USA > Texas > A history of central and western Texas > Part 17
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Texas politics assumed a new phase during the fifties. Strict party lines were not drawn in Texas until during Pease's administration. Up to that time personal popularity had been the deciding factor in the elec- tions, and it was several years after annexation when party alignment, so closely observed in the nation, became a feature of the political life of the new state. Texas being admitted under Democratic rule, and the majority of the people being of southern origin, the political sentiments of the state are easily accounted for. But party politics was of somewhat later origin. About 1854, after the wreck of the Whig party and while the elements of the Republican party were slowly coalescing, a wave of Know-nothingism passed over Texas. It was a political excrescence, having at its root the old "native" party, whose one definite principle was to keep naturalized foreigners from holding office. This fundamental doctrine was now enlarged to include a proscription of Roman Catholics. The entire movement became a cult rather than a political faction, having many mysterious rites and promulgating principles, it was claimed, con- trary to the federal constitution. Its lodges became numerous and its influence in elections for a time was serious. In 1855 this party suc- ceeded in electing a congressman, but failed to elect a governor, and after this defeat the organization and its power rapidly faded from Texas politics.
During this period occurred what is designated in Texas annals as the Cart War. As may be supposed, the feelings of the Americans toward the Mexicans in Texas were not yet freed from the animosity of revo- lutionary times. It was inevitable that the latter people should suffer discrimination if not actual outrage in their competition for the ordinary occupations of life. Moreover, the Mexicans in Texas were mainly of the lower orders, many of them peons, who readily associated with the negro slaves. In 1856 a conspiracy was discovered in Colorado county by which was contemplated a general insurrection of the negroes and a massacre of the whites. This was put down with great severity, and, on the ground that the Mexican population were implicated in the affair,
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the latter were ordered to leave the country on pain of death. This was the first open rupture between the two races, but the antagonism in- creased.
The Mexican population in Texas in 1856 was estimated by Olmsted as 25,000. Of the status and pursuits of the Mexicans the same writer said : "The Mexicans appear to have almost no other business than that of carting goods. Almost the entire transportation of the country is carried on by them, with oxen and two-wheeled carts. Some of them have small shops, for the supply of their own countrymen, and some live upon the produce of farms and cattle ranches in the neighborhood. Their livelihood is for the most part exceedingly meager, made up chiefly of corn and beans. . The old Mexican wheel of hewn blocks of wood is still constantly in use, though supplanted to some extent by Yankee wheels, sent in pairs from New York. The carts are always hewn of heavy wood, and are covered with white cotton, stretched over hoops. In these they live, on the road, as independently as in their own house. The cattle are yoked by the horns, with rawhide thongs, of which they make a great use."
In July, 1857, Charles G. Edwards, who kept a small store and a mill on the San Antonio river, was attacked near Goliad by a party of seventeen men and dangerously wounded. At the time he was in charge of a small train of carts transporting merchandise from the coast. The assault was charged to the guerillas conducting the predatory campaign against Mexican cartmen. The sentiment of the people of San Antonio, as voiced in the Daily Herald, branded the entire movement as outlawry, the expressions of abhorrence at the outrage being concluded as follows : "Persons here in whose judgment we have confidence recommend a call for volunteers from among us, and the formation of a body of citizens sufficiently large to repair to the scene of conflict and chastise the mis- creants in a summary and effective manner. The whole subject is full of difficulty ; but of one thing there can hardly be a doubt-inaction will never stop the outrages. . .
. To admit that our people will ever give up the employment of Mexican carts and Mexican cartmen would be equivalent to signing the death warrant to the prosperity of San An- tonio."
Opinions as to the causes of this so-called Cart War were divided. It was said that the opposition to the cartmen was caused in consequence of their hauling at lower rates than American and German wagoners
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would. Yet for the preceding ten years, it was asserted as another rea- son, the citizens on the Goliad road had complained of the thieving of cartmen upon their stock, and the citizens had long threatened they would not submit to it.
