It was not going to be easy. General Quimper, encouraged by Houston’s foes, dusted off his old anti-Houston pamphlet of 1841, the one written by another hand, and added a salvo of subsequent charges:
We have known for many years that Houston is a drunk, a bigamist, a liar, a land-office crook, a despoiler of ladies and a coward who avoided battle and an honest duel whenever possible. But did we then know that he was also an enemy of the South, a betrayer of the interests of Texas, a cheap tool in the hands of abolitionists and a stealer of public moneys? That is the real Sam Houston, and he is powerless to deny even one of these charges, because the entire nation, and Texas in particular, knows they are true.
As the crucial presidential election of 1860 approached, Quimper maintained the drumbeat of charges against Houston, and the agony into which the nation was stumbling encouraged people to believe the accusations, so that within months of his surprising victory at the polls, the reputation of Sam Houston had fallen to new depths. He may have sensed that he was heading for the major role in a Greek tragedy of destroyed ambitions, but if he did, he still plunged ahead, his actions showing his belief that the preservation of the Union was more valuable to the world than the salvaging of a local reputation.
From the vantage point of Texas, the presidential election of 1860 can be quickly summarized but not so easily understood. The new Republican party nominated a former congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, whose very name was anathema to the South; when planters like the Cobbs were forced to speak it, they either spat or cursed.
The Democrats, split over the question of slavery, produced splinter groups that nominated three candidates whose combined popular vote smothered Lincoln, 2,810,501 to a mere 1,866,352. However, the peculiarity of the electoral system gave the Illinois lawyer the victory, 180 to 123, enabling him to become President of a nation already painfully divided on a vital issue, all of his electoral votes coming from the Northern states. In Texas he collected not a single vote, popular or electoral; he was not allowed on the ballot. But the most shocking fact was that in the Southern states, which he must now try to govern, he received less than 100,000 votes in all. Tragedy became inescapable, and men of all parties sensed it.
Everything Sam Houston had wanted to preserve, all the honorable things he had fought for, he had lost. But he was still governor, and from his powerful position he was determined to keep Texas on a sober course. There would be no impetuous acts while he was in control.
But to keep Texas in line he had to contend with hotheads like General Quimper and relative moderates like Reuben Cobb, who had been terrified by the various John Brown raids. As soon as the election results were known they and thousands like them began to shout: ‘Immediate secession! Abe Lincoln is not our President!’ Houston, ignoring the fact that this cry galvanized the state against him, vigorously opposed secession, reminding his Texans that the Union still stood, still protected freedom as in the past.
When South Carolina, always the incendiary leader, always first to defend its rights regardless of cost, voted to secede on 20 December 1860, Houston fought even more valiantly to prevent his state from following, whereupon Quimper and his fellow secessionists decided to make their own law: ‘We’ll assemble a convention of elected delegates and let them determine what course Texas shall take.’ When it became clear that this revolutionary tactic was going to succeed, Houston bowed to the inevitable and sought to give the action a cloak of legality. Calling for a special session of the legislature, he allowed it and not Quimper’s compatriots to summon the convention.
It was a fiery assembly, determined to break away from the Union, and when one fearless delegate tried to persuade his fellows to remain loyal, the gallery hissed, inspiring one of the great statements in Texas history: ‘When the rabble hiss, well may patriots tremble.’
A plebiscite was authorized, and when the popular vote was counted, the men of Texas had decided 46,153 to 14,747 to secede, even if this resulted in warfare. The tally provided an interesting insight into Texan attitudes, because only one person in ten owned a slave, but nearly eight in ten of those who voted defended Southern rights, and when the test of battle came, nine in ten would support the war.
When these results were announced, General Quimper felt justified, for they proved that his ancient nemesis, Sam Houston, had been repudiated by the state he was supposed to lead. ‘He should resign,’ Yancey shouted. ‘He has lost our confidence.’ As before, Houston ignored such talk, arguing ineffectively with any who would listen: ‘Yes, yes, Texas has withdrawn from the Union. But that doesn’t mean we have joined the Confederacy.’
