Slave Insurrections Played Minor Role in the Texas Revolution

The war for independence waged in 1835-1836 by Texas freedom fighters was in my opinion primarily necessitated by Mexican decrees abolishing slavery within its frontier states. Mexican hegemony in the area included an anti-slavery strategy in its new order of 1835 that erroneously depended upon actual slave insurrections as a military tool for creating an offensive against Texas militia. What was the extent of slavery in Texas by the fall of 1835? Were Mexican political and military leaders depending upon actual slave insurrections to create a “second front”? Accepting the preservation of slavery as the key factor leading to the Texas movement for independence in 1835-1836, does the evidence suggest that Mexican political leaders, adamant about maintaining their anti-slavery strategy, justifiably counted upon actual slave insurrections as a tactic of their military commanders?

Before outlining the evolution of the anti-slavery strategy of the Mexican Congress from the 1820s to the early 1830s, we need to review other factors leading to the revolt that have been espoused by leading historians such as Eugene C. Barker, William C. Binkley, Randolph B. Campbell, Paul D. Lack, Benjamin Lundy, and Dudley C. Wooten.¹ These historians weighed other factors vis-à-vis the slave issue as cause for successful Texas independence from Mexico, but the consensus which I concur with was that the anti-slavery issue was central as to Mexico’s policy toward Texas.

In January 1834, almost seven years after the report of Mier y Teran, the Mexican government sent Colonel Juan N. Almonte to Texas. His mission was to make an inspection, promising reforms within the province if Texans were on the brink of secession. Almonte argued in his statistical report that they were not preparing a revolt, and he recommended most of the reforms for which they asked.² Despite the conscientious efforts of leader Stephen F. Austin to further mutual cooperation and good feeling, the Anglo-Americans and Mexicans could not long live together in harmony because of fundamentally different racial and political backgrounds.³ “Mexicans looked with apprehension at their northern neighbor as it advanced ever more rapidly toward the territory of Mexico,” writes Gene Brack.⁴ Almonte’s and Teran’s reports emphasized the immense wealth that might be anticipated from the region, and their belief that the loss would be at the hands of the United States.⁵ Early treaty negotiations between the United States and Mexico included attempts by the United States to adjust boundary lines. Offers to purchase Texas had been extended in the early 1820s.⁶ Mexico answered to those claims for the purchase-sale of the territory with legislative rules for the colonization of it.⁷ Clement Eaton, a chronicler of Southern history, opines, “The Occupation of Texas by Southerners seemed to be manifest destiny.” ⁸ One writer saw the Texas Revolution as “an attempt to build a massive southern empire that would eclipse the northern Yankee Cousin so completely that slavery and states’ rights would be forever safe.”⁹ An expert on the history of slavery in the United States, Kenneth M. Stampp declared, “Before the annexation of Texas in 1845, Americans had firmly planted slavery in its soil.”¹⁰

According to Binkley, “It [Texas Revolution] has been described variously as a part of a deliberate design of the South to extend the slave territory of the United States, as a plot of speculators to enhance the value of their investments, and as a spontaneous uprising of outraged freemen against the threat of tyrannical oppression.”¹¹ Louis Filler concludes, “The year 1829 teemed with incidents, including the official ending of slavery in Mexico, which caused the Yankee settlers of Texas to be concerned for their slave property.”¹² “War is our only resource,” Stephen F. Austin wrote to Texans in a circular letter of September 19, 1833.¹³ Austin was writing as chairman of the Central Committee on Safety of San Felipe. The Committee called for a consultation at Washington on the Brazos for October 15, 1835 in response to the aggressive enforcement of custom duties at the Galveston Bay post near Anahuac by General Martin Perfecto de Cos. The consultation was preempted when fighting erupted at Gonzales on October 2, 1835.¹⁴ This defiance over custom duties, not slavery, forced the issue.¹⁵ An eminent Texas historian, Eugene C. Barker, doubted the prevalence of proslavery crusading zeal among Texas revolutionaries. “He asserted that the number of slaves and the frequency of Texan-Mexican disagreements over the status of slavery declined after 1830.”¹⁶ However, the preponderance of circumstantial evidence tilts the scales to slavery as the major cause of the revolution.¹⁷ “Slavery conflicts between the Texas settlers and the Mexican government in the 1820s had attracted the attention of abolitionists in the United States.”¹⁸