A wordy war was carried on between Goliad (in which vicinity many of the outrages occurred) and San Antonio. Citizens of the latter place alleged that the warfare was conducted with the practical con- nivance of Goliad authorities; while the people of Goliad replied that outlaws from San Antonio were taking a leading part in the hostilities against legitimate carting and also in the thieving itself.
It was charged that the teamsters with "four-wheeled carts" (Amer- icans) were endeavoring to supplant the "two-wheeled cart owners," and such a distinction must have had a conveniently invidious force in such a contest. Undoubtedly race antipathies were complicated in the hostilities, and those actively concerned in the attacks excused their actions with this prejudice.
The conflict, whatever may have been its causes, resulted in much economic loss and interruption to business. For a time it was found necessary to provide military escorts for wagon trains between Lavaca and the inland towns. Commenting on the serious aspects of the problem the Austin Intelligencer said (September, 1857) : "The subject affects not that place (San Antonio) alone. The driving of the Mexican carts out of the trade has already withdrawn a portion of the teamsters accus- tomed to deliver freights at Austin from this trade; and as a conse- quence, our merchants are paying an increased price of 33 cents on their freights. The rise is attributed by the Lavaca forwarding merchants alone to these cart difficulties. Consumers are thus enormously taxed for the benefit of the selfish, murderous butchers who are making an exterminating war upon cheap labor. It is useless to disguise the mat- ter. This is the sole cause of the war. It has been gaining ground in all the western counties ever since the short-sighted movements here in 1853 (referring to attempts to drive out the Mexican population). It has been excused under the various pretexts which lawless violence always assumes."
Eventually Governor Pease called out the militia to put a stop to the outrages, and thereby, according to some accounts, aggravated the ten- sion between the two parties. The governor in his special message to the legislature on this subject enclosed some documents from the secretary of
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war at Washington, showing that the matter had assumed a national im- portance. The secretary's letter refers to protests from the Mexican minister in relation to "an organized system of persecution, violence, ex- pulsion and even murder, which it is alleged is directed against peace- able Mexican citizens resorting to Texas in the prosecution of their lawful business." The Mexican minister's letter reads, in part, as follows ; "It is averred that in the neighborhood of San Antonio de Bexar commit- tees of armed men have been organized for the exclusive purpose of hunt- ing down Mexicans on the highway, spoiling them of their property and putting them to death. It is stated, moreover, that the number of victims is rising of seventy-five; whilst it is also affirmed that from the neighbor- hood of San Antonio de Bexar the residents of Mexican origin have been expelled. . . Sundry families, the victims of these persecutions, had commenced reaching the Mexican territory in utter destitution."
Somewhat later, beginning with 1859, the Rio Grande border became a scene of conflict between the settled communities and an army of desperadoes. Cortina was a Mexican who, while confining himself to civilized pursuits, was a stockman, but, finding that occupation desultory, he turned cattle thief and bandit, gathered a crowd of similarly-minded ruffians about him, and later, under the guise of carrying on a war for the defense of his Mexican kindred oppressed by American rivalry, led his forces against the armed soldiery and set law and order at defiance. In his role as protector and champion of his people during the Cart war. he gave greater dignity to his predatory operations than they deserve so that the hostilities under his leadership have been distinguished as "Cortina's rebellion."
In July, 1859, Cortina and some of his followers got into trouble at Brownsville, and in September he led an attack against the town, took possession, killed one or two men, terrorized the inhabitants, and then retired. He issued a proclamation of his purposes in engaging in hostili- ties against the Americans, and declared he would relieve the state of all enemies of the Mexican inhabitants. A little later his lieutenant was cap- tured by the Texans and hanged, an act that aroused the bandit leader to vengeance. Towards the latter part of October the American troops, reinforced by a Mexican company from Matamoras, attacked Cortina. but were discomfited. This was followed by an ambuscade of an Amer- ican company, and for a time the Mexican seemed to be master of the situation. In the latter part of November another ill-organized attack
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of the Americans failed, and Cortina's forces rapidly increased. But in December a company of United States regulars and a troop of Texas Rangers captured one of Cortina's camps, and then rapidly followed him to the vicinity of Rio Grande City, where he was completely defeated and driven out of the state. This was not accomplished, however, until a large area of country had been devastated and many lives lost.
