Censoring Texas History
Real History: The Cotton Gin
In late 18th-century America, the working assumption about slave labor in the cotton fields was that it was becoming too expensive. Here is the scenario: In the American South most slaves were used in cotton production. Yet, the use of slave labor was negatively impacting cotton’s profitability. The most labor-intensive aspect of the cotton process at this time, after planting and harvesting, was the extraction of cotton seeds from the raw cotton ball. If you ever get hold of a raw cotton ball, you can easily see why this would be so. The seeds are tightly entwined in a thick mass of cotton fibers. To increase production meant acquiring more slaves to perform this task of extraction. By the 1790s, the cost of additional slaves exceeded the expected profit from added production. Under these conditions U.S. cotton production was stagnant and losing markets to foreign production (such as in India). There was little incentive to expand American cotton production into new regions.
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There may have been multiple reasons why U.S. immigrants chose to move into Mexican Texas, but there was only one reason—the desire to own slaves—for which these immigrants rose up in armed rebellion in 1835-1836 and subsequently declared independence. No white resident of Texas at that time would have denied this fact. Thus, it is noteworthy that today, in the early 21st century, the state’s most conservative and indeed reactionary citizens, seek to censor this history almost out of existence. To quote a New York Times (NYT) article of 26 November 2021, “political leaders in Texas are trying to … restrict how teachers discuss the role of slavery in the Texas revolution and target hundreds of books for potential removal from schools.” One should note that similar efforts are being made in close to a dozen other states, and they are all under the control of Republican legislatures.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/16/censoring-texas-history/