“Benjamin Lundy, the noted abolitionist who traveled extensively in Texas between 1830 and 1835, believed it was the settled design of slaveholders (with land speculators and slave traders) to wrest the large and valuable territory of Texas from the Mexican Republic, in order to re-establish the system of slavery, to open a vast and profitable slave-market therein, and ultimately, to annex it to the United States.”¹⁹ Lundy is supported by Don Lorenzo de Zavala in his Trip to the United States, where he writes, “The land speculators of Texas have tried to convert it into a mart of human flesh where the slaves of the South might be sold and others from Africa might be introduced, since it is not possible to do it directly through the United States.”²⁰ The public pronouncements in Texas stressed liberty and human rights.²¹ The Liberty Committee of Public Safety defined the contest as one for “liberty or slavery, for life or death.”²² Once Texas was independent, slavery was guaranteed in the new republic. The introduction of slaves from the United States was guaranteed.²³ “Political, social, and economic considerations have combined to render Texas a slaveholding country.”²⁴

The Texas colonists were unwilling to make concessions to the customs of their adopted land. They clashed with regard to the administration of justice. There were the underlying differences between Roman law of Mexico and the English common law adopted by Americans. Confusingly to Texans, sometimes Mexican executive and judicial functions were united.²⁵ The Texans were chagrined by the chronic, unstable nature of Mexican governance.²⁶ They were unable to maintain their northern territories, separated as they were by great distances.²⁷ Robinson pointed out how race and religion played pivotal roles.²⁸ Barker wrote, “The racial feeling, indeed, underlay and colored Texan-Mexican relations from the establishment of the first Anglo-American colony in 1821.”²⁹ Cultural differences existed. For example, “The American colonist and the native Mexican soon discovered that the same words could have vastly different meanings, depending on the traditions and conditioned attitudes of those who spoke them.”³⁰ Campbell explains, “Anglo-Americans were simply too different from Hispanic-Americans to accept Mexican government indefinitely. One of those differences was slavery.”³¹ “Protecting slavery was not the primary cause of the Texas Revolution, but it certainly was a major result.”³²

Slavery had existed in Mexico before its own revolution and independence from Spain in 1821. After Spain colonized New Spain (Mexico), indigenous people were enslaved when they failed to embrace Catholicism. Cortes after he invaded Mexico in 1519 rewarded his followers with vast tracts of land called encomiendas. All indigenous people living within the boundaries of these land grants were bound to the land as slaves. Black slaves were imported into Mexico in the early sixteenth century. Father Bartoleme de las Casas in 1542 spoke out against slavery in Mexico. It was not until 1824 that a Constitution was adopted that actually freed them. Even so, it was not until 1829 that the last slaves were freed. Slavery did survive in the part of Mexico that is now Texas.³³

Paul D. Lack reports, “A sense of uncertainty had characterized the status of slavery from almost the beginning of North American colonization of Texas. Throughout the 1820s local authorities blunted repeated but indecisive antislavery measures enacted by the Mexican Congress.”³⁴ In 1822 and again in 1824 the Congress passed legislation to abolish the slave trade and gradually erode the institution.³⁵ Also, in 1823 a Mexican law forbade the sale or purchase of slaves and required that children of bondsmen be freed at the age of fourteen.³⁶ The decree issued July 13, 1824, prohibited the slave trade in the most emphatic terms.³⁷ The constitution of the State of Coahuila-Texas of March 1827 declared that no one was thereafter to be born a slave and outlawed (after six months) the introduction of any more slaves. In May 1828 a law recognized the legality of contracts made between masters and workers prior to the arrival in Texas so that, by the use of the lifetime contracts, slavery for all practical purposes was legalized.³⁸ Texans skirted around the law by using the bogus “contract” system allowing imports of bound labor until September 15, 1829, when the general emancipation decree was promulgated by the Mexican president, Vicente Guerrero.³⁹ An exemption for Texas was granted.⁴⁰ On April 6, 1830, another decree ended all North American emigration to Texas, though it recognized the existence of slavery there.⁴¹ Just as undocumented persons cross the Rio Grande River each day entering the United States illegally, the law of April 1830 did little to stem the tide of North American settlers flowing into Texas. On April 24, 1832, the legislature of Coahuila y Texas set a ten-year limitation on the length of labor contracts.⁴² This showed abolitionist sentiment still prevailed among Mexican legislators. Anglo settlers in Texas held two conventions at San Felipe de Austin: one in October 1832, and a second in April 1833. These conventions urged the repeal of the Law of April 6, 1830, and asked that Texas be made a separate state in Mexico’s federal union.⁴³ On March 18, 1834, Texas was divided into three districts, i.e. Bexar, Brazos, and Nacogdoches, with a political chief in each.⁴⁴ According to Herbert Aptheker, “The anti-slavery policy of the Mexican Government was a prime cause of dissension between that state and American slave holders resident in Texas. The Negroes of Texas learned of the Mexican anti-slavery regulations, and grew restless so that their masters had to resort to barbarous methods of punishment in order to retain them.”⁴⁵ “Mexico provided a haven for Negroes who risked their lives to run away.”⁴⁶ The defense of the institution ultimately rested upon weak enforcement by local governments.⁴⁷ “Despite the shroud of uncertainty that hung over it, slavery began to expand aggressively in the two or three years prior to 1835. Southerners moving into Texas acknowledged the “peculiar institution” for the humanitarian concerns and its attendant race problem, yet their economic requirements called for a cheap labor supply.⁴⁸ Clearly the challenge to slavery contributed to the Texas decision to resist the new order in Mexico.”⁴⁹

