Why do so many cool people come from Texas?

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We were once our own country, doncha' know.

Nothing against Texans personally, but I recently saw this piece relating to the Republic of Texas (this is an excerpt from his review of the new Alamo movie).

Written by Dan Santina from www.counterpunch.org.

So what was the Alamo standoff really about?

Well, for starters, let's take a look at one of the most legendary defenders of the Alamo, Jim Bowie.

Jim Bowie is widely celebrated in film (both Alan Ladd and Richard Widmark portrayed him) and television (a two year run in the '50's) as a daring and resourceful adventurer famed for the development and usage of a long-bladed knife which became known as the "Bowie knife."

The facts are that Bowie was much more than a back alley knife fighter. Shortly after the War of 1812, he and his brother Rezin went into business as slave traders with the pirate Jean Lafitte. In the 1820's they used their profits from the slave trade to become land speculators and eventually established a sugar plantation with slave labor in Louisiana. Ten years later they sold that business, and the 82 slaves who worked on it, for $90,000.

Bowie took his share of the profits and went to "Texas" to join Stephen F. Austin's group of Anglo colonists. He then became involved in a scheme to fraudulently acquire land grants from the Mexican government and ultimately garnered thousands of acres of land. As the crisis loomed between the Anglo colony and the Mexican government, Bowie found himself on the side of William Travis' "War Party," a group that brooked no conciliation with the Mexican government and was dedicated to the creation of a "Republic of Texas."

The "Republic of Texas" was a natural outgrowth of the Austin colony which brought slavery onto Mexican soil in 1821. In 1825, twenty five per cent of the people in Austin's colony were slaves and by 1836 there were 5,000 slaves. James S. Mayfield, a later Secretary of State for the Republic of Texas, stated that "the true policy and prosperity of this country (Texas) depend on the maintenance" of slavery. Like all Southern plantation owners, these Anglo-Texans had a plan for their own prosperity based on the free labor of slaves.

However, the problem for the slave-owning crowd was that the fledgling national government in Mexico City threatened to restrict or abolish slavery on Mexican land.

So the Texas colonists organized a convention in March, 1836 to establish the issues for which they would do battle with the Mexican government. In a two-week period they adopted a declaration of independence from Mexico, declared a republic, and produced a constitution for that republic. All of this activity occurred during the siege of the Alamo.

The Alamo defenders fought and died for the constitution of the Republic of Texas which declared in Sections 6, 9 and 10:

"All free white persons who emigrate to the republic...shall be entitled to all the privileges of citizenship.'

"All persons of color who were slaves for life previous to their emigration to Texas, and who are now held in bondage, shall remain in the like state of servitude... Congress (of Texas) shall pass no laws to prohibit emigrants from the United State of America from bringing their slaves into the Republic with them...nor shall Congress have the power to emancipate slaves; nor shall any slaveholder be allowed to emancipate his or her slave or slaves...no free person of African descent either in whole or in part shall be permitted to reside permanently in the Republic without the consent of Congress."

"All persons, (African, the descendants of Africans and Indians excepted,) who were residing in Texas on the day of the Declaration of Independence shall be considered citizens of the Republic and entitled to all the privileges of such."

Contrary to popular mythology and the spurious history of White Man Movie Fiction, the story of the Alamo is not a story of a fight for freedom. It is the story of a fight for slavery. It is important for us to look honestly at our cultural and historical mythologies so that we can learn from them. By perpetuating the old myths, we create a stagnant and dangerous platform which prevents our cultural and artistic growth as a society.

Forget the Alamo as it's portrayed in this movie, but never forget what really happened.