This module examines the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the rise of state-enforced segregation in the Walker County, Texas.  Populated primarily by the enslaved on the eve of war, the county served as an economic and political hub of the East Texas cotton economy.  Although its most prominent resident, Governor Sam Houston, was deposed for his opposition to secession and war, Walker County contributed hundreds of Confederate soldiers.  In addition, local residents served the war effort by harnessing the penitentiary system to textile production for the Confederacy. Until 1865, blacks and whites lived in society characterized by white freedom in a larger society committed to slavery.

Peace brought emancipation, martial law, and a new interracial public sphere of politics. Confederate veterans resumed lives interrupted by war and frequently started new careers. Supporters of the new Republican Party, both black and white, allied to elect Richard Williams and James H. Washington as the first black politicians to represent Walker County in the Texas legislature in Austin. This new-found power proved to be short-lived, however, since white communities across the state of Texas began to use state law to segregate and disenfranchise African Americans and stifle expansion of inter-racial political cooperation.

Like the other southern states, Texas communities used the power of the state and local violence to crush interracial political cooperation and create a system of de jure and de facto racial segregation that endured into the 1960s. Segregation relied on state and local law and socially enforced rules regulating access to public services, transportation, education, recreation, and housing according to race. This module uses primary documents, local records, and secondary histories to trace personal, social, economic and political interactions among the varied peoples that shaped Walker County, East Texas, and the larger narrative of southern history from Secession to the Era of Segregation. 

Antebellum Texas was among the fastest growing southern states in terms of both population and production of cotton. Between 1847 and 1860, the state's population increased from 142,000 to 604,215, excluding Native Americans. Over seventy-five percent of households were headed by those born in southern states and one quarter of all families owned at least one slave. The enslaved population had increased even faster, with the 182,566 slaves representing a 500% increase since admission to the Union. The demographics of Texas marked it as similar to other southern states with economies and social arrangements grounded in the growth of cotton and use of slave labor.[1]

Because the driving factor in cotton production in Texas was access or ownership of labor, over ninety percent of the cotton grown was produced by those with slaves. The later arrival of large-scale cotton production meant that Texas soils remained very productive averaging a 475 pound bale of cotton for each acre planted. Mimicking the early output of Mississippi and Alabama when cotton was first introduced, Texas production jumped from 58,072 bales per year in 1849 to 431,463 by 1859. Overall Texas total crop size in 1859 stood at fifth among all states, up from ninth a decade earlier. Texans, like other southerners, saw their economic future tied to the explosive profits linked to slavery and cotton.[2]

While the cotton came to dominate the antebellum economy, the majority of east Texans relied on basic subsistence agriculture and ranching. Plantation owners grew food for themselves and their slaves. Access to larger towns and marketing of crops relied on river transport on shallow-draft steamboats or the early rail lines the spread slowly out of Houston. Improvements in river craft opened regions of East Texas to the regional cotton market, but unreliable water levels and an absence of routine channel clearance and natural obstructions frequently forced Texas planters back on the poorly developed networks of roads and trails.

No city in Texas had more than 8300 people, and the households in towns such as San Antonio, Galveston, Houston, and Austin, the four largest, were headed by Mexicans or foreign-born immigrants. Comparing these cities with Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a city in a state that entered the Union after Texas, shows 45,246 residents in the northern town with San Antonio, the largest Texas town listing 8,235 occupants. Antebellum Texas, particularly its Anglo settlers, reflected the dominance of an agricultural way of life and an absence of manufacturing. The economic attraction of cotton production with enslaved labor attracted average Texans and new settlers with a grim logic more enticing than investments in risky manufacturing concerns. The state's leading men of the state drew their wealth and power from their involvement in cotton, slavery, and a sense of membership in southern culture and values.[3]

