New book discusses what really happened at The Alamo that people should remember

“Forget The Alamo.”

I like the part where the Lt Governor boasts of stifling a discussion of the book at the state museum, while an hour before he supported a bill to make tech companies explain their policies for removing content and allowing customers to appeal, calling it “supporting our right to free speech.”

Patrick boasted on Twitter of pressuring the state’s history museum to abruptly cancel a discussion of the book he deemed a “fact-free rewriting” of Texas history “that has no place @BullockMuseum.” Had he glimpsed between the covers, the lieutenant governor might have happened upon its 334 footnotes and four-page bibliography.

Notably, just about an hour before the scheduled start of the talk, Patrick sent an email supporting a state law that would have required tech companies to explain their policies for removing content and allowed individuals to appeal those decisions. “In Texas,” the subject line read, “we treasure our right to free speech.”

" The border region of Mexican Texas was largely populated by immigrants from the United States, some legal but most illegal."

:rofl: Illegal American immigration into Mexico was the genesis of Texas

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" These people were accustomed to a federalist government and to extensive individual rights including the right to own slaves, and they were quite vocal in their displeasure at Mexico’s law enforcement and shift towards centralism.[8] Already suspicious after previous American attempts to purchase Mexican Texas,[9] Mexican authorities blamed much of the Texian unrest on American immigrants, most of whom had entered illegally and made little effort to adapt to the Mexican culture and who continued to hold people in slavery when slavery had been abolished in Mexico.[10]"

Extensive individual rights including the right to own slaves. The cognitive dissonance required to argue for that position is truly impressive

No wonder American’s are so worried about undocumented immigrants!

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Don’t have time to read the article, so what’s the tl;dr that the Lt Gov took umbrage with?

The book tells the truth (allegedly) about the Alamo, while he prefers the myths made by Disney (via its Davy Crockett limited series) and John Wayne (“The Alamo” movie). Because feels over reals.

The book observes that the Texans were seeking independence due to a desire to own slaves in the face of Mexico’s abolition of slavery, and it points out the foibles of some of the heroes of the Alamo.

Here is an easier read than the book (I expect):

It is well-known that this was a major motivation for independence for many Texians.

Texas was also culturally very different from the rest of Mexico in those days. Mexico had barely settled it with any population; at this point, the lion’s share of the population was settlers from the US traveling west. It is not surprising that Texas wanted independence from Mexico.

My recent link tells of that. Mexico welcomed Americans, and reluctantly, their slaves. Then, they decided it was all a bad idea.

According to the official website of the Alamo, beginning in 1820, American and European settlers were encouraged into northern Mexico with promises of free land, seven years of tax breaks, and — sigh — the legal right to keep owning slaves. With incentives like that, who could say no? By 1823, 500 white settlers had arrived in what we’d now call Texas but back then was part of Coahuila y Tejas. Unfortunately for Mexico, these settlers were the same people about to revolt against their nation. Man, talk about ungrateful guests.

Here are some figures, according to Smithsonian. By 1830, white settlers in Texas outnumbered Mexicans five to one. This was partly due to Mexico’s generous immigration policy, but it was also due to poor border screening. The people in charge of monitoring the influx were often white settlers themselves, like Stephen F. Austin (pictured above). Many of these guys tended to look the other way even if the new arrivals were con men on the run from the law (stand up, Jim Bowie). They also weren’t great at checking if the newbies were loyal to Mexico. In fact, a whole bunch of Texians — as they called themselves — moved in while openly proclaiming that they wanted Texas to secede.

Eventually, the Mexican government cottoned on to the fact that it had shot itself clean through the foot and cancelled the settlement program. By then, though, they had tens of thousands of seditious white guys living on their northern frontier. All it would take would be the slightest spark to turn this smoldering issue into an inferno.

Aside:
Didn’t Australia introduce a toad to kill insects?
Yes. Yes, they did: