Lone Star

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  This was logical, a reasonable outgrowth, because apparently America had been operating under a form of social Darwinism for some time. It no longer seemed either feasible or reasonable for a handful of intelligent, highly motivated men to shape, or even direct, public affairs. At any rate, there was a mass desertion of public service by the old-new rich. If three out of four of the new financial or industrial elite came from old colonial families, all disappeared into the economic whirlpool. The age of the coal or steel senator, manipulated by money interests, was at hand. The power of northern America was increasing by quantum leaps, while the loss of social values was equally profound, long before the existing situation was rationalized into the new Republican Party.

  The changes in the North were also erasing state boundaries. There was a tendency among immigrants from Europe, whether Irish or German, to insist on being Americans, not citizens of Illinois or New York, and this had its influence. But industrialism and the tying-in of the Midwest with the North economically was a greater factor in changing the view of sovereign states to one of a unitary nation. The emerging, classless, amorphous, silk-stockinged new elite in the North was largely without ethic, and thus without responsibility, but it did have clear economic vision: they looked upon the United States not as an alliance of regions but as a potential market. The industrial leadership's role in forging national laws and destroying state powers over business and industry was to be immensely greater in the 19th century than the efforts of all the reformers and advocates of Presidential power combined.

  The life, and the role, of the Texas planter was light-years removed from that of the Northern businessman and from the existence of the subsistence farmer who lived beside him. The planters had gone a long way to forging Texas in the old, or 18th-century, American image.

  By the time Texas became a state, "planting" was becoming less and less a business enterprise and a road to wealth, and more and more a genuine way of life. Cotton planting, despite falling prices in the 1850s, was still profitable. But the evidence indicates that many successful men in other lines, such as law or medicine, deliberately bought plantations and slaves at an outlay that could hardly be remunerative for years. Even in bad years, the prices paid for field Negroes constantly rose. Most successful men aspired to be planters, for the same reasons that English merchants of the 18th century purchased landed estates at prohibitive prices—eighteen or more times annual rents. The ownership of Negroes, with its implied and actual removal from trade or labor, imparted status. It was impossible for a man to pose as a landed gentleman without slaves.

  Contrary to popular opinion, even a large number of European immigrants who settled in or bordering the Anglo heartland by 1860 had purchased blacks.

  Owning slaves, however, did not make a man a planter. The title belonged only to families who had enough black capital to justify the expense of a white overseer—usually considered to be twenty or more Negroes. The planter, who never called himself a farmer, was thus completely removed from direct participation in his enterprise; he was a member of an owning, directing, semi-leisure class. He gave orders to his overseer, or rode past his fields; he rarely entered them except for inspections.

  The vast majority of Texans owned no slaves, although they were farmers. More than half of the actual slaveholders owned five or less. These men supervised their own slaves, and frequently worked in the fields beside them. Although some thousands of yeoman farmers owned between one and twenty Negroes, the true planting class was extremely small. It numbered about two thousand families. Of these, only fifty-four held one hundred or more slaves. Since a good field hand could be rented out for $200 to $300 per year, or was expected to produce eight bales of cotton, these families were relatively quite rich. And since a healthy field hand cost as much as $2,000 in Texas, and a "plow boy" almost as much, the larger planters held an enormous money investment in their way of life. In these years the greatest Texas planters were very rich, even by Northern money standards. This was not unnoticed, or unresented, in the North and West.

  During this period, there was a continual importation of Negroes from the older states, particularly those of the upper South, where the plantation economy was phasing out. Importation from Africa or the Indies was illegal. However, dealers in Galveston and Houston, on the coast, were always able to have slaves of all ages and both sexes in stock. The mayor of Galveston himself supervised a slave auction at least once a week. The supply never quite caught up with the demand. The common supposition that Texas, or the Gulf South, was or would soon have abandoned slavery for economic reasons does not bear out. Between 1850 and 1860, the census years, the slave population of Texas increased 213.8 percent. The white population, in these same years, rose at a rate of approximately 177 percent.

  In the old Brazos-Colorado colony and in much of east Texas, the black people greatly outnumbered the white. Only at the plateau line, in central Texas, did the countryside become completely white. And slavery was encroaching westward; it would have reached the Dallas-Sherman line in a few years, as soon as it was realized the black prairie soils would grow cotton as efficiently as coastal muck.

  Freed from work, if not from worry, by his slaves, the planter had both the time and inclination to be influential in the state. As an obviously wealthy and successful man, he was given at least a grudging due and deference. Almost every true planter enjoyed considerable influence in his own area or county. Lesser men consulted him on political or business affairs; his choice for sheriff or commissioner was closely watched. He performed the only true social life in the county, and he set the dominant social standards other families looked up to. The greatest planters were known throughout the state, and some had influence in Washington.