Sam Houston defined his political identity in terms of strict loyalty to the principles of Andrew Jackson, his political mentor. Unionism and responsiveness to the voice of the people in preference to party machinations and spoils. Like Jackson, he held to a firm sense of acting as he saw in the interest of the nation regardless of the political cost. In 1850 Sam Houston had been a United States Senator for four years and cooperated with fellow Senator Henry Clay was to advocate a final compromise that would end the slavery debate, even he found portions of the proposed plan distasteful. The Compromise of 1850 was comprised of five measures passed to appease both North and South: the Texas Boundary Bill, California statehood, bills regarding the territories of New Mexico and Utah, and the Fugitive Slave Bill. Sam Houston voted for every bill, including California statehood which he argued was in accordance with “the rights of American citizens to govern themselves.”[4] The Texas border bill concerned Houston, but his influence resulted in a ten million dollar payment by the federal government to Texas as compensation, which effectively eradicated Texas' debt remaining from its days as a Republic. Sectional peace overrode his desire for larger state borders as “he would have been willing to see every foot of the territory claimed by Texas become a lake of fire and brimstone rather than see it throw an impediment in the way of the peace and harmony of the Union.”[5]

Like Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston was a supporter of slavery and a slave owner. He voted for the Compromise of 1850 even though most of southern politicians voted against the bill. Houston was a fervent believer in the written constitution and firmly believed that the Compromise of 1850, together with the Missouri Compromise, proved that slavery would be protected by the Constitution and that extending the Missouri Compromise line was “the best solution to the slavery expansion issue.”[6] Incidentally, Houston used this same logic to combat growing sentiment towards secession, arguing that slavery was protected by the Union and seceding would remove guaranteed opportunity to expand slavery. However, Houston did speak out against the notion of spreading slavery to the North, adopting a practical, more moderate view of slavery by arguing that land in the North was mostly unsuitable for slave labor and that it would be foolish and dangerous to argue the point.[7]

In 1854, Houston again broke ranks with the southern majority. He joined John Bell of Tennessee as the only southern Senators to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Bill that repealed the Missouri Compromise and ignited a firestorm of controversy over the expansion of slavery into the western territories. In a two-day speech in the U.S. Senate Houston warned his southern colleagues that 34 year old ban on slavery's expansion into northern regions of the West protected southern interests and slavery. He warned the Senate, “Maintain the Missouri Compromise! Stir up not agitation! Give us Peace!,” or the South “will go down . . . in a sea of blood and smoking ruin.”[8]

The Texas legislature did not applaud his independent course of action and passed a resolution on November 26, 1855 condemning Houston's opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act by a vote of 77 to 3.[9] Many called for his resignation from the Senate.

In the Texas gubernatorial race of 1857, almost as a point of pride to prove to state Democrats his popularity, Houston took on Hardin R. Runnels, a Democratic protégé of John C. Calhoun, a radical proponent of southern separatism. Houston travelled the state in a borrowed buggy and delivered over sixty speeches defending his Unionism and enduring charges of his betrayal of southern interests in order to curry favor with northern interests.

Thomas Jewett Goree, a young lawyer living in Montgomery, Texas, admired Houston, but qualified his support, noting that “if the General is not a traitor to the South and to his country, I am certain that he has done enough to entitle him to any office he may ask at the hands of the people.”[11] His remarks reveal the lingering damage done to Houston's political reputation by his opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the false rumors of his support for abolition. Houston's complicated stance on slavery hurt him in the polls, and Runnels narrowly defeated him in 1857, winning 53 percent of the vote to Houston's 47 percent. Despite the loss, however, Houston continued to serve in the Senate after his defeat in the Governor's race.

Returning to Texas after retiring from the Senate in March 1859, Sam Houston retired surprised many when he chose to challenge Runnels again for the Governor's office. Runnels was vulnerable for his record of protecting settlers along the Commanche frontiers and his open discussion of reopening the slave trade.

Houston's election faced two challenges. His opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act angered those leaning towards secession and German immigrants and Tejanos distrusted his involvement with the state's Know-Nothings, but Houston reassured Texans were finished. He stressed the importance of the federal forts and military forces to border security and Indian suppression. Texans watched the violence that had gripped Kansas since 1854 and credited Houston with wisdom, if not staunch loyalty to southern interests. In his only speech in the race, Houston condemned both Republicans and Democrats alike, who sought to undermine the law by violating the fugitive slave act and reopening the slave-trade.[12] His opponent Runnel's denounced Houston's “demagogical union saving doctrines” that would “inflict an irreparable blow upon southern interests at this time.”[13] While the Democratic Party in Texas saw Houston's election as a major defeat, they controlled the State House and Senate and used their powers to block his use of the executive mansion for his inaugural ball. Houston struck back by giving his inaugural speech on the Capitol's front porch. By the time Houston ascended the governor's chair, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry had raised the tensions and perceived stakes between the sections.

