The Lamentations of a Whig: James Throckmorton Writes a Letter

THE LAMENTATIONS OF A WHIG: JAMES THROCKMORTON WRITES A LETTER James Marten EARLY IN 1862, Captain James W. Throckmorton, Sixth Texas Cavalry, carried the body of his friend Lieutenant Gabriel S. Fitzhugh home to McKinney, Texas, for burial. Fitzhugh had been killed when Confederate forces routed Creek Unionists at Chustenahlah in Indian Territory. Before rejoining his company in Arkansas in time for the battle of Elk Horn Tavern, Throckmorton wrote a long letter to his good friend and colleague Ben H. Epperson of Clarksville, Texas.1 In it he poured out his thoughts on secession, his fears for the future of his state and section, and his opinions on military strategy and foreign policy. Both Throckmorton and Epperson were well qualified to examine these issues. Born in Tennessee in 1825, Throckmorton had at the age of sixteen moved with his family to Collin County in northeast Texas, where they were among the county's first white settlers. Trained as a physician and a veteran of the Mexican War, Throckmorton entered the Texas House of Representatives in 1851 and the state senate in 1857. Epperson , a north Texas lawyer and businessman, served Red River and Titus Counties in the state House during the 1850s, and a warm friendship developed between him and Throckmorton, cemented by their commitments to the Whig Party and to the Union.2 As the sectional crisis quickened in 1860 and 1861, Throckmorton and Epperson, along with Governor Sam Houston and a handful of devoted Union men, campaigned against secession in the legislature. Throckmorton delivered one of the eight "Nay" votes at the Texas secession convention and helped to swing Collin County against separation in the state referendum.3 'The original letter is in the Ben H. Epperson Papers at the Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. A typescript can be found in the James W. Throckmorton Papers at the Barker Center. 2Biographical information on Throckmorton comes from Claude Elliott, Leathercoat: The Life of James W. Throckmorton (Privately Printed, 1938); Ralph A. Wooster offers a brief treatment of Epperson's career in "Ben H. Epperson: East Texas Lawyer, Legislator, and Civic Leader," East Texas Historical JournoB (Mar. 1967):29-42. 3The convention voted 166 to 8 to secede, while Collin County residents rejected secession by a vote of 948 to 405. Walter L. Buenger, Secession and the Union in Texas (Austin: 164CIVIL WAR HISTORY Nevertheless, Texas entered the Confederacy on March 3, 1861, and both men served their new nation throughout the war, Throckmorton in the army and in the state senate, Epperson with his substantial fortune and political influence. Throckmorton's 1862 letter to Epperson reveals the contours of loyalty in the South—both to the union and to the Confederacy—and offers insights into many aspects of Civil War historiography. His career demonstrates the continuing importance of Whig principles to some Southerners; his rhetoric recalls the antebellum devotion to the memory of the "Fathers" who had shaped the United States; his contempt for the fire-eaters in both the North and the South, who he believed brought on the war, suggests that he considered his own to be a blundering generation. The original spelling, punctuation, and grammar of Throckmorton's letter have been altered only in a few instances where clarity required changes. Those changes are enclosed in brackets. Woodlands Collin Co Tx Jany 19th 1862 B H Epperson My Dear Friend— Yrs of 28th ult. with Gazette4 was rec'd by me at Fort Smith5 as I passed through on my way home. I was more than gratified to receive yr. letter, and the paper—I have so much I desire to say to you, that I do not know where to begin. I rode hard to get here before Jo would depart—my disappointment was extreme. I found a long letter—of despondency—from him—Yrs has no encouragement, but not so distrustful as his—I am sorry that my own Convictions of the future are not much more cheerful than Yours & his—The lost expression of yr letter "that you never expect a reaction" brings the past, with our position and how earnestly & honestly we have labored for the last 12...