Either it was my 7th grade Texas history teacher 20 years ago, or Jose Antonio Lopez when he wrote this column:
In 1835, a group of armed Anglo illegal immigrants from the U.S. were upset. The Mexican government told them they were welcome to settle in Texas on the condition that they had to free their black slaves, since Mexico freed all slaves in 1829
Illegal immigrants? That isn't the way I remember it being taught. And I do remember the slavery aspect of it, but the Texians had quite a few more grievances than just the slavery issue:
Under President Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican government began to shift away from a federalist model. The increasingly dictatorial policies, including the revocation of the Constitution of 1824 in early 1835, incited many federalists to revolt. The Mexican border region of Texas was largely populated by immigrants from the United States. These were accustomed to a federalist government and to extensive individual rights, and they were quite vocal in their displeasure at Mexico's shift towards centralism. Already leery of previous American attempts to purchase Texas, Mexican authorities blamed much of the Texian unrest on American immigrants, most of whom had made little effort to adapt to the Mexican culture.But I guess it's more convenient to your argument if you boil it down to just slavery, especially if your argument is based on race, and Lopez makes it quite clear that it is, in the last sentence of his fact-free screed. I am almost surprised that he did not call Juan seguin, Jose Antonio Navarro, et al. race traitors. No doubt he thinks just that, though.
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