Racial Violence and Reconstruction Politics in Texas, 1867-1868

Racial Violence and Reconstruction Politics in Texas, 1867-1868 Author(s): Gregg Cantrell Reviewed work(s): Source: The Southwestern
Historical Quarterly, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Jan., 1990), pp. 333-355 Published by: Texas State Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30241330 . Accessed: 04/02/2013 14:32
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Racial Violence and Reconstruction Politics in Texas, 1867-1868

GREGG CANTRELL*
WHEN
THE ARMIES OF THE CONFEDERACY SURRENDERED AFTER FOUR
years of bloody conflict, Northern leaders were eager for accurate information on the state of affairs in the defeated South. Before a policy of Reconstruction could be implemented, key questions had to be answered. Would the Confederates accept the reality of defeat and the end of slavery? Did the South desire rapid reconciliation and, if so, on what basis? Although much of the South had been occupied by Union armies during the war, the answers to these questions were only partially known when Robert E. Lee surrendered. Especially in Texas, reliable information was extremely scarce. The Lone Star State never had been successfully invaded, and Texas had been almost completely isolated from Northern observers. Therefore, in the fall and winter of 1865 a number of Union officers were sent to the state on fact-finding missions. Their reports told a story that was far from encouraging to those whose task would be to "reconstruct" Texas.' One of the officers who toured Texas in late 1865 was Insp. Gen. William E. Strong. Sent by the commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, Gen. O. O. Howard, to observe the condition of the freedmen and the manner in which they were being treated by their former masters, Strong penetrated beyond the coastal areas controlled by federal troops and found "a fearful state of things." Wherever the military was absent, he reported, the ex-Confederates "seem to take every opportunity to vent their rage and hatred upon the blacks. They are fre* Gregg Cantrell is assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University. He is currently researching the Populist movement in Texas. 'Michael Perman has examined the Northern obsession with the state of Southern affairs and attitudes immediately following the war. He argues that observers lacked objectivity, tending to find what they wanted to find. The evidence on Texas, however, indicates that it would have been difficult to exaggerate the degree of lawlessness existing in the Lone Star State in 1865. See Michael Perman, Reunion without Compromise: The South and Reconstruction, 18651868 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 13-21.
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quently beaten unmercifully, and shot down like wild beasts, without any provocation, followed with hounds, and maltreated in every way." In the area of East Texas between the Neches and Sabine rivers, Strong found that the freedmen were still being held in slavery. Former Confederate soldiers, clad in their old uniforms, roamed about the countryside, armed to the teeth and ready to resume the fight against the Yankees. Strong had traveled in other Southern states, but nowhere had he witnessed the bitterness and open resistance to federal authority that he observed in Texas. In his report to General Howard, Strong concluded that without the U.S. Army "the condition of the freed people would be worse beyond comparison than it was before the war and when they were held in bondage."2 Strong was not alone in his analysis of the postwar state of affairs in Texas. Gen. Philip Sheridan gained the most notoriety of any contemporary observer when he remarked that if he owned both hell and Texas, he "would rent Texas out and live in hell!"' General Howard paid a high compliment to Edgar Gregory, his appointee as commissioner of the Texas Freedmen's Bureau, saying that Gregory "was so fearless that I sent him to Texas."4 If any Northerner had believed that reconstructing Southern states could be accomplished with ease, that assessment would not have applied to Texas. Conservative Southerners naturally denied that blacks were the victims of widespread violence, but virtually all modern scholars have accepted the reports of Strong, Sheridan, Howard, and others as essentially accurate. Early students of Reconstruction, following the lead of William Dunning, attempted to downplay the violence and place the blame for it with Republican policymakers or Union troops. But even Dunning-school scholars such as Charles W. Ramsdell could not deny that Texas was a very bloody place at certain times during Reconstruction.5
2W. E. Strong to O. O. Howard,Jan. 1, 1866, in Message from the President of the United States ... together with the Reports of the Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, made since December i, 1865, S. Exec. Doc. 27, 39th Cong., ist Sess. (Serial 1238), 81-82, 83 (1st and 2nd quotations), 84-85, 86 (3rd quotation). See also Claude Elliott, "The Freedmen's Bureau in Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, LVI (July, 1952), 1-243Quoted in Paul Andrew Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 22. 4Quoted in William S. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather: General O. O. Howard and the Freedmen (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968), 68 (quotation), 69. 5Charles W. Ramsdell, Reconstruction in Texas (New York: Columbia University, 191o), 127-133; Claude Elliott, Leathercoat: The Life History of a Texas Patriot (San Antonio: Standard Printing Co., 1938), 147- 16o; W. C. Nunn, Texas Under the Carpetbaggers (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962), 8; Ernest Wallace, Texas in Turmoil: The Saga of Texas, i849-1875 (Austin: Steck-Vaughan Co., 1965), 150-159-
Racial Violence and ReconstructionPolitics
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In the last three decades revisionists have reexamined the issue of lawlessness in the postwar South and have concluded that violence against blacks was both widespread and brutal.' The revisionists place blame on Southern Conservatives dedicated to maintaining white supremacy and ending Republican rule. Although Southerners admitted they were "whipped," their admission of defeat by no means signaled acquiescence to black equality or Yankee occupation. Southern resistance to Reconstruction, and the accompanying violence, has led some historians to view the period as a counterrevolution. As George C. Rable noted in his study of Reconstruction violence, "the Confederacy never surrendered beyond the mere laying down of arms." The revisionists consistently single out Texas as one of the strongholds of Southern intransigence.7 If the existence of violence in Reconstruction Texas has been well established, its nature remains elusive. Although virtually all students of Reconstruction acknowledge that blacks were frequently the victims of white assaults, it has been more difficult to ascertain the causes and motives for such lawlessness. It is the task of the following study to examine the dynamics of interracial violence in a more systematic way than has been attempted previously. Many observers, in the 186os as well as in the twentieth century, have tended to focus on that portion of interracial violence that was politically inspired, that is, white Conservatives terrorizing black Republicans in an effort to prevent black voting and overthrow the so-called "Carpetbagger" regimes. Reconstruction-era Republicans, of course, had vested interests in doing so. In July 1868 the Republican-dominated Texas constitutional convention issued a report from a Special Committee on Lawlessness and Violence strongly arguing that politics was
