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VOLUME XXVII 1989 NUMBER 2 EA I TEXA HISTORICAL JOURNAL EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION OFFICERS Gwin Morris President Linda Cross First Vice President Ron Hufford Second Vice President Mrs. Tommie Jan Lowery Treasurer DIRECTORS Bill O'Neal Carthage 1989 Naaman Woodland Beaumont 1989 Gladys Meisenheimer Jefferson 1989 Randolph B. Campbell .......•....... Denton 1990 Patricia Kell Baytown 1991 Cissy Lale Fort Worth 1991 Paul R. Scott Spring 1991 Virginia Long Kilgore ex-President Joe L. White Kilgore ex-President F. Lee Lawrence Tyler Director Emeritus William R. Johnson Nacogdoches ex-officio James V. Reese Nacogdoches ex-officio EDITORIAL BOARD Valentine J. Belfiglio Garland Bob Bowman Lufkin Garna L. Christian Houston Ouida Dean Nacogdoches Patricia A. Gajda Tyler Robert L. Glover Tyler Bobby H. Johnson Nacogdoches Patricia Kell Baytown Max S. Lale Fort Worth Irvin M. May, Jr Bryan Bill O'Neal Carthage Chuck Parsons South Wayne, WI Fred Tarpley Commerce Archie P. McDonald EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND EDITOR MEMBERSHIP INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERS pay $100 annually. LIFE MEMBERS pay $250 or more. SUSTAINING MEMBER, PATRON pays $75 and BENEFACTOR pays $50 annually. REGULAR MEMBERS pay $12 dues annually. STUDENT MEMBERS pay $8 dues annually. P.O. Box 6223 STEPHEN F. AUSTIN STATE UNIVERSITY Nacogdoches, Texas 75962 $7.00 per copy to non-members. $3.00 per copy to members. © Copyright 1989 XXVII - East Texas Historical Association EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL JOURNAL Volume XXVII 1989 Number 2 CONTENTS THE SECOND BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO by Max S. Lale..... .................................. .. 3 THE WARP AND THE WEFr: AN OVERVIEW OF THE SOCIAL FABRIC OF MEXICAN TEXAS by Felix D. Almaraz 13 "WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE NEGRO?": THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU IN TEXAS by Diane Neal and Thomas W. Krcmm 23 SARAH T. HUGHES, JOHN F. KENNEDY AND THE JOHNSON INAUGURAL, 1%3 by Robert S. LaForte and Richard Himmel 34 BAYTOWN POLICE SCANDAL by Buck A. young 41 EAST TEXAS COLLOQUy ,., ,., , .45 BOOK NOTES " 47 BOOK REVIEWS .49 Archie P. McDonald, Executive Director and Editor STEPHEN F. AUSTIN STATE UNIVERSITY P.O. BOX 6223 NACOGDOCHES. TEXAS 75962 2 EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BOOKS REVIEWED Jenkins, Basic Texas Books, by Al Lowman Cutrer, The Art ofthe Woman. The Life and Times ofElizabet Ney, by Abigail Davis Taylor, Citizens at Last. The Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas, and Humphrey, A Texas Suffragist. Diaries and Writings of Jane Y. McCallum, by Sylvia W. McGrath Holland, Brush Country Woman, by Joyce Gibson Roach Vernon, Sledge, Monk, and Spellmann, The Methodist Excitement in Texa.i;, by Melvin R. Mason Gracy, Moses Austin. His Life, by Margaret Swett Henson Alter, Thistle Hill. The History and the House, by Janet Schmelzer Baker, Building the Lone Star. An llJustrated Guide to Historic Sites, by Irvin M. May, Jr. Kingston, A Concise History of Texas (from the Texas Almanac), by Bob Bowman Hofsommer, The Southern Pacific, 1901-1985, by Robert S. Maxwell Young, A Marmac Guide to Houston and GaJve,~ton, by David McComb Bullard, invisible Houston. The Black Experience in Boom or Bust, by Garna Christian Wooster, The Military and United States Indian Policy, 1865-1903, by Matt Nail Pike, Prose Sketches and Poems Written in the Western Country, by Tom C. Cutrer Parrish, The Saga ofthe Confederate Ram Arkansas. The Mississippi Valley Cam- paign. 1862, by G. Milton Dodson Piston, Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant. James Longstreet and His Place in Southern History, by Robert Killam Symonds, A Battlefield Atlas of the Civil War, by Teresa York Coco, A Vast Sea ofMisery. A History and Guide to the Union and Confederate Field Hospitals at Gettysburg, July I-Nov. 20, 1863, by Allen Richman Wells, Commodore Moorc and the Texas Navy, by Paul H. Varga Bartley, The Evolution of Southern Culture, by Randolph B. Campbell Walker, Penology for Profit. A History of the Texas Prison System 1867-1912, by Linda Sybert Hudson Champagne and Harpham, eds., Texas at the Crossroads. People, PoJitic,~ and Policy, by Richard Bailey McCoy, Tim McCoy Remembers The West, by Michael K. Schoenecke Champagne, Sam Rayburn, A Bio-Bibliography, by Edward H. Phillips Lynch, Roughnecks, Drillers and Tool Pushers. Thirty-three Years in the Oil Fields, by Roger M. Olien Owens, Look to the River and Walking on Borrowed Land, by Richard Bailey Capps, Sam Chance, by Joseph Milton Nance Saunders, How to Live - and Die - With Texas Probate, by Joyce Swearingen Brooks, Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, by