Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History)

by Andrew J. Torget

By 1839, Galveston emerged as the largest town in Texas—swelling to more than three thousand residents—as it became the epicenter of the Republic’s economy, boasting several commercial wharves and a thriving trade with New Orleans.