It was a matter of Southern theological pride to be among the slave-owning class, and it was supported by “the overwhelming majority of churches and ministers” in the South, especially in Tyler, Texas. Southerners engaged in “the white man’s burden” or the “Lord’s work” would soon be stunned by the defeat of the Confederacy and the end of their way of life. “And so after the Civil War Blacks and whites simply went their separate ways,” Texas College professor of history and religion Edward J. Robinson says. “It’s called de facto segregation.”

Then American settlers, influenced by their own culture’s long history of warring with Native Americans, moved to modern-day East Texas from South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Empowered by their sense of racial superiority and validated by their Christian faith, southerners imported to the northernmost region of Tejas their dreams of accumulating incredible wealth using the relatively free labor of “subhuman” African peoples. What justified white settlers taking lands that did not belong to them?

The Catholic Church took most of the credit.