The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 96, July 1992 - April, 1993 Page: 529
681 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Wheat Growers in the Cotton Confederacy
neighbors with unease. While much of Texas was dominated by Lower
Southerners, who grew cotton with slave labor, a majority of Collin
County settlers were Upper Southerners who cultivated grain or live-
stock without investing in human chattel. Texas in 1859 produced
431,463 bales of cotton, only sixteen of which came from Collin County.
At the same time, Collin's oat production was the greatest in the state,
its wheat crop was second only to adjacent Dallas County, and its wool
production was among the top o10 percent of Texas counties. Clearly,
many Collin County farmers, only a small fraction of whom owned
slaves, had little economic interest in perpetuating slavery.4
The unease of many whites was enhanced by the arrival in North
Texas of "fanatic preachers, preaching the antislavery question." These
were ministers of the Northern Methodist Episcopal Church who contin-
ued to preach against slavery in areas claimed by the Southern
Methodist Episcopal Church. North Texas was the only portion of the
state in which Northern Methodists organized; by 1859 they claimed
members in six counties, including Collin, where they were met with vio-
lent threats. The annual assembly of the Arkansas Conference of the
Northern Methodist Episcopal Church convened on March 11, 1859, in
Fannin County. One week earlier at Millwood in adjacent Collin County,
a meeting had condemned the Northern Methodists and elected a com-
mittee to prevent the teaching of abolitionism. Two Southern Methodist
ministers had been appointed to attend the nearby conference, and
their report led to the selection of fifty men to tell the Northern
Methodists to desist. This delegation, joined by several hundred others,
interrupted services, and their spokesman declared that violence would
ensue unless the Northern Methodists ceased to minister in North
Texas. The Northern Methodists adjourned the next day, and did not
convene again in Texas before the Civil War.5
' United States Bureau of the Census, Population of the United States in z86o; Compzled from the
Onginal Returns of the Ezghth Census (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864), v, vi,
xvi, xxxiii, 490-491; United States Bureau of the Census, Agriculture of the United States in z86o,
Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Of-
fice, 1864), xxx, xcili, xciv; Randolph B. Campbell and Richard G. Lowe, Wealth and Power in An-
tebellum Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1977), 14-15, 29; Terry G. Jordan,
'"The Imprint of the Upper and Lower South on Mid-Nineteenth Century Texas," Annals of the
Association of Amencan Geographers, LVII (Dec., 1967), 676-680; Buenger, Secession and the Unzon
in Texas, 16. Apparently many farmers in Collihn County sold a substantial portion of their excess
grain to Umted States Army posts on the frontier to the west. They certainly would not have wel-
comed disruption of this business relationship, and thus they would have been even more unwill-
ing to support secession.
5 David J. Edelman, "Autobiography of the [illegible]" (typescript, 1914, Archives Division,
University of North Texas Library, Denton), 24 (quotation); Wesley Norton, '"The Methodist
Episcopal Church and the Civil Disturbances in North Texas in 1859 and 1860," Southwestern
Hzstoncal Ouarterly, LXVIII (Jan., 1965), 323-328 (cited hereafter as SHQ); Charles Elliott, South-
Western Methodism: A History of the M. E. Church in the South-West from ,844 to 1864 (Cincinnati:
Poe & Hitchcock, 1868), 127-131, 137; Macum Phelan, A History of Early Methodism in Texas,
1817-1866 (Nashville: Cokesbury Press, 1924), 442-452.529
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 96, July 1992 - April, 1993, periodical, 1993; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101215/m1/599/: accessed May 13, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.