This new order prohibited slavery. It has been noted how this anti-slavery strategy of the Mexican Congress provoked the slaves and some risked their lives or maiming to run away, usually to Mexico. Campbell writes about the restlessness of slaves as follows: Ben Milam exclaimed in a letter, “Their intention is to gain the friendship of the different tribes of Indians; and if possible to get the slaves to revolt.”⁵⁰ And Horatio Allsbery, who visited Monterrey …, wrote a public letter informing Texans that Mexico intended to “put their slaves free and then loose upon their families.”⁵¹ Finally, Thomas J. Pilgrim asked Stephen F. Austin: “Would there not be a great danger from the Negroes should a large Mexican force come so near?”⁵² Texans and Mexicans were opposed in war by October 1835. Different factors precipitated the rebellion. Certain questions emerge as fighting commenced.

According to the author in a recent book on Negro slavery in Texas, “Negro slavery existed rather tenuously in Spanish Texas and never developed into a basic institution of the society.”⁵³ “An 1819 census recorded only seven slaves around San Antonio with a few more in the Nacogdoches and Goliad regions as Spanish rule neared its end.”⁵⁴ Slavery expanded steadily after Stephen F. Austin began colonization in 1821.⁵⁵ The colonists were nearly all from the southern portion of the United States, and many of them were the owners of at least a small number of slaves. “Thus it was that the institution was introduced into Texas.”⁵⁶ The first decade of colonization brought at least 20,000 Anglo-Americans into Texas. “Despite Mexican discouragement, by the fall of 1825 almost one out of five persons in the colony was a Negro slave.”⁵⁷ “The slave population of Texas grew from 443 owned by sixty-nine slaveholders in Austin’s colony by 1825 to approximately 5,000 in 1836.”⁵⁸ They labored in groups primarily as field hands on plantations to produce cotton, corn, and a limited amount of sugar in coastal counties below Houston.⁵⁹ “Half the slaves labored singly or in groups of less than twenty on smaller farms scattered from the Nueces River to the Red River and from the Louisiana border to the edge of settlement west of San Antonio, Austin, Waco, and Fort Worth.”⁶⁰ “The institution was always there, never too far in the background, as what the noted Texas historian Eugene C. Barker called a ‘dull, organic ache.’”⁶¹ “When the Texas Revolution began in the fall of 1835, whites defeated and severely punished almost a hundred slaves who participated in an uprising along the Brazos, stimulated by rumors of approaching Mexican troops.”⁶² The disparity between Almonte’s slave headcounts and other records are enigmatic. Nevertheless, the ratio of white to black was roughly, five to one; and, the total number of slaves ranged between 2,000 and 5,000 on the eve of the Texas Revolution. As the colonization proceeded with previously reviewed factors causing stress and discontent between Texans and Mexicans, what did leaders on both sides of the Rio Grande River proclaim?

