John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion

[13] the experiment of change; for liberty, once lost, might never be restored. These were words of sober wisdom, and, fearlessly adhered to by a few firm men, they might have paralyzed the revolt. Yet in the same speech he declared that, if Georgia seceded, he should bow to the will of her people --in other words, break the Constitution, break faith, and lose liberty. On this “easy descent” Georgia slid to her ruin. Under such examples the convention passed the secession ordinance, 208 to 89.

While thus in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama; Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, the conspiracy made pretentious efforts to clothe rebellion in the robes of law, and hide it behind the shield of constitutional forms, it pursued an altogether bold and unblushing course of usurpation in the State of Texas. The famous and somewhat eccentric General Houston was governor. His own long struggle to bring Texas into the Union made him loth to join in its destruction. He resisted the secession conspiracy; but his southern pro-slavery prejudices also imbued him with the prevalent antagonism to the Republican party. He therefore nursed a scheme to carry Texas back into independent sovereignty, and, with her territory and population as a basis, to undertake the conquest and annexation of Mexico.

But the conspirators, ignoring all restraint, without a shadow of legality, assembled a revolutionary State convention, and on February 1st passed an ordinance of secession, with a provision submitting it to a popular vote. Houston, pursuing his side intrigue, approved a joint resolution of the State Legislature (February 4th) to legalize the convention, but accompanied his approval with a protest that it should have no effect except to elicit public decision on the single question of adherence to the Union. When in due