Sam Houston; legislators meeting without his call
From The New-York Times December 10, 1860:
To the Editor of the New-York Times:
Can the reports that are in circulation about Texas be true? Can she in reality be so ungrateful as to even think of seceding? Her secession would be the blackest blot of ingratitude on the page of history.
Her independence and annexation alone cost the United States about 50,000 men and $60,000,000, and, in addition, the United States afterwards paid off her debt, amounting to some 8,000,000 or more of dollars.
It is a singular fact that in a speech made in 1845, we then expressed our apprehensions of her in the following words: “May we not be nourishing a viper, which will at some future day turn upon and sting us for our generosity to it? May we not, at some future time. I say, rue the day when first we joined her to our Confederacy?”
We must sincerely hope that our former apprehensions are not now to become realized prophecies, but if they do we can only say, thank God we are no Texan. Yours, respectfully, AMERICUS.
Elsewhere in the same issue:
THE COURSE OF TEXAS.
NEW-ORLEANS, Saturday, Dec. 8.
The latest advices from Texas state that there is an understanding between the members of the Legislature of that State, that the Legislature shall meet at Austin, on the 17th of December next, without a formal call from the Governor, and that it is understood that the Legislature will call a State Convention on the 8th of January.
Sam Houston was the governor at this time. He had Unionist tendencies. Apparently a lot of Texans weren’t of the same mind.
