WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1860
199
ter of Captain Burney Briggs, of Bath, Maine. She and Thomas Chubb had five children. Abbie, their oldest daughter married Thomas Jefferson Chambers; Thomas H. became a fishing-rod manufacturer, of Alston, Massachusetts; Cecelia married HarrY. Duble, of Galveston; Julia E. never married; and William H. became a successful lawyer of Boston. Phoebe Briggs Chubb died in 1867, and in 1869, her husband married Martha A. Sturgis, the widow of a Federal o:.icer, who had remained at Galveston after the close of the war. They had no children. Chubb died at his sum- mer home at Post Hill, Vermont, on August 26, 1890. See Lewis Publish- ing Company (publishers), History of Texas and Biographical Histol'y of the Cities of Houston and Galveston (1895), 331-335; Galveston News, August 28, 1890; Smt Antonio Ex1n·ess, August 30, 1890.
To THOMAS L. RossERl
Austin, Texas, Nov. 17, 1860.
Mr. Thomas L. Rosser Dear Sir: Your letter of the 5th tendering your services in the event of the secession of the Southern States, or a dissolu- tion of the Union, has been received. Much as excitement has wrought upon the public mind, I cannot for a moment entertain the belief that any cause for secession or disunion exists, or that the masses of the people would be willing to precipitate the country into all the horrors of revolution and civil war. If madness and fanaticism should so far prevail as to bring about this disastrous state of affairs, no human being could calculate the injury that would be in- flicted upon mankind. Anarchy and confusion would first ensue, then monarchy, with all its attendant train of evils: Rapine, plunder, and devastation would follow in its footsteps. Brother would be in arms against brother, and besides servile insur- rection, the terrible scenes of the Faubourg St. Antoine which crushed the liberties of the French Republic beneath a tyrant's foot, would be re-enacted. There would then be but two parties struggling for the uppermost, and both equally bent upon build- ing up despotic power upon the ruins of the people's freedom. Such a picture should not be coolly contemplated, but upon the contrary, we should look to the Constitution as the Paladium of our rights, and to the Union as the main pillar in the temple of our independence. Under the wise provisions of the one we hold our dearest rights and enjoy our chiefest blessings; and with the maintenance of the other their preservation is involved.
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