On the 20th, the Convention proceeded to depose. Governor Houston and other State officers who refused to take the new oath. The disloyal Legislature sanctioned the measure, and on the 21st, the seals and the archives of the Commonwealth were resigned into the hands of Lieutenant-Governor Clarke, who assumed the functions of Provisional Governor, and who speedily issued a proclamation, forbidding all intercourse with the people of the Northern States.
Texas was now under the absolute control of the secessionists, and they managed public affairs with a high hand. They persecuted every proclaimer of Union sentiments; and Houston himself actually renounced his allegiance to his Government, and, descending from the proud patriotic position which he at first assumed, became a maligner of the President, and used the vocabulary of treasonable speech with great fluency. He declared that he was loyal so long as there was any loyalty left in Texas. So early as the 18th of May, in a speech at Independence, he recognized the validity of the “Southern Confederacy,” and recommended obedience to its government. In September following, he found it necessary to explain his position, which he did in a long letter, in which he declared that “Union” and “reconstruction” were obsolete terms. “If there is any Union sentiment in Texas,” he said, “I am not aware of it.” He charged Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet with the crime of usurping the powers of Congress and waging war against “Sovereign States,” thereby absolving their allegiance to the National Government. He also charged that they had, “with more than Vandalic malignity and Gothic hate, sought to incite a servile insurrection in Missouri.” He denounced the President as an invader of Virginia, and declared that the South could never unite with the North, and that the latter could never subjugate the South. The course of Governor Houston was a painful assurance to the people of Texas that the heel of a vile despotism was too firmly planted upon their necks to give them any hope of relief while the war continued, and they sat down to wait with faith and patience for the hour when Right should triumph and they should be redeemed.
We have now noted the principal events connected with the so-called secession of seven Cotton-growing States, namely, South Carolina, Florida,
