Summary Of Secession Conventions In The Lower South By Ralph A. Wooster

Ralph A. Wooster’s article “An Analysis of the Membership of Secession Conventions in the Lower South,” provides a comparative picture and personal characteristics of state convention participants. Wooster argues, of the 1,048 men who participated in the state conventions few have received attention from historical analysis. He utilizes the Eighth Census of the United States, 1860, for his research analysis of personal characteristics of convention participants. By analyzing the data, he determines the median age, place of birth, occupation, number of possessed slaves, possession of real and personal property for each delegate. Wooster then utilizes these markers and compares them to each state on how they voted; whether they voted

Wooster’s article, "An Analysis of the Membership of the Texas Secession Convention," provides the economic status of the one hundred and seventy-seven members of the convention. The article lists each member in the convention, their age, place of birth, occupation, number of possessed slaves, possession of real and personal property for each delegate. Wooster’s analysis determines the median age of forty-years old. None of the delegates were natives of Texas, “one hundred and sixty-one members, or 90.9 percent of the convention, were born in slaveholding states.” Under occupation, 40 percent or seventy-seven members listed as lawyers, sixty-two members as planters or farmers, the remaining members as physicians, merchants, judges, ranchers, blacksmith, grocer, clergyman, or local public officials. Possession of real and personal property, analysis determines that for one hundred and sixty-seven

Baker and Dale Baum’s article, "The Texas Voter and the Crisis of the Union, 1859–1861," argues why voters voted for or against secession. Baker and Baum conduct and present a detailed data analysis of the 1859 Gubernatorial, 1860 Presidential, and 1861 Secession referendum election returns. They argue class and religion influenced the electorate in their decision to support for or against secession. The presented quantitative data reflects “secessionist voting strength was the percentage of slaveholders in the electorate. The secessionist tended to be strongest in plantation areas with high levels of swine production, large percentages of Methodists, and greater concentration of land in the hands of fewer owners.” Unionist sentiment represented the wheat-growers around the north-central counties. They relied on U.S. Army support “for protection from the Indian attack and to buy their surplus corn, wheat, and oats for government agencies in the Indian Territory to the north.” Baker and Baum assert that according to their analysis “religious considerations were more important in explaining the antisecessionist vote than the absence or presence of large, medium, or small slaveholders, or the absence or presence of certain levels of agricultural production, including wheat production.” The Baptist, Presbyterians, and Methodists possessed strong ties to other southern states, therefore they supported secession. Baker and Baum argue that the Disciples of