‘What does it mean?’ men like Reuben Cobb demanded, and Houston, not wishing to see Texas take arms against the Union he loved, proposed a pathetic alternative: ‘The vote means that Texas is once more a free nation, strong enough to ignore both South and North. Let us now resume control of our own destiny.’ But the majority were so hungry for war that his advice was rejected.
Houston, nearing seventy and failing in years, now fought his greatest battle. Still governor of the state, but scorned by all and calumniated by General Quimper, who once again challenged him to a duel, he sat in the governor’s mansion in Austin and reflected on what he must do.
The new laws of Texas stated that if he wished to retain office, he must take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy, and this would have been an easy gesture, except for one constraint: ‘I have always been and am now loyal to the Union. My tongue would cleave to my mouth if I took a contrary oath.’ He decided that when the test came, if men like Quimper forced him to deny his allegiance to the Union, he would resign.
But before he was forced to act, an escape presented itself. President Lincoln secretly offered to send Federal troops into Texas to assist Houston in retaining his governorship and thus keep Texas within the Union, and this was a most alluring temptation. But Houston could discuss it only with a man who would be honor-bound to respect the secrecy, so he sent for a man he had met only once, Somerset Cobb, the big plantation owner at Jefferson, and when the two men talked in Austin, Houston said: ‘In the debate about secession, Cobb, you were a voice of sanity. How do you see things now?’
Cobb had not ridden so far to talk platitudes: ‘War is inevitable. The South will fight valiantly, of that you can be sure, but we must lose.’
The two men sat silent, tormented by the problems of loyalty. Houston was loyal to the Union, that splendid concept so ably defended by Andrew Jackson when Houston was a young man learning to master politics. But he was also loyal to Texas, the state he had rescued from burning embers. God, how he loved Texas.
Cobb, for his part, would be forever loyal to the principles upon which he had been weaned in South Carolina, and if his natal state declared war, he must support her. But recent experiences had made him loyal also to Texas, and he saw that her present course was self-defeating. Even so, he must volunteer his services in a cause he knew would lose. Loyalties, how they cascaded upon a man, confusing him and tearing him apart, yet ennobling him as few other human emotions ever did.
‘What should I do, Cobb?’
‘Can you, in honor, take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy?’
‘No.’
‘Then you must resign.’
‘And Lincoln’s offer of military aid? To keep me in power?’
Now the silence returned, for how could the governor of any state accept outside force to retain office when the people of that state had shown they rejected him and all he stood for? In his question Cobb had touched the vital nerve which activated the best men in these perilous days: Can you, in honor, do thus or so? Men like Cobb and Houston had been raised in that Virginia-Carolina tradition of honor; as boys they had read Sir Walter Scott and imbibed from his dauntless heroes their definitions of honor. They had fought duels to prove their integrity, and when Houston’s first wife behaved in a peculiar way, his sense of rectitude prevented him from explaining his position. Now honor
demanded that Somerset Cobb respond to the bugle calls, and honor required that Sam Houston refuse President Lincoln’s offer of aid, which could bring only war to Texas. There was not a chance in ten thousand that Cobb would refuse to fight for the South; the odds were the same against Houston’s accepting outside aid to hold grimly to a governorship he had already lost.
Twice in one lifetime, as a young man in Tennessee, now as an old man in Texas, Houston faced the moral necessity of surrendering a governorship, and surrendering Texas proved twice as bitter as the earlier debacle. On 15 March those state officials eager to fight on the side of the Confederacy, should war come, revoked their pledge of allegiance to the Federal Union and took in its place an oath to defend the Confederacy.
Sam Houston refused to do this, so he was commanded to appear at high noon on Saturday, 16 March, and pledge allegiance to the new government. That night the old lion read from the Bible, spoke gently with his family, then went aloft to his bedroom, where he stalked the floor all night in his stocking feet, wrestling with the monumental choices that faced him. When he came down for breakfast, gaunt and worn, he told his wife: ‘Margaret, I will never do it.’
