after Santa Anna dissolved the Mexican Legislature, ended the Mexican Constitution, and created a centralized Catholic government. 15 Mexican states rebelled at the same time in response, “Alta California, Nuevo México, Tabasco, Sonora, Coahuila y Tejas, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Durango, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Yucatán, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, and Zacatecas.”

          Santa Anna led the army to brutally repress each rebellion. Texas was the only rebellion to succeed, largely due to having more people than the other states and supply lines to the US.

          Santa Anna’s pattern of indiscriminate executions of hundreds of people at a time definitely contributed to the veracity with which Texans fought. Santa Anna was responsible for the slaughter of thousands of people across Mexico, including many indigenous people, and by the end, he appointed himself dictator for life and made everyone call him “His Most Serene Highness.”

              • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                nope.

                dress it up however you like, it’s simply texas ‘exceptionalism’ and a load of horse shit.

                all hat, no cattle, all slavery, no liberty. you guys wanted and fought, TWICE, for a slavery republic.

                look at the fucking constitutions bud. what kind of shithole mandates the bondage of people to the point where EVEN THE FUCKIN SLAVE OWNERS COULDN’T EMANCIPATE THEIR ‘PROPERTY’?

                think about that racist bullshit and stop trying to make it all about the big bad santa ana, there was plenty of evil in texas to go around

            • protist@retrofed.com
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              3 days ago

              The argument about which is more immoral, murdering or enslaving, is certainly more nuanced than you’re making it out to be.