To pay her debts, she asked the court for permission to sell sixty head of sheep and goats, one damaged corn mill, three oxen, one ox wagon, four mules, one mule wagon, one horse, two looms, one bed, one-half league of land, and a box of books. The court scheduled an auction for December 10.27
Few people showed up, but those who did made sure Sarah’s debt was settled. Her eldest son, James, bought two mules, three oxen, all of the sheep and goats, the books, the loom, the wagon, and the mill for $222. Her next eldest son, Gus, bought the other two mules and the ox wagon for $186. Churchill bought back half a league of land for $6,500. Everything stayed in the family. Oltorf took the proceeds and paid off what remained of the forty loans that Jim had taken out during the Civil War. County Judge W. M. Reed declared the estate settled on Sept. 29, 1868.28
During this time, James fell in love with a scion of a historic Texas family, Emma Diantha Perry. She was born in 1845 in Grimes County, which was named after her great-grandfather Judge Jesse Grimes, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. James and Emma married on October 1, 1868, when he was twenty-five and she was twenty-three. They built a home on the north side of Tomlinson Hill, near Deer Creek. Their first son, William Augustus, bore the names of two of James’s brothers. The couple had two more sons, James Eldridge Tomlinson, Jr., born in 1871, and Albert Perry Tomlinson, born in 1872. A daughter, Mary Eliza, was born in 1875. James and Gus helped their mother, Sarah, keep the plantation going, employing their former slaves to raise the cotton and care for the cattle.29 Tomlinson Hill remained one of the most valuable properties in Falls County, worth at least ten thousand dollars. Two years after bankruptcy, Sarah’s personal wealth was set at $2,200, a respectable sum for the period, and enough to increase production.30
Zenas Bartlett, Churchill’s son-in-law and a cousin of the Tomlinsons, wrote to his sister in New Hampshire that life in Falls County was going well. The letter reveals the widely held disdain the former Confederates felt for the northerners who moved to the South to ensure the civil rights and education of the freedmen:
You probably do not see this matter in this light, but had you been living in the South and suffered as we have, then lost all Negro property, had taken away the honest hard labors of a lifetime,—and then had Bureau Agents and “Carpet Baggers”—the off-scourings of the Northern States—to rule with a harsh tyranny over you, you would have understood this better.
But as God brings good from evil, so now we are doing very well, for the above class has lost all control over the Negroes, who have gone back to their old masters, as a general thing, and are behaving as respectfully as old. And we treat them in the same kindly manner as we used to. ’Tis true we cannot punish them by whipping as we used to, but we can drive them off from our plantations, which is a greater punishment and quite as effectual. The Freedmen are working tolerably well. I am farming with my old slaves, and doing as well as when I owned them.31
The 1869 crop was bountiful, but Churchill was growing frail and remained saddened because the White House had still not answered his appeal to restore his U.S. citizenship. Churchill died on October 25, 1869, and his 54,000-acre plantation was divided among his heirs.32
ABANDONED
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant won the 1868 presidential election, putting a Republican in the White House who would cooperate with the Republican-controlled Congress. But the congressional mandate for the Freedmen’s Bureau expired on December 31, 1868, and there was no interest in extending it. Across the state, bureau agents packed up their offices and sent their files to Washington. African-Americans no longer had federal agents to protect them.
Republicans at the state constitutional convention weren’t keeping their promises, either. The caucus fractured into two main groups. Radicals believed in equal rights for African-Americans, included all the black delegates, and enjoyed the support of Grant and the national Republican party. Moderates opposed equality and formed a majority coalition with Democrats that promised to limit the rights of blacks. The Republican schism caused the convention to fall into disarray, resulting in an inability to finalize a new constitution. Gen. E. R. S. Canby, the new military commander in Texas, told his men to gather up all of the convention’s documents and piece something together that Texans could vote on.33
The new constitution would radically change Texas politics. The first article declared state law subordinate to federal law and gave the legislature power to suspend judges and release people from jail for lack of evidence, while creating stronger roles for the governor and powerful state agencies. The governor would also appoint state judges.34 It granted equality to all persons before the law and prohibited “any system of peonage whereby the helpless and unfortunate may be reduced to practical bondage.” The right to vote was granted to all male citizens over twenty-one years old who were not disqualified under federal law. The right to vote was a double-edged sword for Republicans, though, because it did not exclude white men who had served the Confederacy. If the Republicans wanted to hold power in Texas, they would need to attract conservative whites.35
The Klan became even more active before the constitutional vote in 1869. While they claimed merely to punish lawless blacks, their unspoken goal was restoring white conservatives to power. They played on the fears of average whites, claiming that blacks were going to take power and steal their property. Klansmen demanded the support of whites in return for protection against a promised war between the races.36
The November 30, 1869, election pitted the two Republican factions against each other, as well as against a Democratic splinter group. Moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats tried to prevent African-Americans and radical Republicans from voting, while secret militias, including the Klan, warned blacks to stay home or be killed.37
In Falls County, landowners took their black workers to the polls and gave them ballots marked for the moderate Republican ticket. Whites ripped the ballots out of the hands of any black trying to vote for the radical ticket. In neighboring Milam County, an army officer attempted to escort one hundred African-Americans to the polls, but a group of white men attacked the polling station, forcing it to close before the blacks could vote. Similar violence occurred throughout East and Central Texas.38
