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Heartland Patriot wrote: Well, I think that the fact that Texas is so large that SOME parts of the state had very high slave concentrations vs other parts where there were either very few or none. Depends on what part of Texas you are talking about.

That's true, but it is mostly because certain parts of the state are a lot better suited to the type of agriculture that heavily utilized slave labor.

Heartland Patriot wrote: I'm curious to see some sort of census data or something to back up that 30% figure. Not saying in the least that there weren't slaves in Texas, but I'm just curious as to the source for that figure. Do you have a link so I can go read up on it? I'm always willing to learn something new. Most of my old-time Texas history knowledge comes out of J. Frank Dobie books, I must admit.

It looks like someone beat me to it, but I think part of the reason that there is an impression that Texas was not a big slave state (9th in total slave population, I believe) is because there weren't a lot of slaves in Texas until post-independence. The Spanish and Mexicans prevented it from taking off like it had in the US.

Once Texas broke away (and then joined the US) that changed fairly rapidly as agriculture took off.

Bullwhip wrote: We all know about the racist roots of gun control but slave labor was never a big thing in Texas, so freed slaves weren't either.

Carpetbaggers running TX worried a lot more about white/black/brown folks who thought they should be free.

Shortly before the Civil War started, something like 30% of the state population was made up of slaves, and that was before the advancing Union army started leading slave owners from neighboring states to bring them into Texas.

Bullwhip wrote: Fixed blades not illegal, except....

(6) "Illegal knife" means a:
(A) knife with a blade over five and one-half inches;
(B) hand instrument designed to cut or stab another by being thrown;
(C) dagger, including but not limited to a dirk, stiletto, and poniard;
(D) bowie knife;
(E) sword; or
(F) spear.

It has always seemed weird to me that our knife laws explicitly fail to remember the Alamo.