By Lawrence Davidson
December 20, 202:
Information Clearing House
-- "
Counterpunch
" -- In late 18th-century
America, the working assumption about slave
labor in the cotton fields was that it was
becoming too expensive. Here is the
scenario: In the American South most slaves
were used in cotton production. Yet, the use
of slave labor was negatively impacting
cotton’s profitability. The most
labor-intensive aspect of the cotton process
at this time, after planting and harvesting,
was the extraction of cotton seeds from the
raw cotton ball. If you ever get hold of a
raw cotton ball, you can easily see why this
would be so. The seeds are tightly entwined
in a thick mass of cotton fibers. To
increase production meant acquiring more
slaves to perform this task of extraction.
By the 1790s, the cost of additional slaves
exceeded the expected profit from added
production. Under these conditions U.S.
cotton production was stagnant and losing
markets to foreign production (such as in
India). There was little incentive to expand
American cotton production into new regions.
Then in 1793, Eli Whitney (1765–1825)
invented the modern cotton gin or cotton
engine. It automated the seed extraction
process. Whitney’s was not the first cotton
gin. Small, hand-cranked models had been in
use in India since the 16th century and were
introduced into the American south around
the mid-18th century. However, their use was
restricted to long-staple cotton and their
production capacity was low. Whitney’s
invention, on the other hand, simultaneously
lowered a major cost of production of both
long- and short- staple raw cotton, while
increasing the volume yield. At this point
American cotton production became more
competitive and the incentive for expansion
grew. Cotton producers looked westward for
new land—such as the Mexican province of
Texas.
Real History: Moving into Texas
The infiltration of north American
citizens and their slaves into Texas went on
for several decades before the Mexican
authorities took note of the growing numbers
and became concerned. There were several
reasons for this alarm, but all of them had
to do with racism.
First, the Mexicans had a long history of
less than diplomatic relations with the
Unite States, whose representatives were
always trying to purchase adjacent Mexican
territory while interfering in Mexican
domestic affairs. All too often Americans
had displayed a racially tinged sense of
superiority and disregard for Mexican law
and customs. This attitude would be
enshrined for all Central and South America
in the application of the Monroe Doctrine of
1823.
Second was the issue of slavery. Slavery
was not a favored labor system in Mexico,
probably because the Catholic Church began
to turn against the institution on the
18th-century. In 1823, Mexico made the sale
and purchase of slaves illegal. In 1827, the
Mexican government forbade the importation
of slaves into the country. Then, in 1829,
slavery was officially abolished. Throughout
this period slaves of American immigrants in
Texas were periodically rebelling and
running away in order to, among other
things, join the Mexican army. Inevitably,
all of this ratcheted up the tensions
between the Mexican authorities and the
American settlers who defied Mexican law.
A small American slaveholders’ rebellion
occurred in 1831. This was triggered by the
refusal of Mexican authorities to return
runaway slaves. In other words, it was a
protest against the Mexican insistence on
enforcing their own laws. A larger and more
seminal rebellion began in 1835. The
thirteen-day siege of the Alamo (February 23
to March 6, 1836) was part of this latter
conflict. The 1835 uprising led to the
declaration of Texas independence in 1836.
Immediately thereafter, slavery was
officially made legal.
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Then in 1836, perhaps to affirm white
supremacy, Texas authorities under the
leadership of Mirabeau Lamar began what he
called an “exterminating war” against local
Indian peoples. University of Houston
historian Raul Ramos finds Lamar’s
description accurate—he confirms that this
effort amounted to “a state-sanctioned
program of genocide.”
Slavery Inspires Texas
Independence but Not Texas History
There may have been multiple reasons why
U.S. immigrants chose to move into Mexican
Texas, but there was only one reason—the
desire to own slaves—for which these
immigrants rose up in armed rebellion in
1835-1836 and subsequently declared
independence. No white resident of Texas at
that time would have denied this fact. Thus,
it is noteworthy that today, in the early
21st century, the state’s most conservative
and indeed reactionary citizens, seek to
censor this history almost out of existence.
To quote a New York Times (NYT) article of
26 November 2021, “political leaders in
Texas are trying to … restrict how teachers
discuss the role of slavery in the Texas
revolution and target hundreds of books for
potential removal from schools.” One should
note that similar efforts are being made in
close to a dozen other states, and they are
all under the control of Republican
legislatures.
