Studies in Southern History and Politics Author:William Archibald Dunning Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IIl THE FRONTIER AND SECESSION As the van of the Anglo-American settlements swung around the arc of the Gulf states, the slaveholding cotton planter follow... more »ed close upon the advancing frontier and at times marched with it. He hurried forward, seeking and finding fresh and fertile lands where abundant waterways gave a ready means of transportation to market: he prospered greatly, and in prospering fixed his industrial system upon the whole Gulf region. In Texas, slavery had been hampered under Mexican rule, but not arrested; and by 1850 it had taken full possession of the river bottoms near the coast and of the Red River basin in the northeastern part of the state. By this time, however, the frontier line was being pushed rapidly westward into the uplands and prairies, and the planters, though they followed along the rivers, were no longer keeping pace. The margin between gradually broadened, and before 1860 the settled portion of Texas was divided into two regions of nearly equal size and with sharply differing characteristics. These differences caused much anxiety to the pro-slavery state rights leaders of the southwest, who watched with alarm the gradual isolation of the cotton states. Not only was western Texas the only avenue left for the expansion of slavery within the Union after the loss of Kansas, but it was felt that if the necessity for separation should come, the attitude of this large region, bordering on the frontier and chiefly non-slaveholding, would be of very great importance. It is the purpose of this paper to trace the relations of this frontier community with the plantation region and to explain its situation and its attitude in 1860-1861. The limits of the cotton plantation area were determined chiefly by the considerations of soil and cost of transpor...« less