March 16, 1861—Twenty-five years to the day that the republic he helped establish approved a constitution, Sam Houston, now governor of the state of Texas, made the last great stand of his long, stormy public career, defying secessionist sentiment by refusing to join the Confederate States of America.
Like another Andrew Jackson protégé, Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, Houston was a slaveholder who, for the last decade, had found himself on increasingly thin political ice for not backing unlimited expansion of slavery into Western territories. The victorious commander in the successful Texas War of Independence was now watching a large segment of the state turn its back on him.
Perhaps because he had seen so much bloodshed in his life—first as an Indian fighter under Jackson, then in his win over Mexican dictator Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto—Houston was prescient about the cost of secession. “I see only gloom before me,” he observed in rejecting calls to link up with other states breaking out of the Union.
In a prior post, I touched on Houston’s improbably victorious campaign for governor in 1859, only three months after he had been unceremoniously turned out of the U.S. Senate. Why talk about him again?
Because he was a colossus—a man whose virtues and failings (including alcoholism for much of his life) were as large as his frame. Because his life and career were filled with one surprising and dramatic turn after another (e.g., adoption by Cherokees, then becoming an Indian fighter several years later).
And because the current occupant of the governor’s mansion in Austin, Rick Perry, has made his outsized predecessor all too relevant. By paying heed to the loudest calls in his state—i.e., those who insist there can be no compromise with those who see any form of constructive role for the federal government—Perry is deviating from the wise example of Houston, who sought to conciliate factions.
Last year, the Dallas Morning News speculated that Perry’s invocation of “states’ rights” posed problems for voters who associated the term with segregation. But the term had an even longer, and equally problematic, association: with the agitation that led to the Civil War.
Houston correctly foresaw that passage of Stephen Douglas’ Kansas-Nebraska Act--in particular, its advocacy of “popular sovereignty,” enabling residents of a territory to choose whether they wanted slavery or not--would open up unparalleled agitation concerning “the peculiar institution.” His delicate balancing act in the 1850s--denouncing abolitionists and “fire-eaters” alike--failed to placate the latter, who increasingly--and correctly--saw him as their foe.
The election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 put Houston on the spot as no other event did. He stalled on holding a special legislative session just before the state’s secession convention, then yielded when he thought he could influence the vote. (Even then, he didn’t make any secret where his sympathies lay. Working on the first floor of the Capitol building, he referred to the delegates convening on the floor above as “the mob upstairs.”)
He was mistaken about his ability to sway events. On February 1, 1861, only four days after delegates began to convene in Austin, they voted in favor of the Texas Ordinance of Secession, 166-8. A downcast Houston, seeing another opening, said he could abide by the vote if the people endorsed it. Though this vote was less lopsided than the first, it was just as decisive, 44,317 to 13,020.
Now Houston tried to argue that, though the voters wanted secession for the state, it wasn’t as part of the Confederacy. Rather, it was as an independent republic--the kind he’d brought into being a quarter century before.
The last maneuver Houston could summon against the secessionists--securing the federal arsenal at San Antonio by calling on Texas Rangers supporting him--likewise failed. With the Confederacy calling on all state officeholders to swear allegiance to the new provisional government forming in Montgomery, Ala., all escape routes out of his dilemma were closed off.
No matter how much he might have talked about supporting states’ rights over the years, people sensed where Houston’s heart really was. It undoubtedly related to sentiments like this, voiced at the time of the Kansas-Nebraska Act: "Mark me, the day that produces a dissolution of this [Union] will be written in the blood of humanity."
It was undoubtedly because he feared that “blood” that Houston refused to take the one active step that would have enabled him to stay in office while keeping Texas in the Union. Abraham Lincoln offered him 50,000 troops and the rank of major general if he would put down the rebellion in the state. But Houston couldn’t fire on his own people--and, after five decades of military conflict, had grown too tired of the tumult.
Instead, Houston opted for a defiant act of resignation. On March 16, the bluff-speaking 68-year-old wrote a letter to the people of Texas that repeatedly cried out his opposition:
“Fellow-citizens, in the name of our rights and liberties, which I believe have been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the nationality of Texas, which has been betrayed by this convention, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the Constitution of Texas, which has been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath.”
The post of governor being declared vacant, Houston retired to his farm in Huntsville. His last two years alive were spent in fear of the calamity he was certain would strike the state--and that did, in fact, hit his family. A year after his warning of bloodshed, his firstborn son with wife Margaret, 18-year-old Sam Houston Jr., was so badly wounded at the Battle of Shiloh fighting for the Confederacy that he was left for dead. It took him months under the care of his mother before he recovered.
In July 1863, Houston himself died. Not long before the end, he confided his torment about and love for his state to friend Ashbel Smith:
“It is my misfortune to be a prophet like Cassandra, for my warnings are disbelieved. This war will be disastrous to the South and to Texas. The Northern armies will cut the Confederacy asunder. But while forecasting the perils and woes of Texas, I love her. Texas may spurn my counsels; Texas may cast me off, but in my abiding love for Texas, her fortunes are my fortunes; I shall lay my bones to repose in her bosom, I shall leave my blessings on her.”
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