Central and East Texas county lines in 1861 are similar enough to today's county map so it's fun to look back in time and examine how each county voted.

Caution. I find this map very non-intuitive. I would have titled and shaded it as "Percentage of Votes for Secession" rather than throwing the word "Against" in there and forcing me to process the map key ass-backwards. But I digress...

As a Brazos County guy, but raised in Collin and Grayson counties, I've spent most my life in some very pro and anti Secession parts of the state.

I'm surprised Angelina County (Lufkin) in East Texas was anti-Secession. I would have guessed deep East Texas to be all pro-Secession. Ditto for Comanche/Erath/Hamilton counties as I would have surmised those counties in that day to not be cotton country and therefore have no obvious economic reason to secede.

Thought some might find this interesting on this board.



[This message has been edited by Corporal Punishment (edited 6/18/2013 12:07p).]

I use that map in class.

It depends a lot on the percentage of Germans in each county. Find a large percentage of Germans and find a very low percentage of votes for secession.

I have also used that map in class. You are correct about the counties with large German populations voting against secession. Many of them paid for it with their lives. My family is originally from Burnet County, and Burnet was my first teaching job. I used to use this story about Dead Mans Hole in Burnet County in one of my lessons.....(many Unionists sometimes just "disappeared").
http://www.voicesofthetexashills.org/vthhsites0010.htm

The other map that would be interesting to compare it to is the counties by percentage of slave population. You'd find the more slaves, the more in favor of seccession generally. Wise County for example with poor White dirt farmers was anti-slavery, same with some of the counties in the Piney Woods where poor whites were eking out a living before Meth . As mentioned previously counties with a large German population were anti-slavery as most had fled from the revolutions of 1848 and were politically liberal in thought.

[This message has been edited by BQ78 (edited 6/18/2013 10:41a).]

More about the public referendum to secede:

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The results for the state as a whole were 46,153 for and 14,747 against.

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Of the 122 counties casting votes only eighteen cast majorities against secession.

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...and if I understand this part correctly, Sam Houston thought a separate vote should be made on joining the Confederacy. Perhaps he thought the voters should get to say if Texas should again be a Republic?

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In addition to his persistent opposition to secession, [Houston] considered the drafting of a constitution and the joining of the state to the Confederacy without extensive public debate and another public referendum to be unconstitutional.

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http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mgs02

quote:

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Angelina County was settled predominantly by natives of the southern United States, some of them slaveowners who established plantations in their new Texas home. Large plantations were owned by the Stearns, Oates, Kalty, Stovall, and Ewing families. However, many Angelina County farmers were relatively poor men who owned no slaves. In 1847 slaves numbered 154, out of a total population of 834. In 1859 the number of slaves had grown to 427, valued at $269,550, and the total population was 4,271. Cotton culture, however, occupied only 2,048 acres of county land in 1858, a relatively small area for East Texas. Between 1850 and 1860 improved land in the county increased from about 3,000 to about 16,000 acres.

In 1861 Angelina County was the only county in East Texas, and one of only a handful of other Texas counties, to reject secession. This election result was startling when compared with that of Angelina County's neighbor to the immediate south, Tyler County, which supported secession by a 99 percent vote. Angelina County had also given the Constitutional Union party candidate, John Bell, a strong minority vote in the 1860 election. Two companies of county men were organized to fight in the Civil War, but they saw only limited action; only nineteen Angelina County men lost their lives in the war, and no Union soldiers entered the county before 1866.

Before the war, a principal source of wealth in Angelina County was the raising of livestock, since most of the early settlers were not slaveholding planters able to concentrate on agriculture. After the war, livestock was largely supplanted by the lumber industry, and therefore the numbers of cattle did not increase proportionately with the population.

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http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hca03