A Lone Again?

O.M. Roberts invokes forefathers of '76

150 years ago today the Texas secession convention assembled in Austin. The delegates elected Oran M. Roberts as convention president.

On taking the chair, the President remarked, “I bow to the sovereignty of the people of my state“. All political power is inherent in the people. That power, I assert, you now represent. We have been congregated in obedience to the public will, by the spontaneous and voluntary concert of the people of this State, to consider and dispose of questions equally as momentous and more varied than those that were solved by our revolutionary forefathers of ’76! The crisis upon us involves not only the right of self government, but the maintenance of a great principle in the law of nations – the immemorial recognition of the institution of slavery wherever it is not locally prohibited – and also the true theory of our general government as an association of sovereignties, and not a blended mass of people in one social compact. However grave the issues presented may be, I trust this body will be fully adequate to their solution, in such manner as to preserve the rights of the state. …

You can read the entire Journal of the Secession convention of Texas, 1861 (1912) at Internet Archive. This includes the above quote from Mr. Roberts.

Alone again? (if only temporarily)