“Rip” Ford and A.J. Hamilton

Rip Ford - Napoleon on the CSA-Mexico border

Texas Still Divided

Who needs a governor and legislature? The Texas Convention still seems to be running the show.

From The New-York Times, March 28, 1861 (The New York Times Archive):

IMPORTANT FROM TEXAS

GALVESTON, Tuesday, March 26.

The Convention have elected Col. FORD and Lieut Col. BAYER, as Commanders of the Regiment of Rangers, to serve twelve months on the frontier, in addition to the one ordered there by Secretary WALKER.

Andrew Jackson Hamilton: like his namesake, strongly for the Union

On the 21st, Gov. HOUSTON, and Hon. A.J. HAMILTON, delivered speeches at Houston, both of them violently denouncing the State Convention and its acts, the Southern Confederacy and the new Constitution.

On the 22d, the Convention, in Committee of the Whole, after some debate, adopted the Constitution of the Confederate States, by an almost unanimous vote. The vote, on engrossment, was nearly unanimous for the Constitution.

Thanks to the convention it was ex-Governor Houston by this time.

Guide to Texas Legislative Information discusses “engrossment”.

John Salmon Ford was a politician and military officer throughout the war. He was a member of the secession convention and “initiated a trade agreement between Mexico and the Confederacy.” He also “engaged in border operations protecting Confederate-Mexican trade.” He definitely fought for the duration of the Civil War. He got his nickname during the Mexican-American war because he always included “Rest in Peace” after every single name in his casualty reports.

Andrew Jackson Hamilton was forced to flee to Mexico in 1862 because of his pro-Union statements. Later that year he went on a tour of Northeastern cities, during which “He spoke out in favor of the Union and criticized the “slave power” of the South.

And speaking of the “slave power” of the South:

The Cornerstone

I recommend Seven Score and Ten’s report on Confederate Vice-President Stephens’ March 21, 1861 speech at Savannah, Georgia. You can also read a report at The New York Times Archive. The Times’ 1861 opinion is here.
Mr. Stephens believed that the framers of the U.S. Constitution got it wrong by believing that slavery would eventually fade away:

Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it, when the ‘storm came and the wind blew, it fell.’

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man. That Slavery, — subordination to the superior race, in his natural and moral condition. [Applause.]