Politics After the Civil War

1
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)
2
Federal Army Enters Richmond, 1864, by Harpers
Weekly, New York
3

• Chaos in 1865
• Disbanded soldiers confiscated Confederate
  property
• Criminals committed acts of violence and theft
• State and local governments were powerless

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)
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• General Gordon Granger - June 19, 1865
• Declared the acts of the Texas Confederate
  government illegal
• Paroled members of the Confederate army
• Announced that all slaves were free

General Gordon Granger
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• Texas was in a stronger position than other
  southern states
• Slaves had been moved into the state
• Trade with Mexico had helped Texas businesses
• Little wartime devastation

Problems at the end of the Civil
War 1. Financial distress 2. Property values
depreciated 3. Legacy of hatred
8
PRESIDENTIAL 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.
9
Andrew Johnson's Restoration Plan 1. Declare
secession null and void 2. Cancel the Confederate
debt 3. Approve the Thirteenth Amendment 4. Amnest
y program
10
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.)
Andrew Jackson Hamilton Hamilton 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.
11
See pages 150-151.
12
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 Convention
• Declared secession illegal
• Repudiated the war debt
• Ratified the Thirteenth Amendment

13
Federal mandates forced the convention to grant
certain rights to blacks 1. Purchase and sell
property 2. Sue and be sued 3. Enter into
contracts 4. Testify in court in cases involving
blacks The convention denied blacks 1. The
right to vote 2. The right to hold public
office 3. The right to serve on a jury 4. Public
schools
14
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.)
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Black Code Legislation
16
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.
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18
General Philip Sheridan
Elisha M. Pease
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20
Donald Campbell to Pease, August 25, 1868
21

• Freedmens Bureau
• See 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
  Freedmens Bureau because white Texans thought
  him too sympathetic to the freedmens rights

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Scalawags and Carpetbaggers
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Carpetbagger or Good Freedman Bureau Officer
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A political cartoon depicting the KKK and the
Democratic party as continuations of the
Confederacy.
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The Freedmen's Bureau, Alfred R. Waud, July 25,
1868Reproduced from Harper's Weekly
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George T. Ruby
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• Targets of white terrorism
• Blacks
• Freedmen's Bureau agents
• U. S. Army

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32
A cartoon threatening that the KKK would lynch
carpetbaggers, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent
Monitor, 1868.
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The Freemens Bureau supported the education of
former bondspeople. In 1865, the bureau began
operating sixteen schools for freedmen in Texas.
(p. 155)
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Texas v. White In March 1869, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that a states 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.)
38

• At the national level, Radical Republicans
  believed
• Southerners should take an oath of allegiance
  before voting or hold office
• The southern states were "conquered provinces"
• Blacks should have equal civil rights

• Under Andrew Johnson's Restoration Plan
• Ex-Confederates controlled the southern
  governments
• Black codes limited the right s of freedmen
• White terrorism

39
A series of congressional acts in 1867
established Radical Reconstruction

• Divided the South into five military districts
• Abolished the Restoration governments
• Required new constitutions with equality for
  blacks
• Restricted the political participation of former
  confederate leaders

40
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.
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The Election of 1869
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
Rubys registration efforts had paid dividends.
Radical Republican Edmund J. Davis
Moderate Republican A.J. Hamilton
42
The Radical Republican Governor Edmund Jackson
Davis establishes a state policy to bring order
to the state, and also establishes the states
first system of public education.
Edmund  Jackson  Davis
Governor Davis organized a state police as well
as a state militia, both to be under the
governors 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.)
Governor of Texas from January 1870 to January
1874
43
Radicals supported

• Ab initio
• Equality for blacks
• State financing of public schools
• The use of eastern railroad interests to build
  railroads in Texas
• Disenfranchisement of ex-Confederates
• The division of the state

44
George T. Ruby
Matt Gaines
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Republicans were weakened by

• Internal divisions
• White terrorism

46
Governor Davis Faces Strong Opposition Governor
Daviss 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 states 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 governments
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 Daviss public school
system. (p. 165)
47
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.
Richard Coke (1829-1897)
Edmund  Jackson  Davis
48
Composite photo of the 1875 Constitutional
Convention, Archives and Information Services
Division, Texas State Library and Archives
Commission.
49
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.
50
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.