Roberts, Oran Milo

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Oran Milo Roberts
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    South
    Origins
    Slave State
    Education
    Other
    Other Education
    University of Alabama
    Occupation
    Politician
    Military
    Attorney or Judge
    Educator
    Relation to Slavery
    Slaveholder
    Political Parties
    Democratic
    Other Affiliations
    Fire-Eaters (Secessionists)
    Government
    Governor
    State legislature
    State supreme court
    Military
    Confederate Army

    Oran Milo Roberts (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    Supporting southern unity against "freesoil aggression" (Bailey, p. 70), Roberts aligned himself in the 1850s with states' rights Democrats against more nationally minded Texans who identified with Sam Houston. Though not counted among Texas's fire-eaters, he apparently became convinced by 1860 that the election of a Republican president would warrant southern independence. Accordingly, as Abraham Lincoln's victory became apparent, Associate Justice Roberts began to plot strategy with similarly inclined politicians and made a much-publicized speech in Austin supporting secession. Now governor, Houston opposed precipitate action, so Roberts and his allies issued their own unsanctioned call for a secession convention. Gathering in late January 1861, the delegates chose Roberts convention president by acclamation. Roberts appointed a committee on public safety, which arranged for volunteer forces to seize federal property, evict U.S. soldiers from the state, and raise troops. After the electorate endorsed the convention's secession ordinance, the body deposed Houston because the venerable governor refused to swear allegiance to the Confederacy. Roberts had wished secession to be an orderly process and afterward made much of its constitutional justifications, but he never shrank from declaring that its essential object was to perpetuate the enslavement of an "inferior" race. Not a planter himself, neither was Roberts disinterested. He owned eight slaves in 1860.
    Patrick G. Williams, "Roberts, Oran Milo," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/05/05-00662.html.
    Chicago Style Entry Link
    view record
    Buenger, Walter L. Secession and the Union in Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984. view record
    How to Cite This Page: "Roberts, Oran Milo," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/12349.