Stephen F. Austin founded the Texas colony as a cotton empire, manned by slave labor. Mexico outlawed slavery in 1829, but appeased the colonists by granting an exemption to Texas. The Constitution of the Republic of Texas not only legalized slavery, it prohibited the emancipation of any slave without the consent of Congress. In 1845, with the price of cotton on the floor, the bankrupt young republic faced a choice of being annexed by the United States as a slave state or accepting a bailout from Great Britain and remaining independent. The loan came with a catch: Texans would have to pay
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This was a very incomplete telling of the history. This “bailout” offer brokered was by a relative nobody with no authority or office to negotiate such a deal. It’s like attributing the outcome of a national policy decision by an elected body being the winning outcome versus what your neighbor mentioned to you as their own passion project.