In his first year as Governor, Houston tried to avoid issues dealing with slavery or secession and focused on securing the frontier. The Indian problem proved to be a polarizing issue as state and federal forces failed to protect the growing settler population. In most counties, especially the northwest counties, Indian raids ravaged communities and residents grew to doubt the only concrete value many saw in remaining in the Union. Sectionalist critics reasoned, that if “Houston could not be trusted to eliminate the threat of Indian attack, why should he be trusted when he sang praises of the glorious Union?”[14] Houston's efforts to redirect secessionist passions back-fired and, instead, largely contributed to sectionalist attitudes throughout Northwest Texas and the frontier.

As talk of secession increased in the beginning of 1860, Houston became disenchanted with the Democratic Party, now dominated by southern partisans demanding federal support for slavery or disunion. There were discussions in March by moderate Democrats of putting Houston's name forward as a well known southern man of national as opposed to sectional sentiments. In a strongly worded letter to the Charleston, South Carolina Democratic Convention written in March, Houston adamantly rejected further association with the Democrats and the “serpent of sectionalism.” He recalled when the Democrats named him “traitor to the South and an Abolitionist” and believed only the people could purify the political climate of its “corruptions and chicanery” that “disgusted the people.”[15] He refused to be the tool of a single party or section and vigorously declined to be considered for the presidency. Upon his renunciation of political parties and anti-unionist leanings throughout Texas increased, Sam Houston wrote to his son, Sam Houston Jr., urging him to “love and revere the Union.”[16]

This Party nominated John Bell of Tennessee and advocated the same position that Sam Houston had been arguing since 1850. Houston's name was again put forward for president and he ended up second in the balloting to Bell. It was ironic that in the space of a single year Houston could be considered by conservative men of two competing political parties for the presidential nomination.[17] The Constitutional Union Party would advocate Union, preservation of the Constitution, and protection of slavery where it already existed. Bell ran strongly in Virginia, Tennessee, and other border regions but had limited appeal in Texas.

Houston continued to appeal for moderation but Lincoln's victory and Breckinridge's overwhelming victory in Texas made his a lonely voice. Houston urged that “if Lincoln acted in accordance with the Constitution, the South had nothing to fear.”[18] Shortly after the election, Houston wrote a letter to the people of Huntsville, Texas who had been asking his opinion of the crisis. The letter was printed into a handbill for public distribution. He stated that he had no fear of revolution, but hesitated “to plunge into revolution now, it is not because I am ready to submit to Black Republican Rule; but because I regard the Constitution of my country and am determined to stand by it. When I contemplate the horrors of civil war such as the dissolution of the Union will ultimately force upon us, I cannot believe that the people will rashly take a step fraught with these consequences.” He also asked Texans to consider, “after enduring civil war for years, will there be any promise of a better state of things than we now enjoy?”[19]

The Texas government was split at all levels on the issue of secession and this confusion spilled over onto the population. Secessionists hit a major roadblock in their efforts to dissolve ties with the Union. Only the state legislature could call a secession convention, but the only the governor could call the state legislature into a special session. The next meeting of the state legislature was not scheduled to meet for almost a year. After Lincoln's election, as southern states began to secede and pressure from radical secessionists mounted, Houston refused to call a special session, which was his first step in a political retreat. Houston attempted to stall the forming of a secession convention to allow for passions to cool and moderation to seep back into the heads of Texans, because he still aimed at Texas remaining in the Union.

