Lone Star

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  Flanagan then wired certain friends in Austin to "withdraw." The game was up.

  Grant wired Davis also: ". . . The call [for troops] is not made in accordance with the Constitution of the United States . . . would it not be prudent, as well as right, to yield to the verdict of the people as expressed by their ballots?" As a Northern historian expressed it, Grant and the North were not prepared to refight the Civil War.

  Davis did not accede. Now, in Texas, a dangerous situation was brewing. Richard Coke, the Confederate veteran, conferred with men he knew and trusted about taking over the state government peaceably. These men were Generals Henry McCulloch and Hardeman; the sheriff of Travis County, Zimpleman; and Colonel John S. Ford. Coke wanted these former officers, who were local heroes, to try to control the public. He intended to be inaugurated; he intended the new legislature to convene, and he expected Davis to use force to prevent this. All the Texans agreed that Davis would try to use an outbreak of fighting as an excuse for Yankee intervention. They agreed to move quietly and peacefully. At this time, they did not know of Grant's wire to Davis.

  Acting quickly, armed citizens acting for Coke took possession of the legislative chambers in the Capitol building. They repelled an attempt of Radicals to enter by force. Police acting under Davis's orders and parties of armed Radicals gathered in the Capitol basement. Austin had divided into two armed camps, with the old and new governors, and both the fourteenth legislature and a rump of the old thirteenth claiming to be the legal regime.

  On January 15, groups of Negroes from the country further down the Colorado River entered Austin. Davis's Adjutant General armed these newcomers with rifles from the state arsenal.

  It appeared that bloodshed was inevitable.

  One Major Russell, from the staff of General Augur, commander of the U.S. Army Department of Texas, arrived in the capital. A rumor spread among Coke's people that Russell had told Davis the general had instructions from the President to declare Federal martial law. All believed that Davis intended to provoke violence. But despite some very delicate incidents, Coke kept control. His officers, who more and more resembled a convention of Confederate survivors, kept the populace quiet. At one point some Radicals, under a Carpetbagger Union officer named De Gress, aimed a cannon at the Capitol. But Coke's men had spiked it earlier, and hugely enjoyed the frustration of Davis's men.

  The Governor ordered out the local militia, called the Travis Rifles, only to see the company, surrounded by citizens led by Sheriff Zimpleman, go over to the other side. Davis apparently could not understand the changed temper of the North or realize that the great experiment in Texas was over. He telegraphed the President again, for troops.

  Grant did not deign to reply personally. His answer came through the Attorney General of the United States: ". . . Your right to the office of the Governor at this time is at least so doubtful, that he does not feel warranted in furnishing United States troops to aid you in holding further possession of it."

  Governor Davis now had the choice of starting a war to hold his office against impossible odds, with no help in prospect from his Northern friends, or of surrender. He felt that Grant had virtually ordered him to surrender. His organ, the Daily State Journal, expressed Radical feelings in a bitter sentence: "The courts are powerless; the government of the state has been forcibly usurped, and President Grant has backed the usurpation."

  From his office he could see the stacked arms of Texas militia—stacked against him. Old Rip Ford, tall, grim, still ruddy-faced and handsome at sixty, was marching toward the Capitol at the head of an armed, angry, but disciplined body of men. They were singing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" in a mighty roar.

  Davis surrendered. He vacated his offices on Monday, January 19, 1874. He did not present Coke with a key, but that did not stop the ebullient Texans. On the orders of a state senator from east Texas, the door was broken down, and Richard Coke went in. The secretary of state, a die-hard Unionist, was ousted from his desk.

  The militia paraded with music to the Capitol, where a salute of 102 guns was fired. The legislature passed a resolution thanking President U.S. Grant for his decision. Coke and his lieutenant governor, Hubbard, addressed a deliriously happy throng from the Capitol steps.

  The first phase of the Civil War in Texas was over. The next phase was to last at least a hundred years.

