According to the passages, why would Benjamin Lundy reject William Travis's notion that the Texan rebels are fighting for liberty?
"A blood-red banner waves from the church of Bejar, and in the camp above us, in
token that the war is one of vengeance against rebels; they have declared us such,
and demanded that we should surrender at discretion, or that this garrison should be
put to the sword. Their threats have had no influence on me, or my men, but to make
all fight with desperation, and that high souled courage which characterizes the
patriot, who is willing to die in defence of his country's liberty and his own honor." -
William Travis
“But the prime cause and the real objects of this war are not distinctly understood by
a large portion of the honest, disinterested, and well-meaning citizens of the United
States. ... [M]any of them have been deceived and misled by the misrepresentations
of those concerned in it, and especially by hireling writers for the newspaper press.
They have been induced to believe that the inhabitants of Texas were engaged in a
legitimate contest for the maintenance of the sacred principles of Liberty, and the
natural, inalienable Rights of Man: whereas the immediate cause and the leading
object of this contest originated in a settled design, among the slaveholders of this
country (with land speculators and slave-traders), to wrest the large and valuable
territory of Texas from the Mexican Republic, in order to re-establish the SYSTEM
OF SLAVERY; to open a vast and profitable SLAVE-MARKET therein; and, ultimately,
to annex it to the United States"-Benjamin Lundy