I don’t think I want to turn the Corner into a bulletin board of rage about the Alamo thing. Suffice it to say references to male bovine fecal droppings come up in a lot of emails. Brad Short summarizes:

To say it is b.s. is to do it far more credit than it
deserves:
1) Santa Anna (SA) had sent his tyrant-lite brother
(Jose Perfecto de la Cos) up to San Antonio to take
away their cannon the year before (1835)-and since
this violated San Antonio’s right to defend itself
from Indian-raids, the Texicans kicked his butt out of
the province. This was part of why SA *wasn’t* going
to go easy on the Alamo when he came up to it with his
huge Mexican Army in 1836.
2) Yes, the immigrants from the U.S. to Mexican Texas
largely held slaves (I think Jim Bowie had one of his
with him at the Alamo), but that was NOT all that was
at issue.
3) Immigration. Ironically the United States of Mexico
gov’t wanted illegal immigration to Texas to end,
because they thought too many Anglos were coming in
and changing loyalties (sounds familiar?). Problem
is, the whole reason Mexico had earlier let all these
Anglos into Texas under the leadership of Stephan
Austin (whose dad had also been trying throughout his
life to emigrate to a hispanic country with a bunch of
followers) (more on him below) was that Texas was
empty and not being productively farmed-the mestizos
of Mexico didn’t want to come up. Texicans did not
want the province to stay so empty (a little less
empty than before-enough for pols in Mexico City, but
not for the Texicans), and often they wanted their
family members from places like Tennesse to come in
and live with them (sounds familiar?)
4) Stephen Austin (who tried so hard to hispanicify
himself and his fellow former-U.S. Texicans that he
would sign his name: “Don Estavan d’Austin”) went to
Mexico City to negotiate issues like slavery,
immigration, etc., and he was thrown in jail by the
dictator SA-in total violation of his free speech
rights (btw, I don’t *think* Austin owned slaves).
5) Basically, SA was the Napoleon Bonaparte of Latin
America. The Texicans, by rebelling, preserved the
republican form of gov’t that Mexico did not get until
yours and my lifetime (Benito Juarez, who fought Santa
Anna throughout the 19th century tried to govern as a
democrat-and I think it is fair to say that he really
wanted to-but he often resorted to dictatorial-like
acts to try to keep Santa Anna out of power; e.g.
staying in as President longer than his term was
supposed to last for). The “Congress” in Mexico City,
in the 1830’s was a joke.
6) So the Texican revolution was justified because the
central gov’t violated many natural rights of
Texicans, e.g., to keep and bear arms and to
republican gov’t. It wasn’t about slavery, and still
less was it all “Anglo” and anti-mestizo-while the
brave men of the Alamo and Goliad were murdered by SA,
the Texas representatives were drafting the Texican
Declaration of Independence-it was signed by several
mestizos, including Jose Antonio Navarro, who would
have been hanged as a traitor if Santa Anna got his
hands on him. Thanks to Sam Houston, that didn’t
happen.
Peace out.
-Bradford Short