On Sept. 30, 1830, native San Antonian Juan Martín de Veramendi appeared before the top officials of Mexico’s Coahuila y Tejas state, vouching personally for his prospective son-in-law, Jim Bowie, to be granted Mexican citizenship.
Why did Veramendi, perhaps the most prominent Tejano politician of the moment, go all-in on supporting Bowie, widely known for his involvement with slave smuggling, real estate fraud and knife-fighting?
Bowie promised to bring the miracle of cotton to the young state.
In Episode 3 of The Engines of Texanity podcast, we talk about the complicated legacy of cotton in Texas and the American South.
Although the crop had been cultivated by Native Americans and settlers since the mid-1500s, the U.S. cotton boom was set off by Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793. Paired with industrial advances such as the steam engine, automated cotton gins were processing up to 4,000 pounds of cotton per day.
Cotton became abundant and valuable. Finished cotton products could be equal in worth to horses, the most valuable and liquid forms of wealth.
After the Battle of Medina in 1813 and years of attacks by Lipanes and Comanches, Texas was perhaps the poorest province in the new Mexican nation. Many Tejanos left the state, taking refuge in Natchitoches, Louisiana, where they — Veramendi and Bowie among them — witnessed firsthand how the cotton economy was transforming the South.
Between 1810 and 1820, the Anglo population in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama grew into the hundreds of thousands, causing land prices to skyrocket. In Texas, meanwhile, the population struggled to grow more than a 2,000 people and Stephen F. Austin began selling plots of land cheaply and on credit. Mexican citizens could claim up to 50,000 acres for $0.05 an acre!
This prompted Bowie and Veramendi’s agreement. In return for Veramendi’s sponsorship and his daughter Ursula’s hand in marriage, Bowie would purchase land as a Mexican citizen to establish wool and cotton mills in Texas.
Bowie’s promises went unfulfilled. Veramendi and Ursula died from cholera in 1833 and Bowie died three years later at the Alamo.
Cotton did prove to be the best hope for Texas’ economy, but it was built on an unpleasant truth: slavery. By 1860, the number of slaves in the South grew threefold, totaling 40% of the population.
Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, so Tejano lawmakers and Anglo-American planters formed a loophole: When crossing the border, immigrating slaves would be forced to sign contracts indenturing themselves for 99 years to their masters. Now indebted workers, they continued being slaves in all but name.
The economic returns were powerful. By 1835, Texas was selling 3.15 million pounds of cotton a year, worth an estimated $500,000. Over a single decade, Texas had gone from 1/1000th of the Mexican economy to something like 1/16th, a massive change.
The cotton boom never extended into Mexico due to various reasons, including geographical and economical differences, so the Texas cotton economy stayed inextricably linked to Louisiana, and, by proxy, the United States. Along with the growing Anglo and slave populations, this created a powerful economic rationale for the Texas Revolution of 1835-36.
The role of cotton in the growth and economy of 19th-century Texas cannot be understated. By the outbreak of the Civil War, the census counted more than 600,000 non-Indians living in Texas, a third of which represented more than a third of the wealth in the state.
Cotton isn’t something we should talk about only in the past. Texas “cottonlands” never stopped expanding. Today Texas produces something like 3 billion pounds per year, 40% of the U.S. total.
A part of Texas identity, it’s a legacy that Texans have become increasingly uncomfortable with in recent years. Versions of history told in the 20th century came to favor the story of the cowboy and cattle drives. There is something far more romantic about a man on a horse than a man with a hoe, particularly when that man is enslaved.
Click below to listen to Episode 3 of The Engines of Texanity.
