The Nexus between the Southwest, the Confederacy, Slavery and Camels: Redux

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Inter-ethnic relations, Regional History

The Southwest, 1850

WEST BY SOUTHWEST
History books tell us how the United States in the first half of the 19th century strove to fulfil its self-defined mission of “Manifest Destiny” by spreading its territorial reach on the continent ever more westwards. Having acquired the Southwest—comprising vast stretches of mainly dry, desert land—through highly profitable adventures south of the Río Grande, Washington found itself staring at a dauntingly formidable obstacle to exploration and settlement.

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Jefferson Davis

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SHIPS OF THE DESERT” FOR THE SOUTHWESTERN DESERT
The idea of using camels to meet the massive challenge of traversing this harsh terrain was first floated by Quartermaster captain George H Crosman in the 1830s but it was later taken up with full enthusiasm by Jefferson Davis (later to be the breakaway Confederacy’s president during the Civil War) who advocated tirelessly for the superior efficacy of camels over mules and horses as “beasts of burden” ideally suited to the Southwest. As well as the being the optimal pack animal for the arid New Mexico territory plains, the camel, it’s proponents claimed, would help soldiers hunt down troublesome native peoples impeding westward progress (‘The sinister reason why camels were brought to the American West’, Kevin Waite, National Geographic, 27-Oct-2021, www.nationalgeographic.com). Davis, after being appointed secretary of war in the Pierce Administration, eventually got approval to purchase a caravan of 40 camels through Congress in 1855 and the US Army Camel Corps came into existence.

Pack-carrying dromedaries in the desert (Photo: Getty Images/Stockphoto)

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The plan to import camels itself was not Davis’ idea but the brainchild of Major Henry C Wayne , also an early convert to the camel cause. Wayne was selected to collect the army’s first batch of camels from West Africa, however his public role in the camel saga soon became secondary to the private capacity he fashioned for himself as the number one publicist in promoting the virtues and utility of camels for America…proclaiming a multiplicity of uses in addition to transportation, including plantation chores (eg, hauling cotton, corn, etc.) which were more cost-effective than comparable equine alternatives. Wayne’s efforts ignited a craze for camels and dromedaries especially among Southern planters (‘The Dark Underbelly of Jefferson Davis’ Camels’, Michael E. Woods, Muster, 21-Nov-2017, www.thejournalofthecivilwarerw.org).

‘Southwest Passage’, a 1950s Hollywood B-movie purportedly about the Camel Corps

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CONSPIRACY AND OPPORTUNISM
With camels, if not quite thick on the ground very much conspicuously present, the Camel Corps HQ was established at Camp Verde, Texas, and army camel experiments were undertaken in the Southwest. What eventually emerged though were other, non-military uses for the importation of camels. Behind the enthusiasm of slaveholders to acquire camels lay a deeper scheme. Jefferson Davis and the slaveholders were determined to expand slavery westward into the new territories of the Southwest even to “free” states like California, and they certainly saw the camel, capable of going without water for long periods while still hauling great loads, as instrumental to the conquest of the southwestern deserts and the securing of a safe route to the far west. Though Davis himself denied this was his intention historian Kevin Waite asserts that “camels were part of his broader fantasies for the western expansion” of the slave industry. Michael Woods offers a different viewpoint, arguing that Davis did not envision this outcome when he initiated the camel project nor did he collude with the “Slave Power” which steered the scheme, but his crucial championing of the project did trigger the chain of events that led to it.

Transatlantic Slave route to Texas

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MASKING THE BANNED SLAVE TRADE
The importation of these humped, cloven-footed creatures by Southerners likely served another, even more nefarious purpose of the slaveholding class. Suspicions were high in anti-slavery circles that the influx of camels in the 1850s was being used as a smokescreen to shield the smuggling in of African slaves—an activity made illegal in the US since the 1808 ban—probably funnelled into the country via the Texas coastline where a raft of slave traders were based (Woods).