CHAPTER XXV
THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD
It was the happy lot of Texas that she lay outside the main path of destruction wrought by the Civil war. The lives of thousands of her sons and the resources of the new but vast empire were offered for the southern cause. While the youth of the state were in camp and fortress in other states, the aged and weak, with the women and children, were engaged in the equally important task of protecting the homes and in- stitutions of the state and producing the bread and clothing and equip- ment so much needed in other parts of the Confederacy. The borders of the state were blockaded and harassed by contending armies, but the mighty battles of the war and the desolating invasions of hostile troops were outside of Texas. For this reason Texas recuperated more rapidly than the states which were the main theatre of the war. At the same time the scourge fell heavily here, and if enterprise was not entirely de- stroyed as in other states, it was at least paralyzed for years, so that the effects of the war can be traced in every locality and in every social activity.
Texas was a logical slave state. Her geographical latitude. her climate, her industrial opportunities aligned her among those divisions of the world which were the last to break away from an institution that had been fastened upon both barbarism and civilization from times un- recorded. The institution had its roots in the past, tradition sanctioned it ; to the southern people it was regarded as an indispensable condition of industry. Its abolition by a part of the nation which had only the- oretical interest in the subject was a violation of local privileges and pride which could never be tolerated. Thus the sectional issue, originat- ing in the slavery questions, reached its crisis under a quite different form, namely, whether the individual states might dissolve the federal compact and by seceding regain their original sovereign powers.
When it came to deciding whether a long-established institution in
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the commonwealth should have its foundations threatened by the general government, and whether the rights and powers of a state over its internal affairs should be subordinated to the will of the federal union, the previ- ous history of Texas indicates her natural attitude to the issue. Twenty- five years before, the war of independence had been fought against the despotism of a too strongly centralized government. Those who fought at San Jacinto would naturally resent what they regarded as undue usurpation of authority by the government at Washington. Texas on becoming a nation legalized slavery. Having voluntarily surrendered her national powers on entering the Union, she had accepted statehood with an implied guarantee of the institution of slavery. Hence it ap- peared that Texas, of all the southern states, was most justified in re- nouncing the act of union when the privileges and guarantees accompany- ing that act were about to be withdrawn.
The election of Hardin R. Runnels, the Democratic candidate, over Sam Houston, in 1857, by a majority of about nine thousand, was the first definite sign of the approaching conflict in Texas. In 1820 Henry Clay's Missouri Compromise had forbidden slavery north of latitude 36 degrees and 30 minutes-the southern boundary of Missouri. In 1846 the doctrine was promulgated in the Wilmot Proviso that slavery should not be extended into the territory annexed from Mexico. In 1850 the venerable Clay again compromised so that California might be admitted a free state and the organization of the other territory south of the orig- inal compromise line might be effected without restrictions as to slavery. Then in 1854 came Senator Douglas with his famous "squatter sov- ereignty," which practically annulled the Missouri Compromise and ap- plied, in the organization of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, the doctrine of local option as to slavery. About the same time was issued the decision in the Dred Scott case by which slaves were declared to be the same class of property as horses or cattle and therefore could be taken from slave into free states without losing their character ,of slaves. Following the squatter sovereignty enactment ensued the contest be- tween the slave and anti-slave elements for the possession of Kansas, with all the bloody and disgraceful border warfare which eventuated in that territory entering the Union as a free state.
