According to historical Texas newspapers’ accounts of violence throughout the 1850s and early 1860s, William Carrigan was correct in his arguments about slave resistance and the Panic of 1860 in The Making of a Lynching Culture because newspapers from the time blamed outsiders for instigating resistance and defended slavery by claiming that slaves enjoyed being subservient to white men.
In his third chapter, Carrigan claimed that “Texas slaveholders blamed Mexicans for slave resistance because it was historically useful to do so.” By painting the Mexican army as “aggressive” and the battles at Goliad and the Alamo as “massacres” instead of retaliations due to Anglo Texan actions, Texas slaveholders can conceal how unhappy their slaves are and claim they are victims. Carrigan further explains that Anglo Texans “suggested that outside agitators did more than urge flight—they encouraged slave revolts,” which gave slaveholders the right to use extralegal violence and “acts of terror they needed to limit slave…show more content… White supremacy can only excuse mistreatment for so long, and resistance “did not go unnoticed by Texas-slaveholders.” Carrigan says that this acknowledgement “must be considered at least an important backdrop” for the panic that ensues one year
