Career
A native of South Carolina, Murrah graduated from Brown University in 1848. He moved to Texas and opened a law practice in Marshall. He ran and was defeated for the U.S. Congress before winning the state gubernatorial race in 1863.
During the American Civil War, Murrah emphatically supported the Rebel cause, although he ended up in a controversy over the conscription of Texas militia troops into the Confederate army. Still, even after Robert E. Lee surrendered in 1865, he encouraged Texans to continue the revolution. Only when Union occupation forces were en route to Texas did Murrah flee with other Confederate leaders to Mexico. Lt. Governor Stockdale filled the vacant post, acting as governor for three months, until provisional governor Andrew J. Hamilton assumed office in August 1865. The trip was too much for his already fragile health, and in August 1865, he died in Monterrey, Mexico of tuberculosis. His grave is located in the Panteon Municipal of Monterrey, Mexico.
Read more about this topic: Pendleton Murrah
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)