Lone Star

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  The impeachment failed to carry by one vote, and only because certain cooler Republican heads in business and finance, outside the Congress, prevailed. The form of Presidential government thus survived, and the concept of a tribunate of the people, which Jackson began and Lincoln fostered, could await a stronger man.

  The consensus of most historians, North and South, is that this Congressional uprising was a national disaster.

  Delegates to a state constitutional convention, to rewrite the Texas instrument in accord with Northern prejudices, were elected in early 1868. This convention met at Austin in June. So complete was the political revolution that only six men who had sat in the convention of 1866 came to Austin in 1868.

  The Republican slates of delegates won, 44,689 to 11,440. A Democratically inspired campaign to invalidate the elections by sitting them out—a majority of registered voters had to cast ballots—barely failed. The Democratic slogan was "Better Yankee than Nigger Rule," but just enough whites voted to legalize the result.

  The new constitution emerged in conformance with prevailing Republican thought: it strongly reflected centralization and the aspirations of the national, if not the Texas, middle classes. The governor was given a four-year term, and the power of appointing all top state officials, including the justices of the state courts. County courts were abolished. Political offices were thus made stronger, and power largely removed from local influences, especially the influence of the planter class. Another important innovation was a centralized state public school system, funded by public land sales, a poll tax, and from the general revenue. Until this time, Texas had not had statewide public schools.

  Unrestricted Negro suffrage was guaranteed by a clause prohibiting disenfranchisement by "race, color, or former condition of servitude." But only those whites already barred from voting by the Fourteenth Amendment were disenfranchised.

  Over-all, the new constitution was a Conservative Republican, rather than a Radical, document. Because of this, there was a violent split in the Republican ranks. Although the Conservatives, under A. J. Hamilton and E. M. Pease, prevailed, only 45 members of the convention signed the finished instrument in February 1869.

  The Radicals, under E. J. Davis and Morgan Hamilton (A. J. Hamilton's brother), bolted the convention toward the end. Their policies were strikingly different. Radicals wanted to disenfranchise all Confederates and to divide Texas into three new states, permitted under the original terms of annexation.

  Both factions carried their positions to Washington, the seat of all real power. General J. J. Reynolds, the new military chief who replaced Griffin when that officer succumbed to yellow fever on the coast, sided strongly with Jack Hamilton. He expressed strong Conservative Republican views, arguing that only white men should serve as registrars, and opposed division of the state. He chided the Radicals for acting like children in bolting, and Radical chieftains were able to prevent their rump convention from asking for his removal by only a single vote.

  History, however, is a series of accidents. Reynolds had a secret wish to cap his career by entering the United States Senate. Preferring the mild Texas climate and seeing a chance of preferment in his grasp, he had his "secret" desire carried to Conservative leader A. J. Hamilton. Hamilton officially let it be known that the Republicans could find a stronger man. What he said privately about this proposition threw the General into a white-faced fury.

  Jack Hamilton was understandably reluctant to promise one of the most hated men in Texas a Senate seat. But his refusal set the stage for tragedy.

  Elections now were scheduled to select the new state government that would bring Texas back into the Union for the third time. E. M. Pease had been appointed provisional civil governor by General Sheridan in New Orleans, but Pease was to hold office only until the end of Reconstruction. Elisha Pease was a moderate, a former Texas governor who was more Whig than either Democrat or Republican, and so far as he could, served the state well. He had very little real power, as events soon showed.

  At the start of 1869, it appeared that the Conservative Republicans would win the elections and organize the state. The majority of these men were longtime residents; they were Southerners with basic Unionist, rather than Secessionist, views. In fact, both the Conservatives and the Democrats considered fusion with each other, but the idea failed. The scars on the Blue and the Gray were still too new for full cooperation, though little real hatred separated the two.

  The Conservatives had the support of most prominent men, and the backing of every important newspaper in Texas.

  The Radical faction, meanwhile, was a minority within a minority, and were detested not only by A. J. Hamilton's group but by almost every white person in the state. When they organized early in 1869, and presented their own candidates for office—E. J. Davis for governor; J. W. Flanagan, lieutenant governor; Jacob Kuechler, land commissioner; and George Honey, treasurer—it seemed they had no chance. They did not even put up their own ticket by choice, but because the Conservatives would no longer tolerate them within the regular Republican Party.

  The Radical leaders were Texas residents, though they were supported by people arrived out of the North, such as Freedmen's Bureau officials, Army officers, and the like. However, the whole faction began to get a new name, Carpetbaggers, a cynical allusion to the fact that many Yankees came South with their entire worldly possessions in a traveling case. The term, unfair in Texas as compared with other Southern states, clung.

  The Radicals, both native Scalawags and Carpetbaggers, were a remarkable band of political buccaneers. Their ideology, beyond Unionism, was primarily a dislike for the old Southern order and a general desire to remake Texas more in the order of a Northern state. In this they were "moderns," but their main cement was a hunger for political office. They had no real uniformity. E. J. Davis, discharged as a Union brigadier, was impeccably honest in money matters; most of his closest cronies were not. The genuine idealists among the Radicals were few—Morgan Hamilton, A. J.'s brother, was a Southern gentleman among thieves.