Camel expedition in the Southwest, 1857 (Image: via VMI/Getty)

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With the outbreak of war between North and South in 1861 plans for their extensive use were pretty much shelved notwithstanding that the Confederacy now had sole control of the camels. Post-bellum, interest was not revived for a number of reasons – the camels didn’t catch on partially due to the creatures’ undesirable personal traits and their being not easy for Americans to handle. Besides, the completion of the Transcontinental Railway in 1869 made their utility for long distance transport more or less obsolete. Consequently, owners were quick to dispose of their stocks of camels, some were sold off to travelling circuses or zoos, others were simply released to roam into the wild leading to random sightings of the creatures decades afterwards.

Slavery, the Elephant in the Room: Myth-making about the United States’ Uncomfortable Past

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Cinema, Inter-ethnic relations, Popular Culture, Regional History

When human rights principles buttressed by international law took root, slavery in both its traditional and modern forms became ever more of a dirty word in First World societies like the US. Little wonder then that faced with the stark realities of such a repugnant and vilified practice staining their own country’s history, some might seek to lay a euphemistic guise over the unpalatable nature of the institution.

⊳ Texas, 1835-36 (Source: texashistory.unt.edu)

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“Involuntary relocation”, denial, whitewashing?
One topical example of this involves Texas and its long and vexed relationship with slavery. A conservative group of Texas educators in 2022 proposed that schoolchildren should be taught about the state’s history of “involuntary relocation”, which enables teachers to neatly avoid the dreaded word “slavery” altogether (on the pretext that references to slavery might be too confronting for the tender ears of small children). Needless to say this attempt “to blur out what actually happened in that time in history” has been heavily criticised by progressive historians (‘State education board members push back on proposal to use “involuntary relocation” to describe slavery’, Brian Lopez, The Texas Tribune, 30-Jun-2022, www.texastribune.org)ⓐ.

⊳ The Alamo, San Antonio (Photo: age fotostock)

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Texas creation myth
Conservative groups in Texas have good reason to try to bury the spectre of slavery as the institution is very much connected to the state’s most sacred historical symbol, the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. The traditional Alamo story—brave American freedom fighters against the far superior forces of tyrannical México, their heroism inspiring the (Anglo-led) Texians under Sam Houston to achieve independence—is ingrained on the consciousness of all Texans and all flag-waving Americans…it is in fact a story central to the creation myth of Texas. The defenders of the Alamo, so the conventional Anglo narrative goes, made the ultimate sacrifice for liberty. The heroic Alamo myth has been reinforced by fictionalised screen versions of the Alamo’s leaders: Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and William Travis come across as courageous martyrs for the Texians’ cause (largely thanks to Walt Disney and John Wayne)…in reality they were far from lily-white, Crockett was a slaveholder and an unsuccessful politician who resorted to buying votes, and his glorified death at the Alamo as portrayed on the screen—going down valiantly fighting “evil” Méxicans to the very end—was a fiction (first-hand accounts verify that Crockett surrendered and was executed). Bowie and Travis were both slave traders and the morally dubious Bowie also made a living through smuggling. Hardly 19th century model citizen stuff (Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson & Jason Stanford, Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, (2021)).

⊳ The Alamo according to the John Wayne movie

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Slaveholder rebellion, Manifest Destiny, American exceptionalism?
Similarly, the traditional view of why the American colonists revolted—because they were supposedly being oppressed by a tyrannical regime in Mexico City—is at variance with the inconvenient facts. American colonists came to Mexico’s Tejas with the purpose of making money through from cotton, the only viable cash crop in the territory at that time. For this to happen, black slave labour was a necessityⓑ. Once the Texians declared their independence in 1836, the centrality of slavery in the new republic became even more apparent with the institution being enshrined in the Texas constitution. Numbers of slaves in the republic grew exponentially, doubling every few years in the period from 1836 to 1850ⓒ. By 1860 slaves made up nearly one-third of the state’s population. As James Russell noted, rather than being “martyrs to the cause of freedom” as claimed, the defenders of the Alamo could more truthfully be tagged “martyrs to the cause of freedom of slaveholders”(‘Slavery and the myth of the Alamo’, James W. Russell, History News, 28-May-2012, www.historynewsnetwork.org)ⓓ.

