We Found a REAL Texas Segregationist You Can Denounce (Tom Lubbock)
Hee hee
This article from a San Antonio radio station takes HUD secretary and former San Antonio mayor Julian Castro to task for suggesting a name change at San Antonio’s Robert E. Lee High School. It uses the typical RW device of changing the subject by pointing to a more extreme alternative.
As a response to Castro it is pretty weak stuff, but it does contain some VERY interesting information on the namesake of America’s second most conservative city.
Julian Castro—meet Thomas Saltus Lubbock.
’ The man Lubbock County and the City of Lubbock are named for was almost a cartoon character of a racist, segregationist antebellum character, a man who clearly felt African Americans were inferior and who actively pursued the expansion of slavery.
’ Texas Tech historian Donald Abbe says Lubbock was a member of something called the ‘Knights of the Golden Circle,’ who pledged allegiance to slavery, and, in fact, wanted to see slavery extended to the new U.S. territories between Texas and the new state of California.
’ “Their immediate goal as far as the United States was concerned, was expand slavery to the West,” he said.
’ In fact, Lubbock’s goal was to expand chattel slavery out of the United States, into Mexico, where slavery was outlawed by the Constitution of 1824, and into U.S. territories.’ The reason the Kentucky native was even in Texas was to further his aim of expanding slavery.
’ Contemporary accounts refer to Lubbock as ‘a very worthy and zealous’ activist for slavery, and tell of his strong feelings that the African American was an inferior being, good only for labor.
’ “Nobody tells us that Tom Lubbock was in favor of slaves,” Lubbock historian Cosby Morton said.
’ Lubbock organized Terry’s Texas Rangers, ironically the Confederate division that George Washington Littlefield, who financed the construction of the Jefferson Davis statue at the University of Texas, fought in.’ He died of Typhus in 1862.
Tom Lubbock could have been worse than Nathan Bedford Forrest, though he fortunately died before he could really get started on this bushwhacking campaign in Virginia. Changing the name of a city and a whole county is a forbidding task but if there is any city in America where it needs to be considered, this is it. The local church/business/grifter alliance that runs Lubbock would oppose this tooth and nail but it would be fun and informative to bring it up and watch them expose themselves for what they truly are.
Tom’s brother, the more “moderate” Francis Lubbock, was Confederate governor of Texas and many Lubbockites mistakenly believe the city is named for him.
After a brief interim period under former Lieutenant GovernorEdward Clark, Lubbock was elected to replace the great Sam Houston, who had been deposed for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy. Houston’s statement refusing the oath is a masterpiece of defiance and courage:
Fellow-Citizens, in the name of your rights and liberties, which I believe have been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the nationality of Texas, which has been betrayed by the (secession) Convention, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the Constitution of Texas, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of my own conscience and manhood, which this Convention would degrade by dragging me before it, to pander to the malice of my enemies, I refuse to take this oath. I deny the power of this Convention to speak for Texas….I protest….against all the acts and doings of this convention and I declare them null and void.
A month later, right after Fort Sumter, Houston told a crowd:
Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South.
He was right , of course, but he unfortunately died in 1863, two years before his prescient remarks were vindicated.
More: Hey, Julian! We Found a REAL Texas Segregationist You Can Denounce
Tom Lubbock bio at wikipedia