  These potential pirates always realized their best friends were in the Northern Congress. That men such as Charles Sumner tolerated them and even supported them can be laid only to the fact that the Radical program lay nearer than the Conservative one to the hearts of Northern politicos. Jack Hamilton was as appalled as Throckmorton at the social revolution Reconstruction intended, and equally determined to restore the society of the state.

  This Northern bias in their favor was a tremendous asset. Political history turned upon it, and upon the fact that J. J. Reynolds, an Army general, had the ear and confidence of U. S. Grant, who had just been elected overwhelmingly as President of the United States.

  Reynolds switched sides. In a state still under military occupation, this was decisive. During the summer of 1869, the Army systematically stripped all Hamilton men of political offices, patronage, and favors. The vacant offices were filled with Davis men. With the connivance of the Army, Davis made an alliance with G. T. Ruby, state president of the Union League, a secret society whose members had come South to educate the Negroes to vote Radical Republican. Between the Union League and the Army, the freedmen were dragooned and told that A. J. Hamilton intended to re-enslave them. In this way, the Davis Radicals began to gain control of the powerful black vote.

  Jack Hamilton, who considered himself a loyal Republican, protested vigorously to Washington. General Reynolds, however, had the final word. He wrote President Grant on September 4, 1869 that the election of A. J. Hamilton meant a "restoration of Confederate government in Texas" and that the only "real Republican" party in the state was led by Davis. Grant, who seems to have been a basically honest man presiding over a world he did not understand, listened to the General and to his Party Radicals in the North. He turned the full power of the Federal government behind Davis.

  Pease, the puppet provisional governor, was so nauseated he immediately resigned. He wrote Grant bitterly in his letter of resignation
that "eight-tenths of all educated [a euphemism for "white"] Republicans" favored Hamilton, and that Davis represented a "carpetbagger and Negro Supremacy party."

  Davis retorted that the Conservatives had "sold out to the rebels." Grant's advisers lined up even more strongly behind him.

  The real tragedy of the Texas election of 1869 was not the imposition of Carpetbagger rule, but the fact that to impose it the entire democratic political process was perverted. Less damage would have been done had the Army simply continued martial rule. There had been no organized opposition when the Reconstruction Acts were forced upon the South. Despite great bitterness, Southern leaders everywhere counseled meekness. Former Confederate generals from Beauregard to Throckmorton indicated that Southerners were "a conquered people"—the actual words most commonly used—and must submit. There was a belief that the American political process would eventually be restored.

  The problem was that Radical rule in Texas could only be imposed by bayonets or wholesale chicanery and fraud. United States authorities, unable to countenance the first, chose the second. Such was the feeling of the day.

  Reynolds appointed only Davis men as voting registrars on October 1, 1869. These officials were given almost limitless powers. Their abuses—if this were to be any kind of representative election—were also without limit. Although it was prohibited in the constitution, men who had volunteered for Confederate service were rejected. Further, Texans who were known Unionists and had suffered for it were also rejected and forbidden to register—if it was known that they were Hamilton men. This included thousands of men who had registered freely the previous year. Then, after registration ended, some thousands of names were arbitrarily stricken from the rolls. In some cases there seems to have been no political reason, merely personal prejudice.

  The election, held between November 30 and December 3, 1869, was supervised by Davis Radicals, backed fully by the Army. Military detachments stood at every polling place; at each an Army officer acted as election official. The polling was a farce, conducted in an air of white resignation and gloom.

  Negroes, some in slave rags, were herded to the polls. Led by Radical white men, they came singing, "As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free." They were voted—no Negro was refused the right, on any grounds.

  Democrats had put up Hamilton Stuart, editor of the Galveston Civilian. They knew he could not win; also, most Democrats feared that if he did, the North would impose full martial law. Few Democrats even attempted to vote. Most whites tried to vote for Jack Hamilton, the Conservative Republican.

  The Army had been ordered to close the polls in any place where trouble occurred. Significantly, this occurred only in heavily white counties, where Army officers apparently were hoping for reasons to stop the voting on any pretext. If a voter found his name stricken and argued the fact, the polls were immediately closed down. This cut the Hamilton vote.

  In Navarro County, the registrar realized a heavy Hamilton majority was certain to be cast. This man took the registration lists and departed before the election; no votes from Navarro were ever counted. In Milam County, the polls opened, but the results were never reported in; they were not even counted. In Hill County, the ballots were removed to another jurisdiction, and counted by a single official, a Davis man. He reported a huge Davis majority, despite the fact that the vote certainly went the other way.

  Less than one-half the registered white voters in Texas, in these circumstances, were able to cast a ballot.

  There was no canvass, nor were the ballots ever made public. General Reynolds certified to President Grant that Davis had been elected, by a vote of 39,901 to 39,092. Despite the fact that affidavits charging fraud were sworn before magistrates all over the state, and even a number of U.S. Army officers protested to Reynolds about this farce, Reynolds certified the entire Radical ticket, and Grant refused to investigate.