6See John Pressley Carrier, "A Political History of Texas during the Reconstruction, 18651874" (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1971), 118; Barry A. Crouch, "A Spirit of Lawlessness: White Violence; Texas Blacks, 1865- 1868," Journal of Social History, XVIII (Winter,
1984), 217-232; Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 274-282; McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, 68-69; Carl H. Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), 78; Donald G. Nieman, To Set the Law in Motion: The Freedmen's Bureau and the Legal Rights of Blacks, 1865i868 (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1979), 14; George C. Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), 13; ministration of Texas, 1865- 1870" (Ph.D. diss., North Texas State University, 1970), 193- 207; James M. Smallwood, Time of Hope, Time of Despair: Black Texans during Reconstruction (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1981), 128- 158. Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 137-148. 7Perman, Reunion without Compromise, 28-29 (iS t quotation); Rable, But There Was No Peace,
William L. Richter, "The Army in Texas during Reconstruction, 1865- 1870" (Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University, 1970), 212-236; Robert Walter Shook, "Federal Occupation and Ad-
187, 188 (2nd quotation).
336
the principal source of lawlessness since the war's end. This committee based its report on district court records, sworn statements of "reliable witnesses," and Freedmen's Bureau records. The committee's report dealt only with homicides and did not break down the statistics by month. The report listed 38 murders of freedmen in 1865, 72 in 1866, 165 in 1867, and 133 for the first half of 1868, indicating a significant escalation of interracial violence. The committee explained that white Texans were "intensely embittered against the freedmen on account of their emancipation and enfranchisement, and on account of their devotion to the republican party" and that the perpetrators' "object is to compel the negroes to give up loyal leagues."" Recent scholarship, however, has suggested that politics has been overemphasized as a factor in Reconstruction lawlessness. One of the most persuasive scholars to take this view is Barry A. Crouch. "In past writings about Reconstruction," states Crouch, "historians have too often narrowly focused on politically motivated violence against blacks." Crouch concedes that politics "was certainly a central part of the violence equation," but he contends that many other factors played a large role. Indeed, Crouch argues that economic and social conflicts between blacks and whites may have been responsible for a large proportion of the violence. But he wisely notes that "white violence against Texas blacks took many forms and resulted from a variety of causes that are difficult to pinpoint precisely."9 Another competent student of Texas Reconstruction, James M. Smallwood, also stresses the many different sources of racial violence during the early Reconstruction years. Like Crouch, Smallwood emphasizes the pervasive attempts of white Texans to maintain white supremacy, efforts which took various forms: masters covertly holding blacks in slavery long after official emancipation, the burning of freedmen's schools, the driving of black farmers from their land, or punishing blacks for the mere act of talking to a Freedmen's Bureau agent. As Smallwood explains, "Anglos beat blacks for almost any offense, including indications by freedman [sic] that they were in fact emancipated. If Negroes did not show due deference in all matters involving whites, they faced punishment." Although he generally avoids any distinct effort to quantify or assess the relative importance of social, economic, or political motives for violence, Smallwood appears to place the
S. Misc. Doc. 10o9, 4oth Cong., 8Letter of the President of Constitutional Convention of Texas ..., 2nd Sess. (Serial 1319), 1 (ist quotation), 3 (2nd quotation), 4 (3rd quotation). 9Crouch, "A Spirit of Lawlessness," 221 (quotations).
337
greatest emphasis on economic conflict. Throughout the entire Reconstruction period, he explains, freedmen found themselves hopelessly suppressed by whites who individually and collectively continued to follow the trend set in 1865 of keeping blacks in their economic place. Although periods of heightened tension might follow political crises and although blacks in certain areas experienced less trouble than those in other areas, economic suppression apparentlyremained relatively constant, with Anglos relenting only after freedmen learned their place and ceased even to complain. In a later chapter Smallwood relates a number of such "periods of heightened tension" and the politically inspired violence that accompanied them.'o Clearly these scholars are correct in stressing the complexity of the violence issue and in noting the pitfalls of a monocausal explanation. At the same time, it is possible that white violence against blacks may assume certain patterns that do help to explain the causes and motives behind the assaults. This essay employs statistical analysis to suggest that racial violence during two crucial years of Texas Reconstruction was indeed closely associated with political developments. Whites, embittered or upset with the course of Reconstruction politics, lashed out at blacks in many ways and for many ostensible reasons. Much of this from being "seemingly random"-was in fact an expresviolence-far sion of hostility to political conditions." Studies of Reconstruction violence generally have utilized two types of traditional sources: newspapers and military records. Newspapers, almost always fiercely partisan, document a great deal of the violence that occurred in Texas. Conservative sheets, however, invariably give a very different picture than that presented by the Unionist papers.'2 The Fifth Military District and the Freedmen's Bureau also kept records of violence, and these sources have been widely discussed in the historical literature. Whereas Ramsdell dismissed these sources as being "of a most partisan and untrustworthy character," revisionists have read the same records and deemed them the best extant sources. Historian John Pressley Carrier concluded that the Freedmen's Bureau's reports were "usually precise enough to indicate that many civil authorities failed to protect the lives and property of freedmen." Leon A. Litwack and George C. Rable have argued that the number of assaults and murders
'oSmallwood, Time of Hope, 33 (1st quotation), 34, 57 (2nd quotation), 61, 81, 125-158.
" Crouch, "A Spirit of Lawlessness," 221.

