Jack of Harts

Sam Houston wore many hats in his lifetime. He was a Representative and Governor of Tennessee, and leader of the Texian army that defeated Santa Anna. He was the first and third President of the Republic of Texas, and served as Senator and Governor of the State of Texas. There were few politicians in all of Texas who had as much respect and prestige as Sam Houston, but the Democrat Party had spent over a decade establishing themselves as the dominant force in Texas politics. Houston urged their Secession Convention to reject secession due to the horrors of war and the probability that The South would lose any conflict with the Union. But even his prestige had limits, the convention voted to secede, and just over ten percent of the State’s free population voted to ratify it. Under four percent voted against it. Houston then urged Texas to return to its status as a Republic and to remain neutral between North and South. But the Secession Convention further voted to join the Confederacy, and when called to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy he remained seated and silent. They removed Sam Houston from office for that refusal, and he died two years later, a reluctant citizen of a Confederacy at war with the Union he had grown up in.