  Hamilton was counted out. Despite all handicaps, the evidence is overwhelming that he got almost the entire white vote. The returns on the ratification of the new state constitution were perhaps an indication. This was a Conservative document, which the Radicals detested. It carried, 72,466 to 4,928.

  Led by E. M. Pease, a dozen Republicans of known integrity petitioned Washington. Documented cases of serious fraud, presented to Congress and the President, were ignored.

  In an atmosphere reeking of Spanish cigars and sour Bourbon whiskey, the Radicals congregated in the capitol at Austin. General Reynolds eased the new regime on its way. On January 8, 1870, by general order, he appointed the officials-elect to office before their constitutional terms began. He convened the new twelfth legislature on February 8. Before convening it, he took the unusual step of appointing Major B. Rush Plumley speaker of the Texas House.

  The twelfth legislature contained a Radical majority. Seventeen Radicals, seven Conservative Republicans, and six Democrats sat in the Senate; two of them were Negro. There were fifty Radicals, nineteen Conservatives, and twenty-one Democrats in the House. Eleven state representatives were black.

  Four Texas Congressmen had been elected. Three were Radicals; the fourth, who claimed to be a Democrat, was a discharged Union Army officer and Carpetbagger.

  The legislature routinely ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution without serious debate. J. W. Flanagan and Morgan Hamilton were elected to the U.S. Senate. On March 30, 1870, the President signed an act of Congress admitting the Texas delegation to sit in Washington. General Reynolds relinquished military authority to the Davis regime on April 16.

  The Davis crew, flamboyant and energetic, was not without ability and a certain political genius. They had smelled the wind's direction and correctly trimmed their sails. Now, they showed a remarkable amount of political inventiveness.

  Davis, who was born in Florida in 1827 and arrived in obscure circumstances in Texas in 1848 with his widowed mother, typified the rise of a new type of American officeholder. At some time he apparently read law, but no details are known. His main thrust in life was seeking office. In 1850 he gained the position of deputy customs collector of the Rio Grande. In 1853 he became a district attorney, and the year afterward, district court judge at Brownsville. He married the daughter of an army officer, and while in this post opted for the Union in 1861.

  He spent the war either in exile in Mexico, or fighting Rip Ford's cavalry along the Rio Grande. He was commissioned a colonel of cavalry, and discharged at San Antonio in 1865 as a U.S. brigadier. He had no reason to love Texans, nor they him. By 1866, he was a leader of the faction demanding disenfranchisement of ex-Confederates, division of the state, and Negro suffrage. Now, in 1870, E. J. Davis was governor of Texas.

  He was personally honest, and there were far worse Reconstruction governors in the Southern states. But Davis had some notions that bespoke a native ingenuity, and afterward, as a reaction, were to have long-lasting effects on his adopted state.

  The first considered action of the Davis administration was to extend its term of office. Under the 1869 constitution, elections for Congress were to be held again in 1870 and for state officers in 1871. Davis's legislature by majority vote postponed both till November 1872. The official excuse was to make local and Federal elections coincide; Davis privately mentioned that the people would not be sufficiently "reconstructed" before 1872.

  Morgan Hamilton, when he heard of this in Washington, choked on it. Probably, Hamilton had been sent to the capital to get him out of the way.

  Davis next proposed a number of bills, each of which was most unusual in the American 19th century. The first was called the Militia Bill. The title was innocent; all states had militia regulations. But the Texas law put all male citizens between eighteen and forty-five subject to military duty, under the personal command of the governor. Its startling provisions, beyond this, were: the governor was permitted to declare martial law in any Texas county, suspend the laws, and maintain this until the legislature convened; the governor coul
d assess the districts put under martial law for all costs of such operation, and also assess punishment of "offenders."

  Another radical bill was a provision for a State Police. This would consist of 200 men, under the command of the governor through the state adjutant general. The State Police would have the authority to operate anywhere—hitherto, law enforcement was limited to sheriffs and local constables, who could not cross county lines. The State Police was to have extraordinary powers, including an unconstitutional privilege of taking offenders from one county to another for trial, and of operating undercover, as secret agents. At this time, there was no such force in any American state.

  The Enabling Act enabled the governor to control patronage on a truly kingly scale. Under it he could appoint mayors, district attorneys, public weighers, and even city aldermen. It centralized power and patronage in the executive's hands as no American legislation ever had. Davis could and did appoint 8,538 state officials, earning $1,842,685 in salaries, and another 1,386 officers who were paid by fees.

  The Printing Bill provided an official public printer, a state journal, and provided that regional newspapers be designated to print the various required official notices. This in effect instantly created an "official" state press, subject to government control and influence.

  The terms "police state" and "propaganda machine" had not yet come into American English. The Davis Administration, in power in a state where nine-tenths of the white population detested it, was instinctively and logically doing what came naturally. It had not arrived in power through the democratic process; it could not be expected to behave democratically.

  These Radical bills passed the Texas House easily, where the Radical majority was absolute. But a deadlock over the Militia and Police Bills developed in the Senate. The thirteen Conservative Republican and Democratic state senators formed a solid opposition bloc; a tie vote emerged. The governor handled this first legislative crisis firmly.