Upon declaring itself a sovereign nation, one of the first acts of the new Republic was to cement “the existence of slavery forever in the young nation’s constitution.” Interestingly, in the 10yr history of the nation, a successfully stable government and a working economy was never established. It eluded the new Texans.

Nevertheless, the centrality of a slave economy revealed itself as the slave population grew exponentially. At the beginning of the Republic, slaves numbered 5000 souls. In less than ten years, the population soared to 30,000 souls.

Cantrell, the author of Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas said, “He understood very clearly that the cotton economy depended upon slave labor. On numerous occasions, when people raised this issue with him, he said, ‘Texas must be a slave country,’ and he put his money where his mouth was.” Austin lobbied hard to ensure slavery in Texas despite the attempts of the Mexican government to ban the institution. However, in 1824, Mexico passed the General Colonization Law, which enabled all heads of household, regardless of race, religion, or immigrant status, to acquire land in Coahuila y Tejas. Mexico was attempting what the United States offered in the constitution to land-owning white men; life, liberty, and land ownership to all peoples, including Black peoples.