Sam Houston.

One of the more international flavoured drums that is in existence, is the drum above - General Sam Houston - his family ancestry indicates that his folks emigrated from Ulster, when they move to the 'New World'.

This drum was commissioned by the Houston family and I believe is kept on permanent display at the family home in Texas.

You may find this interesting - Sam Houston was a hero to many and a very influential man........ On this day 1st February this day in 1861, Texas becomes the seventh state to secede from the Union when a state convention votes 166 to 8 in favour of the measure.

 

The Texans who voted to leave the Union did so over the objections of their governor, Sam Houston. A staunch Unionist, Houston's election in 1859 as governor seemed to indicate that Texas did not share the rising secessionist sentiments of the other Southern states.

 

However, events swayed many Texans to the secessionist cause. John Brown's raid on the federal armoury at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in October 1859 had raised the spectre of a major slave insurrection, and the ascendant Republican Party made many Texans uneasy about continuing in the Union. After Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency in November 1860, pressure mounted on Houston to call a convention so that Texas could consider secession.

 

He did so reluctantly in January 1861, and sat in silence on February 1 as the convention voted overwhelmingly in favour of secession. Houston grumbled that Texans were "stilling the voice of reason," and he predicted an "ignoble defeat" for the South. Houston refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy and was replaced in March 1861 by his lieutenant governor.

 

Texas' move completed the first round of secession. Seven states--South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas--left the Union before Lincoln took office. Four more states--Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas-- waited until the formal start of the Civil War, with the April 1861 firing on Fort Sumter at Charleston, South Carolina, before deciding to leave the Union. The remaining slave states--Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri--never mustered the necessary majority for secession.

 

HMA