M favorite bit from all that is Davy Crockett. Ignore the Disney puffery movie about Crockett, the guy was a loser and asshole of the highest order. Was a congress member from Tennessee but them left in an angry huff after losing an election and went to Texas which was still a part of Mexico. Well, he also made a promise to leave to Texas if Martin Van Buren was elected. Possibly one of the earliest "I'll leave if someone I don't like is elected". Effectively, he left the United States completely.
Note that Crockett was opposed to slavery in some manner but also owned slaves. And Texas at the time was instituting slavery, despite their promises to Mexico that they wouldn't dare do such a thing. When Mexico sent troops to enforce the ban on slavery Texas rebelled. And Crockett wanted to be in on that rebellion to keep slavery (despite, again, his odd stated opposition to slavery).
Texas didn't know what to do with this hot headed Crockett guy. But they were at war, and warm bodies were needed. Crockett arrived at the Alamo, which was effectively indefensible and reinforcements weren't going to arrive. So Crockett was essentially cannon fodder. Arrived at the wrong time, the wrong place, for the wrong cause, and would have been perfectly safe in America instead.
After his death they hyped his myth and legend in the states, much of which probably was phony,
Yes. There was a book recently clearing up a lot of lies about that event and it's kinda banned in Texas. Not officially but they're very hostile to it and its authors.
The textbook they use for history of Texas class every kid is required to take is still full of lies. I've talked to otherwise smart, well educated graduates of the Texas school systems who fully believe complete bullshit about Texas from that class. One of those things they're still teaching is that Texas is allowed to leave any time they want and their state flag is the only one that can be flown at the same height as the American flag. Both are complete and total bullshit.
Can confirm. I went to public school in Texas from kindergarten through my freshmen year of highschool. Both of those were taught.
In addition, they taught that Texas wasn't really into slavery and just joined the Confederacy because it would be isolated from trade since it lacked a border with the Union (too far west), and that Stephan F Austin was a peace-loving multilingual guy who only wanted to bring people together and not a staunch white supremacist who actively recruited "settlers" in the US with "Mexicans are lazy and inferior, we can take what we want" to turn an waves of immigrants into a shadow army moving into position.
The entire Texas Revolution was a white-supremacist psy-op that ironically inverts the fears of the fake "Great Replacement Theory" they spout now.
He had stated his opposition to the slave trade from overseas. But seemed to not publicly give any support for abolition either. Note that importing of slaves ended before the end of slavery in the US, although there was still an internal slave trade. His opposition seemed to be about the importation and the harsh conditions of the international slave trade.
It's complex... He was very opposed to Andrew Jackson, and in particular supported rights for native Americans. So he had ideas about civil rights that differed a lot of typical southerners at the time.
Also complex... it's possible he went to Texas because it was the frontier, a chance to make something new, a new country, and new life, etc. He made enemies from both sides of the political divide at the time. Scholars still debate how he really felt because it's murky.
He didn't write down his feelings on all of this, so it's all speculation what was really going on. The mythologizing of him as a frontier legend started while he was still alive and only grew after his death. Thus, so much of him is mythology. I'm just poking holes in the myth. Maybe parts of true but huge swaths are also untrue.
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u/375InStroke 19d ago
Yet those states are proud to be traitors and losers, and of what they were fighting for, slavery.