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

Los Brazos de Dios; A Plantation Society in the Texas Borderlands, 1821–1865 offers a sociological overview of the plantation society along the lower Brazos River in Texas from the beginning of the Austin colony until emancipation in 1865. Author Sean Kelley argues that the ‘borderland’ status of the region gave rise to a plantation society quite distinct from the older and more traditional areas of the South from which the new slaveholders originally came. The book then systematically analyzes those features that made it different.

Kelley devotes a large part of the book to a discussion of the influence of Central European emigrants in the area, both Czech and German. Conventional wisdom has it that the Germans, especially, were almost unanimously opposed to both slavery and secession. The author rightfully points out the diverse composition and lack of unanimity within the German settlements and the sometimes contorted efforts by German spokesmen to paint themselves as patriotic dissenters. Despite an impressive array of cited sources, many in the original German, there are striking omissions. The author does not discuss the influential and moderating role of the extended von Roeder family, the family who founded both Cat Spring and Shelby (Roeders Mühle). Neither does he mention that a group of German noblemen established a slave plantation in 1843 a stone’s throw from the German community at Roeder’s Mill, a community he mentions in several discussions.

This suggests a further concern: the geography of the book is artificial. Few Texans would regard the Brazos River from Chappel Hill down to the coast to be a borderland at any point in time between 1821 until 1865. The region represented neither the furthermost extension of Anglo colonization (and slavery) during Mexican rule, nor did the area ever border in any immediate way centers of Spanish linguistic and cultural predominance. Likewise, the area of the German settlements in question extended to watersheds to the west into Fayette and Colorado counties. If, however, we consider “borderlands” more abstractly, as the cultural interface between the Hispanic and Anglo worlds, then the title becomes more understandable. This then begs the question, why did the author restrict himself to the Brazos River valley when this area of cultural overlap extended at least to the Colorado River basin forty miles to the west?

Overlooking this, the book provides a valuable study of plantation life along the lower Brazos River before and during the Civil War and rests on an exhaustive survey of both primary and secondary sources.