Politics After the Civil War Radical Republicans advocated extending full civil rights to ex-slaves. Conservative Republicans principally wanted to pursue.

Politics After the Civil War

Radical Republicans advocated extending full civil rights to ex-slaves.

Conservative Republicans principally wanted to pursue economic development.

Both the Radical and Conservative Republicans agreed that African Americans should have legal equality.

Texans sought to reestablish the Democratic rule redolent of that before the war. Most urgent, for them, was to find a way to keep a newly freed black population (estimated by scholars to have numbered about 250,000) in subordination. (See p. 148)

Federal Army Enters Richmond, 1864, by Harper’s Weekly, New York

News of the Confederate surrender in April 1865 resulted in the disintegration of the army and government in Texas. Servicemen deserted in large numbers, and as the army dissolved, chaos erupted. Disbanding soldiers sacked arsenals and government buildings and confiscated Confederate public property of every sort. Scoundrels capitalized on the general disorder to rob and recklessly kill innocent civilians. Unidentified persons pillaged the state treasury on the night of June 11. Simultaneously, government at the state and local level staggered. (pp. 148-149)

Chaos in 18651. Disbanded soldiers

confiscated Confederate property

2. Criminals committed acts of violence and theft

3. State and local governments were powerless

General Gordon Granger - June 19, 1865

1. Declared the acts of the Texas Confederate government illegal

2. Paroled members of the Confederate army3. Announced that all slaves were free

General Gordon Granger

Texas was in a stronger position than other southern states

1. Slaves had been moved into the state2. Trade with Mexico had helped Texas

businesses3. Little wartime devastation

Problems at the end of the Civil War

1. Financial distress2. Property values depreciated3. Legacy of hatred

PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTUCTIONPRESIDENTIAL RECONSTUCTION

President Andrew Johnson offered relatively mild terms for those states which seceded to reenter the Union. He called on them to declare secession null and void, to cancel the debt accumulated during the war, and to approve the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery. However, he did not press further to guarantee the rights of African Americans. Most white Texans who took the oath of loyalty to the United States, as required, could participate in the restoration of home rule. This lenient policy permitted the majority of Texans to assume previous civil rights. (p. 150.)

President Andrew Johnson,A Unionist Democrat from Tennessee, succeeded to the presidency on April 15, 1865, after the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Andrew Johnson's Restoration Plan

1. Declare secession null and void2. Cancel the Confederate debt3. Approve the Thirteenth Amendment4. Amnesty program

Andrew Jackson HamiltonHamilton and his supporters worried that those tied to the Confederate past would attempt to regain their former prominence, and duly block efforts to realize civil rights for black persons.

On June 17, 1865, President Andrew Johnson appointed Andrew Jackson Hamilton, a former U.S. congressman from Texas and a Unionist who had fled to the North, as provisional governor of Texas. As a part of his ongoing plan to implement what historians call Presidential Reconstruction, Johnson instructed Hamilton to call a convention and undertake the necessary steps to form a new civil government in the state. (p. 150.)

Political PartiesPolitical Parties Position Regarding Position Regarding Freedmen’s Civil RightsFreedmen’s Civil Rights

•Republican Party

•Unionists

Proposed basic civil rights for the freedmen.

•Conservative Democrats (formerly the Secessionist Democrats)

•Conservative Unionists

Opposed granting any freedoms to blacks beyond emancipation; they favored new legislation specifically restricting the rights of African Americans.

See pages 150-151.

James Webb Throckmorton

Convention Chairperson

Governor of Texas

On June 25, 1866, the voters approved the Constitution of 1866, which essentially consisted of an amended Constitution of 1845…. (p. 152).1866 Constitutional Convention1. Declared secession illegal2. Repudiated the war debt3. Ratified the Thirteenth

Amendment

Federal mandates forced the convention to grant certain rights to blacks

1. Purchase and sell property2. Sue and be sued3. Enter into contracts4. Testify in court in cases involving blacks

The convention denied blacks

1. The right to vote2. The right to hold public office3. The right to serve on a jury4. Public schools

The “Black Code” included a contract labor law specifying that laborers wanting to work for more than thirty days would have to enter a binding agreement. Although the “black code” did not mention race specifically, it clearly intended to dictate the way the freemen would earn their living. (p. 154.)

Black Code Legislation

The black code legislation prohibited blacks from marrying whites, holding office, and voting. African Americans suspected of being truant from their jobs could be arrested and forced to work on public projects without pay until they agreed to return to their employer.

In dealing with whites, African Americans could not make insulting noises, speak disrespectfully or out of turn, dispute the word of whites, or disobey a command. Further, they had to stand at attention when Whites passed, step aside when white women were on the sidewalk, address whites "properly" and remove their hats in the presence of whites. Whites insisted upon this behavior because they continued to believe in white supremacy.

To restrict the liberties of Blacks, the 1866 state legislature enacted "black codes," which essentially were an attempt to recreate slavery. A contract labor law specified that the freedmen were to choose an employer and then sign a binding contract if their work exceeded one month. A child apprenticeship law provided that parents could indenture their offspring to employers until the age of 21.

General Philip

Sheridan

Elisha M. Pease

Donald Campbell to Pease, August 25, 1868

Freedmen’s BureauFreedmen’s BureauSee page 155.

•White Texans detested the outsiders from the North.•“carpetbaggers” and “scalawags” •With only about 70 field agents and subordinates at its full manpower level, the bureau lacked the personnel to help ex-slaves successfully enter society as free persons.•Many Texans saw the bureau as an institution thrust upon them by the Radical Republicans•E. M. Gregory was transferred out of the Texas Freedmen’s Bureau because white Texans thought him too sympathetic to the freedmen’s rights

Scalawags and Carpetbaggers

Carpetbagger

or

Good Freedman Bureau Officer

A political cartoon depicting the KKK and the Democratic party as continuations of the Confederacy.