As a result of the Kansas controversy, Texas first expressed an official attitude toward the great sectional issues. Governor Runnels, and advocated the doctrine of secession. A state Democratic convention in his message of January, 1858, described the state of affairs in Kansas
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about the same time proposed an election of delegates to a convention of the southern states, and declared that the rights of individual states were being threatened by the federal government. February 16, 1858, a joint resolution of the legislature, which recited the great danger threatened by the Kansas situation, provided for the appointment of delegates by the governor to a convention of the southern states whenever a majority of said states should decide that the crisis demanded such a conven- tion.
The Runnels administration represented the extremes of slavery ex- tension in Texas, and many of its supporters favored a resumption of the slave trade. This radical element did not compose a majority in the state, and in the following election in 1859 the conservative party rallied around Houston-who had been previously defeated largely because of his opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska bill-and elected him by a large majority to the office of governor.
By the time Houston was inaugurated the north and the south were so embittered that compromise and peace were no longer possible. Kan- sas had come into the Union as a slave state, John Brown's raid had pro- voked indignation throughout the south, and in December, 1859, South Carolina's legislature affirmed the right of any state to secede from the federation of states, and issued a call for a convention of the slavehold- ing states.
In his message to the legislature concerning these South Carolina resolutions, Houston argued vehemently against nullification and seces- sion, asserting that separation from the Union would not cure the evils from which the south suffered, and remonstrated against sending dele- gates to the proposed convention. The debate over this message resulted in two sets of resolutions, which expressed the divergent courses of gen- eral opinion in Texas before the war. The majority resolutions declared that the Union should be preserved but that federal aggression on the sep- arate states was intolerable; deprecated the black abolition movement in the north which might, by obtaining control of the government, use federal laws for the abolition of slavery ; and that, if necessary, organized resist- ance among the southern states should combat northern aggression. The minority resolutions opposed premature action among the southern states ; believing that the north had not as yet violated any of the constitutional rights of the southern states; and asserted the principle that only when the federal government should prove unable to protect the individual
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states in their inherent rights would there be cause for the dissolution of the Union.
In 1860, by the disruption of the Democratic party, Abraham Lincoln was elected president, and politically the north became dominant in the nation. The secession tide running so strong in the south, now reached its flood. Extreme radicalism and disunionism, hitherto a strong minority only, now gathered strength and attracted the support of all the elements except the stanchest conservatives and unionists of Houston's stamp. Within two months after the national election all the southern states east of Texas, South Carolina leading the way, had seceded.
It was Houston's opposition that delayed the secession movement in Texas. The legislature was not in session, and the governor persistently refused to call it together. In the absence of the legislature the chief executive was practically the entire state government, and he used his position to combat the approaching crisis as long as he could. Finally, in December, by extra-legal means, the people were asked to elect dele- gates to a state convention to meet at Austin, January 28, 1861. Though this convention was constituted in an informal manner, it was clearly a popular measure. Under these circumstances Houston yielded to the importunities of the political leaders and called a session of the legislature to meet one week before the convention assembled. The legislature when it met disregarded Houston's counsel for moderation, and sanctioned the calling of the convention, declaring it to be empowered to act for the people.
On February Ist, the convention passed an ordinance of secession, by a vote of 166 to 7, and referred the measure to a general election for approval. February 23d the ordinance was accepted by the people in a vote of forty-four thousand to thirteen thousand. The vote was counted in the legislature on the same day that Lincoln was inaugurated presi- dent. The convention also appointed a committee of safety and delegates to the Confederate convention at Montgomery, Alabama.
Houston was throughout consistently opposed to all these steps. A few days before the secession ordinance was submitted to the vote of the state, he delivered a speech in Galveston in which he pictured the horrors of civil war and the ultimate triumph of the north over the south, but in his peroration expressed his determination to stand by "my state, right or wrong." That he could thus talk directly in the face of such a storm of secession shows the esteem in which he was held by the people, who could tolerate his candor and integrity even in the heat of their contrary
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passions. On March 16th Houston was summoned before the convention to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederate government, and on his refusal the office of governor was declared vacant, and the lieutenant governor, Edward Clark, installed in his stead. Houston protested to the legislature and the people, but the former sanctioned his removal. He acquiesced in this judgment and remained in retirement until his death, which occurred in 1863.
