Picking Cotton in Texas
Center for American History
University of Texas at Austin

Life as a slave in Texas was, if anything, harder than it was in the rest of the South, because new land had to be cleared even as existing fields were tended. Slavery thus had a different feel. Cotton planters in the Antebellum South who were prosperous stayed where they were. With a few notable exceptions, it was mostly the "have-nots" who emigrated to Texas. Thus, most planters in Texas were small operators. They had great dreams for their futures but only a few slaves to do the labor.