The Starless Night of Centralism: Examining The Language of War in and outside of Revolutionary Texas

Abstract

Texian officials and American Democratic party newspapers pushed for a cause that they believed appealed to shared ideals concerning Jeffersonianism, centralism, race, liberty, slavery, nationalism, kinship, and identity. Altogether, their consistent rhetoric reveals what they thought it meant to be Americans. The true American was the decentralist minded ideologue whose predilection was against consolidation and abolitionism: the true American was the Texian. With their own interpretations of the Texian Revolution, party ideologues conveyed a specific vision of America itself. Texians used the language of centralism at home through the print media and they argued that Santa Anna had usurped protections given to the state under the 1824 Constitution. This was echoed and expounded upon by Democratic newspapermen in the United States who saw the Texian cause as their cause.