Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War

9. Rustling Texas Out of the Union

113 9 RUSTLING TEXAS OUT OF THE UNION A core group of committed secessionists convened in the Austin o∞ce of Attorney General George Flournoy in late November 1860 to come up with a way to precipitate Texas’s secession from the Union. John S. Ford, a KGC colonel and Texas Ranger commander, was one of the ringleaders. Ford had recently arrived in Austin, and he immediately began agitating and speaking out boldly in favor of secession. Oran Milo Roberts, a politically active Texas Supreme Court justice, also assumed a key role at the meeting. Roberts was from Tyler, the home of soon-to-be KGC grand marshall George Chilton, who was likely involved behind the scenes.1 This core group proceeded to issue a citizens’ call (on its own authority) for the early January selection of delegates to a state constitutional convention for the consideration of Texas’s secession. The convention would be held in Austin on January 28.2 In support of the call, KGC member Thomas Green, a Texas Supreme Court clerk, helped the core group to rapidly organize a meeting at the Travis County Courthouse, attended by more than two hundred secession sympathizers. The call was simultaneously sent to Waco, Houston, and other Texas cities, where it was published by southern-rights newspapers , and similar meetings were held to endorse the proposed extralegal program. The call appeared in the Austin State Gazette on December 8, signed by seventy-two citizens.3 According to the Unionist Charles Anderson , a majority of the signers of the call were clerks in Austin, and all were Knights of the Golden Circle.4 knights of the golden circle 114 Knights had played a key role in the events leading up to the call. The KGC leader Ben McCulloch, who was meeting with members of the South Carolina legislature in October 1860, had written his Texas southernrights contacts, urging the convening of a convention. McCulloch said that if Governor Houston won’t convene a convention, “there ought to be a primary meeting in every [Texas] county of the state calling for a convention .”5 From Washington City, KGC sympathizer Senator Louis Wigfall similarly wrote that “all hope of compromise was exhausted” and urged Texans to secede.6 The estimated eight thousand Knights in Texas played an equally instrumental role in applying the political pressure and strong-arm tactics needed to precipitate Texas’s secession. KGC operatives orchestrated many of the mass prosecession meetings and torchlight parades held throughout Texas during late November and early December. In Austin, John Ford spoke fervently from platforms draped with the Lone Star flag and helped break up meetings called by Unionists.7 In Tyler, Knights George Chilton and John C. Robertson, a Harvard-trained lawyer, engaged in similar prosecession agitation, while the KGC leader John A. Wilcox led a meeting orchestrated by the Knights at San Antonio.8 In Galveston, Congressman Guy Bryan churned out propaganda that urged Texans in other areas to select a slate of delegates. Judge Roberts embarked on a related trip across East Texas in support of the secessionists’ program.9 U.S. Army Major John Sprague, who was then serving in the Lone Star State, said that the “display of force, and the harmony and secrecy” provided by Texas’s eight thousand Knights “hold in subjugation the sentiment and conduct of the entire population of the State.”10 The call recommended the election (to take place on January 8, 1861) of two delegates from each Texas county or district. The call suggested that the chief justice of each county should order the election. Failing that, it recommended that the county commissioners or a committee of five citizens order the election.11 Despite the call’s recommended procedures, many delegates were both nominated and selected at public meetings such as those held in the KGC hotbeds of Harrison and Gonzales Counties. In Galveston, three delegates were o∞cially nominated at a mid-December public meeting , where secession leaders intimidated Unionists by patting their revolvers and warning that there would be no abolitionist speeches allowed.12 115 rustling texas out of the union A number of counties held elections in advance of the specified January 8 date. James Newcomb, the pro-Union editor of the Alamo Express, reported that where the local justices failed to call an election, the polls were opened by the KGC. Newcomb said that the people looked...