  In his own society, the Texas planter was neither passé nor phasing out; if he had suffered the general loss of ethic and rationalism the whole century was heir to, he was still vigorous and possessed of high morale. He had not succumbed to the funks of the Northern landed class, who were increasingly taking refuge in pure money power. Significantly, the planters had little true money power; their influence was based on deference and the fact they filled a social vacuum at the top. Many planters dabbled in mercantile enterprises and investments on the side, and they were completely allied with the practitioners of the law. Most judges were planters; and many planters, with no intention of serving at the bar, read law. Lawyer, clergyman, doctor, and—a tradition that never saw birth in the North—soldier were the genteel occupations; at the base of all these, around which they revolved, was the landed slave estate.

  The mark of the planter class was not its wealth as such but its removal from labor and economic activities. This was a tradition carried unbroken from the English squirearchy of the past, as was the tradition of concern with public affairs. Also, a significant number of planter families were Episcopalian, in a Trans-Appalachian West where the mass of farmers had deserted the Reformation churches for fundamentalism.

  Although there was ample evidence of class conflict in the South, particularly in the mountain states, it is difficult to uncover this in Texas. The biggest reason was that Texas was new country, with millions of acres of undeveloped lands. A family that found itself stifled or encroached upon by burgeoning planters in the east could move easily up the rivers toward the west. The small farmers thus congregated in their own belts beyond the planter coast; they did not yet really impinge upon each other. The dirt farmer could and did resent the planters' prosperity and social arrogance. But although the planters strongly influenced state politics, they did not, in this era, deny the poorer whites anything to which they considered themselves entitled. The small farmer was as violently opposed to direct taxation on his acres, for any social purpose, as was the conservative, constitutionalist planter on his estate.

  Nothing like a landlord-tenant, noble-serf, or employer-employee relationship existed. The aristo-democracy of Texas worked well, because every citizen was, or had the potentiality to be, a freeh
older. This system, however, confused not only some later Americans, but contemporary European immigrants of socialistic views. Some Germans in San Antonio went about nailing up placards condemning the "oppressor class" while Anglos read these with bewilderment. It was, of course, impossible for any Texas white to identify with "niggers"; many Europeans, however, were too recently removed from serfdom. It was very easy for newcomers, unfamiliar with American society, to equate cotton planters with cotton barons.

  The sweat of his Negro chattels allowed the planter to live better than anyone in Texas; the life of plantation whites was a different world from the disorder and labor of the average dog-run. Although a feature of early Anglo-Texas was that all classes, planter with slaves and free farmer alike, lived in hastily thrown-up log cabins, many of the planters were making incomes of $5,000 or more while the yeoman had a surplus of only a few bags of corn. Immediately after San Jacinto, some of Austin's Old Three Hundred began erecting impressive houses. These dwellings were built of walnut, pine, cedar, or cypress planks, and in a few cases out of brick. Texas plantation houses were similar to, but did not follow exactly, the Greek revival architecture of the Mississippi delta. They were generally less large and imposing, and had simpler lines; this was probably due to the influence of the ever-present frontier. But they were sturdy and well built, with large and airy rooms, set into broad lawns or natural shrubbery. Most plantation houses had extended porches, or galleries, some surrounding the house. Many were fully carpeted, with decorated ceilings. Mirrors and chandeliers were shipped in from Europe, and marble for fireplaces was brought from Italy. Furniture, of walnut or other woods, was usually locally made, or imported from the United States; it was simply and beautifully made. Very few Texas country houses showed evidences of florid, baroque, or rococo styles; they did have lines that later builders often sought to imitate. The Varner Plantation House, built on the Brazos in 1836, Wyalucing, erected by Beverly Holcomb at Marshall in 1850, and the McNeel House, in Brazoria County, were outstanding examples of important family seats.

  From these houses planters looked after their operations, almost always from a room called the "office." Here business agents were consulted, and overseers were given their orders. The "office" much more resembled a library or study than a modern business room; in fact, those Texans who possessed libraries invariably called them offices.

  Not far from the main or Big House were the overseer's little house, and the slave cabins, usually in a row. There were no bars on the cabins, but occasionally bars on the kitchen of the big house, to prevent food filching by hungry blacks. The overseer sometimes ate with the planter, but never slept in the big house. House slaves worked in the kitchens and in the plantation house, but an unwritten protocol required them never to sit down while inside. Intricate codes of conduct, between slave and master, overseer and owner, and even slave and poor white, were already far advanced. Since there were codes, there was none of the social unease that frequently attended the relationship between servant and master in the North.

  The traveler William Bollaert, who was familiar with the homes of the English aristocracy, left this impression of a day in the life of the leisure class at Galveston during the Republic:

  About sunrise prudent and judicious people will arise, prepare their toilette, clad themselves lightly, walk or work in the gardens, then ride or bathe on the seashore. . . .