For Mexico, the colonization represented both a hope and a fear. The hope was the opportunity of populating the province with industrious people coming from the North, while the fear was that the individual ambition of those colonizers would have disastrous consequences for Mexico.⁶³ Lundy feared that “Texas, now in the hands of aggressive and not too scrupulous white colonizers, might be committed to slavery.”⁶⁴

David Walker, a free black born in North Carolina who later moved to Boston, became active in the Massachusetts Colonial Association and in 1829 published his famous incendiary abolitionist appeal, directed to “the colored citizens of the World.” Several radical abolitionists (including William Lloyd Garrison) later said that Walker’s shocking pamphlet helped goad them to greater militancy despite their misgivings about its hints toward violent insurrection.⁶⁵

Austin was an effective lobbyist since he had taken the time to learn Mexican customs and language, and had sojourned in Mexico City. In his letter of January 8, 1823, to Governor Trespalacios, he emphasized that new colonists should be allowed to bring their slaves.⁶⁶ Austin was pressing for a concession to the recently passed legislation that gave freedom to all slaves in ten years, for he asked that slaves be committed for life and their children free at the age of twenty-one.⁶⁷ The Mexican authorities knew the immigrants were bringing slaves with them. They continued to encourage it even though it was technically a violation of the decree of July 13, 1824.⁶⁸ The American colonists, however, still continued the practice of introducing their slaves, under the appellation of “servants.”⁶⁹ The Mexican officials officially pronounced that they were eradicating slavery within one of their richest provinces while at the same time they were using subterfuges fostering the continuance of slaveholding immigrants. Austin wanted it made clear to future immigrants that the Mexican Congress was slow to act on the slavery issue, and could not be counted upon to permit the unrestricted admission of slaves, though those slaves already resident would most likely remain slaves for life.⁷⁰ Austin was writing at the time of the Texas conventions in the autumn of 1832 and in April 1833 about the need for Texas to have a state government providing sanctity of persons and property. Clearly, the property included slaves. He argued, “Texas must be a slave country.”⁷¹

Jose Maria Tornel, Mexican minister to the United States, was among the Mexican leaders who feared the loss of Texas. He believed the abolition of slavery would check Anglo movement into the area. He was instrumental in convincing President Guerrero to sign the decree on September 15, 1829, abolishing slavery in the Republic of Mexico.⁷² Tornel berated Mexican officials for opening the doors and he declared, “left us powerless against the attacks and the invasions of this modern Rome.”⁷³ Indeed, Article 3 of the decree of April 6, 1830, specified the appointment of commissioners (hence, Almonte’s inspection of 1834) and one of their duties was to watch over the exact compliance of contracts on the entrance of new colonists.⁷⁴ General Cos hardly dispelled the anxiety when he warned that “the inevitable consequences of war will bear upon [the rebels] and their property.”⁷⁵ In a letter written by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna on February 16, 1832, he inquired, “Shall we permit those wretches to moan in chains any longer in a country whose kind laws protect the liberty of man without distinction of cast or color?”⁷⁶ Santa Anna’s letter seemed to invoke the idea that Mexico did officially invite a slave rebellion.⁷⁷

On December 2, 1835, the Beaumont Committee sent a letter to Major Henry Millard regarding free black persons, and it stated, in part, as follows: “We earnestly recommend that you bring before the Council a bill prohibiting all black persons or persons whatsoever from emigrating to Texas or residing within its boundaries under any pretext whatsoever.”⁷⁸ This rather poorly worded request was aimed at northern abolitionists who promoted the acquisition of land for the settlement of the free black population. The slaveholders everywhere feared free Negroes.⁷⁹ Slaveholders believed this would cause slaves to absence themselves from their owners.⁸⁰ By 1834, Almonte was promising Lundy that he could colonize ex-slaves in Tamaulipas.⁸¹

Binkley explained how things actually operated day-to-day, “on the question of slavery, prohibiting measures which had been adopted by both the state and the national government were virtually nullified when Mexican officials collaborated with the colonists in working out a system of contract labor which permitted its continuation in fact if not in name.”⁸² Lack writes, “Even malleable local Mexican officials clearly regarded slavery as a temporary and shameful evil.”⁸³

By the late summer of 1835, Austin proclaimed, “There is no other remedy but to defend our rights, ourselves, and our country by force of arms.”⁸⁴ The Matagorda Committee of Safety and Correspondence wrote about the Mexican soldiers advancing upon Texas as follows: “to give liberty to our slaves, and to make slaves of ourselves; to let loose the blood hounds of savage war upon us, …”⁸⁵ The two sets of people “functioned under basically different assumptions in essential areas of human behavior.”⁸⁶ Austin went so far in an appeal to the United States in 1836 that Santa Anna meant to exterminate the American population of Texas and fill “that country with Indians and Negroes.”⁸⁷ Texans could not have protected slavery had they lost the war with Mexico.⁸⁸