Thus Texas was aligned with the states that withdrew entirely from the federal Union, and for over four years her troops bore a gallant share in the strife that all but wrecked the nation. Resources and men were sacrificed without stint, Texas furnishing the names of many illus- trious leaders and organizations to the annals of this war. The broad track of the war was down the east side of the Mississippi, across the center of the Confederacy to the sea, and in the Virginias. Texas was not in this path. No northern invasion of her territory was permanently effective. During most of the war this state was the one reliable source of communication and of supplies for the entire south. The federal squadrons soon had the Atlantic and gulf ports of the other states thor- oughly blockaded and all commerce cut off, while the armies ravaged and desolated inland from river to sea. But the long line of Texas coast and the numerous harbors could not be effectively guarded. Blockade runners were constantly slipping in with provisions or out with loads of cotton and other products. Nothing could prevent the trade across the Rio Grande with the states of Mexico, although the width of the frontier presented an obstacle to this traffic. Except in the few places where the enemy secured a foothold, Texas experienced little of the ruinous havoc of battle and invasion, though the people endured the other hardships and poverty in common with the rest of the south.
Before the actual outbreak of hostilities, the committee of safety had conferred with General Twiggs, who was in command of the federal forces of the state, but was a southern sympathizer. He indicated his willingness to surrender his post at San Antonio provided a show of force was made. Col. Ben McCulloch, therefore, on being assigned to com- mand at San Antonio, collected a volunteer force, appeared before the city, and received the surrender of the garrison. Over a million dollars' worth of property and munitions were thus delivered into the hands of the Confederates. All the other forts in Texas were similarly sur- rendered or abandoned, Colonel Ford taking possession of Fort Brown opposite Matamoras, commanding the Rio Grande border. By Novem-
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ber, 1861, fifteen thousand soldiers had been enrolled in Texas for service in the war.
The governors of Texas during the Civil war were Francis R. Lubbock, who was elected in 1861, and Pendleton Murrah, elected in 1863.
In the summer of 1861 Texas troops took a prominent part in the movement to gain New Mexico for the Confederacy. Lieut. Col. John R. Baylor crossed the Rio Grande into the territory and captured a force of seven hundred federals. In the following February General Sibley, commanding the Confederate army, met and defeated the Union troops under General Canby at Val Verde. Santa Fe and Albuquerque then fell into the possession of the former. But the invasion as a whole was un- successful, and the battle at Apache Canyon repulsed the aggressive char- acter of the movement. The Confederates then retreated down the Rio Grande, and by July, 1862, the territory was entirely abandoned, after many Texans had lost their lives in the campaign.
The border defenses of Texas were as a rule too strong for the fed- eral armies to penetrate. In September, 1862, a naval force captured Corpus Christi, but occupied it only a brief time. In October of the same year the port of Galveston was captured by the federal squadron. During the rest of the war the island was almost depopulated, most of the in- habitants seeking shelter on the mainland. On New Year's day of 1863 General McGruder, by a combined land and sea attack, destroyed or cap- tured three of the vessels in the harbor, drove the others out to sea, and by a successful assault on the fort compelled the surrender of the garrison. For the rest of the war Galveston remained in the possession of the Confederates, although the port was closely blockaded.
A few weeks later the blockade of Sabine Pass was temporarily raised as a result of the capture of two Union vessels by two Confederate boats after a hot conflict, and thereafter Sabine City was protected by a strong fort. In the latter part of 1863 General Banks undertook to carry out his plan for the conquest of Texas. The expedition was to land at Sabine Pass and carry on operations from that point. On the morning of September 8th the gunboats attacked the fort. Then ensued the battle of Sabine Pass. Two of the gunboats were destroyed, over a hundred men killed and many more captured, while the garrison of two hundred Texans, only forty-two of whom participated in the battle, came out almost unscathed. The transports then returned to New Orleans and the expedition was abandoned.
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