Texas | A rare broadside featuring the Ordinance of Secession

Texas

An Ordinance to Dissolve the Union between the State of Texas and the Other States, United Under the Compact Styled "The Constitution of the United States of America." [Austin:] State Gazette [February 1861]

Letterpress broadside (523 x 352 mm). Type ruled in decorative border, printed on newsprint, with nice wide margins; creases, old ink stains to right margin, some browning, very faint "1861" penciled in red in upper right corner. Matted, framed, and glazed in Plexiglas; not examined out of frame.

A rare broadside announcing Texas' secession. On 1 February 1861, the Ordinance of Secession was passed by the legislature in Austin, with the delegates voting strongly in favor—167 to 7. At the same time that "Lincoln prepared to take office on March 4, 1861, conventions in seven Lower South states voted to secede: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Only in Texas were voters given the chance to approve their convention's secession ordinance (and Texas's convention agreed to such a measure only because of doubts about its own legality and legitimacy)" (CCC, p. 163). After its passing, the ordinance was submitted "to the people of Texas, for their ratification or rejection," and although Governor Sam Houston vehemently opposed secession and struggled to uphold the Union, the vast majority of Texans voted to secede.

Rare. We can locate no other copy of this broadside being offered at auction. "Any copy of the ordinance is rare and usually known in just one copy. Upon investigation, some reported copies of the present edition proved to be facsimiles or other types of reproductions, such as photostats (e.g. Parrish & Willingham 4163, a single copy at New York Public Library). Winkler & Friend also report a copy at the New York Public Library, a copy at the Texas State Library (put through the press wrinkled and thus poorly printed and subsequently laminated), and a copy at the University of Texas. In the last case there are actually fourteen copies of this printing, all heavily damaged by rodents, in addition to another copy from the Vandale collection, on heavy paper. Another, reported to be in the possession of the Maryland Historical Society, is also a ghost" (Dorothy Sloan Rare Books).

REFERENCE

Parrish & Willingham 4163; Winkler & Friend, Check List of Texas Imprints 1861-1873 163

PROVENANCE

Dorothy Sloan Rare Books, 11 December 2009, lot 133 — Christie's New York, 13 June, 2018, lot 149