Texas Secession, Continued

Main Plaza in San Antonio. This photograph is captioned "Texas troops at San Antonio at the time of the surrender of the U.S. arms." (SC11484C)

In last week’s post, we presented some documents in the library’s collections relating to the actions taken by Texans in February 1861 to secede from the union. Meanwhile, members of the Committee of Public Safety, assembled by the state’s secession convention, also worked to move their state toward allegiance with the Confederacy.

Dismissed from the U.S. army due to his surrender to McCulloch, Twiggs joined the Confederate army in May 1861. (SC96.381)

According to historian Walter L. Buenger, when General David E. Twiggs, commander of the Department of Texas, “appeared ready to resign, the [Committee of Public Safety] ordered General Ben McCulloch and his men to enter San Antonio rather than wait and deal with Twiggs’s successor, who was less favorably inclined to the South.” On February 16, 1861, Twiggs agreed to surrender between 1.3 and “three million dollars’ worth of federal stores to Texas” and to evacuate all federal troops in the state (154), which included 160 men in San Antonio and 2,700 soldiers (or approximately fifteen percent of the entire pre-war U.S. army) scattered in forts across Texas.

One unit that participated in the surrender of federal supplies and troops was the Alamo City Guards, a local militia company comprised of volunteers from the San Antonio area that was formed in 1859. Captain William M. Edgar, commander of the unit, recorded what happened once the Texans accepted Twiggs’s surrender:

…as I with my command was placed in charge of the Alamo, this flag was hoisted and remained on the Alamo building for some time and in recognition of the Secession of the State [and] was the first flag and only flag used in San Antonio at that eventful time.

Edgar’s company was later sent east, where it served under the command of Confederate General Earl Van Dorn during the Civil War.

In this letter of February 16, 1861, Samuel Maverick authorizes and orders Captain William Edgar to seize an iron safe and its contents.

The flag described by Edgar was donated to the Alamo by his daughter in the early twentieth century and restored in 2006 by Textile Preservation Associations. The field was always thought to have originally been blue; however, conservators determined it had actually been cream colored with a salmon colored star in the center. The Latin motto on the flag translates to Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.

The flag of the Alamo City Guards. Donated by Mrs. O. M. Burt; restoration assisted by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Image courtesy of Ernesto Rodriguez, Alamo assistant curator.

The flag is temporarily on display inside the Alamo shrine.

Some information for this entry was provided by Dr. Bruce Winders, Alamo historian and curator.

References and Further Reading

The Exodus of Federal Forces from Texas, 1861 by J. J. Bowden.

Secession and the Union in Texas by Walter L. Buenger.

Ben McCulloch and the Frontier Military Tradition by Thomas W. Cutrer.

Click here for a full citation of documents and images included in this entry.

“To Dissolve the Union Between the State of Texas and the…United States of America”

In February 1861, Texans put themselves on a path of separating from the United States and aligning their state with the Confederacy.

A broadside publicizing the February 1 ordinance declaring that Texas "is a sovereign State and that her citizens and people are absolved from all allegiance to the United States or the Government thereof."

While Texas shared many characteristics of other Southern states, historian Dale Baum writes in The Shattering of Texas Unionism that “the Lone Star State…was also distinctive [as] only Southern state with an international boundary, an extensive western frontier, and a sizable population of Mexicans and Germans” (1).

Additionally, asserts Ralph A. Wooster in the Handbook of Texas Online, “while most Texans had a strong attachment to the Union that they worked so hard to join in 1845, they expressed increasing concern over the attacks upon Southern institutions by Northern political leaders.” Specifically, even though “only one Texas family in four owned slaves, most Texans opposed any interference with the institution of slavery, which they believed necessary for the continued growth of the state.”

"Here I take my stand!" Governor Sam Houston declared soon after Lincoln's election. "So long as the Constitution is maintained by 'Federal authority' and Texas is not made the victim of 'Federal wrong,' I am for the Union as it is."

The Confederate States of America, writes James M. McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom, “organized itself, drafted a constitution, and set up shop in Montgomery, Alabama, within three months of Lincoln’s election.” (By comparison, the second Continental Congress “deliberated fourteen months before declaring American independence in 1776,” and two additional years were needed to write the Constitution and create a new government.) The South “moved so swiftly” because “secession proceeded on a state-by-state basis rather than by collective action” (234). Indeed, following Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860, six states in the Deep South left the Union: South Carolina on December 20; Mississippi on January 9, Florida on January 10, Alabama on January 11, Georgia on January 19, and Louisiana on January 26.

In his March 16 broadside "to the people of Texas," governor Houston protested the actions of the secession convention. Its members removed him from office that same day.

These events caused the move towards secession in Texas to gain momentum. When Texas governor Sam Houston refused to call the legislature into special session, secessionist leaders formed a special convention and, on February 1, 1861, approved a secession ordinance by a vote of 166 to 8. Texas voters approved the ordinance by a better than three to one majority (46,153 votes to 14,747 votes) on February 23. The following month, the convention formally joined the Confederate States of America. Texas was the seventh state to secede, and the last to secede before Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4 and the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12-13.

References and Further Reading

The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State During the Civil War Era by Dale Baum.

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson.

Journal of the Secession Convention of Texas, 1861 edited by Ernest William Winkler; also available online here through the University of Texas at Austin.

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.