WI Antislavery Americans dominated the Anglo settlements of Texas?

raharris1973

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What it says on the tin.

The American impresarios/promoters of settlement in Texas happen to be antislavery and do their settler recruiting first and foremost from people not expecting to have slaves. The people most invested in and influential in the settlements and the ones winning the land grants Mexico recognizes fall into this category.

Their influence is decisive enough that slave property never becomes secure in customary local law and usage (and of course it was never legal under Mexican federal law).

How do things go from the 1820s through 1860s in Texas in this case?
 
Well, this is in an intresting scenario.

If Texas is dominated by abolitionist settlers, then I'd say it's kinda of a game changer. I'm not sure what could change in the 1820's, but in the case that they still rebel and win (even in OTL this was up to chance, but I'd assume we're going for OTL events here) like in OTL, they might actually oppose US annexation, since it would mean instating slavery (Texas is south of the Missouri Compromise Line, after all). In this case, and with Mexico currently aiming to reconquer them, maybe they look for help from Europe. Most likely the UK, then. In OTL, Santa Anna tried and fail to reconquer Texas in 1842, and the UK actually mediated the situation. They got Mexico to recognize Texan independence on the condition Texas remained independent. If this still happens, then Texas could now have a counter against any possible American encroachment, and Mexico may be willing to cooperate if it means a buffer between them and the US. Well, who knows if this alternate Texas would also claim the Rio Bravo as border like in OTL, but perhaps if they still do they might trade it for Mexican support.

But that's assuming they would avoid American annexation in order to avoid expanding slavery, or that the US would resort to other means to annex them if they refuse (and considering they'd be anti-slavery, what would the South think then?), like how the M-A War was triggered.

Still, this is going to involve big butterflies, one way or another.

On the long run, perhaps they still end up joining the US post Civil War, but that's too far away to really tell.
 

kernals12

Banned
What it says on the tin.

The American impresarios/promoters of settlement in Texas happen to be antislavery and do their settler recruiting first and foremost from people not expecting to have slaves. The people most invested in and influential in the settlements and the ones winning the land grants Mexico recognizes fall into this category.

Their influence is decisive enough that slave property never becomes secure in customary local law and usage (and of course it was never legal under Mexican federal law).

How do things go from the 1820s through 1860s in Texas in this case?
If Texas were antislavery, then I'm guessing they'd less conservative than IOTL, or maybe they'd still put in place Jim Crow but targeted at hispanics instead of blacks.
 
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Thinking it further, I wonder if the number of Americans moving would change significantly. OTL, it was Southerners moving, joined by even more Southerners. And location wasn't much of an issue since it was nearby, relatively.

If it's Northerners and Abolitionists that make up the initial settlers... would this mean it's now a similar number of them moving afterwards? Would Southerners still move? Anglo population ends up lower, same-ish, or even higher than OTL?
 
You could have immigration/settler patterns similar to Kansas in the 1850s, setting up a similar showdown between slave-vs.-free. But, I agree, it would be an interesting idea to have the early impresarios be northern US or European.

But what you can't get away from is how damned suitable the farm land along the eastern river systems in Texas is for cotton production. That was one of the geopolitical constraints of the early to mid- 19th century. Just like today, aside from subsistence farming, people then farmed for money once they had met their own needs for survival. Cotton was the cash crop of the region. You'd have to flap some huge butterflies to change that.

Something that is worth looking at, as far as Texas early settlers is there are a surprising number of Northerners who came to Texas (Like David Burnet and Ashbel Smith, among others) who were northern born but ultimately defended slavery.
 
You could have immigration/settler patterns similar to Kansas in the 1850s, setting up a similar showdown between slave-vs.-free. But, I agree, it would be an interesting idea to have the early impresarios be northern US or European.

But what you can't get away from is how damned suitable the farm land along the eastern river systems in Texas is for cotton production. That was one of the geopolitical constraints of the early to mid- 19th century. Just like today, aside from subsistence farming, people then farmed for money once they had met their own needs for survival. Cotton was the cash crop of the region. You'd have to flap some huge butterflies to change that.

Something that is worth looking at, as far as Texas early settlers is there are a surprising number of Northerners who came to Texas (Like David Burnet and Ashbel Smith, among others) who were northern born but ultimately defended slavery.

Perhaps because of that, you have a partition of Texas, as Texas was permitted to do. Maybe assign the Plains, Texas Hill County, etc. into their own state?
 
