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Sixteen years after Texas joined the union, the American Civil War erupted. Gov. Sam Houston, urging Texans to stay aloof or reestablish a neutral republic, was driven from office. Texas cast its lot with the doomed
southerners, reaping devastation and economic collapse as did all Confederate states. But two events fixed Texas and Texans as somehow different in the nation's eyes. First, Texas troops on Texas soil won the final
battle of the Civil War, not knowing the South had capitulated a month earlier. Second, returning Texans found a population explosion of wild longhorns, sparking the great cattle drives that became American legends. The
Confederate flag flown in Texas was the South's first national emblem, "The Stars and Bars" of the Confederate States of America, although the later X-crossed Confederate battle flag is better known today.
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