Undaunted: A Norwegian Woman in Frontier Texas

Chapter 8

C h a p t e r 8 Civil War For elise there was only one cause of the Civil War: slavery . “I am convinced,” she wrote in her Confession of Faith, “that slavery will be abolished by gentle means or force, because I believe that institutions founded on injustice are doomed to fall.” Her statement about abolition was prophetic. Conflict was boiling between the North and the South, with the planter aristocrats who controlled the politics of the South claiming that slavery was essential to their region’s agricultural economy. They drew on constitutional theory to maintain the institution. The Union was a “compact” between the states, and the southern states had a right to secede if abolitionist sentiment in the North were to threaten their economic survival. Elise cared nothing for these legalities and economics. She shared the growing sentiment against the system that southern apologists were calling “our peculiar institution.” Most European nations had ended slavery in their colonies and were attempting to stamp out the slave trade in the Americas. In the United States the North was insisting Congress must do likewise. A climax came with the  election when the Republican Lincoln won over the Democratic Party (split into northern and southern factions, each with their own candidate) and the Constitutional Union Party.1 The inaugural arrangements of the time gave the defeated southern Democrat secessionists opportunity for drastic action. Lincoln could not take the office until March , . As the outgoing President James Buchanan dawdled to the end of his term, South Carolina, longtime leader of the movement to break up the Union, seized the initiative. In early December it declared the Union dissolved. Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana followed suit. Elise was writing her Confession of Faith as the fever spread to Texas. In late December the state’s secessionists set up a convention to withdraw from the Union. Sam Houston, governor of the state, opposed secession. He tried to forestall the proceedings by summoning the legislature to deny recognition to the unauthorized gathering. Instead, the legislature rejected his position and endorsed the convention. With this legal power, the convention adopted a secession ordinance by a lopsided vote of  to . In spite of the feeble showing of dissent—fewer than  percent of the delegates said “nay”—several leading citizens shared Sam Houston’s sentiments. At Houston’s insistence the issue was put out to public referendum. Late in February, , the people of the state did choose secession, , to ,—but  percent were opposed. The convention next required state officials to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy. Houston refused. The delegates deposed him by declaring the office of the governor vacant and appointed Lieutenant Governor Edward Clark in his place. In Van Zandt County, where the foreign-born population and northerners nearly equaled the number of residents from the lower south, the  vote was  to — percent opposed secession. The majority of voters in seventeen of the other  Texas counties also opposed secession, in one by  percent and another by  percent. In eleven more counties over  percent were opposed. As a woman Elise was ineligible to vote, but according to her testimony most Norwegians were Unionists and against secession. They were but a small part of the dissenting group; the bulk of the opposition came in counties with large German, Mexican, or northern populations. During February, , the states of the Deep South met in Alabama and formed the Confederacy. Texas joined in March. On April , a South Carolina shore battery opened fire on Fort Sumter, the federal fortress in Charleston harbor. Lincoln proclaimed the southern states in insurrection and summoned a volunteer army to suppress the rebellion. Slavery would be struck down by force.2 During the early war years an extraordinary inconsistency appears in the record of Elise’s opposition to slavery. Although she remained intensely hostile to the institution, the property tax records for Van Zandt County for  and  show that Wilhelm and she owned a slave.3 The documents bearing witness to this startling fact were created almost  years ago. They can be viewed today in a voluminous set of microfilm rolls housed at the Texas A&M University library at Commerce. The pages recorded on these films are photographs of the Van Zandt County tax regisChapter 8 —— ter volumes kept from  to . The documents thus preserved are products of routine government business. Turned out on orderly...