American politicians were not silent on the subject of slavery in Texas. In his address to Congress in 1835, President Andrew Jackson called attention to the recent lecture tour of Boston abolitionist, George Thompson, labeling him a “foreign emissary.”⁸⁹ Henry Clay spoke of Texas as an unpopulated land destined to become settled by Americans.⁹⁰ John Quincy Adams kept antislavery demands steadily before Congress from 1836 to early 1842.⁹¹

When shots rang out at Goliad on October 2, 1835, what was the state of the “peculiar institution” in Texas? The Texas Gazette decried slavery as an injustice tolerated throughout Texas for economic reasons.⁹² The newspaper said international philanthropic opinion and Mexican law rightly condemned it. Lack argued, “Proponents of the peculiar institution had been placed in a defensive position in Mexican Texas.”⁹³

Were the masters afraid of slave revolts? According to Raymond H. Bauer and Alice H. Bauer, the social tension at this time was highly charged, because the masters lived in constant fear on this subject.⁹⁴ Mier y Teran noted in his letter to President Guadalupe Victoria in 1829 as follows: “Most of them have slaves, and these slaves are beginning to learn the favorable intent of the Mexican law to their unfortunate condition and are becoming restless under their yokes…”⁹⁵ Texans, even if distracted by the war with Mexico, were alert and ready to suppress any new threats.

The war unsettled the normal routines. Masters went off to war. They might try to transfer their slaves in and out of war zones. Some owners had more fear of the loss of their slaves than the year’s farming.⁹⁶ Some of these owners shifted their slaves eastward all the way to the United States border. They were vigilant, as briefly noted before, as to the settling of free blacks from the United States. This would threaten the peace and tranquility of slave property.⁹⁷ The leaders at the Consultation at San Felipe in November 1835 even proposed an ordinance making it unlawful “for any free Negro or mulatto to come within the limits of Texas.”⁹⁸

The masters by the time of the revolt were evading Mexico’s constitution and anti-slavery decrees by employing a system characteristic of the peonage common throughout Mexico.⁹⁹ This system involved contracts signed before notary publics binding not only the parents by also their children into an involuntary servitude. It was slavery pure and simple.¹⁰⁰ The Mexicans realized the colonists had brought prosperity that the area had not previously witnessed.¹⁰¹ Protecting the interests of the colonists protected the prosperity. Authorities in Coahuila also realized that land fees from Texas helped to support the state government.¹⁰² “Masters bought, hired, and sold workers with little regard for the law, but Mexican policy had the effect of slowing the pace of immigration, perpetuating labor shortages, and retarding growth,” concluded Lack.¹⁰³ Lack summarized, “The Texas Revolution had thus completely reversed the fortunes of slavery, transforming it from an institution whose defenders sought merely to postpone the day of its demise to one supported by law and prevailing opinion and expanding by every measure.”¹⁰⁴

Abigail Curlee describes the plantation at Peach Point, ten miles below Brazoria, using documents, not only rare for expounding upon plantation life in Texas during these times, but also due to the detailed nature of the daily entries.¹⁰⁵ However, there is little in the records to indicate how the Negroes lived. No punishments were recorded in the records from Peach Point.¹⁰⁶ James Franklin Perry, brother-in-law of Stephen F. Austin, received twelve leagues of land.¹⁰⁷ Texans were slaveholders, but not on an extensive scale. One Negro family was more often the rule than fifty slaves.¹⁰⁸ “On the whole the people seem to have lived on what they and their slaves produced.”¹⁰⁹ The Negroes were allowed small patches of their own in which they raised cotton, corn, and vegetables.¹¹⁰ There was around the Peach Point plantation an air of culture and contentment. The Negroes remained long in the family and were apparently treated with consideration.¹¹¹ Curlee noted, “Early in the year [1836] Perry was advised to take his family to a place of safety because of possible uprising of Negroes and the danger of Indians.”¹¹² He moved his family. The threat of slave insurrection was real in the minds of slaveholders. How extensive were the insurrections in 1835-1836? Were the insurrections used as a tactic of Mexican political and military strategy as a way to hasten the defeat of the upstart Texans?

