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Papers by John Willingham

Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 2023

The 2021 book Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth claims that it updates revi... more The 2021 book Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth claims that it updates revisionist arguments that have, for decades, documented the importance of slavery in causing the revolution.

Revisionist and more recent histories assign a prominent role to slavery in causing the Texas Revolution but either stop just short of claiming that it was the necessary cause or, while arguing or implying that it was a necessary or sufficient cause, usually give full attention to other factors. A cause herein is considered to be the necessary cause of an event when, absent its presence, the event would not occur. A sufficient cause, given a valid necessary cause, is strong enough to bring about the event. A proximate cause occurs at a time close to the event, and while not being necessary or sufficient in itself to cause the event, it can precipitate sufficient causes. Forget the Alamo diminishes in text and tone the importance of other factors while laying out the most severe indictment to date of Texians and their commitment to slavery.

Specifically, Forget the Alamo goes beyond revisionist positions to claim that slavery was “the true underlying cause” of the revolution. The words “underlying cause” are problematic. Proximate causes, sufficient causes, or necessary causes are usually connected to specific, related events. In the course of some of these events, underlying currents can become powerfully manifest—making the event a turning point within the dynamic of persistence and change. A principal task, then, is to determine as precisely as possible when, where, and how the turning point events leading up to the Texas Revolution occurred. A preoccupation with an overriding cause can detract from a close examination of the sequence of events and lead to errors of historical anachronism. On one point, especially, the authors of Forget the Alamo force events to conform to their stated “true underlying cause.” Their claim that “the Battle of the Alamo was as much about slavery as the Civil War was about slavery” ignores striking differences between Texas in 1835–1836 and the South as a whole in 1861.

San Antonio Review, 2022

One wonders—do the lethalists ever consider that such pathological hatred and reverence for weapo... more One wonders—do the lethalists ever consider that such pathological hatred and reverence for weapons that kill is also shared by the mostly young men who murder children in our schools? These young killers, some young enough to be called boys, are by now following a hellish script of vindictive, performative murder, one written in the blood of hundreds of innocents torn apart by high velocity rounds that, on impact, tear, twist, and vaporize so much human tissue that parents, themselves broken and deeply wounded forever, may only be able to identify their murdered children, it at all, by the blood-soaked remnants of the clothes they wore to school. And in the Uvalde shooting, a girl with no aid forthcoming and desperate to survive, feigned a mortal wound by covering parts of her body with the blood of a murdered classmate.

In the horrid aftermath, it is the lethalists who say, often to those same, shattered parents, we hold you and your child in our hopes and prayers; what a sick person he was, the one who killed your child, sick, sick, sick; if only someone, someone with a gun, could have stopped him. And then to themselves, the lethalists aver that such is the price of freedom. They sleep well knowing that the fate of the nation rests with them, they are prepared, they are badasses, and they are mean as hell. It is not the lethal rifles, the ones with the military descriptor—assault—that are the problem, no those are fully justified. It is the sickness.

In this they are correct.

Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 2023

The 2021 book Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth claims that it updates revi... more The 2021 book Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth claims that it updates revisionist arguments that have, for decades, documented the importance of slavery in causing the revolution.

Revisionist and more recent histories assign a prominent role to slavery in causing the Texas Revolution but either stop just short of claiming that it was the necessary cause or, while arguing or implying that it was a necessary or sufficient cause, usually give full attention to other factors. A cause herein is considered to be the necessary cause of an event when, absent its presence, the event would not occur. A sufficient cause, given a valid necessary cause, is strong enough to bring about the event. A proximate cause occurs at a time close to the event, and while not being necessary or sufficient in itself to cause the event, it can precipitate sufficient causes. Forget the Alamo diminishes in text and tone the importance of other factors while laying out the most severe indictment to date of Texians and their commitment to slavery.

Specifically, Forget the Alamo goes beyond revisionist positions to claim that slavery was “the true underlying cause” of the revolution. The words “underlying cause” are problematic. Proximate causes, sufficient causes, or necessary causes are usually connected to specific, related events. In the course of some of these events, underlying currents can become powerfully manifest—making the event a turning point within the dynamic of persistence and change. A principal task, then, is to determine as precisely as possible when, where, and how the turning point events leading up to the Texas Revolution occurred. A preoccupation with an overriding cause can detract from a close examination of the sequence of events and lead to errors of historical anachronism. On one point, especially, the authors of Forget the Alamo force events to conform to their stated “true underlying cause.” Their claim that “the Battle of the Alamo was as much about slavery as the Civil War was about slavery” ignores striking differences between Texas in 1835–1836 and the South as a whole in 1861.

San Antonio Review, 2022

One wonders—do the lethalists ever consider that such pathological hatred and reverence for weapo... more One wonders—do the lethalists ever consider that such pathological hatred and reverence for weapons that kill is also shared by the mostly young men who murder children in our schools? These young killers, some young enough to be called boys, are by now following a hellish script of vindictive, performative murder, one written in the blood of hundreds of innocents torn apart by high velocity rounds that, on impact, tear, twist, and vaporize so much human tissue that parents, themselves broken and deeply wounded forever, may only be able to identify their murdered children, it at all, by the blood-soaked remnants of the clothes they wore to school. And in the Uvalde shooting, a girl with no aid forthcoming and desperate to survive, feigned a mortal wound by covering parts of her body with the blood of a murdered classmate.

In the horrid aftermath, it is the lethalists who say, often to those same, shattered parents, we hold you and your child in our hopes and prayers; what a sick person he was, the one who killed your child, sick, sick, sick; if only someone, someone with a gun, could have stopped him. And then to themselves, the lethalists aver that such is the price of freedom. They sleep well knowing that the fate of the nation rests with them, they are prepared, they are badasses, and they are mean as hell. It is not the lethal rifles, the ones with the military descriptor—assault—that are the problem, no those are fully justified. It is the sickness.

In this they are correct.