[Texas Broadside — Civil War] | An exceedingly scarce broadside

[Texas Broadside — Civil War]

To the People of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri, and the Allied Indian Nations. Marshall, Texas: 18th August 1863

Printed broadside (415 x 325 mm). 65 lines, including five line header, and signed in print at the bottom: "Tho. O. Moore, Governor of Louisiana | Harris Flanagan, Governor of Arkansas | F. R. Lubbock, Governor of the State of Texas | Thos. C. Reynolds, Governor of the State of Missouri." Unobtrusive creasing, previously folded, edges just fraying, light spotting.

An exceedingly scarce address from the rebel governors of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri

After the successful efforts of the Union Army in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, the western Confederate States were cut off from the eastern Confederacy in July 1863 ("We will not attempt to disguise the change in our position by the fall of our stronghold on the Mississippi River. Interrupting communication between the two sections of the Confederacy, it throws each mainly on its own resources"). Control of this key transportation artery was a major victory in Union efforts toward economic strangulation of the Confederate states. 

This broadside was issued following the second Marshall Conference by the Confederate Governors of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri with the aim to reunite and give confidence to the Western states ("We now are self-dependent, but also self-sustaining... We address you in the true language of firm confidence in the final triumph of our cause, concealing nothing of our perils, exaggerating nothing of our hope").

Marshall, Texas was an important seat of power for the Western Confederacy. In addition to hosting three strategic conferences from 1861 to 1865, it was the site of Missouri Governor Thomas C. Reynold's fugitive state government, which split from the state capitol at Jefferson City in July 1861, before putting down roots in Marshall in late 1863. 

We can locate only one other copy of this broadside on the market, from a 1964 catalogue by Texas bookseller C. Dorman David, where it was described as potentially "the only existing copy." Parish and Willingham, Jr. cite two institutional copies—at Yale University, and the University of Texas at Austin. 

REFERENCE

Confederate Imprints, 5991