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

At his inauguration as the Republic’s second president in 1838, Lamar had outright rejected the idea of annexation because he believed that joining the United States would expose Anglo-Texans to the deadly influence of American abolitionists. By the mid-1840s, however, Lamar had come to fear abolitionists in Great Britain even more, and he now urged his fellow Texans to join the United States because it represented the only sure way to preserve slavery in the region. “I paused in my opinions,” he explained, “and turned to seek for my country a shelter from the grasp of British cupidity beneath the only flag under which her institutions could be saved.”107 For even the most ardent of Texas nationalists like Lamar, there was simply no reason to maintain their independence if it meant sacrificing slavery and the cotton economy in the process.