Nat Turner’s insurrection of August 21, 1831, at Southampton, seventy miles from Richmond, raised fears of a general servile war. At this time the white population in this area was 8,000, the black 12,000.¹¹³ Turner, besides being a skilled carpenter, was a literate, mystical preacher. He had discovered particular relevance in the prophets of the Old Testament. As his conviction deepened, the solar eclipse early in 1831 appeared to him to be a sign that the day of vengeance was at hand.¹¹⁴ As a “leader” or lay preacher, Turner exercised a strong influence over his race. It seems that Turner had thought of his conspiracy for many years and, no doubt, believed that he was divinely inspired.¹¹⁵ He led his followers to the plantations of whites killing fifty-five before the community could act.¹¹⁶ “In a short while all of the conspirators had been killed, or captured, tried, and executed.¹¹⁷ The year 1831 was one of unusual uneasiness throughout the slaveholding States, focused upon the apprehended uprisings of the Negroes.¹¹⁸ Slave unrest continued up to the time of the Civil War.¹¹⁹

After the American Revolution and throughout the new world, numerous slave rebellions shook the foundations of bondage and led to overthrow. These rebellions occurred in Haiti, the British West Indies, and the South American republics. Radical ideologies existed in these slave societies. The old order was undermined in these slave societies when sudden shifts in political, economic, and military power emerged during times of crisis.¹²⁰ Wars gave the slaves opportunities to seize their freedom. Revolutionary movements had left the institution of slavery isolated and threatened from outside and within.¹²¹

In an early letter to Stephen F. Austin dated February 25, 1811, Isaac Baker reported, “I have since been twice to New Orleans and happened there at the time a Negroe [sic] insurrection broke out. About 150 Negroes have been killed in various ways.”¹²² Austin in a letter to his sister wrote, “Texas must be a slave country. It is no longer a matter of doubt.”¹²³ Slave owners were haunted by the “ubiquitous fear of rebellion.”¹²⁴ A few had been accused of threats against whites, which aroused fears they might instigate a slave revolt.¹²⁵ According to Lack, “The possibility of a slave insurrection placed an impossible burden on the embryonic Texas army, so initial responsibility for monitoring slave behavior rested with the multipurpose committees of safety organized by most communities.”¹²⁶

The proximity to Mexico may have led to increased cruelty toward slaves in Texas. With the war pending, William H. Wharton compiled a list of evidence of Mexican hostility toward Texas.¹²⁷ In Wharton’s first item he declared, in part, as follows: “they have, contrary to justice, and to law, intermedled [sic] with our slave population, and have even impotently threatened …to emancipate them, and induce them to turn their arms against their masters.”¹²⁸ By the summer of 1835 many Anglo-Texans concluded that Mexico had acquired the will and power to implement an antislavery strategy.¹²⁹ Mier y Teran in 1828 viewed the slaves as ripe for an uprising.¹³⁰ According to Stampp, “For Texas slaves, Mexico was the land of freedom, and most of those who sought it headed for the Rio Grande. In Mexico, the fugitives generally were welcomed and protected, and in some cases sympathetic peons guided them in their flight.”¹³¹

The first slave insurrection of consequence in Texas occurred during the Texas Revolution. Benjamin Milam had warned that Santa Anna intended to get the slaves to revolt. Generals Santa Anna and Cos invited the slaves to unite with them for the destruction of their masters.¹³² According to Lundy, “As the weaker party, Mexico, when the contest shall have once begun, will look abroad, as well as among your Negroes and your Indians, for assistance.”¹³³ Early in October 1835 a suspected force of two thousand Mexicans led by General Cos was approaching the Brazos River.¹³⁴ The Negroes on the Brazos made an attempt to rise on October 17, stimulated by rumors of the advancing Mexicans. The rebellion was suppressed with about 100 slaves taken up and whipped nearly to death. After the defeat it was learned the Negroes had divided up the cotton farms. They intended to ship the cotton to New Orleans and make the white men serve them in turn.