Despite the interference, the radicals won by 39,838 to 39,055 votes, with the Democratic ticket taking only 445 votes. The radical Republican candidate, Edmund Davis, became governor, and voters approved the new constitution. The moderate Republican and conservative Democratic coalition failed to turn out more than forty thousand registered white voters. Most whites could not bring themselves to vote for the new constitution.39
The voter intimidation campaign took a toll, though. Only 66 percent of registered blacks voted, down from 76 percent in 1866. The biggest drop-off was in northern counties, where the Klan was particularly active. In Collin County, black turnout dropped 70 percent between 1866 and 1869. In the race to elect a state senator to represent Falls County, 267 fewer blacks voted than whites, allowing a Democrat to win that seat.40
There was no doubt, though, that Davis owed his victory to black voters, since fewer than five thousand whites voted for him. Democrats said this was proof that the Republican party was only for black people.41
On January 8, 1870, General Canby appointed the winners of the election to their offices and called the legislature to meet in Austin to carry out the final steps for Texas’s readmission to the Union. Lawmakers ratified the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments, and on March 30, Congress voted to allow the Texas delegation to take their seats in Washington. From the point of view of northerners, Texas had finally elected a legitimate government. But the majority of white Texans despised the Republican leaders, whom they felt were being unjustly imposed on them.42
William P. Ballinger, a prominent lawyer and Democrat, wrote to former Lieutenant Governor Fletcher Stockdale on December 20, 1869, with an ominous prediction: “The Radicals will never be able to establish themselve
s here without military force. Their manipulation and control of the Negro will turn the people against them. It will only be a matter of time before the people will rise up and turn them out.”43
CHAPTER
NINE
[The blacks] were overbearing. I remember how when the men went to vote … at Marlin, they had to march between rows of Negro guards. How they were all set to win their men and how the white men came armed in order to fight, if need be, for their right to vote.
—R. E. L. Tomlinson
Texas’s Twelfth Legislature convened on April 26, 1870, and Governor Edmund Davis took the oath of office two days later. He made law and order his top priority, not only to cut the high crime rate but also to end racial and political violence. His second priority was economic development. The enormous state held many natural resources, but the population was too small and the infrastructure too weak to exploit them.1 Davis proposed a state police force to enforce the law in places where the sheriff was either too weak or uninterested in stopping crime. He also intended to prosecute gangs, primarily the Klan.2 The new governor believed public education was key to achieving both law and order and economic development. Davis also wanted to encourage railroads, but he didn’t want lawmakers spending too much taxpayer money subsidizing them. Few Texans could disagree with these programs, but Democrats demonized Davis and denounced everything he said or did.3
While Republicans controlled both chambers of the legislature, Davis didn’t know who belonged to what faction. Few carpetbaggers won election, which meant almost all of the lawmakers were native Texans. In the state senate, two of the thirty senators were black, as were twelve out of ninety representatives. Davis knew that despite their sparse representation in the legislature, blacks were the majority of his supporters and he had to address their issues.4 The first few votes made it clear Davis could count on a majority in the house, but the senate was a problem.5
Davis set up the state police, issued railroad bonds, and began opening new public schools within his first year in office. Democrats claimed he hired criminals to serve as police and called his railroad deals corrupt. Democrats generally disliked the schools because Davis required a standardized curriculum, but they complained the most about how much the schools cost, particularly to educate blacks. To pay for all of this, the legislature passed a new tax plan, which gave counties the power to raise property taxes, resulting in a 300 percent spike in taxes in some parts of the state.6
Education for blacks was not opposed by all whites, though. In Falls County, Henrietta Gassaway, the wife of a major planter near Marlin, established in 1870 the first school for blacks on her property, two miles up Little Deer Creek from Tomlinson Hill. Shortly afterward, James Tomlinson and Nicolas Stallworth opened a school for African-Americans at the base of the Hill; it was called the Tomlinson Negro School. Nicolas initially taught the former slaves himself, but later he hired a black man from Marlin. The Tomlinson Negro School was surprising because it preceded the first white school in western Falls County. White mothers generally taught their children at home.7
The plantation business was also changing, with landowners forced to diversify their products. In the 1860s and early 1870s, a combination of weather and labor problems kept cotton production in Falls County from returning to levels seen in the 1850s. The increasing cotton production in India and Egypt, combined with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, meant lower global prices. The U.S. Department of Agriculture pleaded with farmers to focus on self-sufficiency, but large-scale planters were deep in debt and needed a cash crop.8
The main alternative to cotton was cattle. Falls County has an abundance of springs and streams feeding into the Brazos River and there was no fencing, so cows could graze far and wide on plentiful grass. Prairie fires were still common at the time, and they burned back shrubs and trees, so there was even more grass and less forest then than there is today. Cattle speculators bought huge herds in Texas and drove them overland to the railheads in Kansas and Missouri to meet high demand in the East. More than 700,000 head of Texas cattle went north in 1869, and these cattle drives gave birth to the American cowboy.9
The inhabitants of Tomlinson Hill always had cattle, but Sarah, James, and Gus quickly recognized the potential of developing their herd, since much of their land was prairie. Yet cotton, even at depressed prices, remained king, bringing Texas ten million dollars for 84,485 bales exported from Galveston in 1869. In 1873, Galveston exported 333,502 bales for $32 million.10 Cotton production built Texas, not the lonesome cowboy herding cattle on the range. But the cattle kept many planters, including the Tomlinsons, afloat.
