I had first intended to only skim and consult this book as background reading for a chapter I was writing on slavery in Galveston, TX, but the author's research, writing, and arguments were so compelling I read it from beginning to end.
I am not a a native Texan and although I lived year for a couple years during elementary school I never took Texas history. For me, the first few chapters of the book were an excellent primer on Texas's founding, independence as Republic, path to statehood, and decision to secede...the first few chapters were also a revelation for on every page and in every step from founding to secession the founders of Texas made clear how important slavery would be to its settlement and future growth and did everything possible to insure the "Peculiar Institution's" survival. The workings of the Mexican government and legislature in the 1830s and 40s was very interesting, indeed.
The sections on the lives of slaves - the breakup of families, religion, music, work conditions, etc. - was taken from slave narratives as much as possible. I would have liked to have seen much more material on the medical care of Texas slaves, a subject which merits only a page or so in this book, but that is due to my own special interests and not an obligation on the author. There is little comparison between the lives of slaves in Texas and other slave states, but the author maintains that is because there was little difference, and - in a statement that made a great impression on me - he declares that it matters little whether slavery was better or worse in Texas than elsewhere...the argument is "morally pointless": "the moral nature of a system that held human as property would remain the same" whether conditions were "better" or "worse" in Texas.
I especially liked the section on how Texans viewed abolitionists in the years leading up to the Civil War and how they were subjected to severe vigilante justice, also known as: murder. That section in the book reinforced other reading I have been doing on Texas abolitionists and Unionists.
The book is written as an academic study and is impeccable researched. The footnotes (yeah! love them so much more than endnotes!) and bibliography are worth the price of the book themselves and will provide excellent avenues and leads for future research.
Excellent. Just excellent.
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