  Chapter 23

  THE RESTORATION

  He [President Grant] says he opposed the Fifteenth Amendment and thinks it was a mistake, that it had done the Negro no good, and had been a hindrance to the South, and by no means a political advantage to the North.

  ENTRY IN THE DIARY OF SECRETARY OF STATE HAMILTON FISH, DATED JANUARY 17, 1877

  IN January 1874, Richard Coke and his band of joyous Democrats at last had control of the never-again-quite-so-sovereign state of Texas. Their euphoria was to be short. They had inherited not the whirlwind but what the long storm had left behind. The state was ruined economically; only now had cotton production reached what it had been in 1860—500,000 bales. These losses could be restored. There was political, judicial, and social damage no one could repair.

  The next few years must be interpreted not according to later views but in the light of the foregoing fifteen years. Texans now began a long, detailed, and exhaustive program that was nothing short of a rebellion against government itself. If between 1874 and 1876 Texas turned its back on much of the 19th century, the great majority of Texans had seen little in the postwar world to admire. They had acquired an abiding prejudice against centralized government of the state and against the powers of government at any level. Government had done them nothing good.

  The state was disastrously in debt. The Carpetbaggers collected $4,0000,000 in taxes, but borrowed $3,000,000 more. Coke found current receipts in 1874 would cover only half the programmed expense. To make things worse, the national panic of 1873 now hit Texas hard. Texas could take one of two courses: try to prop up the present system by finding new funds, in a country where industry and commerce hardly existed and land prices were falling, or simply call a halt to it all.

  They chose to wield a radical knife.

  State expenditures were slashed, without mercy. Salaries were cut, the school funds stopped, although both measures caused considerable anguish. However, history had shown that compromise in such a program was fatal; expenditures could only be reduced if the frame of mind that produced them was changed.

  No way to reduce costs was ignored. The state prison system was made self-supporting, by leasing out convict labor to private employers. This caused hideous abuse, and doubled the convict death rate, and was finally abolished in 1883. But for some years money was saved. Pensions, to Revolution veterans, were no longer paid in money but in grants of public land. A hundred other economies were introduced. These economies not only began to balance the budget, they dismantled government as a side-effect. The state treasury was able to go on a cash basis in 1879. By this time, too, conditions had eased. Cotton production had grown rapidly, and cattle money was bringing gold and silver to the state.

  Public parsimony, however, was popular over-all. The basic reason was simple: Texas was an agrarian state, and now the government was again in the hands of farmers. However much small farmers believed in education, pensions, or adequate public salaries, the taxes fell on them and their land.

  While the legislature sliced away at costs, it took up other problems. Foremost was the restoration of law and order, followed by replacement of the constitution of 1869. The Texas Rangers were brought back; there would never again be any organization in Texas called a "state police." The Frontier Battalion was organized. Between 1874 and 1880, both on the Indian and Mexican borders, the Rangers had their great days and were a spectacular success. Both Indians and internal anarchy disappeared. Order was restored first, then law.

  The judiciary had to be dismantled. The terms of the Davis-appointed courts were closed. Oran M. Roberts became Chief Justice, presiding over a new
bench. Further, the legislature removed most of the Republican district judges around the state.

  Delegates to a constitutional convention assembled in 1875. Not one man who had written the constitution of 1869 sat in this delegation. The convention was composed almost entirely of old Texans: John Henry Brown, Sterling C. Robertson, son of the empresario, Rip Ford, John H. Reagan (ex–Postmaster General of the Confederacy), and a bevy of generals who had worn the gray. Of the ninety members, more than twenty had held high rank in the C.S.A. This was a restoration convention.

  There were forty-one farmers, twenty-nine lawyers, seventy-five Democrats, and fifteen Republicans, six of whom were Negro. Congressman W. P. McLean sounded the keynote of the day: "If future State Governments prove burdensome and onerous, it ought not to be the fault of this Convention."

