WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1860
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APPOINTMENT OF A. B. NORTON AS ADJUTANT GENERAL, APRIL 6, 1860 1 [The Commission is here omitted.] 1Docmnents under the Great Seal; also Execzitive Reco1·ds, 1859-1861, p. 83, Texas State Library. Anthony Bannon Norton was born in Ohio and was educated at Kenyon College, having as schoolmates Rutherford B. Hays, David S. Davis, Guy M. Bryan, Forbes Britton, and a score of other men whose names are well known in the pages of history. After leaving college, Norton read law with Thomas McGiffen and John L. Gow, of Washington, Pennsylvania, and was admitted to the bar at Portsmouth, Ohio. He practiced his pro- fession in central Ohio, and southwest Texas before the Civil War. The ' exact date of his arrival in Texas has not been ascertained, but he was here by the middle of 1855. In early life Norton was an ardent Whig, and edited Whig newspapers at Washington, Mt. Vernon, and at Columbus, Ohio. Before he was twenty-one, he was a delegate to a Whig conven- tion, and from that time he was a delegate to every convention the Whigs held. In 1844, he impulsively vowed not to cut his hair or shave his beard until Henry Clay became President of the United States, and for nearly fifty years he kept this vow. This stubborn resolve rendered him a unique, and, in old age, a picturesque figure with his long flowing white hair and beard. Soon after his arrival in Texas he began the publication of The Intelli- gencer (Austin), and later, The Chief, at Fort Worth. He was a prolific contributor to various magazines and journals. After the Civil War, he published The Union Intelligencer, at Jefferson, until his press was destroyed by a mob, and he himself had to take to the thickets of Van Zandt County for personal safety. Three times he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives, first in 1857, when he sat in that body with Hamilton P. Bee, John Henry Brown, Thomas J. Jennings, and others as well known'. He was reelected in 1859, and during a recess of the first session of this legislature, Gov- ernor Houston appointed him adjutant general. Norton was always a staunch Union man, and when Texas seceded from the Union, he seceded from Texas and went to live in Ohio. He remained in his native state until the war was over, but took no part in the .military side of the con- flict. While in Ohio, however, he worked constantly to alleviate the condi- tion of Texans who were held in northern prisons. After the war ·ended, he immediately returned to Texas, and was appointed, by the United States Government, collector of internal revenue for Texas, a position which he declined; then he was offered the position of collector of revenue _at Gal- veston, but he likewise declined that office. During the provisional govern- ment of the Reconstruction, however, he accepted the post of judge of a district embracing Dallas and surrounding counties, a district rabidly pi·o- southern. Practically every lawyer on the bench was bitterly opposed to Norton, but came to respect him, because of his fair decisions. From the time of his arrival in Texas, Norton was an admirer of Sam Houston. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Union Convention at
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