Los Brazos de Dios: A Plantation Society in the Texas Borderlands 1821–1865 (review)

This volume offers a new borderlands perspective, beginning with the statement that Texas became “the only slave-based plantation society to originate under Mexican sovereignty” (p. 2). The author is careful to note, however, that Texas differed in important ways from other borderland societies of the Southwest, while presenting similarities to states of the United States South. The focus is on five counties of the lower Brazos River valley. To explore the diversity of the region in detail, special emphasis is placed on three neighborhoods, Gulf Prairie near the coast and Chappell Hill and Cat Spring, both further inland. The region is presented as contested, with transitions from Mexico to the Texas republic, followed by U.S. statehood and finally by the U.S. Civil War.

Population diversity existed among slaves and non-slaves alike. About a thousand slaves (about 20 percent of the population) were smuggled in from the Bight of Benin and other points on the West African coast through Cuba in a dozen voyages during the 1830s. Other slaves came with owners who settled there or arrived later through the U.S. internal slave trade. Immigrants, primarily from western Germany, and their American-born children added cultural complexity as 30 percent of the white population in the region, especially in the upper counties.

The borderlands setting led to varied household patterns in the Mexican period, with further change in later eras. Two-man partnerships counted as households for purposes of acquiring larger land grants. Temporary “bond” marriages occurred for lack of preachers. White households tended to be nuclear families on small farms or extended ones on plantations that included white workers. Wives retained property under Mexican law and later under Texas law. Unusually flexible divorce laws allowed abandonment and cruelty as grounds; these were used in several cases. Slave marriages lacked a legal basis, but could be defended by threats of escape. African- born slaves married other Africans when possible. German families added to the social complexity, emphasizing duty more and affection less than their Anglo counterparts.

Slaveholders’ concern that Mexico might ultimately abolish slavery contributed to the Texas Revolution. Once Texas was independent, however, the fear that slaves would run away to Mexico forced slaveholders to negotiate with their bondsmen on paternalistic grounds, while slaves sought to manage their situation through flattery. Slave labor evolved in stages from land-clearing to cotton-raising, later mixed with sugar production. The need for skills on sugar plantations and sugar harvest deadlines resulted in incentives for the slaves. A separate slave culture developed more fully on larger plantations.

Anglos organized their local society around an ideal of neighborliness and respect for others’ interests. Although a few Germans became slave owners, Anglos held a degree of suspicion regarding the majority of Germans who did not. German churches and social attitudes about drinking further emphasized the sense of difference. Although many Germans did not vote on secession to avoid conflict, opposition by others heightened Anglo fears that the Germans as a group were anti-slavery.

The Civil War in the United States brought a range of problems to the Brazos valley: a slowdown in trade through Mexico, shortages, and Confederate impressment of supplies and slaves. Tensions increased between social classes, toward and among Germans, and in regard to slave escapes and the growing resistance to controls. The end of the war and Emancipation of the slaves in 1865 ended the attraction of Mexico as a place of freedom. It also changed a borderland to bordered lands with a reduced sense of contested space.

Kelley might have broadened and deepened the perspective of this work by comparing the Brazos River region with the later development of other plantation societies in Texas that did not contain the same degree of ethnic and cultural diversity. What probably is a typographical error in the discussion of Texas politics has Sam Houston winning election...