TEXAS – An Ordinance to Dissolve the Union between the State of Texas and the Other States, United Under the Compact Styled ''The Constitution of the United States of America. [Austin:] State Gazette [February 1861].

TEXAS – An Ordinance to Dissolve the Union between the State of Texas and the Other States, United Under the Compact Styled "The Constitution of the United States of America. [Austin:] State Gazette [February 1861].

Texas secedes from the Union: an exceptionally rare broadside printing. Texas' bellicose declaration of the causes and the formal Ordinance of Secession was passed by the Texas legislature in convention at Austin on 1 February 1861 and submitted as a referendum "to the people of Texas, for their ratification or rejection." South Carolina had seceded on December 20, 1860, and other states quickly followed suit. In Texas, Governor Houston reluctantly yielded to public pressure and convened a convention at Austin in late January. On the first of February, the delegates voted for secession by an overwhelming majority (167 to 7). As Fehrenbach writes, "the six causes for Texas' secession are historically important; they revealed the dominant Texas mind." (Lone Star, p. 345). Despite heroic efforts by Houston and his Unionist supporters to win the popular vote, the act was ratified by a large majority, independence was declared on 2 May and contacts were made with the provisional Confederate government (which had already admitted Texas, before it even applied). RBH records only the present copy of this broadside at auction and only one other of any Texas Secession broadside. Check List of Texas Imprints 1861-1873 163; Parrish & Willingham 4163.

Broadside (523 x 358mm), ornamental border, on newsprint with wide margins (soft creases, scattered pinprick holes, faint "1861" penciled in upper right corner). Provenance: an estate in East Texas (sold Dorothy Sloan Rare Books, 11 December 2009, lot 133).

Pre-Lot Text
PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR IN TEXAS