'2See Rable, But There Was No Peace, 14-15.
338
SouthwesternHistorical Quarterly those that were exaggerated or
never reported probably exceeded

untrue.
c"
The following analysis is based on the revisionist assumption that the records of the Freedmen's Bureau offer the most systematic and objective portrait available of Texas Reconstruction violence. The bureau in 1865 began compiling a register entitled "Records of Criminal Offenses Committed in the State of Texas." Field agents submitted monthly reports that were entered into the register through the end of 1868, the active life of the bureau in Texas. In this time over 2,200 criminal acts were recorded in the register." How accurate were the reports? General Howard had insisted that the War Department only assign officers with good reputations.'5 Half of the field agents in Texas in mid-1867 had achieved the rank of captain or above in either the regular army or the volunteers.'6 Biographical studies of two Texas agents suggest that certain individual officers were conscientious in their defense of freedmen almost to the point of heroism.17 Since such agents were almost always seeking additional federal troops for their counties, it is at least theoretically possible that some bureau men, in the midst of political crises, purposely exaggerated their violence reports. Not all agents, however, could be described as heroic defenders of black rights and Republican policy. In his study of the federal military in Reconstruction Texas, William L. Richter notes that several of the agents "followed the easiest course and supported local planters rather than the freedmen."" Agents like these logically would be expected to minimize violence in their reports. Lacking a comprehensive collective biography of bureau personnel in Texas, one cannot positively rule out either purposeful over- or under-reporting during certain months.
'SRamsdell, Reconstruction in Texas, 191; Carrier, "A Political History," 209; Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long, 280; Rable, But There Was No Peace, 29. A scholar who tends to agree with the Freedmen's Bureau (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1955), 112-115-
Ramsdell that many bureau reports were greatly exaggerated is George R. Bentley, A Historyof
of Criminal Offenses Committed in the State of Texas," Assistant Commissioner, '14"Records Austin, Vols. 11-13, Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (BRFAL), Texas, Record Group 105 (National Archives; cited hereafter as BRFAL). For a racial breakdown of the incidents, see Crouch, "A Spirit of Lawlessness," 220.
'5Shook, "Federal Occupation," 244.
of Officers and Civilians on Duty in the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Aban16"Roster doned Lands, State of Texas, Nov. so, 1867," BRFAL. 17SeeJames [M.] Smallwood, "The Freedmen's Bureau Reconsidered: Local Agents and the Black Community," Texana,XI, No. 4 (1973), 309-320; James Smallwood, "Charles E. Culver, A Reconstruction Agent in Texas: The Work of Local Freedmen's Bureau Agents and the Texas A&M University Press, 1987), 58.
Black Community," Civil War History, XXVII (Dec., 1981), 350-361. 18William L. Richter, The Army in Texas during Reconstruction, 1865-z870 (College Station:
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One might reasonably assume, however, that the overzealous and the underzealous constituted the opposite ends of a spectrum on which bureau agents might be placed, with the majority of the officers falling somewhere in the middle. Most importantly, the officers actually had incentive to file accurate, not exaggerated, reports. Reconstruction policy consisted of a controversial, volatile, ever-shifting set of civil laws, military directives, and popular expectations. This was illustrated not only by the contests between the president and Congress, but also by conflict between radicals and moderates at all levels of the civil government and the military. Certainly the Fifth Military District was not insulated from such conflicts. Field agents of the bureau, working in isolated areas of Texas, would be very imprudent to deviate from moderation and accuracy when the opinions of those in command were so unclear. Under these circumstances, as one student of Texas Reconstruction has pointed out, "exaggeration brought only adverse attention and perhaps thwarted ambition."'9 Although a number of historians had utilized the reports of the bureau in studying racially related violence (and the Constitutional Convention committee also utilized them in a cursory manner), the full potential of these records had not been emphasized until Barry Crouch's 1980 article examining the records and recommending them as the best available source on Reconstruction violence in Texas. Crouch argued that a systematic analysis of these records was "sorely needed" if scholars were to understand the impact of violence on the black community.20 He then went on to provide an excellent initial analysis of those records in a subsequent article."' This study amplifies considerably Crouch's analysis and, by examining the relationship between politics and violence, deals with important questions that his article did not address. One of the reasons that the nature of Reconstruction violence has eluded historians is that violence is difficult to quantify. Newspapers, even when objective, had access only to deeds that became known to their reporters and editors--probably a small and unrepresentative sample of the total violence in a region with as few cities and towns as Texas. Nor, unfortunately, was the Freedmen's Bureau spread widely enough across the state to provide anything approaching complete records. Even at its height, the bureau only employed sixty-nine agents
19Shook, "Federal Occupation," 244. 20Barry A. Crouch, "Hidden Sources of Black History: The Texas Freedmen's Bureau
Records as a Case Study," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, LXXXIII (Jan., 1980), 224. 21Crouch, "A Spirit of Lawlessness," 217-232.
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spread across the vast reaches of Texas, the eastern half of which was as large as Alabama and Mississippi combined. A New York newspaper likened the bureau's attempts to regulate labor in Texas to trying to tickle a rhinoceros with a straw.22 Faced with this reality, one scholar of Reconstruction violence throughout the South has concluded that "incomplete data precluded numerical analysis of the incidents."23 This is the rub that quantifiers invariably face. They find themselves at the mercy of incomplete or inaccurate data. But it has been established that much can be learned from quantitative methods when they are applied judiciously, their assumptions clearly stated, and their limitations recognized and heeded. Incomplete data do not necessarily preclude numerical analysis. For although the Freedmen's Bureau records cannot provide comprehensive numbers on violence, they can offer representative statistics. The accompanying map shows the counties in which the bureau maintained offices at its full strength in 1867. Clearly there are counties with huge black populations that desperately needed their own bureau. Rusk County's 7,864 blacks, for example, hardly could have received the assistance they needed from the agents in neighboring Harrison, Smith, and Nacogdoches counties.24 Yet the map makes one point apparent: the bureau was spread quite evenly, albeit thinly, across Texas. Every county with any significant black population shared at least one border with a county that contained a bureau office. Furthermore, the bureaus were clustered most thickly in areas where large concentranortheast Texas and along the Trinity, tions of freedmen lived-in Brazos, and Colorado rivers. While it is impossible to know the actual total number of assaults and murders that took place and precisely the counties where the most violence occurred, it nonetheless follows that changes in the relative level of violence over time for the entire state would be reflected in the bureau's records. The accompanying graph represents changes in levels of white violence against blacks for 1867 and 1868, the two years in
22Smallwood, Time of Hope, 136; New York Herald, July 30, 1866, cited in Bentley, Freedmen's Bureau, 137. But There Was No Peace, 29. Rable,
24The black population for Texas in the late 186os is uncertain due to the large influx of blacks during the Civil War and the unreliable Federal Census of 1870. The figure cited here is from the county tax rolls of 1864, the last year that blacks were enumerated as property for tax purposes. I am indebted to Randolph B. Campbell of North Texas State University for sharing his transcripts of the manuscript tax rolls.
Racial Violenceand ReconstructionPolitics
341
Counties with a Freedmen's Bureau post
Freedmen's Bureau posts in Texas, 1867, compiled from Roster of Officers and Civilians on Duty in the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, May 1, 1867 and October io, 1867, BRFAL Records. Eight army outposts in frontier areas with insignificant black populations were officially designated bureau offices. These locations were omitted from the map, as were several frontier counties that had not yet been settled or that had no blacks at all.
342
TotalViolence
175-
No. of Incidents
150-
125 -
c100
0
-J
75
50
25
,cB~;QI
cQ
oC
~p`
~B~pe
1867
1868
Violence against blacks in Texas, 1867-1868.

