I'd forgotten about this thread. All good stuff here. I was too old to actually wear a coonskin cap—girls didn't go for guys in coonskin caps but it was okay (not hip, just okay) to tie the tail on your car's radio antenna.

I certainly didn't mean to impugn the bravery or patriotism of the people who fought at the Alamo. I was just trying to bring the 20-20 vision of hindsight and history to bear on the events of that time.

The following is a timeline from a presentation at the Ohio State history department.

• 1829 – Mexico outlaws slavery. Concerned about the influx of slaveholding U.S. settlers, Mexico tries to prohibit further immigration from U.S.
• 1832 – Americans in Texas organize conventions to secure independence from Mexico and statehood.
• 1836 – After a coup in Mexico, Texas declares independence and seeks admission of the Union.
• 1838 – Filibuster blocks annexation of Texas.
• 1845 – Texas is admitted to the Union as the 28th state. Mexico breaks diplomatic relations.

The following quotation is from an 1836 article by Benjamin Lundy addressed to John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, et al.

But the prime cause, and the real objects of this war, are not distinctly understood by a large portion of the honest, disinterested, and well-meaning citizens of the United States. Their means of obtaining correct information upon the subject have been necessarily limited; and many of them have been deceived and misled, by the misrepresentations of those concerned in it, and especially by hireling writers for the newspaper press. They have been induced to believe that the inhabitants of Texas were engaged in a legitimate contest for the maintenance of the sacred principles of Liberty, and the natural, inalienable Rights of Man: whereas, the motives of its instigators, and their chief incentives to action, have been from the commencement, of a directly opposite character and tendency. It is susceptible of the clearest demonstration that the immediate cause and the leading object of this contest originated in a settled design, among the slaveholders of this country, (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 SLAVEMARKET therein; and, ultimately, to annex it to the United States. And further, it is evident—nay, it is very generally acknowledged—that the insurrectionists are principally citizens of the United States, who have proceeded thither for the purpose of revolutionizing the country; and that they are dependant upon this nation, for both the physical and pecuniary means, to carry the design into effect.

Of course the peon system was at least as brutal as slavery but at least the peons weren't the legal chattel of the plantation owners. The peon system was so successful, in fact, that it has become the very basis for employment in the whole industrial world. The model to which we all aspire. <g>

      - Mark