Wednesday, February 1, 2017 at 7:18 PM via Conservative Daily Post » Feed
He tried to stop the secession
On this day in 1861, Texas becomes the seventh state to secede from the Union. This was quite a surprise to some since the Governor, Sam Houston, indicated during the election that Texas did not have intent to secede as the other southern states were doing.
However, a state convention vote came back 166 to 8 in favor of the measure, overruling the Governor.
There were several factors that contributed to this defiance. John Brown’s raid on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry Virginia (now West Virginia), had raised concerns that a massive slave uprising was about to happen.
The raid had many concerned
The election of Abraham Lincoln, a fierce opponent of slavery, had made many uneasy and they pressured Houston to call a convention to consider the matter of succession.
His election meant slavery might soon be abolished
He reluctantly did so and sat silent as he was outvoted. He complained that Texans were “stilling the voice of reason” and he predicted an “ignoble defeat” for the south.
His dissent continued when he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. Texas replaced him a month later with his Lieutenant Governor
This made Texas the last state to leave the Union in the first wave along with South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Four additional states waited until the formal start of the Civil War in April of 1861; Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
Despite Houston’s objections, it went forward
The remaining slave states, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, never got the necessary majority vote to secede. Perhaps if they had, the outcome of the war would have been different.
The post Today In Political History: February 1, 1861 appeared first on Conservative Daily Post.
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