  A small bell is now rung when all take their places at the breakfast table—the ladies at the top. We all appear to suffer a little langor, the air is sultry . . . we get this meal which is a most excellent dejuener [sic] a la fourchette—retire, light the gentle Havana, discuss the politics of the day . . . then those who have business attend to it. Idlers may return to their rooms, read—and these idlers and visitors read a great deal—Bulwer's last novel of Zanona is here, this is a great favorite—then, before dinner, billiards or ninepins may be played. . . .

  We congregate on the Verandah—impart to each other news etc—probably take an iced mint-julep—the ice comes from U. States—a glass of Madera [sic] and bitters etc. etc. . . .

  Towards 4 or 5 o'clock pairties [sic] are made to go fishing on the beach . . . or a gallop on the prairie till dark . . . it is generally a tea supper—a quiet smoke on the Verandah—long chats—then each one off to some evening party or other—but it does not require much pursuasion [sic] to sit for an hour or two in the cool of the evening, sup a mint julep—touch a guitar and sing the song most loved.

  The description fits the life of almost any landed leisure class, from the country houses of England to the haciendas of Mexico or Peru. Some historians have claimed that this manner of life was well on its way to giving birth to a genuine indigenous culture. This is doubtful, even though the links to the dominant American puritanism were fast eroding away; the English gentry, with centuries-longer existence, failed to produce a genuine culture. The American planter was a recognizable reflection of his British cousin, in a completely rural atmosphere without the civilizing effect of London. In another generation or two the Texas planter might have become a patron of the arts, but this would not have replaced his preoccupation with his hounds. It was not incumbent upon a leisure class to create art, and the planter had visible business-capitalist origins, despite his movement in search of aristocracy.

  Yet this life of Grecian symmetry, or monumental idleness, was producing intimations of an American culture quite different from the dominant puritanism of both the North and the South. A studied languor replaced the furious display of energy the middle class considered proper. Many planters worked at their businesses, and worked quite hard, but the trick was to pretend not to. Gentlemen did not sweat. Planters were not frugal or thrifty. Their tables carried enormous varieties of meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, hot breads, cakes, preserves, and jellies, as a facet of the code of hospitality. It was not unusual for a planter to seat forty people at lunch. He imported excellent boots and fine firearms from London, and wines and liquors from the Continent.

  The planters, as a class, were not "moral" in the puritanical sense, as the farmer and tradesman tried to be. Planters drank, smoked, gambled, cursed, loved a horse race; they brooked no insults, either direct or subtly implied. There were dark corners in their sex lives that did not meet the Victorian codes. But the planter lived by a stern ethic, or was supposed to: he was gracious, hospitable, and courageous, decent rather than frigidly moral. He did not lie, cheat, or steal; he was considerate to "inferiors," and his womenfolk were always "ladies." On all these recognizable aristocratic manifestations the planters built an imposing image, both public and personal. It permeated the entire Texas frontier by 1861, because, as one historian rather sourly noted, enough of it was true.

  Hundreds of miles from the lower Brazos where the plantation houses stood, mothers in dog-runs and sod shanties begged their frontiersmen sons to "act like Southern gentlemen." On the edge of nowhere, the Anglo-Celt farmer who had neither the inclination nor wherewithal to be hospitable to strangers felt called upon to ask passersby in for meals. On the frontier that eventually stretched from Brownsville to Calgary, many men learned unhappily that pistol-hung Texans of non-gentry background had somehow acquired a sense of honor that was better not scoffed at or impugned. In Texas, the influences of the planter class penetrated far beyond the falls of the Colorado. They sank into the far frontier and created a certain, lasting confusion in the Texas frontiersman's social patterns. He emerged part surly borderer, part puritan democrat, part normal Westerner, but with the traditions of the Southern gentleman seeded ineradicably in some corner of his soul. He could slip from one role to the other unconsciously, confusing everyone but himself. If the wheat farmers of Kansas evolved with certain differences from the corn hoers of Texas, it was because Kansas never had a planter class.

  The inherent liberalism of the planter was not transmitted because it was the liberalism of social confidence, never that of conformity or popular prejudice. The old saying—anyone could e
nter through the planter's door, while the middle classes made inferiors and "niggers" go round back—had a biting truth. The planter, like the early Presidents from the same class, never cared what worse-disposed men wanted or believed; he deliberately gave each man his due, according to his worth or attainments. Negroes were slaves, and were treated like slaves—but the planter was more disposed to regard blacks as human beings than poor whites. He could value a good Negro above a poor white man, something the more tribal breeds of Americans never dared do. He demonstrably, in this era, took Jews and European Catholics on their personal merits; the only Jewish United States Senators in the 19th century were elected from the South. This liberalism, however, was regarded both by Northern businessmen and Southern poor whites as arrogance. The American concept of democracy, in the 19th century, was moving rapidly in the direction of mass conformity and the enforcement of popular prejudices.