by Gerald Horne
International Publishers
5/11/2022
SKU: 9780717800018
When Mexico moved to abolish slavery, Texas seceded in 1836-in a replay of 1776-- in order to perpetuate enslavement of Africans forevermore. Until 1845 Texas was an independent nation and moved to challenge the U.S. for leadership in the odious commerce of the African Slave Trade: Texas also competed vigorously with the U.S. in the dirty business of denuding Mexico by snatching California in the race to the Pacific and domination of the vaunted China market.
But Texas could not withstand pressure from abolitionist Mexico and revolutionary Haiti and joined the U.S. as a state-under questionable legal procedures-in 1845.
Thereafter Texas' enslaved population increased exponentially along with land grabs targeting Comanches, Caddo and Kiowa-and other Indigenous nations-leading to staggeringly violent bloodshed.
But Mexico continued to support Indigenes and the enslaved, irking Texas, which then led the secession from the U.S. in 1861 in order to perpetuate enslavement of Africans forevermore-though a number of leaders in Austin wanted to avoid the resultant Civil War by moving southward and snatching Cuba, Nicaragua and points southward.
But weakened by conflict with the U.S., Mexico was then seized by France which then plotted with Texas to continue enslavement of Africans after the defeat of the rebels in 1865-and after "Juneteenth" of the same year.
Black troops helped to foil this deviltry but, alas, during the Reconstruction era-1865-1876-these same soldiers were at the tip of the spear as Indigenes were being pounded in West Texas as Black people were being pounded by the Ku Klux Klan in East Texas.
Texans were also in the vanguard during the scandalous 6 January 2021 insurrection on Capitol Hill and promises to be in the forefront as a unique U.S. fascism seeks to rise.
One lesson from Texas is that Repression was so severe because Resistance was so daunting-a lesson to keep in mind as this century unfolds.
Reviews:
"The prolific and brilliant historian Gerald Horne is the most important U.S. historian working today. In this new offering, Horne dives into the battle of Texas history where he identifies the roots of American fascism. Being a U.S. historian and also born in San Antonio, I read every book and article available on Texas history, and Horne's is the most important to date. Anyone who wants to understand U.S. history and the present should start with The Counter-Revolution of 1836." -- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of many books, including: An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, Not 'A Nation of Immigrants:' Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion, and Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment.
"Over the past quarter-century, Gerald Horne has seemingly undertaken the task not only of refuting the entire complex of fraudulent narratives undergirding the U.S. settler state's brazen self-portrayal as the world's exemplar of freedom and democracy, but, concomitantly, of exposing the squalid realities comprising its actual history. In this, he has emerged as something akin to a force of nature, relentlessly producing more than three-dozen well-argued and documented books, each of them interlocking with and reinforcing the rest. His latest effort, The Counter-Revolution of 1836, is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how and why the openly fascistic variety of white supremacism now displayed by a growing segment of settler society has evolved." -- Ward Churchill, author of many books, including: Wielding Words Like Weapons: Selected Essays in Indigenism, 1995-2005, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States, Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, and Kill the Indian, Save the Man.
About the Author:
Dr. Gerald Horne holds the Moores Professorship of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. He has also written extensively about the film industry. Dr. Horne is the author of more than thirty books, including: The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century, Confronting Black Jacobins, Facing the Rising Sun, and The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism. Dr. Horne received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from Princeton University.