After this revolt, considerable fear of insurrection seems to have spread among the Texas slave owners.¹³⁵ Wish wrote, “The danger of inducing general panic by spreading news of an insurrection was a particularly potent factor in the maintenance of silence on the topic.”¹³⁶ Those who lived near the coastal rivers continued in 1836 to suspect a Mexican strategy of sending troops by sea to incite the Negroes.¹³⁷ In March 1836 the committee at Brazoria, alarmed by news of the fall of the Alamo, claimed to have been appraised [sic] that the “treacherous and bloody enemy” intended to recruit Negroes “as instruments of his unholy and savage work, …thus lighting the torch of war, in the bosoms of our domestic circles.”¹³⁸ “Here as elsewhere in southwest Texas, most Anglos chose not to volunteer, organize, or fortify, but to flee.”¹³⁹ About this same time, the Negroes high on the Trinity River in East Texas had manifested a disposition to become troublesome. Once again the white reprisals ended the threatened slave insurrections. Lack argued, “These incidents weakened the Texans’ military effort both by diverting attention from the enemy army and also by undermining recruitment. Even President Burnet acknowledged that some men had to be retained to protect their neighborhoods.”¹⁴⁰ None of these instances of slave unrest resulted in the actual shedding of white blood.¹⁴¹ The insurrections were insufficient to constitute a second front.

Some slaves adhered to the Texas side. Slaves provided aid in a variety of ways. Some contributed provisions, while others engaged in forms of military service. Some free blacks saw military service in the Texas ranks.¹⁴² They drove wagons and constructed fortifications. The removal of slaves to army supervision would leave greater security at home.¹⁴³ During the campaign that led to the Battle of San Jacinto, the slaves seemed to form an unofficial spying network that relayed the size, location, and disposition of the Mexican forces, including its vulnerability.¹⁴⁴

Robinson ended his article by saying, “Given the added combustion of race antagonism, could the result have been other than the Texan Revolution?”¹⁴⁵ The racial feelings colored Texan-Mexican relations. “Slaves who revolted were depicted as beasts that could not be freed because they would endanger society. Submissive slaves were pictured as children in need of paternal protection from the evils of a complex, modern world. They were never seen as men whose rights and liberties had been proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.”¹⁴⁶

After the decree of September 15, 1829, ending slavery in Mexico, Yankee settlers were justifiably concerned for slave property. This new order prohibited slavery. In fact, Herbert Aptheker had postulated that the anti-slavery policy of the Mexican government was the prime cause of dissension between that state and the slaveholders in Texas. This placed the proponents of slavery in a defensive position. They suffered no anti-slavery crusade from within. Abolitionism was puny within Texas.¹⁴⁷

It was the South who wanted to extend the slave territory of the United States. Benjamin Lundy feared from his travels throughout Texas in the early 1830s, and rightfully so, that white colonizers might be committed to slavery. They certainly were. They had an economic requirement of a cheap labor supply. Some planters were willing to sacrifice a year’s farming in order to safeguard their slave chattels.¹⁴⁸ Their leader, Stephen F. Austin, minced no words when he extolled, “Texas must be a slave country.” The minister to the United States, Jose Maria Tornel, understood the situation. He aptly commented to his president that the abolition of slavery would check Anglo movement into the area.

Nevertheless, the Mexicans knew immigrants were bringing in slaves after the decree of emancipation in 1829. The Mexican officials realized the colonists had brought prosperity. Therefore, the Mexican officials collaborated with the colonists in their system of contract labor. The Mexican policy had the effect of slowing the pace of immigration, perpetuating labor shortages, and retarding growth.

Two issues helped bring on the war. First, Mexicans provoked slaves to run away. Second, the Anglo-Texans feared the possibility of free Negroes colonizing with support from the Mexican government, thereby disturbing the peace and tranquility of slave property. By the summer of 1835, many Anglo-Texans concluded that Mexico had acquired the will and power to implement an anti-slavery strategy. Therefore, protecting slavery was a major result of the Texas Revolution. Texas could not have protected slavery had they lost the war with Mexico.

Once Texas was independent, the new republic guaranteed slavery. “The Texas Revolution had completely reversed the fortunes of slavery, transforming it from an institution whose defenders sought merely to postpone the day of its demise to one supported by law and prevailing opinion and expanding by every measure.”¹⁴⁹ Lack stated, “The events of 1835 and 1836 had shaken slavery considerably, but in the end the Texas victory confirmed the institution.”¹⁵⁰

The research is conflicting as to the slave population in Texas by 1835. The consensus is 5,000 slaves by 1836 as confirmed by Abigail Holbrook (nee Curlee). Texans were slaveholders but not on an extensive scale. Were Mexican political and military leaders justified in expecting slave insurrections to present a second front? Some slaves did fight on the side of Texans. About one-half of these slaves labored singly or in groups of less than twenty on smaller farms. It is true that Nat Turner’s led a small group of bondsmen in his insurrection in Virginia in August 1831, killing roughly fifty-five white persons. It is also true that the white populace put down the rebellion rather quickly and efficiently.