METHODOLOGICAL NOTE
The broken line is a summation of the number of incidents reported for each month (modified by means of the moving average described in the third paragraph below). For example, in January 1867 there were fifty-eight incidents. In this curve no distinction was made between very severe incidents and relatively minor incidents. All data are from BRFAL Records (see full citation in note 14). The solid line utilizes the same numbers, but with incidents weighted to reflect severity. The weighting scheme operates as follows: the number of homicides was multiplied by twenty-five; the number of serious assaults and whippings was multiplied by sixteen; the number of minor assaults was multiplied by nine; the number of incidents of intimidation was multiplied by four; the number of robberies was multiplied by two. This exponential formula was devised because it was thought that a simple ordinal weighting scheme would not adequately reflect the much more serious nature of murders, stabbings, shootings, and severe beatings, when compared to threats or relatively minor physical acts. It is not based on any "scientific" conclusions about the degree of seriousness of different types of violent acts, but when compared to the unweighted curve it does allow us to see clearly when the more serious forms of violence predominated. The categories themselves were determined as follows: In the "Serious Assaults" category were placed acts described in the records as
343
"assault with intent to kill," "aggravated assault," "beaten nearly to death," and so on. In the "Minor Assaults" category were placed those acts in which physical harm was done or attempted, but the act was not life-threatening. In the "Intimidation" category were placed those cases in which threats were made or the freedmen were otherwise placed in fear, but no actual assault was performed. After classifying each incident and multiplying it by the appropriate factor, the now-weighted incidents were summed to provide a "Total Violence" figure for each month. Finally, the "Total Violence" figures were divided by ten so that the "Total Violence" curve could be placed along the same scale as the "Number of Incidents" curve. After the above process determined the "Number of Incidents" and "Total Violence" figures for each month, a two-month moving average was computed for each set of figures. For example, the fifty-eight incidents plotted for January 1867 is actually the average of the number reported in January and February, the seventy shown for February is actually the average of February and March, and so forth. This was done because the dating of the actual reports was imprecise. For example, some of the reports dated "February" in the records may actually have occurred in January but were not filed or recorded until the following month. This manipulation of the statistics with a moving average is an attempt to make the violence curves reflect this delayed reporting. (Note: The last plots on the curves, December 1868, are the actual figures for that month only, since it was impossible to average December's figures with the nonexistent January 1869 figures.) The author will be happy to furnish the actual monthly numbers on request. Cases of violent acts by whites against blacks utilized in this study number 1,390. Eighty-three Texas counties reported incidents. In his study of the bureau's records, Barry A. Crouch listed 1,524 white-against-black assaults, 134 more than I have counted. These cases were ones in which a reasonably accurate date of the incident could not be determined or in which the race of the parties involved was unclear. (See Crouch, "A Spirit of Lawlessness," 220.)
which bureau records are most complete.25 The broken curve on the graph represents a simple summation of incidents reported, with no attempt being made to differentiate between types or severity of violence. The solid curve represents the same data, weighting the incidents according to severity (that is, giving homicides and serious assaults more impact than simple assaults and robberies).26 Thus, when
25Although the first entries in the register begin in September 1865 and continue through the end of 1868, the 1865 and most of the 1866 records appear to have been kept sporadically. Only toward the end of 1866 do the reports begin appearing for every month. Apparently by this time reporting procedures had been formalized. 26The incidents have been placed into one of five categories: homicides, serious assaults/ whippings, minor assaults, intimidation, and robberies. An exponential weighting scheme has been employed to take into account the severity of the offense. For an explanation of the weighting scheme, see the methodological note accompanying the graph.
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the distance between the two lines is great, a relatively high proportion of the reported incidents are the more serious types of violence. The two curves correspond closely to one another, so in the following discussion it usually will not be necessary to distinguish between the two when noting a rise or decline in violence. The graph makes it exceedingly clear that violence was by no means constant during 1867 and 1868. Low points in April 1867, January 1868, and October 1868 are interspersed with high levels in February 1867, July/August 1867, February/March 1868, and July/August 1868. This is not to say that violence in Texas was nearly nonexistent in those "low" months, but simply that such times were relatively peaceful. The new year dawned in 1867 with violence on the increase. The Presidential Reconstruction plan had been implemented, but doubts about the survival of Andrew Johnson's lenient program were growing. The spring and summer of the previous year had seen major riots in Memphis and New Orleans, and as recently as September an entire block of Brenham, Texas, had been burned in a racially related disturbance.27 One by one the Southern states had elected ex-Confederates to high office, only to see their chosen representatives reach Washington and be denied their seats in Congress. Texas had sent two prominent secessionists to the U.S. Senate and had elected as governor James Throckmorton, a prewar Unionist who nevertheless had served as brigadier general in the Confederate army. When Congress passed the first two Reconstruction Acts over Johnson's veto in March 1867, violence against blacks in Texas apparently subsided. These acts overturned Presidential Reconstruction, placing the South under martial law and dividing it into five military districts. Sheridan was named commander of the Fifth Military District, comprising Louisiana and Texas. The legislation granted the new commanders broad powers to protect civil rights and maintain justice. The statistics suggest that perhaps white Texans were waiting to see exactly what Congress's intentions were in passing the acts, because the initial response to the March acts was not a bloodbath. In fact, violence in April was lower than in March, and even in May, when news of Congress's actions would have had time to reach even the most isolated Texans, violence remained lower than in January, February, or March. From a low point in April 1867, however, assaults against blacks increased steadily until violence peaked in July and August. The Second Reconstruction Act of March 23 had attempted to clarify the first act by
27Rable, But There Was No Peace, 33-58; Ramsdell, Reconstruction in Texas, 127-128.
