Sam Houston's Response To The Secession Crisis
There were two collections I used for primary sources: the Sam Houston Papers, which is a loose collection of various documents pertaining to Sam Houston’ life, and the Hearne collection, which is a collection of Sam Houston’s letters to various people throughout his life compiled by Houston’s great-grandson. Most of these letters are sent to family and friends, but a few also were addressed to fellow Congressmen from Houston’s time in the U.S. Senate in the 1850s. It is in these letters that the true political stances of Houston can most likely be found, and in others such exhortations as like can be found, “My son I wish you to love and revere the Union. This is my injunction to all my boys!”.3 I examined the letters primarily in the late period of Sam Houston’s life in order to gain an insight into the true views of Sam Houston regarding the secession crisis.
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Sam Houston drew heavily from Andrew Jackson’s school of thought in opposing the idea of sectionalism, and decried both political parties in the 1856 presidential election for what Houston saw as sectionalism.4 As for the Sam Houston papers, these contained various useful newspaper accounts documenting Sam Houston’s response to the secession crisis, but were at times visibly biased against Sam Houston, one even peddling a conspiracy theory about Old Sam.5 Hence a broad range of methodological issues needed to be
Sam Houston drew heavily from Andrew Jackson’s school of thought in opposing the idea of sectionalism, and decried both political parties in the 1856 presidential election for what Houston saw as sectionalism.4 As for the Sam Houston papers, these contained various useful newspaper accounts documenting Sam Houston’s response to the secession crisis, but were at times visibly biased against Sam Houston, one even peddling a conspiracy theory about Old Sam.5 Hence a broad range of methodological issues needed to be