18. The Belief That the Alamo’s Defenders Fought for Freedom is Inaccurate,
Generations of scholars tiptoed around an uncomfortable aspect of the Alamo and a widespread but inaccurate belief that the Texas Revolution was a noble fight for freedom: slavery. It was not until the 1980s that academic researchers finally tackled the relevance of slavery to the Texas Revolution. Their findings demonstrated conclusively that slavery was the main issue that drove a wedge between the American immigrants and the Mexican government. Simply put, Mexican law prohibited slavery, and that did not sit well with the American immigrants who wanted to bring and maintain slaves on Mexican soil.
Regardless of who was in charge, Mexican governments before the Texas Revolution were dedicated abolitionists. By contrast, many American immigrants to Texas wanted to farm cotton on its virgin soil, and wanted to do it with slaves. Stephen F. Austin, “the Father of Texas”, argued for years that slaves were necessary for the prosperity of Texans. In correspondence with Mexican bureaucrats in 1832, for example, he wrote: “Nothing is wanted but money, and negroes are necessary to make it“. The key “freedom” fought for at the Alamo was the freedom to own slaves.
