On this day in 1861, Sam Houston was forced to resign as Governor of Texas for refusing to secede and swear allegiance to the Confederacy:
Fellow-Citizens, in the name of your rights and liberties, which I believe have been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the nationality of Texas, which has been betrayed by the Convention, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the Constitution of Texas, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of my own conscience and manhood, which this Convention would degrade by dragging me before it, to pander to the malice of my enemies, I refuse to take this oath. I deny the power of this Convention to speak for Texas . . . I protest . . . against all the acts and doings of this convention and I declare them null and void.
Houston retired to Huntsville, and was dead by 1863. To say he’d had an interesting life is to understate things rather dramatically. Immigrants to Texas like myself would do well to review that Wikipedia article, since we missed the no-doubt otherwise inescapable “History of Texas” classes in middle school.
Don’t feel bad, Chet, about missing the Texas history in middle school; I know more about Texas history than the majority of my students, and I’m no more Texian than you. For example, a shocking number of my students (white, black, brown, and whatever) are of the impression that Cinco de Mayo is a Texas holiday celebrating Mexico. Not exactly sure how that works, but they keep passing the TAKS social studies test with flying colors.