Ron Howard to make movie about the Alamo? OH NO!

Everything you posted is absolutely true, and I freely admit that "The Alamo" took some incredible liberties and told some tremendous whoppers when it comes to history. But, like "Armageddon" (another movie almost universally panned), I just like it.

The fact that Cortez took slaves in the 16th Century (for God's sake!) is irrelevant to the fact that Mexico did not allow it. The fact that "only" 10% of Texans were slaves does not minimize this stain on their political culture.

My point, which perhaps I failed to elucidate sufficiently, was that the Spanish and Mexicans compromised several principles in order to people Texas with Anglo-Celts. Many Spanish officers, before the Mexican Revolution, were Catholic in name only and belonged to the Masonic Order, and didn't strictly enforce the rule that required the immigrants to observe the orders and take the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. Likewise, they didn't often try to enforce the laws that forbade commerce with Louisiana (there was a lively underground trade between Nacogdoches and Nachitoches, both of them founded by the interesting Quebecois Louis Juchereau de St. Denis at the instigation of the French governor of Louisiana; St. Denis's father-in-law, the Spanish governor of Texas, shared the profits and protected the trade at that time), and most of the early Texians' exports went to, and imports (except salt) came from, Louisiana.

Likewise the Spanish overlooked slaves owned by Americans and Spanish subjects of American origin, like Moses Austin whom I cited above, and Jared Groce, who brought 90 slaves from Georgia when he joined the Old Three Hundred in 1821 or 1822.

If you want to go on about slavery, consider that many of Lincoln's in-laws owned numbers of them, and that -- as I'm told on these threads -- Ulysses Simpson Grant was attended by at least one slave on the battlefield during his Civil War career.

You insist on judging certain people with a harsh eye and in the light of an exaggerated moral stance concerning slavery, from a distance of 180 years. This is polemic, not historical understanding, and so I ask you:

What have you got against Texans? Other than the "issues" you dragged up?

My goodness. I tire of this. My whole point was that if (as seemed to be suggested by many) Ron Howard, America-hating Commie that he is, were to do less than recreate the silly, inaccurate, context-less 1960 version of The Alamo, he would be reviled by everyone here. And that isn't right. I'm only pointing out that the Texans weren't exactly Abe Lincoln or Ronald Reagan.

"We're considering making a film about the Texas Revolution and the Alamo. And it was suggested to me by Russell Crowe that I go and pick the governor's brain," director Ron Howard said.

Russell Crowe and Governor Perry are friends (check out my profile page) and RC loves Austin. There is also talk that RC will be in the movie if it's made. (Anyone live in Austin that will let me crash at their place while RC is in town?????)

Another article about this movie.That article tells the connection b/t RC and Gov. Perry

Not to sound like a peacenik here, but the truth does matter.

Indeed it does. So let's correct the historical inaccuracies in your post:

The hicks in the nacent Texan Republic were on Mexican soil.

Indeed they were, as they had settled there on Mexico's invitation under the Mexican government established by the 1824 Constitution.

They refused to accept Mexican authority and started the war in 1835.

Incorrect. The war began as a direct result of the usurpation of power in the Mexican government by Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana. Santa Ana operated as a dictator upon coming to power, and in doing so used force to dismantle opposition party factions in the Mexican government, including those in which the people of Texas had been allied. As a result of Santa Ana's dictatorship, Texan representation in the government of Mexico was basically eliminated, its home rule shifted hundreds of miles south, and its envoys to Mexico City imprisoned without reason. Military presence was then implemented to combat dissent, and in fact the first battle of the revolution occurred when Santa Ana's troops arrived at a frontier town to forcefully confiscate their cannon. It is further historical fact that the defenders of the Alamo flew the Mexican tri-color flag bearing the date 1824 signifying support for the legitimate constitution Santa Ana had trampled upon.

Their great contribution to geopolitical history, apart from the fact that John Wayne was one of them, seems to have been an unremitting insistence on the perpetuation of slavery.

Oh really? While it is true that Texas was a slave state, I seem to remember a census figure from a few decades after the revolution just prior to the war showing that slave holders in Texas constituted something less than 5% of the state's population - hardly what one would expect from the picture you paint. It is also true that the state's greatest hero, senator, and governor Sam Houston was a unionist opposed to the war.

Which Mexico didn't practice, BTW.

Untrue. While Mexico did not have institutionalized slavery, Santa Ana definately did practice enslavement of Mexico's peasantry in uncompensated forced servitude of his armies and himself.

The outcome, of course, was that the U.S. annexed Texas in 1846, starting the deeply unpopular Mexican-American War.

You mean the same "unpopular" war that propelled its greatest hero, Zachary Taylor, into the office of President of the United States?

While Thoreau and his yankee friends may have concurred with your sentiments about the war's purpose, in actuality the Mexican war came about as a result of Santa Ana's failure to honor the written terms of settlement at the conclusion of the Texas revolution along with the specified boundaries contained therein. Instead he and other Mexican forces had been waging open warfare inside the borders of Texas for the better part of the decade following its establishment as an independent republic in 1836.

You hillbilly ;)