Episode 56 - Texas Votes and it’s War

Remember from the last episode that those who wanted to leave the union forced the state to call a special convention. In that election the separatists pushed through their agenda and quite frankly ignored any semblance of legitimacy. The procedures they followed were not even remotely close to having any type of standards.  Many delegates were elected by a simple voice vote at a public meeting, and since there was so much fervor for secession, those who supported the union often didn’t even attend.

The delegates they selected were much like the folks around them. They averaged 40 years old, and virtually every one  of them had originated from one of the states in the south where slavery was accepted. Some of them had more money than most Texans, but you can’t say the extremely wealthy dominated things. However, about 40 percent of them were lawyers and about 70 percent of them were slaveholders.

The convention opened on Monday afternoon, January 28, and the presiding officer offered these words, "All political power is inherent in the people. That power, I assert, you now represent." The next day, January 29 John A. Wharton made a motion "that without determining now the manner in which this result should be effected, it is the deliberate sense of this Convention that the State of Texas should separately secede." His motion was seconded by George M. Flournoy, and needless to say it passed 152 to 6.

Over the next 2 days, the delegates wrote out the formal ordinance of secession, which called for a popular vote. This was different from the lower southern  states, who simply passed a resolution and declared they had seceded. Of course, there was opposition to having a popular vote, but that motion was easily defeated, 145 to 29. Since Texans had held a referendum before they joined the union, most of the delegates insisted that the same procedure should be followed if they were to leave the union.

Because he knew the significance of what was taking place Governor Houston and other members of the legislature asked for a referendum. They believed that a popular vote would end all doubt and questions over the legality of secession. The final vote was taken in the morning of February 1st. It was a roll-call vote taken in alphabetical order. The final vote was 166 for secession and 8 against.

One of the first steps the convention took after the vote was to form the Civil War Committees of Public Safety. They also sent delegates to Montgomery, Alabama, who took part in officially establishing the Confederate States of America. On February 4th, they adjourned.

Before the popular vote took place, the Committee on Public Safety, using power it had been given by the convention authorized the seizure of all federal property in Texas. This included the arsenal at San Antonio, which would later become the headquarters for the H.E.B. grocery chain and that sits on the bank of the San Antonio River.

This order resulted in the evacuation of almost 3,000 federal troops from Texas. These actions essentially made the secession referendum itself an afterthought. However, there were some people and counties in the state that did not consider the referendum to be insignificant. Those opposed to secession were primarily situated along the northern border of the state and in the counties that surrounded Austin.

Some leaders such as Throckmorton and Benjamin H. Epperson in North Texas and Elisha M. Pease, Svante Palm, and George Paschal of Austin led the local fights against secession. Sam Houston continued to question whether it was necessity or wise to leave the Union. Federal United States representative Andrew J. Hamilton, who was also a resident of Austin, campaigned against secession.

What were some of the common features of those opposed to secession? The areas it was most prominent in were culturally, geographically, and economically unlike the lower South.