![]() 7 The retreating Mexican army nonetheless continued to attract asylum-seekers. For example, in early May 1836, three escaped slaves were forcibly brought back from the old Fort Tenoxtitlán to San Antonio. 6 After San Jacinto, many runaways who had taken advantage of the confusion were arrested. ![]() The man later served the Mexican army as a guide for river crossings (as did many other male fugitives, while women often became washerwomen). Officer Juan Nepomuceno Almonte described how, while waiting to ambush the norteamericanos, “a negro passed at short distance” from his troops. The Mexican side echoed this observation. William Parker likewise underscored the difficulty of preventing “the negroes from joining the enemy in small parties”. While reaching Ashworth’s Ferry on Lake Sabine in late April 1836, William Fairfax Gray described his encounter with “three runaway Negroes, who fled and plunged through a bayou at approach”. In the meantime, many slaves from central Texas plantations had deserted to the Mexicans, capitalizing on the panic among their enslavers. Thereafter, the Mexican army marched eastward to the Colorado and Brazos rivers, the location of most of the Euro-American settlements, before the battle of San Jacinto (on 21 April 1836) marked the final Texan victory. 5 The conflict remained limited to the vicinity of San Antonio until the fall of the Alamo on 6 March 1836. Ann Thomas, a resident of Caney Creek since 1832, claimed that she and her husband lost seven slaves (four of whom fled to Mexico’s interior) while fleeing to New Orleans from their cotton plantations in February 1836. The ensuing dislocation of the established social order gave way to expressions of long-held resentment among slaves: many of them defected to the Mexican troops. 4Īs the crisis intensified by early 1836, most Texan settlers did not fight against Santa Anna’s army, but instead fled back to Louisiana. Nonetheless, the Texas Revolution would have serious disruptive repercussions on local slavery over the following months. A local vigilance committee thwarted the suspected uprising its leaders were hanged. 3 In October 1835, about 100 slaves near Brazoria, the heart of slavery in Mexican Texas, were accused of planning a rising against their owners in order to enslave them for the production of cotton bales for the Louisiana market. ![]() 2 Mier y Terán – who had already envisioned such an alliance as a buffer against the rising influence of Euro-American settlers while inspecting Texas in 1828 – argued that slaves were “becoming restless to throw off their yoke” as they grew aware of Mexico’s liberalism regarding slavery. Enslaved people had by then “acquired some familiarity with the emancipationist leanings of Mexico”, making them ready “to embrace the invading force as an army of liberation”, as Paul D. 1 The following autumn, as Mexican troops were gradually dispatched to Texas, colonists in Matagorda grew concerned that the army would “give liberty to our slaves and make slaves of ourselves”. As a Texan settler recalled, “there was much uneasiness felt in regard to the threatened loss of slave property and the owners of slaves were disposed to favor the peace policy”. In July 1835, when the military vessel Correo sailed close to Galveston, asserting Mexican sovereignty against an incipient rebellion, planters in central Texas feared that the ship’s presence might embolden their slaves. 1 Introduction: The Texas Revolution and the Political Landscape of Slavery and FreedomĬonflicts over fugitive slaves contributed to the growing divide between the Mexican federal state and the Euro-American slaveholders in Texas during the early 1830s. ![]()
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