Texas Divided: Loyalty and Dissent in the Lone Star State, 1856-1874
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University of Kentucky UKnowledge United States History History 4-5-1990 Texas Divided: Loyalty and Dissent in the Lone Star State, 1856-1874 James Marten Marquette University Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Marten, James, "Texas Divided: Loyalty and Dissent in the Lone Star State, 1856-1874" (1990). United States History. 5. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/5 TEXAS DIVIDED TEXAS, 1860 ,,, TEXAS DIVIDED Loyalty and Dissent in the Lone Star State 1856-1874 JAMES MARTEN THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright © 1990 by The University Press of Kentucky Paperback edition 2009 The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Frontispiece: Adapted by Lawrence Brence from map by Liz Conrad in Secession and the Union in Texas, by Walter L. Buenger (Austin, 1984). Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8131-9335-9 (pbk: acid-free paper) This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses To Linda This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Drawing the Line 1 1 Southern Vigilantism and the Sectional Conflict 6 2 Antebellum Dissenters in Texas 18 3 Confederate Unionists and the War 33 4 Unionists as Dissenters 53 5 Speculators, Deserters, and Bandits 86 6 Ethnic Texans and the War 106 7 Loyalty and Reconstruction, 1865-1874 128 8 Black Texans during Reconstruction 153 Epilogue: Nothing to Regret but Failure 175 Notes 181 Selected Bibliography 217 Index 241 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments This book is no different from any other in that a number of individuals and institutions aided in its completion. Financial aid was provided by the Texas Chapter of the Colonial Dames of America, by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, by a Dora Bonham grant from the Department of History and a Texas Studies Dissertation Fellowship from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, and by a Faculty De velopment Award from the Graduate School of Marquette University. The staffs at the Barker Texas History Center and the Perry-Castenada Library at the University ofTexas at Austin, the Texas State Archives, the Austin History Center at the Austin Public Library, and the Marquette Universi ty Memorial Library sped research with their competence and courtesy. In addition, although the notes barely show it, I was also welcomed by the able archivists at the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at the Duke University Library. The guiding hand of Robert H. Abzug is evident throughout the work. He delivered inciteful and extensive comments on several drafts of the 1986 dissertation on which this book is based and on a subsequent draft long after his duties as my dissertation director had officially ended. I will always value his scholarship, confidence, and continuing friendship. Reid Mitchell volunteered to read the entire manuscript and I profited enor mously from his wit and shrewd suggestions. I also benefited from the comments and cooperation of my dissertation committee at the University of Texas at Austin-George B. Forgie, Robert A. Divine, Norman D. Brown, and Orner Galle-and from the remarks willingly offered on parts of the manuscript by Walter Buenger, Frank Klement, Grady McWhiney, and Tim Machan. F. E. Abernethy, Carl Moneyhon, Randolph B. Camp bell, Col. Harold B. Simpson, Liz Conrad, and William Gist all generously corresponded with me on large or small aspects of my research. A number of friends and fellow graduate students at UT-Austin helped with sugges tions and favors, including James Boyden, Judith Kaaz Doyle, Sally Graham, Brian Hosmer, Richard McCaslin, and James B. Martin. At the X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS University Press of Kentucky, Wm. Jerome Crouch and the staff made the publishing process much less of a puzzle to this novice. Any surviving errors of fact or of judgment remain, of course, solely mine. On a more personal note, I would like to thank my family. Roy and Mary Lou Marten have always been encouraging and proud parents. Many of my own feelings of self-worth and confidence stem from their enthusi astic support; I firmly believe that my cherished memories of their deter mined attendance at years of high school and college sporting events, concerts, and other miscellaneous occasions will continue to contribute in some way to whatever success I achieve in life. My younger sister Jane, a small-town music teacher, has overcome her disdain at my professor's teaching schedule to express her satisfaction that at least I finally have a paying job. Her interest has always been appreciated. Another intangible acknowledgment goes to my four-year-old daughter Lauren Ruth, who during her brief life has unknowingly and happily put graduate school and my own career, to say nothing of the Civil War, in proper perspective. I dedicate Texas Divided to my wife, Linda Gist Marten. Marriage into the Gist clan has allowed me to claim as shirt-tail in-laws southern dissen ters from the Gist and McCracken families. During the Civil War, Joe McCracken, one of Linda's great-great-great uncles, hid in a Boone Coun ty, Missouri, apple cellar for two years to avoid conscription into the Confederate army (not to mention the Union army), while several great great-uncles on the Gist side served in the Union army, although they lived in Confederate Arkansas during the war. Linda, on the other hand, endured five Texas summers and supported our little family through six years of graduate school with only a few murmurs of dissent; dedicating this slim volume to her attests-albeit meagerly-to my appreciation for the faith, patience, and love she has demonstrated throughout a dozen years of marriage. Introduction: Drawing the Line 1b.e Civil War hardly scratched the Confederate state ofTexas. 1b.ousands of Texans died on battlefields hundreds of miles to the east, of course, but the war did not destroy Texas's farms or plantations or her few miles of railroads. Her long border with Mexico neutralized the effect of the federal blockade on Texas, and the battles fought inside her borders were mere skirmishes compared to the sanguinary struggles in Virginia and Tennes see. Although unchallenged from without, Confederate Texans faced chal lenges from within-from fellow Texans who opposed their cause. Dissension sprang from a multitude of seeds. It emerged from prewar political and ethnic differences; it surfaced after wartime hardships and potential danger wore down the resistance ofless-than-enthusiastic rebels; it flourished, as some reaped huge profits from the bizarre war economy of Texas. 1b.e geographic location-indeed, isolation--of the Lone Star state caused her domestic struggle to overshadow the fight with the Yankees more than in perhaps any other southern state. Nevertheless, all the satellites in the Confederate constellation fought their own internal civil wars between 1861 and 1865. 1b.e surprising amount of unity with which Texans and their corevolutionaries marched against the Yankees obscured for a time the divisions within southern society. Many southerners had long objected to the principles espoused by the secessionists or had opposed secession. Despite this opposition, passion usually overcame ideology, sparking widespread support for southern fire-eaters and win ning votes for secession in Texas and all over the South. Fiery campaign speeches against "Black Republicans" in 1860 and "Union shriekers" in 1861 helped spawn a Confederate patriotism among Texans that reached its zenith in the months immediately following the attack on Fort Sumter, before beginning a decline that would not reach its nadir until the end of the war. 2 TEXAS DIVIDED Prewar and wartime conditions produced a wide range of dissenting styles among Texans that lasted well into the Reconstruction. The some times volatile dynamics among the major social, political, and ethnic groups in antebellum Texas, produced a spectrum of dissent, which I have traced from the origins to the Reconstruction fates of groups and individu als who refused to support the southern and Confederate causes. In many ways, the real civil war in Texas was fought not over the state's relationship with the federal government, but over relationships among Texans. These battles, blending race, politics, and economics, gave birth to a turbulent era of strife and conflict. That those who did not support the Confederacy generally did not emerge victorious from the Civil War, despite its out come, makes the story even more compelling, and sheds light on the course of events in Texas and in the South for the rest of the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century. The question of loyalty-to the South, to the Confederacy, to the Union, to one's ethnic group--provides one key to understanding this story of a society at war with itself Many of the people included in this book were not conscious of any disloyalty.