Divided Times

In March 1861, as the United States hurtled toward the Civil War, Texas Governor Sam Houston assembled his closest advisors late one night in the Governor’s Mansion library in Austin. He read them an extraordinary letter from President Abraham Lincoln. If Houston would hold Texas in the Union, Lincoln would make him a major general with command of 50,000 troops. Upon his advisors’ counsel, the 67-year-old governor burned Lincoln’s letter in the library fireplace. Houston said if he were 10 years younger, he would’ve accepted.

Houston was the most prominent pro-Union leader in Texas, but he wasn’t the only Texan who opposed the state’s secession. The state Legislature had been so