How Can Conservatives Oppose Immigration When Many Early Texas Settlers Were Illegal Immigrants?
In the 1800s, Whites in the slave owning states received an appeal by Sam Houston to come to Texas to gain wealth very swiftly by planting cotton and acquiring slaves. Members of the lower classes, poor Whites, flooded into Mexico (Texas) in hope of escaping poverty. They did this at the expense of other human beings. All who came had to volunteer to fight Native People and were promised 640 acres of free land. David Crockett thought this was as a way to join the upper class of lazy gentlemen slave owners and to escape debt in Tennessee
Slave Smuggling and the Mexican Constitution of 1824
Texas settlers during this period were smuggling slaves into Texas, even after the Mexican Congress of 1824 passed legislation that effectively ended the slave trade-but not really! The 1824 Mexican Constitution allowed each area to decide on slavery and this explains why the White immigrants supported this constitution. Texas settlers would have none of this for they came to Texas with a scheme, set up by Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston, to rip Texas away from Mexico.
Stephen F. Austin and Mexico’s Early Anti-Slavery Laws
Even before the legislation of 1824, the leaders of Mexico’s new republic, after having defeated Spain in 1821, passed colonization laws aimed at White pro-slavery immigrants, many of whom were illegal immigrants, which forbade the treatment of enslaved people as property. Of course, Stephen F. Austin, and his band of pro-slavery colonists ignored the law. Slave smuggling was carried out by many of the Alamo defenders including the arch-racist Jim Bowie. Bowie’s relatives were New Orleans slave auction owners.
Related: The “Fake Brave Men” They Call Texas ‘Hero’s’
When Stephen F. Austin brought American settlers to Mexico in 1822, Mexican law stated that there could be “Neither sale nor purchase of slaves who are brought to the empire; their children born in the empire shall be free at the age of fourteen.” Mexico eventually outlawed slavery but made concessions for Texas pro-slavery settlers in its desire to populate the northern province and fight the Comanche and other Native tribes. It put these immigrants on notice that slavery was to be a temporary institution. They would ignore this and decide on war to make Texas into a slave empire.
Mexico’s Efforts to Restrict Slavery in Texas
In regards to the American slaveholders immigrating to Mexican Texas, Article 21 of the Law of October 14, 1823 stated “foreigners who bring slaves with them, shall obey the laws established upon the matter, or which shall hereafter be established.” Article 21 reminded the Texans that the laws could change and they would be expected to obey them. This would prove to be a sore point for the pro-slavery Whites who were seeking wealth by bringing in enslaved people.
Historical Myths and the Origins of Texas
It is crucial, that an analysis of why White settlers came to Texas in the first place is necessary. By ignoring these facts racist myth was built into the origin of Texas and eventually the wars with Mexico. Myth was used as invented reality and as a racist prop for fiction. Racial myth must be confronted and exposed from the historical record in order to end white supremacist fiction.
Systematic deception is at the crux of much of the existing educational literature concerning White immigration into Mexican-Texas. It still manages to find acceptance in tours at the Alamo as visitors are bombarded with one lie after another. There is a host of pre-meditated calculations assembled to create a false history designed to bury the truth, and elevate a load of invented Eurocentric interpretations that holds no credibility. How can conservatives be angry with immigrants when they themselves were often illegals on other people’s land?
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