The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970 Page: 29
605 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Whig Party of Texas in Elections of 1848 and 1852
primarily from the census of 1850, gives a few more clues to the nature
of the party. For the state as a whole, it was possible to identify with
reasonable precision only eighty-nine of the men who served the
party in conventions, campaign efforts, and so on, in 1848 and/or
1852. Table 2 will indicate that there were thirty-three farmers (in-
cluding the two Whigs identified as "planters"), fifteen merchants,
sixteen lawyers, ten physicians, and fifteen who worked in nonagricul-
tural, often commercial-related occupations.0
Leadership was provided most importantly by those who attended
the Huntsville Convention in 1848, the Tyler, and Houston conven-
tions of 1852, and/or the national convention of 1852, or served as
electors. Of the twelve members of the Huntsville Convention who
can be identified, there were three merchants, four craftsmen or small
"manufacturers," three doctors, one lawyer, and one farmer. At the
Tyler Convention in 1852, sixteen delegates were farmers (thirteen
of whom were from Harrison County and generally of medium to large
property holdings), five were merchants, four were doctors, and one
was a lawyer. At Houston that year, the only delegates identified were
three merchants, one hotelkeeper, one lawyer, and two farmers. Of
twelve delegates to the national convention in 1852, eight were identi-
fied as lawyers, three as merchants, and one as a farmer. Eight of the
Whigs who were appointed or served as electors could be identified by
occupation-four lawyers, one doctor, one merchant, one farmer, and
one planter.
Conclusions from such a limited sample must necessarily be in the
nature of suggestions, especially since a sample of Democratic leader-
ship at the time might possibly yield similar results in certain areas.
For example, there appears to have been a high incidence of profes-
sional men among the Whigs, but lawyers and doctors were plentiful
in Texas around 1850."' Undoubtedly there was a large percentage of
lawyers among the leadership of the Democratic party as well. It does
appear, however, that for a state in which well over 50 percent of the
people were farmers, there was a significantly high rate of leadership
by men whose occupations were commercial, commercial-related, or
professional. Thus, both the geographical distribution of the vote and
a limited sample of the occupations of the leaders of the party point
toward greatest Whig support from commercial interests in major
S"Table 2 is compiled from the Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, Schedule 1-
Free Inhabitants and Schedule --Slave Inhabitants. Some parts of Schedule 2 were so
faded as to be illegible, and not every slaveholder could be identified with certainty.
t6Richardson, Texas, Lone Star State, 156.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970, periodical, 1970; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117147/m1/45/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.