The Freedmen's Bureau, Alfred R. Waud, July 25, 1868Reproduced from Harper's Weekly

George T. RubyGeorge T. Ruby

Targets of white terrorism

1. Blacks

2. Freedmen's Bureau agents

3. U. S. Army

A cartoon threatening that the KKK would lynch carpetbaggers, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent Monitor, 1868.

The Freemen’s Bureau supported the education of former bondspeople. In 1865, the bureau began operating sixteen schools for freedmen in Texas. (p. 155)

Texas v. WhiteIn March 1869, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state’s secession from the Union was unconstitutional.

Ab initio: the belief that all official acts passed under secession to help the Confederacy were null and void.

(p. 159.)

At the national level, Radical Republicans believed

1. Southerners should take an oath of allegiance before voting or hold office

2. The southern states were "conquered provinces"3. Blacks should have equal civil rights

Under Andrew Johnson's Restoration Plan

1. Ex-Confederates controlled the southern governments

2. Black codes limited the right s of freedmen 3. White terrorism

1. Divided the South into five military districts

2. Abolished the Restoration governments

3. Required new constitutions with equality for blacks

4. Restricted the political participation of former confederate leaders

A series of congressional acts in 1867 established Radical Reconstruction

Edmund J. Davis first got involved in military affairs in 1859, when as a district judge in South Texas, he accompanied the ranger unit of Captain William G. Tobin during the Cortina wars in Brownsville. As the Civil War approached, he supported Sam Houston and opposed secession. After secession, he refused to take a loyalty oath to the Confederacy and was removed from his judgeship.

President Lincoln commissioned Davis a colonel in the Union army. Davis recruited and led the First Texas Cavalry (U.S.), and saw action in Galveston, Matamoros, and the Rio Grande Valley. Promoted to brigadier general in November 1864, he commanded the cavalry of General Joseph J. Reynolds in the Division of Western Mississippi. On June 2, 1865, he was among those who represented the Union at the surrender of Confederate forces in Texas. Source: Texas State Library and Archives Commission (www.tsl.state.tx.us/ governors/war/davis-p01.html) This photograph shows Edmund J.

Davis in uniform as a brigadier general in the federal army.

By the time of the election of 1869, the Republicans had split and consequently fielded two candidates. The Radical Republicans chose Edmund J. Davis, who supported the principle of ab initio and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Seeking to attract disaffected Democrats, the Moderate Republicans ran A.J. Hamilton, even though he did not believe in much of their program. (p. 161.)

Radical Republicans vs. Moderate Republicans

The Radical Republicans marshaled the black vote through the efforts of the Union League, in which Ruby’s registration efforts had paid dividends.

Moderate Republican Moderate Republican A.J. HamiltonA.J. Hamilton

Radical Republican Radical Republican Edmund J. DavisEdmund J. Davis

The Election of 1869

Edmund  Jackson  Davis

Governor of Texas from January Governor of Texas from January 1870 to January 18741870 to January 1874

Governor Davis organized a state police as well as a state militia, both to be under the governor’s oversight. He also signed a bill financing a public school system with such progressive features as a state superintendent and compulsory attendance. Higher taxes were imposed on property to finance these efforts…. (p. 164.)

The Radical Republican Governor Edmund Jackson Davis establishes a state policy to bring order to the state, and also establishes the state’s first system of public education.

1. Ab initio2. Equality for blacks3. State financing of public schools4. The use of eastern railroad

interests to build railroads in Texas5. Disenfranchisement of ex-

Confederates6. The division of the state

Radicals supported

George T. RubyGeorge T. RubyMatt GainesMatt Gaines

Republicans were weakened by

1. Internal divisions2. White terrorism

Governor Davis Faces Strong Opposition

Governor Davis’s opponents managed to mold public opinion into associating the Radical administration with corruption and extravagant spending. Recent research suggests that the greatest percentage of the state’s revenue went to law enforcement, the common school system, and frontier defense and that the Radicals were not in fact wasteful with the taxpayers’ money. But Texans (among them the members of the planter class, allies of the Democrats), opposed what they considered arbitrary taxation, while others condemned what they believed to be a central government’s usurpation of local autonomy. As Democrats campaigned in the special congressional election of 1871, they stressed the issues of high taxes, corruption, fraud, and misgovernment.

In November of 1872, the Democrats won a majority in both chambers of the State Legislature. When the new legislature met in 1873, it abolished the state police and overthrew Davis’s public school system. (p. 165)

Richard Coke (1829-1897)

In the gubernatorial election in December 1873, Davis again ran on the Republican ticket, while Richard Coke, an ex-Confederate, campaigned as a Conservative Democrat. During the campaign, Davis highlighted the programs he had initiated, while Coke and his followers talked of “redemption,” of restoring strong states’ rights and of overthrowing the coalition of Republicans and freedmen. Coke took the election 100,415 to 52,141.

Edmund  Jackson  Davis

Composite photo of the 1875 Constitutional Convention, Archives and Composite photo of the 1875 Constitutional Convention, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Wagon Trains from Tennessee and Alabama entered Texas after the Civil War. Early day Blueridge settlers were looking for a fresh start, and Texas seemed to be the best place to find it.

Coming of the Steam Train in 1873 put Reagan, Texas on the Map! The old Reagan Depot stood next to the Train tracks until the 1960's.