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requiring military authorities to register voters (including blacks) and supervise the election of delegates to a new constitutional convention. In addition, on April 27 Gen. Charles Griffin, Sheridan's subordinate in charge of Texas, issued Circular Order No. 13, which required all potential jurors to take the "Ironclad" Oath and prescribed strict penalties for anyone who deprived a citizen of his civil rights. Now the writing was on the wall for white Texans; the Yankees apparently were serious about giving blacks full political equality. Governor Throckmorton strongly opposed Circular Order No. 13, and one student of Texas Reconstruction described it as evoking "a howl of rage from whites across the The increase in violence over the next three months substantistate."'28 ates this interpretation. Despite the first two Reconstruction acts and Circular Order No. 13, violence, as previously noted, did not peak until July and August. The March acts had been worded vaguely, and neither the officers of the Fifth Military District nor conservative Texans knew exactly what the acts allowed or prohibited. The acts declared the state governments provisional, but General Sheridan did not believe that he had the power to make wholesale removals of elected officials. By July, however, it had become obvious that the law would be revised so as to erase any ambiguity concerning Sheridan's duties and prerogatives.29 On July 19 Congress passed a third Reconstruction Act, which specifically allowed commanders to remove any public officials who impeded Reconstruction. Sheridan wasted no time and on July 30 removed Throckmorton from office, replacing him with former governor Elisha M. Pease, an antebellum Unionist who had not supported the Confederacy. Racial violence thus increased as the intentions of Congress and the leaders of the Fifth Military District became more apparent. Violence, of course, is much more complex than a simple response to national political developments. Conditions in postwar Texas certainly would have been conducive to a greater than average rate of ordinary crime, and students of violence have noted that "wars always leave a residue of violent men."30 But the significant coincidence of political developments and rising violence in the spring and summer of 1867 strongly suggests that much of the violent activity directed by whites against blacks in Texas was indeed politically motivated.
28Richter, "The Army in Texas," 244, 245 (quotation), 29Perman, Reunion without Compromise, 303. 30Rable, But There Was No Peace, 12.
246-248.
346
To suggest that violence was politically motivated is not to say that events in Washington, New Orleans, or Austin were the only factors involved. In April, May, and June 1867 local political affairs took an alarming turn in the eyes of white Texans. In these months Union, or Loyal, Leagues began to form throughout the state."1 The Union Leagues were founded in the South primarily as a means of mobilizing the black Republican electorate. Because of their secret nature, there is little evidence directly connecting the leagues with violence, either as perpetrators or victims, but there is little doubt that the leagues, when their presence was known, represented the one thing that most white Southerners feared above all-black equality. In his study of antebellum violence, Leonard L. Richards argued that anti-abolitionist mobs took violent action when local antislavery societies formed. Violence, according to Richards, was a response to organization, and once the initial antislavery "beachhead" was established, violence decreased.32 This theory appears credible for Texas during the spring and summer of 1867 as Union Leagues organized and established a beachhead of black political power. The leagues were the primary vehicle for establishing the Republican party, and unabashed Republicanism finally made its appearance in Texas on July 4, when the party held its first state convention in Houston. This convention, along with the removal of Throckmorton two weeks later, marked the zenith of racial violence in Texas for 1867. Three days before the convention convened, Charles Griffin described the current conditions in a letter to O. O. Howard: "[T]here is still a large part of the State where murder is bold and unchecked, in these parts the life of a white man is worth but little, the life of a Freedman is worth nothing."33 Throughout the fall of 1867 racial violence in Texas declined. From the end of August 1867 through January 1868 the number of incidents reported and the overall level of violence dropped each month, except for a slight increase in November. During this time the government of Texas was undergoing a dramatic change. Governor Throckmorton's removal from office on July 30 had been followed rapidly by the removal of "the entire executive department at the highest levels." On August 27 Sheridan gave his subordinate, Gen-
Ramsdell, Reconstruction in Texas, 166. 32Leonard L. Richards, "Gentlemen of Property and Standing": Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 8o-81.
31
3Griffin to Howard, July 11, 1867, "Received and Retained Reports Relating to Rations, Lands, and Bureau Personnel, 1868," BRFAL.
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eral Griffin, authority to remove county officials. Griffin began the process but died in September of yellow fever. Gen. J. J. Reynolds replaced Griffin and zealously resumed the removals. The process continued throughout the fall, until many (but by no means all) Conservatives had been replaced with loyal Republicans. On November i, for example, Reynolds issued Special Orders No. 195, which in one stroke removed 400 Conservatives. By the end of November, Reynolds had appointed 644 Republican officials to state and local offices.34 Reynolds's wholesale restructuring of Texas politics came to a halt when President Johnson replaced Reynolds's commander, Sheridan, with a Democrat, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock. The new commander of the Fifth Military District put an end to the removals by restraining Reynolds. In fact, Hancock wanted to reverse Sheridan's and Reynolds's policies and overturn the removals, but General Grant ordered them confirmed.35 The decline in violence from August through January suggests that the strategies of Griffin, Reynolds, and Sheridan were working-at least from the standpoint of the blacks who were so often the targets of Conservative wrath. When Republicans replaced Conservatives as county judges and sheriffs, the lives and property of blacks became more secure. When the Ironclad Oath disqualified ex-rebels from serving as jurors, and when blacks began sitting on those juries, the chances improved for conviction in cases of assaults on blacks. Texas Republicans and revisionist scholars have argued that when the Democrat Hancock took the reins of the Fifth Military District in late November 1867, violence increased. The 1868 Constitutional Convention's Committee on Lawlessness and Violence, compiling a list of murders only, reached the same conclusion. Republican provisional governor Elisha M. Pease also made this claim repeatedly in early 1868, and he tried to substantiate his claim with the same Freedmen's Bureau records that are utilized in this study. Pease bitterly disputed the contention from Hancock's headquarters that "the country is in a state of profound peace," and he cited sixty-two murders in December and January as evidence that there had been a "perceptible increase" in lawlessness."3
Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, 69. 35Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, 69; Ramsdell, Reconstruction in Texas, 18o-188; Richter, "The Army in Texas," 129-131. 36See, for example, Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, 78; Shook, "Federal Occupation," 360; and Smallwood, Time of Hope, 142. E. M. Pease to W. G. Mitchell, Jan. 17, 1868, in Communications from Governor Pease of Texas, Relative to the Troubles in that State, H. Misc. Doc. 127, 4oth Cong., 2nd Sess. (Serial 1350), 6 (1st quotation), 7 (2nd quotation).
34Carrier, "A Political History," 161 (quotation); Richter, "The Army in Texas," 127;
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Historian Carl Moneyhon accepts Pease's characterization, and Pease did not falsify his statistics. But the "perceptible increase" that Pease noted included all the homicides and assaults reported in those two months, not just those committed by whites against blacks-the concern of this study. In fact, of the sixty-two murders that Pease cited, only twenty-two of the victims were blacks and only eight of the acts were known to have been perpetrated by whites. The distinction is important, because total violence and violence against blacksare likely to be two very different things. Whites were much more likely than blacks to be the victims of banditry, personal vendettas, an, other forms of violence unrelated to politics or race. Moneyhon cited Pease's report as evidence that attacks on freedmen increased in December and Januarya conclusion not supported by the data." Hancock's claims of "profound peace" were exaggerated, but black Texans were safer in December and January than they had been during the previous summer. The replacement of Conservatives with Republicans had worked well from the black perspective. This comparatively peaceful state of affairs would not last long. Under the terms laid down by Congress, Southern states were to call elections in order to begin the Reconstruction process anew. Therefore, in December 1867 the military announced that in February a statewide election would be held to determine two matters: whether or not to call a constitutional convention, and to select delegates to that proposed convention. With large numbers of white Conservatives disfranchised and disorganized, and with thousands of blacks newly registered as voters, the upcoming election held the prospect of much strife between the races. The balloting was to be held on five consecutive days, February lo14, in each county seat."3The Conservatives faced a difficult decision as the election approached. They could vote for the convention and attempt to elect Conservative delegates to it, as they had done under Presidential Reconstruction. A second alternative involved voting against the convention in hopes of defeating it and remaining under military rule-an option that many Conservatives deemed preferable to "black Republican" rule. The new suffrage rules, however, made any sort of Conservative victory at the polls highly improbable. Too many blacks had registered and too few whites could or would vote. But
37Moneyhon, 247; Moneyhon, Texas, 198. Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, 78. Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, 75-80; and Ramsdell, Reconstruction in
38Discussions of the election of 1868 can be found in Carrier, "A Political History," 239-
349
under the rules governing the election there was a third alternative. If fewer than 50 percent of the registered voters actually went to the polls, the election was invalidated and military rule continued."9 Many Conservatives, therefore, adopted the strategy of registering if possible and then staying at home on election day. If the freedmen could be kept from the polls as well, the strategy enjoyed a fair chance of succeeding. It was a prescription for violence. Several Reconstruction historians have written about the role of violence in the election of February 1868. Ramsdell reported that the election "passed off more quietly than might have been expected." Carrier agreed with this assessment, while Moneyhon suggested that violence was both "real and threatened" and cited some isolated instances of intimidation at the polls.40 The bureau's records indicate that racial violence not only accompanied the election but that it was the most severe and widespread violence of the two-year period. March's eighty-seven incidents exceeds the total for any other month, though the seventy-nine incidents reported in the previous July and August are not far behind. Moreover, the curve of total violence for the election period (weighted to reflect the relative severity of violent acts) is significantly higher than at any other time, indicating that the violence against blacks during February and March included a disproportionately high number of homicides and serious assaults. Murder, in fact, was the most common type of incident reported in February and March.4' Because of the imprecise nature of the dating of reports, it is impossible to know how many of these assaults took place before, during, or after the actual election. The fact that violence is highest in March may suggest that postelection reprisals were taking place against blacks, or it may simply mean that violence before and during the balloting was not reported until March. Whichever the case, this huge increase in white attacks on blacks strongly supports the thesis that racial violence had its roots in political events. Following the extreme levels of February and March 1868, violence not to levels against blacks declined in April, May, and June-though
Perman, Reunion without Compromise, eyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, 75-79; 335-366; and Ramsdell, Reconstruction in Texas, 197-198. 40Carrier, "A Political History," 241; Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, 78 (2nd
39For discussions of these alternatives, see Carrier, "A Political History," 235-240;
Mon-
in Texas, 198 (Ist quotation). quotation), 79; Ramsdell, Reconstruction 41The number of murders reported for February and March 1868 are thirty and thirty-four, respectively (computed using the moving average described in the methodological note accompanying the graph). Whippings also reached their highest levels during these two months, though other types of assaults were lower than their mid-1867 highs.
350
