Secession Convention in Texas

See the Full text of the Journal of the Secession Convention, 1861.

The Louisiana secession commissioner gives a speech to the convention on March 9, 1861, which stresses the interdependence of Texas and Louisiana and their joint reliance on slavery:

Louisiana and Texas have the same language,laws and institutions. They grow the same great staples–sugar and cotton. Between the citizens of each exists the most cordial social and commercial intercourse. Red river and the Sabine form common highways for the transportation of their produce to the markets of the world. Texas affords to the commerce of Louisiana a large portion of her products, and in exchange the banks of New Orleans furnish Texas with her only paper circulating medium. Louisiana supplies to Texas a market for her surplus wheat, grain and stock; both States have large areas of fertile, uncultivated lands, peculiarly adapted to slave labor; and they are both so deeply interested in African slavery that it may be said to be absolutely necessary to their existence, and is the keystone to the arch of their prosperity.