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Slavery, mythology and the Civil War
When I went to school in the 1960s I learned that slavery was the cause of the American Civil War, clear and simple, the Southern states wanted to retain the practice and the Northern states wanted to end it. But in the US itself there has been no such consensus. As early as 1866 the defeated South had cobbled together its own, alternate narrative for America’s most costly war.

⊳ The post-bellum myth portrayed a society of happy, docile slaves and benevolent masters as conveyed in the classic film Gone With The Wind

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“Lost Cause of the Confederacy”
Southerners depicted the Civil War as a noble “lost cause”, romanticised its soldiers (Robert E Lee the chivalrous Christian gentleman) and constructed a pseudo-historical myth that the war was all about states rights, not slavery, the South was just protecting its agrarian economy against Northern aggression, trying to defend its way of life against the threat posed by the powerful industrial North. In reality, when South Carolina, the first of the Southern states to secede, did so in 1860, it complained that the national government had refused to suppress the civil liberties of northern citizens (ie, its failure to halt Northern interference in the South’s slave industry) (Finkelman, Paul (2012) “States’ Rights, Southern Hypocrisy, and the Crisis of the Union,” Akron Law Review: Vol. 45: Iss. 2, Article 5.
Available at: https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/akronlawreview/vol45/iss2/5).

Confederacy based on the principle of white supremacy
The Confederacy’s (CSA) philosophical underpinnings rested on an unquestioned sense of white supremacy and black subservience, bolstered by pseudo-scientific ideas of race gaining traction at the time. Suffrage was a right afforded only to CSA’s white males. The South fought to safeguard its “right to hold property in persons”, and to do so in perpetuity (‘The Confederacy Was an Antidemocratic, Centralized State’, Stephanie McCurry, The Atlantic, 21-Jun-2020, www.theatlantic.com).

⊳ Slaves in the cotton field (Artist: John W Jones)

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ⓐ it didn’t go without notice that this development is occurring at a time that Tejanos (Texas Latinos) are poised to become the majority in the Lone Star state

ⓑ the government for its part had originally invited American migrants to Méxican Texas to populate the vast province and to counter the indigenous peoples, especially Comanches and Apaches, who freely raided and plundered Méxican settlements and ranches

ⓒ fulfilling the founder of Anglo Texas Stephen F Austen’s prediction that the Texas Republic would become “a slave nation”

ⓓ Burroughs et al dismissed the Texas Revolt as “a sooty veneer of myth and folklore”

The Filibustering Fifties: American Armed Incursions into the Mexican Frontier

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
International Relations, Military history, Regional History

Filibuster: a soldier of fortune who engages in military adventurism in a foreign country or territory to foment or support a revolution (flourished 1840s/1850s) [‘Filibuster (military)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Also known as ‘freebooters’, they were privately organised, irregular soldiers or militia used to try to effect regime change or exploit a power vacuum. 

 

The 1850s coincided with a surge of filibuster activity launched from within the United States and targeted at Mexico. The majority of the filibuster expedition participants were Americans of Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic descent but there were other nationalities involved including French expeditions (eg, de Pindray, Raousset)✱.

What accounts for the massive spurt in filibuster ventures at this time? Conditions on both sides of the US and Mexican borders were conducive to their prevalence. A contributing factor was the inability or unwillingness of both sets of authorities to curb the filibusters. 

∆ “Republic of Sonoro” flag

An accessible and porous Mexican frontier
The area of the western border region—separating the new American state of California and the Territory of New Mexico (including Arizona) from the Mexican states of Baja California and Sonoro—was largely frontier land, lacking effective natural boundaries and sparsely populated at the time. The northern Sonoro part of the frontier in particular was a bit of a “no man’s land” and thus considered a “lawless zone”. The Mexican government lacked the resources and men to patrol the northern border properly. Indian raids from US territory into the Mexican frontier were common [Scott Martelle, in ‘Hundreds of 19th Century Americans Tried to Conquer Foreign Lands. This Man Was the Most Successful’, (Sarah Pruitt), History, 07-Mar-2019, www.history.com]. The government in Mexican City was doing little to redress the northern vulnerability, a plan to colonise (thus strengthening) Sonoro’s northern frontier, the Paredes Proyectos in 1850, was rejected by the Mexican National Congress. To the American filibusters, all of this made the prospect of invading Mexican territory more appealing.