As noon approached, he retreated to the cellar of the capitol, where he sat himself firmly in an old chair, took out his knife, and started whittling a hickory limb. From the top of the stairs a messenger from the new government cried three times: ‘Sam Houston! Sam Houston! Sam Houston! Come forth and swear allegiance!’ Silent, he continued whittling, and thus surrendered the nation-state he had called into being.
Although Houston preferred exile in silence, there was such a public demand that he explain his unpatriotic behavior, he, against his better judgment, agreed to defend himself at an open meeting held in Brenham, a little town due east of Austin, and people gathered from far distances to hear his attempt at justification.
When General Quimper and other staunch Southern partisans learned of the meeting, they were infuriated: ‘His views are downright treason!’ and a half-dozen rowdies announced that they would shoot Houston the moment he appeared on the platform. Friends urged Houston to cancel the meeting, but to retreat under such circumstances was not his style: ‘I shall speak.’
Millicent and Petty Prue rode south to hear the historic address, and were startled at how old Houston looked when he came onstage, six feet four, rumpled hair, his shoulders warmed by the Mexican serape he favored, his eyes sunk, but visible in every feature that old fire, that love of combat.
‘Look!’ Millicent whispered. ‘He sees Quimper,’ and indeed he did, for he looked directly at his would-be assassin and nodded.
‘See those men!’ Petty Prue cried loud enough for others to hear, and all looked to where six of Quimper’s followers were moving resolutely toward the stage.
But then Millicent uttered a low ‘My God!’—and when Prue looked to where she pointed, she saw that onto the stage had come the two Cobb men, pistols drawn.
‘No shooting!’ Prue whispered. ‘Please God, no shooting.’
‘We’ve gathered here tonight,’ Reuben said quietly, ‘to hear a great man try to justify his mistakes. Sett and I, we oppose everything he stands for. We deem his actions a disgrace to Texas, but at San Jacinto he saved this state and we propose to let him have his say.’
Some cheered, but it was Somerset who electrified the hall: ‘If anyone makes a move to interrupt this meeting, Reuben and I will shoot him dead.’ And he pointed his two guns directly at Quimper while his cousin covered the others.
‘Let him speak!’ people began to shout, and when the noise subsided, the old warrior stepped forward, drew about his shoulders the tattered serape, and said:
‘I love the plaudits of my fellow citizens, but will never sacrifice my principles in order to gain public favor or commendation. I heard the hiss of mobs in the streets of Brenham, and friends warned me that my life was in peril if I dared express my honest convictions.’
At this point Quimper and his men started to move forward, but Sett Cobb raised his pistols slightly and whispered: ‘Keep back.’
‘Never will I exchange our Federal Constitution and our Union for a Confederate constitution and government whose principle of secession can be only short-lived and must end in revolution and utter ruin.’
This blunt rejection of the Confederacy, to which almost every man in the audience had pledged his loyalty and his life, outraged the listeners, the Cobb brothers included, but the old fighter plowed ahead. Now, however, he threw a sop to the Southerners, for he rattled off that impressive list of great leaders provided by the South:
‘Our galaxy of Southern Presidents—Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Taylor, Tyler and Polk—cemented the bonds of union between all the states which can never be broken. I believe a majority of our Southern people are opposed to secession.’ (Loud cries of No! No!) ‘But the secession leaders declare that the Confederate government will soon be acknowledged by all foreign nations, and that it can be permanently established without bloodshed.’ (Cheers, followed by the thundering voice of prophecy) ‘They might with equal truth declare that the foundations of the great deep blue seas can be broken up without disturbing their surface waters, as to tell us that the best government ever devised for men can be broken up without bloodshed.’