as low as those before the election. In his study of the Ku Klux Klan, Allen Trelease concluded that "large parts of Texas remained close to anarchy through 1868." In a similar vein, Carl Moneyhon wrote that "by the middle of the summer of 1868 a virtual state of war existed in some areas of Texas." The graph's total violence curve indicates that the overall severity of interracial violence remained quite high, even as the total number of incidents reported dropped. This continuing high level of violence for the spring and summer of 1868 supports the contentions of Trelease and Moneyhon.42 One factor contributing to the continuing violence in 1868 was the appearance in Texas of the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups. Bureau records first mention the Klan by name in a report dated May 5, 1868. Seven white men in McLennan, Bell, and Coryell counties were murdered, presumably for horse theft, but the bureau suspected that the victims were Unionists and the assailants Klansmen. These incidents did not involve blacks and thus were not statistically considered in this study, but they mark the beginning of what appears to be greater organization and increased collective effort by white Texans to employ violence in achieving clearly political ends.43 Klan or vigilante violence with overt political aims begins to appear in the records with greater frequency in the summer of 1868. On July 9, bureau records describe the "deliberate and barbarous murder" of A. R. Wilson, a black voter registrar from Burleson County. He was taken from his bed during the night of June 16 by a band of white men and lynched. The body was "fearfully mangled with knives," believed to have been scalped, and thrown into the Brazos River. A few days later a desperate letter from the Burleson County judge reached Governor Pease asking for troops to protect the loyal citizens of the county. "For Godsake," pleaded the judge, "send us help immediately for it is impossible for union men to remain here unless we are protected, unless we are willing to meet the fate of Wilson. Send them [troops] immediately as we do not know how many more may be murdered before they get there."" Conflict between the races increased in July, partly because of a serious disturbance across the river from Burleson County in neigh42Trelease, White Terror, 137 (1st quotation); Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas,
95 (2nd quotation). 43"Recordof Criminal Offenses," BRFAL, case nos. 1682-1688. 44Ibid., case. no. 1865; Judge L. Shoemaker to Gov. Pease, June 26, 1868, "Miscellaneous Records Relating to Murders and Other Criminal Offenses Committed in Texas, 186568," BRFAL.
351
boring Brazos County. White horsemen who identified themselves as Klansmen had ridden in June through the village of Millican, where they were fired upon by the freedmen. In July, reacting to the rumor of a lynching, the blacks again assembled and went in search of the alleged victim's body. They encountered a party of whites, and a riot ensued that saw at least six freedmen killed. Troops eventually arrived to bring the situation under control.45 The Klan was active throughout East Texas in the last half of 1868, bringing terror to at least twenty counties. Northeast Texas saw the most Klan activity, and in July the bureau's Harrison County agent reported the Klan or other organized bands of men driving the freedmen from their crops in Harrison, Upshur, and Marion counties. A grand nighttime ceremony was held in Jefferson in September, in which officers of the "Knights of the Rising Sun," a Klan-type organization, were installed before a crowd of 1,200-1,500 people. The bureau agent in Lamar County reported in October that the Klan had several times attempted to assassinate him. "The Ku Klux," he added, "make the night hideous with their yells and cries and frightful appearance, robbing and terrifying the freedmen to such an extent that many of them have run away from their homes." Organized terrorism helps to account for the continuing high level of violence against Texas blacks after the immediate furor surrounding the February election had subsided.46 Looking again at the graph, we see that the total violence curve reaches another peak in July and August 1868, though not as significant a peak as in the same months of 1867 or during the election period of February and March 1868. Once more violence corresponds with political happenings. The constitutional convention for which delegates had been chosen in the bloody February election convened in June and lasted through the end of August. The session ended with the Republicans badly split into radical and moderate camps, with no constitution to show for three months' work. As the debates proceeded on such controversial issues as a civil rights clause, violence in the state steadily rose. The state conventions of the Union League (late July) and the Republican party (mid-August) did little to set the minds of Conservatives at ease, as the black faction led by Galveston's George T. Ruby showed increasing clout in each of these meetings. As in the previous
45"Record of Criminal Offenses," BRFAL, case nos. 2121-2122. "Record of Criminal Offenses," 46Trelease, White Terror, 137, 140 (lst quotation); case nos. 1867, 1918-1919, 2121, 2122 (2nd quotation). 1954-1961,
BRFAL,
352
summer, demonstrations of black political power had gone hand in hand with an increase in violence against blacks.47 After August, violence declined to the lowest point of 1868 (October), only to rebound in the last two months of the year. Because Texas had not yet been readmitted to the Union, no election was held in November, perhaps accounting for the moderate level of violence in that month. By December, when the constitutional convention reconvened for its second session, attacks on blacks once again appeared to be following politics. When making an analysis of this sort, one must take care not to overlook alternative explanations for variations in levels of violence. For example, at first glance the violence graph hints at a possible seasonal factor that might have nothing to do with political events. Certainly the bureau records indicate that disputes between planters and freedmen involving terms of employment frequently brought conflict. Thus the relatively high levels of violence in February of both 1867 and 1868 would suggest that the beginning of the agricultural year, when labor contracts were being negotiated and signed, might account for a significant portion of the violence. Although this explanation is seemingly persuasive, if one looks at the months on either side of February for each year, the picture becomes much less clear. The contracts under which freedmen labored during the early years of Reconstruction were made as early as late December and continued being drawn up through January.48 Levels of violence are indeed high for January 1867, but the same month in 1868 witnessed violence lower than at any point in the prior eight months, and lower than any point in the eight months yet to come. If disputes arising from the negotiation of labor contracts were the overriding factor in the high level of violence at the beginning of the agricultural year, how can we account for the large differential between the levels of January 1867 and January 1868? Comparing the March figures for each year, we again see the difficulty in using the graph to account for a seasonal factor. March 1867 saw a significant decline in all types of violence, as one might perhaps expect of a month when the contract disputes have been largely resolved and farm work is well under way. Yet in March of the following year, rather than marking a similar decline, we see violence escalate to an unprecedented level, the highest of the two-year period.
in Recon47On political developments in the summer of 1868, see Moneyhon, Republicanism
struction Texas, 82-103. 48Randolph B. Campbell, A Southern Community in Crisis: Harrison County, Texas, 1850-188o
(Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1983), 263, 271; Dallas Herald, Jan. 6, 1866.