These efforts are linked to Donald
Trump’s 1776 Commission Report released in
January 2021. Essentially, the report
promoted the notion that “the primary duties
of schools” are twofold: (1) teach students
“practical wisdom—the basic skills needed to
function in society, such as reading,
writing, and mathematics,” or in other
words, education should prepare the student
for the job market; and (2) the passing on
of “transcendent knowledge,” that is,
“educators must convey a sense of
enlightened patriotism that equips each
generation with a knowledge of America’s
founding principles, a deep reverence for
their liberties, and a profound love of
their country,” or in other words, shape the
nation’s history so that it promotes
national loyalty.
Actually, these two ends are among the
original goals of public education, and not
just in the United States. However, over
time the second one has been tempered by
historical writing that compares
“transcendent knowledge” with facts based on
evidence. For instance, if you want to teach
about Jefferson’s 1776 statement that “all
men are created equal,” shouldn’t you also
teach that this ideal was not real in any
practiced way when Jefferson penned the
words, and that since that time a major
struggle within U.S. society has been waged
to overcome the racial and economic
roadblocks to that goal? For commission
members the answer is that the sentiment is
more important than the facts. For these
folks, and also those they have inspired in
Texas and elsewhere, if you concentrate on
the facts to the point where you call the
sentiment into question, you become one of
the “petty tyrants in every sphere who
demand that we speak only of America’s sins
while denying her greatness.” It never seems
to occur to these people that “transcendent
knowledge” cannot be a basis for “greatness”
unless it is put into practice.
Nonetheless, in defense of its mythology,
Texas has produced simpleminded Trump-style
personalities and soundbites. For instance,
there are the pronouncements of Brandon
Burkhart, the gun-toting president of the
“This is Freedom Texas Force.” Burkhart
lauds the message that Texas was founded
with the ideal of freedom front and center.
And anyone who wants “to bring up that it
was about slavery, or say that the Alamo
defenders were racist, or anything like
that, they need to take their rear ends over
the state border and get the hell out of
Texas.”
The Myth of the Alamo
At the center of the Texas effort to
censor the facts of its own past is what the
Washington Post calls “the myth of the
Alamo”—the myth that this small
mission/church building in San Antonio,
which receives roughly 1.5 million visitors
a year, is the “cradle of Texas liberty.” It
was here, in 1836, that about 180 Americans,
including Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, faced
a much larger force of Mexican soldiers as
part of a defiant struggle for Texas
independence. Nowhere in the official state
version of this tale is the causal role of
slavery mentioned. This “creation myth” has
been maintained for over one hundred years
by, among other means, a protection racket
run by the Texas state government. According
to the three authors of a recent book,
Forget the Alamo, “the state government …
made clear to the University of Texas
faculty and to the faculty of other
state-funded universities that it only wants
one type of Texas history taught … and that
if you get outside those boundaries, you’re
going to hear about it from the
Legislature.”
Who Runs the Thought Collective
All groups, from the smallest, like a
family or a club, to the largest, such as a
multi-regional religion or a nation-state,
seek to create a unifying “thought
collective.” By a thought collective I mean
a way of thinking and seeing that expresses
and adheres to the established beliefs and
aims of the collective. The results are
always approximate but the group elite,
assisted by cultural pressures, is always
making an effort to shape the thought and
perceptions of members/citizens.
At a national level one can understand
the importance of public history to this
process. Where there are ongoing
disagreements about what should be the
content and direction of the thought
collective, such history and its
interpretation will always be a political
battleground. Ideally such disagreements
should be settled through debate and respect
for facts. However, the average citizen is
not wholly rational and logical nor is he or
she particularly good judges of historical
truth.
This leaves a lot of room for the use of
propaganda, plain old lying, and the
machinations of authoritarian personalities
in the struggle to direct the thought
collective’s themes and messages. The
present members and leaders of the
Republican Party fit this description well.
Authoritarians, and those that
enthusiastically follow them, are not
interested in fact checking, reason and
logic. They are most comfortable with
simpleminded storylines that provide
soundbite answers to questions. Their goal
is for the favored storyline to monopolize
the thinking of the collective. And the
truth? Well, the truth is what that
storyline says it is.
We see this process playing itself out in
Texas over the story of its independence.
The favored storyline of the authoritarian
Republicans is an exclusive one of
pure-hearted men seeking freedom. This story
has no room or tolerance for evidentiary
truths, such as the role of slavery, that
complicate the fairy tale script. Take note:
this is how would-be dictators deal with the
mind.