AN ACTIVIST JUDGE COMES TO FALLS COUNTY
Governor Davis made many enemies in Falls County by appointing John W. Oliver in July 1870 to serve in the new Thirty-third Judicial District, which included McLennan and Limestone counties. A thirty-five-year-old Mississippian, Oliver held true radical Republican views, and Davis asked him to replace a white Waco judge who was treating blacks unfairly. The district ended up with an overenthusiastic young man ready to stir up trouble, particularly when it came to elections.11
The 1871 election gave Texans their first chance since the war to choose leaders without military supervision. National Democratic leaders adopted a platform called the “New Departure,” which required Democratic candidates to run on a shared party platform supporting state’s rights and dropping their opposition to African-American civil rights.12 Texas Democrats embraced the platform and relentlessly criticized Davis for everything but black suffrage. They established a statewide newspaper in Austin, the Democratic Statesman, to provide the party a single voice; the paper condemned rising taxes, corrupt railroad deals, and the squandering of taxpayer dollars.13
Davis made an easy target. Before 1869, the state had never spent more than $100,000 on any single program, but Davis had created dozens of schools, hired teachers, and begun instruction in less than a year, costing taxpayers in 1870 more than $1.2 million. Democrats, meanwhile, argued that mandatory school attendance infringed on personal liberty, claimed that school employees earned too much money, and said that the whole undertaking was intended to brainwash children.14
While the Democratic party and its official mouthpiece remained quiet on racial issues, disguised men on horseback terrorized black communities and letters to newspapers expressed seething resentment toward blacks. Klansmen attacked black churches and schools across the state.15
Republican leaders focused their message increasingly on the economy and less on civil rights, mostly because they knew they could no longer afford to be identified as the “black party.” Candidates became less pro-black and more pro-business.16
Davis scheduled the 1871 congressional elections for October 3–6 and, anticipating violence, placed all police in the state under his direct authority. Police required all voters to return home immediately after casting their ballots and ordered guards to disperse large gatherings.
Before the first ballot was cast, violence raged across the state, with some of the worst of it in Oliver’s Thirty-third District. A riot broke out in the Limestone County seat of Groesbeck on September 30 after Oliver ordered state police to arrest a white man for publicly threatening to kill Republicans. A white man was shot during the riot, forcing the police to retreat into the mayor’s office until reinforcements arrived. Once they left their safe haven, the police fled Groesbeck and the armed white mob took control. Rumors spread that the town’s blacks were planning to attack. Davis declared martial law, but the order did little to help the election. The mob seized the ballot boxes and the result was 97 percent for Democrats.17
The violence was probably unnecessary. Conservative whites turned out in huge numbers, dominating the balloting and crushing the Republicans. Democrats won all four congressional seats, with landslides in three districts. Both Republicans and Democrats recognized that despite six years of Reconstruction, white conservatism still dominated Texas politics. The stage was set for
the 1872 general election.18
Trying to save their careers, Republicans in the legislature turned on Davis and slashed funding for his most important programs, security and schools. Republicans joined with Democrats to take away the tax authority granted to counties for public roads and buildings. Many Republicans denounced Davis, but he managed to retain control of the party and it endorsed him for reelection.19 Democrats, meanwhile, promised tax cuts and smaller government.20
In Falls County, Judge Oliver did everything he could to guarantee that African-Americans and white Republicans could vote in 1872. But his efforts to protect blacks and enforce Davis’s policies turned him into a villain among conservative whites, who were still railing against him in their 1947 history of Falls County. The book, compiled by Roy Eddins and published by the Old Settlers and Veterans Association, reflected generations of hatred perpetuated by oral and official history. Eddins quoted from a short book by Tom McCullogh, Memories of the Hills of Home and Countryside:
Even in Falls County, the monstrous effrontery of the carpet-bagger seriously challenged the peace and order of society. Judge J. W. Oliver of Waco was a carpet-bag judge … and allowed a liberal contingent of soldiers or militia and these were usually illiterate Negroes, who liked to wear a blue uniform and carry a gun. These attended his court and executed his orders, not only in judicial matters but in many matters of administration, or tax assessment and collections, as well as in political activities. Judge Oliver was of keen intellect but of overbearing and unscrupulous methods of domination of the people and the province.21
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