The Civil War in Their Own Words: Texas’ Oran Milo Roberts

The Texas Ordinance of Secession

(This is supporting material for “Why did the South Secede? Ask a Confederate.” [Click here] for that full article.)

Oran Milo (OM) Roberts was president of the Texas Secession Convention of 1861 who issued their “Declaration of Causes” for seceding from the Union. The declaration focused on slavery, echoing other Confederate states.

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.”

The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A. D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then a free, sovereign and independent nation, the annexation of the latter to the former, as one of the co-equal States thereof, The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.