Letter, José Antonio Navarro to Samuel Maverick, July 21, 1859.

Though José Antonio Navarro championed the rights of Tejanos, including mixed race citizens, he was also a slave owner, as his father had been before him. Yet, while all four of his sons served in the Confederate army, Navarro supported unionism. He remarked in a letter to Samuel Maverick in 1859 before the start of the Civil War: I do not wish to be, nor shall I ever be found among the number of those extreemist [sic] demagogues, who under the holy name of Democracy and by means of tricks, wish to subject the intelligent people of Texas to their whims and there by destroy the meritorious men of the country, instigating disunion which would be the greatest calamity to our great, glorious and ever to be cherished American Union.