The Details: White Supremacy and Slavery
Slavery, white supremacy, and hatred were all tied at the hip to the cotton trade and agriculture in Texas. When cotton was booming with sales to England and other places, Texas slave owners sought to use slave labor to get wealthy. The lazy bums of plantation “gentlemen” were not going to pick their own cotton. Key to the economic development of Texas was not the hard work of white racist plantation owners, but to slave traders that turned Galveston, Texas into a pure hell for Africans transported from Cuba. At the time, 1830s to 1860s, slave labor was the only way that cotton was going to make these racist scoundrels rich. Since the United States outlawed the importation of slaves into the country, mercenaries and killers sought to use Texas as a way-station for the importation of slaves along the Texas coast. These killers even attempted to control Central America with armed invasions and developed strong relations with William Barret Travis and Jim Bowie in New Orleans. These two racists were not the only slave owners at the Alamo—there were plenty more.
Railroad development in the 1850s was directly related to cotton and slaves. Slave owners needed better ways to transport cotton other than ox-carts or animal-drawn vehicles. This important connection eventually led to rail lines being constructed across the state. It was under the conditions of slavery and cotton that propelled Texas into fighting to demand an end to the law that prevented the importation of slaves. Racist killers and plantation owners (mistakenly called gentlemen) were trying to make Central America and Cuba a slave empire and was supported by Sam Houston who gave speeches in support of crazed white supremacists in 1851. Another fake hero of Texas independence fame was Davis G Burnet, who supported armed white racist invasions of Central America. The Galveston newspapers at the time reported much of this. These killers were aided by Texas Rangers (called the Alamo Rangers) who were nothing more than a gang of criminal pro-slavery men at the time (as reported in the Galveston News of February 1857).
One researcher noted that the term “Texan” was associated with the word “plunder,” and that Texas Alamo Rangers went to Central America to rob and steal, much like the Texas marauders that came to Texas to rip away the land from Mexico and create a slave society. Men that suckered into going into Mexico and Central America were promised all kinds of rewards, but the main enticement was stealing land. Thus, the major issue in Texas from the very beginning was the issue of the slave trade. Racists went so far to utilize an invented Bible that they used to brainwash slaves by leaving out sections of it that spoke of freedom (much of Exodus was removed for example).
It was stated by one slave owner (Willard Richardson, as reported in the Galveston News, 1859) that poor whites coming to Texas should not have to do the hard work of planting cotton and picking it. It is important to note that the term “Manifest Destiny” was actually white supremacist destiny of expanding slavery. Another slave minded buffoon argued that “ White men . . . ought to be free from manual labor” and that the ox and Negroes should do that. Another horror of slavery consisted of kidnapping free black English sailors when they landed at Galveston, New Orleans, Corpus Christi, and other places, by claiming that they were runaways. Texas was built on racism, slavery, and white supremacy.
