Primary Sources November 19, 2008

Here are our two latest primary sources. 

http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/warweb.html#letters

 

 A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Union

 

The primary source was found by using a word search for Texas succession from the Union. The website is run and maintained by Dr. George H. Hoemann. This is a reliable source, because it is run by a professor from the University of Tennessee. The primary source is a document written by delegates of state Texas, and lists all of their causes for succession from the Federal Union. The people of Texas want to succeed from the Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility, and ensure the blessing of peace and liberty for her people. The inhabitants of Texas were frustrated with the government for not protecting them from renegade Indians and bandits from Mexico. They were also even more infuriated when the government would not reimburse the state for their expenses from defending themselves from these threats. Texans believed that the Northern states have deliberately violated the second, third, and fourth article of the slave laws, and have threaten Texas’ liberty and equality.  All of theses reasons, added to the election of a president and vice president that will continue the attack on Southern states by non-slaveholding states is cause for succession from the United States. The document was adopted on February 2, 1861.

The Texas’ document for succession is very similar to other state’s causes for secession. All southern states believed that they were being invaded by Northern abolitionists that were promoting insurrection and slave rebellion. They also all believed that the slave laws were being deliberately violated by Northern states. What makes Texas stand out from the other states is that sixteen years ago Texas was asking to be admitted into the United States and now they want to leave.     

The second primary source is located here: http://elections.harpweek.com/1860/cartoon-1860-Medium.asp?UniqueID=23&Year=1860

It is a cartoon about the Election of 1860, and sees Stephen Douglas, the front-runner in the Democratic Party, as being ground down by elements of the Buchanan administration. The diminutive stature of the Buchanan loyalists, which is reminiscent of the Lilliputians of "Gulliver's Travels", is supposed to suggest that while they are minor impediments to Douglas, they are still impediments on his journey to the White House. It also shows the dangers in Douglas being in the public spotlight for so long: on his right leg, you can see a member of the press trying to climb up, showing his prominence in national affairs. The website is part of the harpweek.com election center, which chronicles elections from 1860 to 1912. 

Primary Sources, November 13

Here are the two latest sources are group has found.

http://tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/annexation/part4/page2.html

The primary source was found by using a word search for Texas annexation. The website is sponsored by the Texas State Library and Archives Committee. This is a reliable source, because it is sponsored by the state and uses original archives for their sources of information. The primary source is a letter written by James K. Polk to a committee in Cincinnati that was debating the Texas issue. They wanted to know where Polk stood on the issue of annexation.
Polk’s letter to the Cincinnati committee, who opposed the annexation of Texas, was very straight forward and short. Polk firmly stood by his view for the immediate annexation of Texas. He believed that since Texas is connected to the Mississippi Valley, and was once part of the American territory. America has the right to bring Texas into the United States. Also, he stated that Texas should have never been ceded away to Spain when the United States acquired Spanish’s Florida. Polk also fears that if the government is to reject Texas’s acceptance to enter the United States. The British will try to bring Texas under their control. He also stated that to ensure that this will never happen again in the future. He is in favor for Oregon to become a state as well.
I believe that Polk’s letter was very simple and easy to understand. He simply stated why he was in favor of the Texas issue and his reasons for believing so. He did not get in great depth about politic issues behind his decision, and did not mention anything about the South or the expansion of slavery in his letter.

The second source, http://caho-test.cc.columbia.edu//dbq/11014.html#D, includes the Republican Party platform of 1856. It shows that by the middle of the decade, a new party had risen in opposition to the Democratic Party's position on the territories. For the Republicans, slavery had to stay confined to the South, and the Constitution itself forbade any growth into the territories. It is also interesting to note that the platform uses language such as "in the spirit of Washington and Jefferson" to support their own policies. The irony, of course, is that both men were Southerners and slaveowners, but Republican Party's appeal is to their views on the federal government. Of course, this is also a slight jab at the Democrats, who claimed ideological lineage with Jeffersonian thought throughout the 19th century. This source could be very useful at seeing the evolution of free-soil thought in the 1850s, especially as it relates to national politics.