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While a possible seasonal factor related to the rhythms of the agricultural year is of questionable value in explaining the January-March patterns of violence, similar seasonal factors appear much more plausible when we attempt to account for the summertime peaks of 1867 and 1868. In both years, high violence in July and August is followed by steady declines in September and October. It is true that during 1867 and 1868 the cotton harvest generally began in August and continued through November, depending upon the locality.49 During the relatively "slow" months of late summer, planters had to deal with idle farmhands who had more time to get into trouble with whites. This fact, along with the summer heat that may have contributed to shortened tempers, makes it impossible to ignore the possibility of nonpolitical causes of violence. It is curious, however, that in each year October violence is about half as high as September violence. Were there half as many idle farmhands in October as in September? It seems unlikely. Furthermore, if idle laborers inspire violence, how are we to account for the upturns in the graph in November and December 1868, when no similar increase occurred in 1867? It seems safe to say that an agriculturally related seasonal factor in part explains the July-August peaks, but only as a partial cause of the violence, not necessarily the overriding one. This study has suggested that the frequency and severity of violence directed by whites against blacks during the crucial years 1867 and 1868 directly reflected the shifting political fortunes of the two races. Yet it appears from the records that relatively few of the assaults and murders immediately can be attributed to a specific political situation. Rarely do descriptions of the incidents say that a freedman was "assassinated for voting Republican" or "beaten for attending a Union League meeting." Cases like the brutal murder of the Burleson County voter registrar are relatively uncommon in the bureau records. Instead, case after case lists a trivial labor dispute or a breach of social etiquette as the reason for the assault. As Leon Litwack perceptively noted, the vio49The cotton crop was usually picked three separate times during each harvest. Before the appearance of the boll weevil in the 189os forced farmers to plant early maturing strains of cotton, the harvest in all but the southernmost parts of Texas did not often begin until September. For example, in Falls County (a Central Texas cotton region), no cotton or corn had been harvested as of August 2o, 1867. In Tyler, Texas, the 1868 cotton harvest was ongoing in midOctober. Farther north, in Hunt and Collin counties, the 1867 cotton harvest was not yet completed in late October. Even in Bastrop, southeast of Austin, farmers were still "busily engaged in picking" in mid-November 1867 and reported that they would "not get through for two months to come, owing to the scarcity of labor, or the indolence of the negroes now employed."
See Texas State Gazette (Austin), Aug. 31, 1867; Texas Republican (Marshall), Oct. 26, Nov. 23
(quotations), 1867.
354
lence directed at freedmen "seldom bore any relationship to the gravity of the alleged provocation." 50 Examples from the bureau records repeatedly illustrate this fact. A freedwoman in McLennan County was shot by her former master because "she gave some saucy words to her mistress." A freedman in Liberty County was standing in church when a white man named Sterling rushed in and stabbed him, saying, "God damn your black soul I will learn you to stand in the way of white ladies." A Brazoria County man beat, kicked, and threatened to kill a freedwoman because she "spoke disrespectful to his wife."51 "Impudence," "sauciness," "disrespect"these were the "crimes" that so often inspired white retribution. How, then, are we to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the surges of violence that appear politically inspired and these apparently nonpolitical descriptions of individual acts? In reality, no contradiction exists. To understand why is to grasp the fundamental question that underlies the politics of Reconstruction: What was to be the relationship between the white and black races in the South? In the minds of most white Texans, that relationship could be defined in two words: white supremacy. The months when violence against blacks peaked were times during which political events occupied center that would potentially affect the lives of every black and stage-events white person in Texas. Such months were times for each freedman to test the social and political waters in his own way. In the late spring and summer of 1867 this could be accomplished by joining the Union Leagues and registering to vote. In February 1868 it could be done by voting for Radical delegates to the constitutional convention. For most black Texans at most times, though, the way to test the resolve of whites and to gauge their own progress was to renege on an unjust labor contract, to ignore an impolite request made by a white, or to refuse the obligatory "sir," "ma'm," "master," or "mistress" that whites expected of their black "inferiors." Thus, when scholars such as Crouch observe that white violence resulted from breaches of racial mores, economic conflicts, or "the peculiar psychological condition" of a defeated white populace, they are by no means wrong. But to believe that such acts of defiance were not "political" in nature is to deny the most basic tenet of white Southern political ideology during Reconstruction's most crucial
50Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long, 278.
"Record of Criminal Offenses," BRFAL, case nos. 2044 (ist quotation), 220 (2nd quota51
tion), 241 (3rd quotation).
Racial Violenceand ReconstructionPolitics
355
years: that the South, in the words of U. B. Phillips, "shall be and remain a white man's country."" This is not to say that whites were making conscious, calculated political "statements" each time they lashed out at the freedmen. For their part in the violence, white Texans often must have reacted out of a sense of frustration and helplessness as much as from any clear-cut goal. In one sense, the "real enemy" was the Yankee soldier and Republican politician, not the black laborer. But the former slave, asserting himself or herself in a variety of ways, was the most available symbol of the South's defeat and of Northern "aggression," and thus served as a convenient scapegoat.53 The evidence presented in this study does not prove scientifically that racial violence and Reconstruction politics were causally related, but the statistics do suggest that whites vented their frustration upon blacks at times when political events were most obviously beyond their control.
52Crouch, "A Spirit of Lawlessness," 221 (Ist quotation); Ulrich B. Phillips, "The Cenof Southern History," American Historical Review, XXXIV (Oct., 1928), 31 (2nd 53Rable, But There Was No Peace, 85.
tral Theme
quotation).

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Racial Violence and Reconstruction Politics in Texas, 1867-1868 Author(s): Gregg Cantrell Reviewed work(s): Source: The Southwestern

Racial Violence and Reconstruction Politics in Texas, 1867-1868

THE ARMIES OF THE CONFEDERACY SURRENDERED AFTER FOUR

Racial Violence and ReconstructionPolitics

187, 188 (2nd quotation).

Racial Violence and ReconstructionPolitics

" Crouch, "A Spirit of Lawlessness," 221.

SouthwesternHistorical Quarterly those that were exaggerated or

never reported probably exceeded

Racial Violence and ReconstructionPolitics

Racial Violenceand ReconstructionPolitics

Counties with a Freedmen's Bureau post

Violence against blacks in Texas, 1867-1868.

Racial Violence and ReconstructionPolitics

Racial Violence and ReconstructionPolitics

Racial Violence and ReconstructionPolitics

Racial Violence and ReconstructionPolitics

Racial Violence and ReconstructionPolitics

Racial Violence and ReconstructionPolitics

Racial Violenceand ReconstructionPolitics

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