How and why did Texas side with the South? I apologize for being about to make what is probably an overgeneralization based in Northern ignorance, but somehow Texas doesn’t seem to have fit in with the rest of the antebellum South, either culturally or economically.
The popular image of slave-worked cotton plantations doesn’t seem very Texan, to say the least. What was the extent of slavery in Texas? Was slavery a prominent feature of antebellum ranch life, or was it only in the eastern part of the state? Why did they secede.
Here’s the Texas Ordinance of Secession. Among the reasons given are the USA Federal Government’s failure to protect Texas from “the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico”.
Texas slavery was, as you indicated, primarily a phenomenon of the eastern two-fifths of the state. By 1860, over 30% of Texas residents were slaves. Because news traveled more slowly in those days, formal emancipation was not declared until June 19, 1865 (Lee had surrendered to Grant at Appomattox in April). Had the Confederacy won the war, slavery might have survived – and even expanded – within the borders of the Lone Star State. A good summary is available at
From the United States Historical Census Data Browser, we find that in 1860 182,566 people out of a total population of 604,215 were slaves, or just over 30% of the people in the state. This is a lower percentage than Mississippi (55% of the population of the state enslaved), but slightly higher than Tennessee (nearly 25%), about the same as that of Virginia, and considerably higher than a Border State like Missouri (less than 10%).
In fact, the economy of East Texas was very much part of the Cotton Belt, and pre-War Texas was considered not just a Southern state but a Deep South state. Texas was one of the first, pre-Sumter wave of seceding states–i.e., the really gung-ho ones who seceded before the outbreak of actual war forced their hand. See the Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union to see the reasons Texans gave for their secession.
Without minimizing the natural estrangement of language and culture between the immigrants to (Mexican) Texas from the U.S. and the Mexican government, one specific sticking point was that Mexico had outlawed slavery while the immigrants from the U.S. wanted to keep the slaves that they brought with them.
It’s actually quite simple. Most of the people living in Texas at the time were from the South. Many still had relatives in the Old South and were not about to take arms against them.
It depends on what part of Texas you are referring to. I live in the pineywoods of East Texas. But, I have lived in Houston, Dallas, Beaumont, Austin and San Antonio and have been practically everywhere in this State. It is quite diverse and yet strangely familiar or similar wherever you go.
You’re picturing Texas as it is today, not as it was in 1860. The cattle boom, the oil boom, large-scale Mexican immigration, and urbanization all occurred after the Civil War. Much of central and western Texas wasn’t settled yet in 1860. The parts of the state which were settled were very much culturally and economically part of the deep South.
BTW, the Texas governor of the time was strongly opposed to Texas leaving the Union and was thrown out of office in early 1861 because of it. You may have heard of him, Sam Houston.
This is just trivia, but for decades the largest city in Texas was not Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, or Austin, but Galveston. A hurricane in 1901 damaged Galveston’s prominence within the state.
Also, while this is a point that is severly abused by some people, not all Confederates were primarily concerned with slaveholding. Some areas where there were few slaves, such as the Laredo area, had confederate supporters. In those parts of Texas, there were strong regional loyalties, as well as those who felt Texas lost too many rights when it became a state.
Also in parts of Central Texas, many people were strongly pro-union.
This is the best link I know of for all Texas related topics.
Texas didn’t join the Union by a treaty between sovereign states. It was annexed by the United States, with the consent of a Texas Convention, called to consider the annexation.
Now, if you look at the terms Congress proposed for annexation, there is nothing giving Texas a special right to secede. In fact, the Resolution admitting Texas suggests the contrary, by saying:
Since Texas is on an equal footing with all the other states, it can’t have a special right to secede. Either all the states can secede, or none, but hard to see how Texas has a special right.
And in fact, the Supreme Court held that once annexed, Texas had no right to secede, in the case of State of Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1868). The key passage reads:
Finally, it’s true that the terms of annexation provide for the possible subdivision of Texas into smaller states, but that is not unique to Texas. Article IV, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution provides that any state can be subdivided, provided the state and Congress consents:
The only difference is that the Resolution specifies that no more than four additional states may be created out of Texas. Dunno how they reached that number, but in principle, other states could be subdivided in a similar fashion. (State of Northern California, anyone?)
Be that as it may, javaman has a point. It was indeed somewhat closer to the deep south that, say, the North or the East South, but Texas is a part of the true Southwest. Additionally, its experiences and such dealing with its vast terrritory and different neighbors (Spanish Indians and previous Spanish settlers) did shape Texas differently.
Your answer is also correct, jklann, but it doesn’t address the exact point where javaman goes astray. I suspect Java’s thinking about the “Old South” plantantion society of “Gone with the Wind” and so forth. Well, that sort of thing didn’t exist in that form outside of the Atlantic states. Certainly there were plantations, and plantation owners were important, but not in the same cultural fashion as back east.
Actually, the whole area from Texas to the Virginia border pretty much sucked, and not many poeple would choose to live there if it were not for the economic wonder of cotton in the Antebellum period. This may surprise you, but cotton was, in fact, only in heavy cultivation for about 50 years or so starting after the turn of the century. The “Old South” was a pretty young place. Pretty much everything to Texas had been settled because of cotton, prmarily because the whole region is hot as hell’s back door in the summertime.