Now he called upon his wide knowledge of war and politics, and like the great seer he was, he hammered home a chain of simple truths: ‘Cotton is not King, and European nations will not fight on our side to ensure its delivery.’ ‘One Southern man, because of his experience with firearms, is not equal to ten Northerners.’ ‘The civil war which is now at hand will be stubborn and of long duration.’ ‘The soil of our beloved South will drink deep the precious blood of our sons and brethren.’ And then the tremendous closing of a tremendous speech, the mournful cry of an ancient prophet who sees his beloved nation plunging into disaster:
‘I cannot, nor will I, close my eyes against the light and voice of reason. The die has been cast by your secession leaders, whom you have permitted to sow and broadcast the seeds of secession, and you must ere long reap the fearful harvest of conspiracy and revolution.’
The crowd was silent. Quimper and his rowdies stood aside to let him pass. The Cobb brothers put down their guns. And Sam Houston left the stage of Texas politics.
What contribution could Texas make to the Confederacy? It was far removed from the fields of battle and possessed no manufactures of significance: if it wanted to arm its men, it had to forage through Mexico to find guns and ammunition.
It had only a sparse population—420,891 white persons, 182,566 slaves and 355 freed blacks—most of whom lived in communities of less than a thousand. Only two towns, Galveston and San Antonio, had as many as five thousand people.
Nor could the Confederacy look to Texas for large numbers of recruits, since the state was heavily agricultural and required its men on its farms. Also, it offered an insane number of exemptions from military service: Confederate and state officers and their clerks, mail carriers, ferryboat operators, ship pilots, railroad men, professors in colleges and academies, telegraphists, clergymen, miners, teachers of the blind or any kind of teacher with more than twenty students, nurses, lunatic custodians, druggists—one to a store—and operators of woolen factories. Matters were further complicated in that any man chosen for military duty could purchase a substitute and stay home. Also, most Texans wanted to fight as cavalry, and in extension of the rough-and-ready rules of the Mexican War, they wanted to enlist for brief, stipulated periods and then fight only under Texan officers whom they elected.
It was a rule of thumb in all the armies of the world that a civilian population could never be expected to provide more than ten percent of its total population to a draft. Texas, with less than half a million white persons, should at best have provided about fifty thousand soldiers to the Confederacy. Despite all the exemptions, it sent between seventy-five and ninety thousand.
Reuben Cobb, as the operator
of a cotton gin, was specifically excused from military service: ‘The Confederacy will survive only if its cotton continues to reach European markets, for then we’ll bring in the money we need for arms and food.’
But Reuben would have none of this, and on the first day that volunteers were accepted he enrolled, telling his wife: ‘Trajan and Jaxifer can run the gin as well as I can,’ and off to war he went, never doubting that the two trusted Negroes would keep his plantation prospering.
Cobb was welcomed as a proven fighter, but it was judged that he would be most useful not in the east with General Robert E. Lee, well regarded in Texas for his frontier wars against the Comanche, but as a member of a force defending the Red River approaches to the state. Elected by his troops as their captain, he roamed his command, assuring the safety of the Confederacy in that underpopulated quarter; he would have preferred more active duty and put his name in for either the Mississippi campaign or what General Quimper called ‘our attempt to recapture Santa Fe,’ but to his disgust he was left where he was.
His post had one advantage: he could at various times ride south to visit Lakeview and his family. His two sons, of course, were in uniform, one with the Texas Brigade, one with fellow Texan Albert Sidney Johnston; and his wife, Petty Prue, was more or less in charge of the plantation, assisted when possible by Cousin Sett. Somerset Cobb, too, could have claimed exemption under a ‘20-slave owner’ rule, but he had quickly volunteered at the first news of Fort Sumter. The government had then decided that he was more needed at home, supervising the movement of cotton that brought the Confederacy wealth when delivered at New Orleans, which remained open at the moment. There brave rivermen sneaked it through the blockade to waiting English and French ships.
‘Are we winning?’ Sett asked during one of his cousin’s unannounced visits.
‘You know more than I do.’
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