Perhaps because of that, you have a partition of Texas, as Texas was permitted to do. Maybe assign the Plains, Texas Hill County, etc. into their own state?

If anything in that day and age could have been considered a common sense solution, that would have been it. I can see a president like Henry Clay offering it as one of his compromises. I have a harder time seeing the Southern fire brands accepting it. They'd likely claim it violated the conditions of the Missouri Compromise.
 
Slavery was never as endemic in pre 1861 Texas as it was in the Deep South. Texas entered the Union as a slave state which made slavery legal in Texas, but it was common only in the cotton producing areas of East Texas. Most of the farmers in Central Texas were European (mainly German and Czech) and wanted nothing to do with slavery, as did the farmers and ranchers of South Texas. When the secession vote was taken by the Convention on Feb.1, 1861 and Texas joined the CSA, a rebellion broke out against the Confederacy in the Fredricksburg area of Central Texas and had to be but down by Confederate troops.

I'm working on a thread now about the possibility that Texas opted to reestablish the Republic Of Texas in 1861 after leaving the Union instead of joining the CSA and remained neutral in any future conflict between the Confederacy and Union. That opens up a lot of interesting possibilities!
 
Given better organization of anti slavery settlers Texas could have split 1861, with successful vote against succession. Then the predominately slave counties in East Texas revolting against the vote.

There are so many ways this could play out. About all the proposals here are viable depending on immigration
patterns.
 
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Why was Texas in the first set of 7 seceders, and not a latecomer to secession like Virginia and Arkansas?
I don't want to throw stones at @Chet Falkenhainer, but by 1860 slavery was deeply entrenched in Texas, IOTL. According to the 1860 census, Texas' population was a smidgen over 600 thousand. 182 thousand were slaves. That's more than 25% of the population.

In comparison to the deep south, that's a much smaller portion of the population than places like South Carolina, Mississippi or Alabama (or heck, most of the rest of the deep south, for that matter), but IOTL, the political power in Texas was held by folks that were very sympathetic to the economic interests of the deep south.

If you're interested in writing a Texas timeline, it's really important to understand that while 25% of the electorate voted against secession, and many of those votes came from places like Fredericksburg, most didn't. There were lots of folks who sided with Texas and the Confederacy after voting against secession.

I wouldn't discourage you from an independence TL, just be aware that you need to find a plausible way to bring enough unionists together with the non-fire eaters to form a coalition for independence. That's a difficult needle to thread, especially when so many of the Texans were originally from places like Alabama, Georgia, etc...
 
I've long had the idea that slavery wasn't all that entrenched early on in the TX settlements, but became increasingly more widespread the closer it got to the TX revolution. They didn't really do many proper censuses back then, but we know the number of slaves shot from 443 in 1825 to 'approximately' 5000 at the end of the war in 1836... that's a huge increase in 11 years. The problem is that TX is right there next to the south, and east TX was superb plantation land... proximity and land conspire to make the place a slave state.
 
I thoughg had heard that Texas had a relatively honest referendum in which most white guys voted for treasonous rebellion. Am I mistaken
 
I agree with drewmc2001 about the challenge of threading the needle on this idea but it's going to be fun to explore the possibilities and see what I can come up with that works.
 
I agree with drewmc2001 about the challenge of threading the needle on this idea but it's going to be fun to explore the possibilities and see what I can come up with that works.
I'll follow it when you write it. I'm sure I'll have plenty of feedback. :biggrin:

You could start the TL with a narrative, where Sam Houston and a couple of men are meeting, following the presidential election of 1860, and they're talking about the angry fire-eaters calling for secession in South Carolina, and from that conversation, they start laying the foundation of a peaceful independence movement rather than an effort to join with the other southern states. Using the standard points that lead to the South's secession, that's probably the earliest POD that makes sense to me, at the moment.

By the time one gets to the efforts by the Texas fire eaters to secede Houston's ability to control the situation is gone, IMO, but if he got a 2 month head start after the election, then you have more ways to nudge the needle towards independence.

Anyway, just my .02

EDIT: another option is to borrow the idea from the OP, and move your POD even earlier. The challenge there, gets back to my first paragraph above. The earlier the POD, then you have to ask yourself what impact that's going to have on the 1860 election. As an example, if you choose to make a change, say, in 1840 or 1850 that results in significantly larger immigration from Europe or the Northern states into Texas may cause changes elsewhere or be the result of changes elsewhere.
 
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