Ben Procter Charles, Last Man Out, by Mark Choate Tolbert, The Staked Plain, by Marion Holt Weddle, The San Saba Mission, Spalli..,h Pivot in Texas, by D.S. Chandler Swift and Corning, Jr., Three Roads to Chihuahua. The Great Wagon Roads that Opened the Southwest, 1823-1883, by Frank Pratt O'Neal, The Arizona Rangers, by David J. Murrah Pusateri, A History of American Business, by Charles W. Brown Lich, Larry McMurtry's Texas. Evolution of the Myth, by Betty Haley Symonds, A Battlefield Atlas of the American Revolution, by Teresa York EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION 3 THE SECOND BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO by Max S. Lale A controversy arising out of events immediately following the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, and involving some of Texas' most notable figures, including Sam Houston, resulted in a libel suit which was not settled until November 20, 1866. The settlement came eighteen months after the Civil War had ended and more than thirty years after what may have been the wanton killing of a high-ranking prisoner of war, another prisoner, and one or more Mexican women. These allegations were brought to public attention by an article in the Texas Almanac for 1859, "San Jacinto Campaign," written by Dr. N.D. Labadie, a surgeon with the Texian army then living in Galveston, where he operated a pharmacy. In addition to medicines his wares also were advertised to include oils, varnishes, window glass, garden seed, cypress and pine shingles, plastering lath, books, and "fine bricks." References were made in the article to Colonel John Forbes, commissary of the Texian army, which he believed defamed his character and damaged his reputation. Forbes wrote a letter in his own defense which the Galveston News published on October 30, 1858, and in a later issue the Almanac disclaimed any intention on its own or Labadie's part "to say anything injurious to him [Forbes] or any other person.tt Despite later denying in a deposition that he had read the Labadie article, Sam Houston rose in the United States Senate on February 28, 1859, to defend Forbes and to dismiss the surgeon IS allegations. This speech, published in its entirety in the Congressional Globe, subsequently was published in an extracted form in the Southwestern Historical Quar­ terly (IV, pp. 316-25), with an editor's prefatory note that it "pretends to be a reply to Labadie's account of the San Jacinto campaign ....tt Despite the Almanac's later disclaimer, which it can be assumed the publication must have agreed to in advance in order to avoid becoming a party to litigation, attorneys for Forbes and Labadie busied themselves between December 12, 1858 and June 25 1 1860 with taking sixteen deposi­ tions from San Jacinto veterans, including Houston. These depositions, sworn under oath and authenticated by notaries public, were from battle participants then living in places as widely scattered as Corpus Christi and Cincinnati, Ohio. Nicholas Descomps Labadie, the defendant in the libel case, was born in Windsor, Canada, on December 5, 1801. He moved to Fort Jessup, Louisiana, in the spring of 1830. The same year he moved to Texas, carrying with him a letter from R.D. Hopkins, fOT whom he worked, to Stephen F. Austin. After a brief stay at San Felipe de Austin. Labadie A1ax S. LaIc, a past president of the East Texas Historical Association, JjyCS in Marshall and Fort Worth, Texas_ 4 EAST TEXAS HISTORICAL ASSOCIAnON located at Galveston, moving shortly thereafter to Anahuac. where he prac­ ticed medicine and surgery and took part in the Anahuac disturbances. At the outbreak of the Texas Revolution he was assigned to the medical staff of the First Regiment of Texas Volunteers. Forbes, the plaintiff. also was an immigrant to the United States, born of Scot ancestry in Cork, Ireland, on February 26, 1797. He migrated twenty years later, settling first in Cincinnati. In 1835 he removed to Nacogdoches, where, along with Sam Houston, he negotiated a treaty with the Cherokee Indians. During the early part of 1836 he served as primary judge of the municipality, administering the oath of allegiance to many of the Anglo-Americans then coming into Texas. In the grade of major, he was appointed aide-de-camp to Houston, who later assigned him as the army's commissary. He was elected mayor of Nacogdoches in 1856 and worked as an attorney and surveyor, and in 1876 was appointed lieutenant colonel on the staff of Governor Richard Coke. By the time depositions had been taken, the points of contention between Forbes and Labadie had expanded beyond the killing of women and a prisoner of war to include Santa Anna's gold snuff box, the disposi­ tion of battlefield spoils, and possible cowardice on the part of Forbes during the San Jacinto engagement.