  The document rewritten at this convention made it almost impossible for government in Texas to be burdensome or onerous in the future. It was a landowners' group, including forty members of the Grange. Its first act was to reduce its own per diem allowance to five dollars. Its second was to vote down a motion to have proceedings printed, because a public stenographer cost ten dollars a day. Then it proceeded to write what was to remain the fundamental law of Texas for the next one hundred years.

  This was an antigovernment instrument; too many Texans had seen what government could do, not for them but to them. It tore up previous frameworks, and its essential aim was to try to bind all state government within very tight confines. The bicameral legislature was continued—thirty-one senators and not more than 150 representatives—but the term of senators was reduced, requiring election every four years. Biennial sessions replaced the annual assemblies under the instrument of 1869. This was done, as one Texan said, not only to save money, "But the more the damn legislature meets, the more Goddamned bills and taxes it passes!"

  The dominant spirit was to allow the state government no real latitude to act. The powers of the legislature were much reduced. It could not incur a debt of more than $200,000, come what may. It could not impose taxes of more than fifty cents on the $100. Property could be taxed only in proportion to its value. The credit of the state was not to be lent, nor any appropriation made for private purpose—and "private" was interpreted in the Roman way. The legislature could appoint no office or commission lasting beyond two years. Finally, it had no powers to suspend habeas corpus, even under martial law.

  The executive was equally, or even more, curtailed. The terms of all state officers were set at two years, though no prohibition was made against reelection. Almost all state offices were made elective; thus the power of a governor to appoint an administration was denied. The Texas governor was made one of the weakest in the United States. He was denied authority over both state and local officials; he was made, in fact, a peer among equals. The lieutenant governor, who could call up legislation in the Senate, was to be henceforth a far more powerful man. On top of this, the constitution slashed the governor's salary by 20 percent.

  The governor was left awesome responsibilities but few powers, which ever afterward few of his constituents could really understand.

  Judgeships, for similar reasons, were made elective, including the bench of the supreme court. No judge who had to run for reelection regularly was expected to decide cases against the popular feeling, on some newfangled point of law.

  None of these changes was controversial; they were what the people wanted. One popular provision failed. This would have required a poll tax payment for voting rights. Another amendment, female suffrage, was hooted down. The real controversy in 1875 concerned the public schools. The convention went on record supporting these, but what actually emerged from committee was a compromise.

  Centralization of school supervision was abolished; the state system was destroyed in favor of local systems. Compulsory school attendance was also dropped. The revenues from a $1 poll tax, and some general revenue, was earmarked for public education—the amount was to be argued bitterly for years. The public school system and new university system, however, were endowed with a vast acreage of public lands, about 42,000,000 acres. The lands originally set aside for educational endowments, which had been in fertile north-central Texas, were now exchanged for sections in the arid, still unsettled west, which were still unappropriated domain. Here the school system suffered a great, immediate loss, but one which, ironically, was to be more than made right by future discoveries of petroleum. The tenor of this legislation also revealed what was to be a continuing pattern in Texas. Huge endowments were set aside for building funds, but very little was provided for annual maintenance of the system from tax monies.

  The state road system begun by the Radicals was also abolished. Personal service was resubstituted in lieu of road taxes. This was a regression, but railroads were made common carriers, following an example in other states. For many years, however, no regulation of railroads was enforced. The constitution of 1876 was in spirit and letter an instrument of the older, agrarian South, not that of an emerging industrial state. It was designed to protect the farmer and landowner, not Yankee-dominated banks and industries. Although nothing in the constitution was actually hostile to business or corporate enterprise—this came later, with the rise of Populism—in many ways it slowed and hampered industrialization and financial growth.

  The emergence of Texas into the modern world was presided over by farmers, and not by businessmen. Texas was a completely agricultural region, and Texans determinedly held on to their heritage. As one Texas historian wrote:

  All in all the constitution complied with public opinion quite faithfully. Biennial sessions of the legislature, low salaries, no registration requirement for voters, precinct voting, abolition of the road tax . . . a homestead exemption clause, guarantees of a low tax rate, a more economical school system, with schools under local control, a less expensive court system, popular election of officers—all these were popular measures with Texans in 1876. The constitution was a logical product of its era.

