Did Texas secede from the Confederacy?
|
An illustration of the Texas State Flag waving over The Alamo, San Antonio. Engraving from "Harper's Weekly," 1861. Show PHAS/UIG/Getty Images By Lily Rothman May 13, 2016 1:25 PM EDT As Texas Republicans meet for their state convention this week, one item on the table would invalidate the very name of the meeting itself: after a run of local resolutions supporting the Texas independence, the party will vote on the question of Texas seceding from the Union. The measure is unlikely to pass, but—if history is any indication—that’s not likely to put an end to the question. Secession has been a part of Texas history for longer than the state has even existed. After all, the state got its start by leaving the nation that had controlled it, in a revolution against Mexico. The Texas Declaration of Independence was signed in 1836 and the Texas Republic ratified its own constitution shortly after. In 1837, the U.S. formally recognized Texas as a nation, but the new country struggled economically without any of the resources of its larger neighbors, leading most (but not all) residents to welcome statehood by the time it came through in 1845. Only a little more than a decade passed, however, before the state tried to secede from its national government again, joining with the Confederacy in 1861. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter After the Civil War, in 1869, Texas was at the center of the Supreme Court ruling that determined that the states that seceded during the war never actually had the ability to leave the Union. In Texas v. White—a case that hinged on whether the federal government still had jurisdiction over Texas during the Civil War, in the period during which the state claimed to be part of a different nation—it was declared that the Confederate states were in rebellion against their rightful federal government, not a separate nation fighting its neighbor. (Hence, the “civil” in Civil War.) “When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation,” the decision stated. “The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through consent of the States.” So, even if every elected official in Texas declared that the state was not part of the U.S., that didn’t matter. Only an agreement by all of the other states—or victory in the Civil War—could have made that decision mean anything. In the 1990s, Texas’ unique history was nearly cause for another violent conflict, when the “self-declared ‘ambassador, consul-general and chief foreign legal officer’ of the separatist Republic of Texas,” a man named Rick McLaren, led a week-long standoff against state authorities, as TIME reported. McLaren and his followers believed that when Texas became a state in 1845, that was really a hostile takeover of a separate sovereign nation, which meant that the Republic of Texas still existed. The current push toward secession has been associated with a different group, the Texas Nationalist Movement. MORE: The Man Who Would Be King…of Texas Texas is far from the only state to make noise about its own secession in modern history. For example, the moment that TIME identified as “the first time since the Civil War Secession was publicly proposed in a State Legislature” came in Depression-saddled 1933, in North Dakota when an 83-year-old State Senator proposed that all the rest of the country secede from the financial oligarchs of New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. “Be it resolved,” the proposal read, “that the remaining 39 States secede from the Union, carrying with us the Star-Spangled Banner and leaving them the Stripes which they richly deserved.” (That didn’t happen, obviously.) And it’s not just states: New York City has many times talked about seceding from New York to become the 51st state, as the city’s residents often feel that the legislature in Albany doesn’t understand its needs. Delegates ousted Houston from governorship when he refused an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. | Courtesy of Library of Congress By Andrew Glass 02/01/2011 04:51 AM EST
On this day in 1861, Texas became the seventh state to secede from the Union. A state convention in Austin voted 166-8 in favor of secession. Some 76 percent of Texans who participated in a statewide referendum had voted to secede. Texas joined the Confederate States of America on March 2, 1861. Gov. Sam Houston, a hero of Texas’s war for independence who was then in his third term, sat in silence during the vote. The convention delegates ousted Houston from the governorship when he refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. Houston said Texans were “stilling the voice of reason” and predicted an “ignoble defeat” for the South. Texas was an integral part of the South’s cotton-based economy; its planters depended heavily on slave labor. In 1860, about 30 percent of the state’s population of 640,000 were slaves. John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry, Va., in 1859, had raised the specter of a slave insurrection. Moreover, the rise of the Republican Party, which favored limiting slavery, made many Texans uneasy about remaining in the Union. During the Civil War, Texas mainly served as a logistical base for Confederate forces until mid-1863, when the Union’s seizure of the Mississippi River blocked further wide-scale movement of men, horses and cattle from the state. Nonetheless, throughout the war, Texas regiments fought in nearly every major battle. Confederate forces won the last battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Ranch, on May 12, 1865, on the banks of the Rio Grande, about 12 miles east of Brownsville. This was more than a month after Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. Word of the Confederacy’s collapse had yet to reach the combatants. Did Texas leave the Confederacy?Houston refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy and was replaced in March 1861 by his lieutenant governor. Texas' move completed the first round of secession. Seven states—South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas—left the Union before Lincoln took office.
When did Texas leave the Confederacy?Texas declared its secession from the Union on February 1, 1861, and joined the Confederate States on March 2, 1861, after it had replaced its governor, Sam Houston, who had refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy.
...
Texas in the American Civil War.. Was Texas ever part of the Confederacy?Texas formally seceded on March 2, 1861 to become the seventh state in the new Confederacy. Gov. Sam Houston was against secession, and struggled with loyalties to both his nation and his adopted state. His firm belief in the Union cost him his office when he refused to take an oath of allegiance to the new government.
When did Texas try to secede?On February 1, 1861, delegates to a special convention to consider secession voted 166 to 8 to adopt an ordinance of secession which cited the institution of slavery as the primary cause of secession.
|
