Lone Star Unionism and Dissent Symposium

Support for the Union in Texas and rejection of the Confederacy did not solely consist of Sam Houston’s famous refusal to take oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. Before, during, and after the Civil War, significant numbers of Texans of all social, economic, and ethnic groups actively opposed the dominant southern slaveocracy for a variety of reasons.

Presented by Texas State’s Center for the Study of the Southwest and The Wittliff Collections, and funded in part by a grant from the Summerlee Foundation, this symposium on April 5, 2014 explored the diversity of that opposition and challenged the myth of a monolithic pro-Confederate Texas. Hosted at The Wittliff Collections in Alkek Library on the campus of Texas State University, the symposium consisted of two morning sessions and one afternoon session of three presentations each, followed by a keynote address and a Q&A period.

The essays from the sympsosium appear in Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance: Other Sides of Civil War Texas