On account of the paltry abolitionist movement in Texas, the onus for instigating slave unrest and hopefully, pell-mell revolt, was left to the Mexican politicos. The Mexican Congress through its promulgation of several anti-slavery decrees certainly provoked the slaves to revolt. Slaves knew they could cross the Rio Grande River into Mexico, find a haven of rest, and be welcomed, even though they were runaways. William H. Wharton in drawing up his list of evidence emphasized how the Mexican government “threatened to emancipate them.” Although Generals Santa Anna and Cos invited slaves to unite and destroy their masters, how were these geographically dispersed slaves, hindered by poor leadership, going to rise up? They were few in number to begin with. There were already 20,000 Anglo-Texans by 1831, and over 25,000 by October 1835. Harvey Wish wrote that slavery expanded aggressively in the two to three years prior to 1835. However, eminent Texas historian, Eugene C. Barker, asserted the number of slaves and the frequency of Texan-Mexican disagreements over the status of slavery declined after 1830.

The Negroes in Texas did grow restless, especially from 1831 forward, and this was partly due to the news of Nat Turner’s rebellion. The social tension was highly charged. Texans lived in constant fear. The Matagorda Committee of Safety and Correspondence told of advancing Mexican soldiers and how this army intended to give liberty to the slaves so that the slaves could make “savage war upon us.” James Franklin Perry moved his family from the Peach Point plantation by Brazoria to the San Jacinto River, near to some of the Texas militia. This is the brother-in-law to Stephen F. Austin. The threat of slave insurrection was real in the minds of slaveholders. They were haunted by the “ubiquitous fear of rebellion.” Wish indicated the importance of silence on this issue since the fear level was so high. Any rumor could set off an avalanche of flight.

Two contradictory findings indicate that the slave insurrections did play a greater role. First, most Anglo-Texans chose to flee instead of fighting, in what was referred to as the “Runaway Scrape.” Second, the notable Lack stated that these incidents weakened the Texans’ military effort both by diverting attention from the enemy army and also by undermining recruitment. It was really the fear of slave insurrection rather than actual insurrections that played the greater role in Mexico’s anti-slavery strategy in Texas. This fear among Anglo-Texans is exemplified by the formation of multipurpose committees of safety in most communities. The result of this was to leave the Texas freedom fighters for opposing the invading Mexican armies. Texans were ready, alert to suppress any new threats of slave insurrection. But the members of the committees were generally not available for military service.

The slaves must have been aware of the duplicitous acts of Mexican leaders with respect to their anti-slavery pronouncements. The Mexican government recognized that the colonists had brought prosperity to this province. Thus, the officials looked the other way as slaveholders used their bogus contract system for maintaining their slave holdings. The government also granted exemptions to their anti-slavery decrees so that slavery could continue. Therefore, it was somewhat naïve for these same officials to believe the slaves could cohesively and in numbers rebel against a vigilant population of Anglo-Texans who were aggressively and industriously developing this fertile region.

They did attempt an insurrection on October 17, 1835 on the Brazos River. It was ruthlessly snuffed out and the one hundred some odd slaves were just about whipped to death. Another small rebellion was later attempted on the Trinity River in East Texas, but it was put down even more quickly than the prior one. This paucity of insurrection displays the minor role actual revolt played in Mexico’s new order for its province of Texas. As a matter of fact, during the Texas Revolution, there was no shedding of white blood from slave insurrections. Texas slaves marched to different drummers; some in fact adhered to the Texas side. And there were free black men in the ranks on both sides.

As Lundy predicted, the Mexicans were weak when confronted in 1834 with over 25,000 Anglo-Texans spread over a vast land. By the time of the revolt in October 1835, although fear was rampant, actual slave insurrections barely materialized. This frustrated General Santa Anna, by now operating as a dictator, who had not hidden his fervent desire for the slaves to unite, rise up, and create a second front opposing the Texas freedom fighters. Masters feared their destruction at the hands of their slaves with the invading Mexican armies on the main assault. The Mexican anti-slavery policy did substantially trigger the eruption at Goliad. Additionally, the policy was so poorly enforced by pliable, local Mexican officials that the slaves were disappointed, thereby failing to even pull off an insurrection Nat Turner would have been proud of witnessing.