Houston's efforts to hold back secession were subverted by the secessionists, as they met in December and decided to elect a secession convention on January 8, 1861 which would assemble on January 28.[22] Houston continued to delay by calling the legislature into a special session one week before the secession convention was to meet, in an effort to undermine its efforts. By this time, Texas was visited by secession commissioners, men appointed from states already out of the Union to convince other southern states to rapidly join the Confederacy. J.M. Calhoun, Alabama's commissioner to Texas, wrote Houston pleading that “Disunion was the only way to protect the South's white citizens from ‘utter ruin and degradation'”.[23] Seeing that the people of Texas were leaning towards secession, Houston relented, but told Calhoun that in his opinion Texas would be better off remaining an independent republic rather than joining the Confederacy.[24] Houston was increasingly isolated and could count on only a handful of legislators who supported him.[25]

When the special session of legislature convened, it decided to allow the secession convention to meet as planned, but conceded to Houston's demand to ratify any decision of the convention in a popular referendum. The secession convention met, as scheduled, on January 28 and voted to draft a resolution dissolving Texas' ties to the Union. Two days later, on February 1, the convention met to give its final vote. Governor Houston attended the convention and listened to South Carolina's secession commissioner and former congressman John McQueen state that “[Lincoln's] policy was to be abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to an equality with ourselves and our children.”[26] Shortly thereafter, the convention voted to secede by a margin of 166 to 8. The Ordinance of Secession was passed on February 1, 1861 to wild cheers in the galleries.

For a full accounting explaining and justifying their decision to leave the Union, the legislature, led by the leaders of the secessionist movement, drafted a Declaration of Causes modeled after the Declaration of Independence. Among the key reasons, the protection of chattel slavery and white supremacy. Texas “was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association.”

On February 23, 1861, the citizens of Texas voted n favor of secession by a margin of 46,153 to 14,747. Seeing that secession was the will of the people, Houston did not oppose it and supported the Texas Constitution and the possible return to Texas independence. However, on March 5, the legislature prepared to join Texas to the Confederacy, which Houston declared was contrary to the Constitution as the convention bypassed submitting the proposal for ratification by the citizens.

Secondly, Houston declared the test oath of allegiance to the Confederacy an act of tyranny and despotism. Lastly, Houston declared himself to be the true Chief Executive and that all actions by the convention are null and void. Lillie Barr Munroe recalls that there were tears in Houston's eyes as they lowered the United States flag from the Capitol and replaced it with the Confederate flag.[28] Houston declined offers of support and even federal aid to hold onto his office, appalled that anyone was “willing to deluge the capital of Texas with the blood of Texans, merely to keep one poor old man in position for a few days longer.”[29]

Instead of fighting to stay in power, Houston retired to Galveston, but continued to speak against the Confederacy. In April, seven days after the firing on Ft. Sumter, Houston stood on the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Galveston and delivered a speech. Prior to the speech a friend of Houston pushed away an unknown man who had cried, “Let's hang the old scoundrel,” showing tensions still ran high. Thomas North recorded the core of Houston's message. He asked the crowd if they would “now reject these last counsels of your political father, and squander your political patrimony in riotous adventure, which I now tell you, and with something of a prophetic ken, will land you in fire and rivers of blood.” He feared the North would “overwhelm the South” with “steady momentum and perseverance.”[30]

In the next two years, Houston accepted his state's decision to join the Confederacy. His eldest son fought for the South, but to Houston's dismay, he was sent away from Texas. In May of 1862, word of Sam Houston Jr.'s death at the Battle of Shiloh reached Galveston and became public knowledge, as Goree wrote to his mother on May 28 saying that he “was very sorry to hear of the death of poor young Sam Houston. I expect it will almost kill his poor parents.”[31] It was not until September when Houston learned that his son had not been killed, but instead, wounded and captured. A chaplain who knew Sam Houston from his time in the Senate and of opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, took great pains to see that young Houston survived and was returned to Texas.[32]

During 1862 and 1863, Houston remained critical of the war efforts in Texas. After the Battle of Galveston on October 4, 1862, Houston retreated north to Huntsville in very bad health, but on the way, he talked with soldiers stationed in Houston on October 10. Ralph J. Smith, a Confederate soldier, recalls that Houston “told us we knew not what we did; that the resources of the north were almost exhaustless. That time and money would wear us out and conquor [sic] us at last.”[33]

Houston's health began to fail and on July 26, 1863, he died from pneumonia at his Steamboat House in Huntsville, with Margaret by his side. Houston's uncanny perception and audacious tendency to speak his mind regardless of the opposition marked his political career. Houston warned against rashness and acted as a pillar of moderation while Texas embraced secession and the defense of slavery. Only when he was thoroughly convinced that the people supported secession was Houston swayed.

