Jack of Harts

The Southern Democrats reacted badly to the Abolitionist Republicans winning the federal election of 1860. They saw the incoming government as at war with their entire lifestyle, and though Lincoln promised not to start a war or infringe on their States’ rights, they struck out at the incoming administration and any who supported it with every weapon at their disposal. They took possession of federal forts and weapons caches throughout The South, and raised an army of their own to stand against any potential Union attack. Texas passed a law to conscript all able-bodied men, unless they owned fifteen or more slaves, into the military, and began hunting down those who refused to sign up. Thousands of Texans, including some entire colonies, traveled north or south across the borders into Union or Mexican lands to flee the forced conscriptions, and army units were sent to hunt them down. They were treated as deserters and sometimes shot on the spot. Others received a hearing in court before their hanging. It was a bad time to be someone who did not toe the party line and do as they were told.

A little known fact of the American election of 1860 that catapulted the Third Republican Party into majorities in both Houses of Congress, and the Presidency, is that it was done with a minority of the vote. The Democrats had a massive majority, but were divided between three competing factions that year. They split the election between them, allowing the man history would call Honest Abe to slip through with an electoral majority. The Democrats were shocked and horrified at having lost, when nobody thought the man they’d called an idiot and worse had any chance of winning. They declared they would never submit to such a man in the Presidency. They called for resistance against him, for driving his supporters out of society, and for outright rebellion against his rule. And seven States, including Texas, officially seceded from the Union a month before Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as President of the United States of America.

Texas achieved independence long after the First Republican Party rose and fell in the 1790s and 1820s. And the Second Republican Party, commonly known as the National Republicans, fell in 1834, shortly before Texas gained its independence. So when Texas joined the Union in the 1840s, and incorporated themselves into America’s larger economy and political structure throughout the 1850s, there was no major Republican Party. Texas was officially a Slave State, with most of their slaves in the oldest colonies of Central and North Eastern Texas. With that rich power base to operate from, the Pro-Slavery Democrats held impressive political power in Texas. Therefore it was the Third Republican Party, founded in 1854, that was a threat to the established Texas power structure of the time. The Republicans promoted stopping the expansion of Slavery into the American Territories, and held the less public mission of helping slaves escape from Slave States. So when the Republicans surprised everyone by winning both Houses of Congress and the Presidency in 1860, the Democrats in control of Texas did not react well.