∆ Filibuster militia in training (Source: Britannica).

US turns a blind eye to filibusters
Official complacency and a reluctant to commit effectively also prevailed on the US side. Hamstrung by a small army, the troop commitment by Washington to the border, which stretched 3,200 km from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, was in perpetual shortfall. With insufficient numbers to police the borders and ports, the government’s response to private filibuster ventures was confined to threats [‘The US Army on the Mexican Border: A Historical Perspective’, ((Matt M. Matthews), (The Long War Series Occasional Paper 22), www.apps.dtic.mil/]. Various neutrality acts forbid Americans from engaging in warfare with foreign countries, however its enforcement by Congress was sporadic and selective. At best, the US approached the task of curbing the wave of filibusters in a half-hearted fashion, ‘Feature the Filibuster Movement’, PBS, www.pbs.org/].

President Fillmore (Whig Party) was not not inclined towards expansionism himself, but he did little to curb the filibuster raids on Mexican soil. His successor Franklin Pierce (Democrat) was more open in his expansionist policies including attempting, unsuccessfully, to purchase Cuba from Spain (which many, especially Southern Americans thought would open the way to it becoming a pro-slavery state) [Joseph Allen Stout, Schemers and Dreamers: Filibustering in Mexico, 1848-1921, (2002)].

Southern comfort to the Filibusters
The filibuster movement elicited strong support from the South – in troops and in financial backing. Wealthy Southern landowners and agriculturalists helped finance expeditions into Mexico. José Carbajal, a Tejano, recruited Anglo-Texans including Texas Rangers for his 1851 armed incursion across the Rio Grande into Tamaulipas. Carabajal’s inducement to gain Texan participation was the opportunity to capture runaway slaves from Texas✪ [José María Jesús Carbajal‘, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Texas, expanding slavery and the filibusters
As with US’ designs on Cuba, Texan land barons saw the prize of land south of the border as a means of securing independent, slave-owning states, thus tipping the balance in favour of pro-slavery states in the US. Chunks of Mexico and other Latin American countries such as Nicaragua were desirable to Texans as viable trading stations for the African slave trade, and as a cheaper source of labour than Texas [‘Texans and Filibusters in the 1850’s’, (Earl W. Fornell), Southwestern Historical Society, LIX(4), April 1956]. The model for an American colony in northern Mexico took inspiration from Sam Houston’s ‘liberation’ of Texas from Mexico [‘How Tennessee Adventurer William Walker became Dictator of Nicaragua in 1857′, (John E. Norvell), Middle Tennessee Journal of Genealogy and History, Vol. XXV, No 4, (Spring 2012), www.thenashvillecitycemetery.org].

∇ The Walker story gets the Hollywood treatment (1987)

William Walker and the “Independent Republic of Sonoro”
The best known of the American filibusters in the 1850s was William Walker. Tennessean Walker’s idea was to colonise Mexican territory in Baja California and Sonoro, where he sensed there was a power vacuum. With an armed force comprised mainly of Tennesseans and Kentuckians, Walker tried to establish first one then another self-declared (but unrecognised) republic. Walker’s attempted takeover was short-lived, meeting unexpected stiff resistance from the Mexican army and local citizens (Norvell).The Tennessean chancer’s venture ultimately floundered on poor planning (logistics problems, shortages of supplies, unfamiliarity with the territory). Forced to return to California Walker was put on trial for violating the US/Mexican Neutrality Act, but with American sympathy running high for Walker and for filibusterers in general he was swiftly acquitted in a travesty of a trial (Pruitt)🀾.