Although the Republican party was not formally created until July 1867 at its first official convention in Houston, the immediate postwar period is fascinating for its combination of experimentation, trepidation, and hope expressed in print as new men and those previously shut out of power attempted to assert themselves as viable candidates to govern the state.   Randolph Campbell’s study of the postwar demographics of Texas officeholders demonstrates that those appointed/elected after 1867 were less likely to have been part of the political leadership that dominated antebellum Texas – particularly in the case of slaveholding.  I have only found fragments on Walker County’s Republican newspaper, the Huntsville Republican which published from 1868-73.  Most references to it have been found in the local Democratic paper.  Most Texas Republican papers were short-lived and many were German language papers.  But Texas, 9th in population of former Confederate states, had the 3rd highest total of Republican papers, over twice the number of Virginia. 

Texas Renunciation of Right of Secession

Be it ordained by the people of Texas in Convention assembled, That we acknowledge the supremacy of the Constitution of the United States, and the laws passed in pursuance thereof; and that an Ordinance adopted by a former Convention of the people of Texas on the 1st day of February, A.D. 1861, entitled "An Ordinance to Dissolve the Union between the State of Texas and the other States, united under the compact styled 'Constitution of the United States of America,'" be and the same is hereby declared null and void; and the right heretofore claimed by the State of Texas to secede from the Union, is hereby distinctly renounced. March 15, 1866.

Source: The Constitution of the State of Texas, as Amended by the Delegates in Convention Assembled, Austin, 1866. Austin: Printed at the Southern Intelligencer Office, 1866, p. 32.
proclamation of peace between the U.S. and Texas dated August 20, 1865.

Act to authorize the readmission of Texas Congressional delegation March 30, 1870
http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/secession/30march1870.html

Endnotes

[1] Randolph B. Campbell, Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 207-09.

[2] Ibid., 209-10.

[3] Ibid., 213.

[4] Llerena Friend, Sam Houston: The Great Designer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1954), 209-210.

[5] Edward R. Maher, Jr., “Sam Houston and Secession,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 55, no. 4 (April 1952): 449.

[6] Campbell, 153.

[7] Ibid., 149.

[8] Ibid., 236-37.

[9] Ibid.

[10] The party had its origins among members of a secret society hostile to Catholics and immigrants who were instructed to respond to outsiders' questions about their activities by saying “I know nothing.”

[11] Langston James Goree, ed. The Thomas Jewett Goree Letters. Vol 1, The Civil War Correspondence (Bryan: Family History Foundation, 1981), 18.

[12] Campbell, 177.

[13] Ibid., 238.

[14] Buenger, 247.

[15] Sam Houston, Letter to the Charleston Convention, March 25, 1860. Printed in the New York Times, April 21, 1860.

[16] Roberts, 367.

[17] President elect Lincoln received dozens of letters from ordinary citizens and leading politicians such as Francis P. Blair suggesting Houston's consideration for a cabinet post to both reward his staunch Unionism and show the South that Lincoln was not hostile to southern interests.

[18] Maher, 452.

[19] Sam Houston, Letter from Sam Houston. His View Respecting our Political Affairs . Huntsville, TX, n.p., November 14, 1860.

[20] Sam Houston, Letter from Sam Houston. His View Respecting our Political Affairs . Huntsville, TX, n.p., November 14, 1860.

[21] Goree, 34.

[22] Campbell, 188.

[23] Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2001), 58.

[24] Campbell, 189.

[25] E.W. Cave to Charles E. Taylor, Letter. January 21, 1860.

[26] Dew, 48.

[27] A Declaration of the Causes which impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union, February 2, 1861.

[28] Gallaway, 179.

[29] Campbell, 194.

[30] Thomas North, Five Years in Texas; or What you did not Hear during the War from 1861 to January 1866. A Narrative of his Travels, Experiences, and Observations in Texas and Mexico. Cincinnati: Elm Street Publishing, 1871. Quoted in Earl Wesley Fornell, The Galveston Era: The Texas Crescent on the Eve of Secession (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961): 296.

[31] Goree, 149.

[32] Campbell, 197.

[33] Gallaway, 109.