In 1843, a New England lawyer almost managed to sell Texas to Great Britain. A convinced abolitionist practicing law in what was then the independent Republic of Texas, Stephen Pearl Andrews got it into his head that, in an attempt to free Texas’s slaves, he would invite a foreign power into North America and hand over a massive chunk of it. Andrews’s attempt to free Texas’s slaves by way of an invitation to foreign interference illustrates the strange bedfellows created by “the slavery question” in the nineteenth century. Andrews, in his quixotic vision, in his idealism, ambition, and occasional crankery, was an exemplary nineteenth-century American figure...After studying law and acquiring a number of languages in Louisiana, Andrews departed for Texas, then still an independent republic where slavery was legal. In Houston, he studied Texas law and opened a practice, earning money for his legal work but mostly acquiring wealth through purchasing land. He took on an increasingly prominent role in Houston society, speaking before the city’s temperance society and getting himself appointed to the Committee of Vigilance of Houston to solicit funds for Texas’s military. At the same time, his anti-slavery sentiments sharpened into full-blown abolitionism. In 1841, Andrews hatched a plan to make his political and moral beliefs a lived reality: He would convince Great Britain to buy up all the land in Texas on the condition that they free Texas’s slaves. The idea was not as outlandish as it might sound. In 1833, Great Britain had done something similar in abolishing slavery on its plantations in the West Indies. There, slaveholders were paid a total of $20 million sterling in recompense for their lost property, though they retained the land. And Texas had already reached across the Atlantic for economic aid. The South Carolina politician James Hamilton had recently attempted to borrow $5 million from European nations in support of Texas. As the historian Charles Shively recounts in the Journal of Negro History, “Hamilton had failed in part because of the English abolitionists’ opposition to Texas slavery. Except for his emancipation proposal, Andrews’ program followed the same lines as that of Hamilton.” Given the American interest in annexing Texas into the United States, the Republic’s sparse population, and military pressure from Mexico, Andrews hypothesized that Texas slaveholders and landowners, rather than taking their chances on land speculation, would be amenable to a cash buy-out, the terms of which would include abolishing slavery. As Madeline Stern, Andrews’ biographer, explains in an article for The Southwestern Historical Quarterly:
By the exchange of British money for Texas land, slaveholders could be reimbursed for the loss of their slaves and slavery could be abolished; [British] emigrants would pour into a ‘free soil territory’ and under the protection of the British flag expediency would be made to serve principle.It did not seem to bother Andrews that his plan would hand a large chunk of North American territory over to Great Britain. Nor did it seem to bother the abolitionist leaders whom he informed of his plan, including Lewis Tappan, a successful businessman, energetic abolitionist, and former client of Andrews’s. Tappan agreed to use his influence in Great Britain. Nor still did it seem to bother anyone that neither Andrews nor Tappan were authorized by the Texas government to do any of this. Andrews, who was a compelling speaker, did take his plan to the public, announcing his intention to raise funds from Great Britain to buy Texas land. And while he was denounced as an abolitionist, he won the crowd over.
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