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

For Coahuilan legislators like Manuel Carrillo and Dionisio Elizondo, the original goal of immediate abolition in Article 13 had been traded away in exchange for antislavery provisions that committed the state to embracing freedom within a generation. For empresarios like Stephen F. Austin and the Tejano leadership in San Antonio, the constitution’s slave provisions pitted important short-term gains against significant long-term challenges. While there would be no widespread confiscation of enslaved property by the state, Texas officials would be hard pressed to convince new settlers from the United States to move with their slaves to Mexican territory.