Nicaraguan adventure
This was a green light for Walker to roll the dice again in the hemisphere filibuster game, turning his attention to Nicaragua in 1855…this time however it wasn’t to end as happily. With a small army of mercenaries he invaded the Central American country and did succeed in usurping power and installing himself as “Dictator of Nicaragua”, and even securing recognition from President Pierce for his regime. However from that point on it went badly “pear-shaped” for Walker. By 1857 Walker had alienated locals as well as American shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. A combined force from Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua, bankrolled by Vanderbilt, routed Walker’s army and banished him. Imprudently, Walker made two more coup attempts in Central America before his notoriety caught up with him. The British, concerned that Walker’s fomenting of rebellion might destabilise its colonies in the Greater Caribbean, handed him over to the Honduran government who promptly executed him in 1860 [‘William Walker: King of the 19th Century Filibusters’, (Ron Soodalter), HistoryNet, www.historynet.com/].

(Source: www.wsj.com)

Endnote: Filibusters and Manifest Destiny
William Walker’s personality has been described as “a mix of hubris, ambition and nascent white supremacy” (Martelle, cited in Pruitt). The military men who followed him and other filibuster leaders were motivated by several considerations – a love of adventure, greed for personal gain and ideology. They like many contemporary Americans believed in the doctrine of “Manifest Destiny”, in the 19th century ingrained in American culture. This embodied the belief that it was an inalienable right of Americans to extend their civilisation across the continent (‘Feature the Filibuster Movement’)⎈.

PostScript: Historian Brian E May has made the interesting observation that the plague of filibustering expeditions had an counter-effect hampering the United States’ best efforts to empire-build in the hemisphere. The activities of filibusters, though they had widespread support within the US, he notes, damaged US foreign policy and limited its territorial expansion, almost in defiance of the locomotive of Manifest Destiny. The rebound from the filibusters’ intervention engendered hostility from foreign countries such as Canada and Great Britain, and Hispanic-Americans, who pushed back against US expansionism [A. James Fuller. ‘Reviewed Work. Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America, by Robert E. May, Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 22, No 4 (Winter 2002), pp.722-724. www.jstor.org/stable/3124776]🃗.

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✱ many of these has been lured to California by the prospect of gold discovery, these hopes disappointed, they turned their eyes south to other potential sources of enrichment, eg, news of gold and silver finds in Baja California

✪ Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, if Texan filibusters could capture territories in northern Mexico, it would make the reintroduction of slavery possible

🀾 Henry A Crabb, a schoolmate of Walker’s, followed him in a filibuster foray into Mexico, also making a failed attempt to colonise part of Sonoro in 1857 – claiming to “liberate the people of Sonoro” and suffering the same fate as Walker, execution at the hands of Mexican troops

⎈ as Nelson put it, “filibusters epitomised the romantic, muscular spirit of American adventure”, a sense of mission inspired by Manifest Destiny (Nelson)

🃗 May also reminds us that the increasing intensity of the criticism of the filibusters by the Federal government hardened Southern resolve to ultimately secede from the Union (Nelson)

Filibustering in the USA: Quintessentially American but Not Exclusively American

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Cinema, Comparative politics, National politics, Politics, Regional History

Anyone following contemporary US politics would likely be familiar with the term ‘filibuster’ – the spectacle conjured up is of a politician, bunkering down, holding the Senate floor to ransom in an endless monologue. The object of such stonewalling is to perversely delay the passage of some piece or other of legislation they are opposed to. Many movie fans of the “Golden Age of Hollywood” cinema will recall the idealistic young ‘greenhorn’ senator (played by James Stewart) engaging in an agonising 24-hour, non-stop talking marathon to try to block corrupt legislation being passed…the junior senator droning on about the Constitution and the Bible before dramatically collapsing, exhausted, on a ‘bed’ of protest letters and telegrams (Mr Smith Goes to Washington, 1939).

(Illustration: Diana Morales/MPA)

The right to ‘speechify’: Extraneous and unrelated to the legislative matter at hand
The principle on which filibustering is predicated—that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary—has seen real-life politicians resort to reading material just as prosaic as the fictional Mr Smith’s tedious ‘talkathon’. Louisiana demagogue Huey Long punctuated recitations of Shakespeare and passages from the Constitution with readings of his favourite recipes – especially fried oysters and pot-likkers. Ted Cruz read Dr Seuss to his daughters while trying to stymie Obamacare. The negativity of filibustering is neatly summarised in Senate historian Donald Ritchie’s definition: a filibuster “is a minority of Senators who prevent the majority from casting a vote, knowing otherwise the majority would prevail” [‘Whatever Happened to the Old-Fashioned Jimmy Stewart-Style Filibuster?’, (Aaron Erlich), www.hnn.us/].