  Certain other things, which were included in, or grew out of this outlook, should be mentioned. The state immigration bureau, which brought new people west, and which all agreed did useful work, was abolished because of its operating expense. Farmers did not believe in tax-supported public works, if the taxes had to be levied directly on them. This was an attitude that was to last.

  Other measures eventually incorporated into Texas law grew out of this restoration, though the most severe restrictions placed on finance and industry came as a result of the long Greenback and farmers' revolts of the coming years. The banking codes, which had always been restrictive in Texas, prevented the establishment of branch banks with the exception of subsidiaries on military posts. This rule, together with the fact that in Texas no horse or homestead could be attached for private debt, nor any wage or salary garnisheed, gave farmers immense protection. But it made the rise of any really significant financial institutions impossible. Corporations as well as people could plead usury in Texas, under low legal interest rates. No industrial state ever adopted such codes.

  The constitution of 1876 was also a very imperfect instrument, which required amendment at the polls for almost every conceivable change. California had a similar constitution, but there was one enormous difference between the two states: in Texas, traditionally, the great majority of proposed significant changes were regularly voted down. A lasting philosophy that no legislature or governor was to be trusted kept Texas more a popular than a representative democracy, and it kept society itself, rather than laws or government, in control. The governor had no power over county sheriffs, who were subject, naturally, to local forces; and with the legislature the governor was merely another equal among peers. Most appointive offices were outside his control. A strong, charismatic governor could have influence on the voters, but no man on earth could really govern the state.

  Ironically, the governor continued to be thought of as the leader and the focus of state politics, because mo
st Texans failed to see the true state of affairs. The clearest indication, however, was that in Texas men who preferred power to local prestige went to Washington. Traditionally, Senators became more powerful, even within the state, that the incumbent in Austin, who more often than not was a symbol of forces beyond his control.

  In the 19th century, and for the first three decades of the 20th, the national government of the United States impinged less on its citizens than any in the Western world, except the Swiss. The national government, and its industrial power structure, set important national policy, but it collected almost no taxes, nor did it interfere or try to influence the citizens' daily life. It left almost all decisions affecting society to local option.

  Because of this, important changes in America in this era were made by the states themselves, or not at all. The constitution, outlook, and philosophies of 1876 brought Texas into the modern world with very much the viewpoints of 1836, because in Texas these did not substantially change.

  Other products of the era were as pervasive and lasting, if not so easily discerned as law.

  Although Texas elections had been rough and ready in the early days, they do not seem to have been violent, or attended by wholesale fraud. After Reconstruction, they were never entirely free of either. Some lessons were learned and habits acquired too thoroughly between 1867 and 1873. The trouble to the body politic spawned these years cannot be overestimated.

  The great family and factional feuds, such as the Sutton-Taylor fight and the Mason County War in which men were shot in the 20th century, were born in Reconstruction politics. Virtual wars continued in many Texas counties for years between Democratic and Republican factions, usually under different names. Old Party, New Party, Jayhawks, Blues, all packed pistols to the polls. Fraud became a fact of political life; ballot stuffing and even the theft of ballot boxes were common. Both violence and cynicism was a part of local politics. A striking characteristic of Texas politicians and leaders, almost never articulated where it might be damaging, was an underlying lack of sympathy with democracy as it was interpreted in the North. The very concept of the rule of law—as opposed to the rule of order—was secretly held in considerable contempt. Texas politics, out of the Reconstruction period, became increasingly devoted to the seizure or retention of power, devoid of any definite ideology beyond the underlying feelings of the tribal mass. This led to bitter factionalism, but also to certain political strengths. There was little confusion over goals, or how to get them.