⇩ Huey Long (Source: www.npr.com)

Reining in its excesses
The impediment of senatorial filibustering—legislation delayed is legislation denied—led to attempts to curb its disruptiveness. Under the Wilson presidency, the Senate accepted a rule whereby a filibuster could be ended on the achievement of a two-thirds majority vote. In DC-speak this device is called invoking ‘cloture’. In 1975 the requirement was amended, necessitating only a three-fifths majority vote (ie, 60 votes out of the 100 senators) [‘Filibuster and Cloture’, United States Senate, www.senate.gov].

The device of the political filibuster, though quintessentially American, is equally a feature of legislatures of other Western democracies such as the UK, Australia, France and Canada※…and it’s a practice that goes way back to Ancient Rome and Cato the Younger’s all-day talk fests in the Roman Senate circa 60 BCE [‘The art of the filibuster: How do you talk for 24 hours straight?’, (Jon Kelly), BBC News Magazine, 12-Dec-2012, www.bbcnews.com].

⇧ The filibuster phenomena continues to provide political cartoonists in the US with endless inspiration
(Image: www.davegranlund.com)

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The other type of filibuster  

The etymology of ’filibuster’ dates from the late 16th century, it is first used in the sphere of Spain’s imperial possessions in the “New World”. The Spanish term filibustero⍟ described the activities of freelance buccaneers and pirates who plundered the riches of Spanish America (typified by Sir Francis Drake and his raid on Panama in 1573). ’Filibuster’ re-emerges in 19th century United States to refer to North American adventurers and ‘chancers’ who organised schemes and private militias in an attempt to take over foreign countries and territories in Latin America [May, Robert E. “Young American Males and Filibustering in the Age of Manifest Destiny: The United States Army as a Cultural Mirror”.  The Journal of American History, vol. 78, no. 3, 1991, pp.857-886. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2078794. Accessed 10 Oct. 2020].

Pirate gold doubloons from the Americas ⇩

(Photo: NY Post)

Burr, godfather of US filibustering
The first tentative steps of US filibustering in the early period of the republic probably starts with Vice-President Aaron Burr in the first decade of the century. After Burr’s political career imploded in 1804 as a result of his killing of former Treasurer secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel, the disgraced VP is believed to have hatched a plan to invade and seize Spanish territories in the west of the North American continent. The scheme was never implemented, however Burr was subsequently tried for treason but acquitted [‘The Burr Conspiracy’, National Counterintelligence Center, www.fas.org/]◰. Other filibusters followed Burr’s lead…early American adventurers like James Long and Augustus Magee formed expeditions to try to wrest control of Texas from the Spanish colonialists.

⇩ Aaron Burr (Image credit: Bettmann/Getty Images/HowStuffWorks)

Manifest Destiny west and south
The activity really took off after US territorial gains at Mexico’s expense stemming from the 1846-48 war and the discovery of gold in California. In the 1850s filibuster expeditions became a regular occurrence as ambitious US citizens, schemers and “soldiers of fortune”, launched raid and raid mainly on northern Mexico but also Central American lands in an attempt to appropriate territory for themselves or in the name of the US. Venezuelan-born Narcisco López was one of the first, trying unsuccessfully with the assistance of American southerners to capture Cuba from the Spanish on three separate occasions. Most of these filibusters were inspired by (or found legitimacy for their actions) in the emerging credo of Manifest Destiny, the belief that Americans possessed  a kind of “quasi-divine Providence” to expand into new territories (be they held by native populations or Mexicans), annex them and thus spread American democracy to them [‘Manifest destiny’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

 

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※ by no means is it confined to Western democracies

⍟ filibustero – from the Dutch vrijbuiter, meaning ‘freebooter’, ‘pirate’ or ‘robber’

◰ Burr was also largely responsible for the introduction into the Senate of the above form of filibuster, the procrastination ploy