Unionist sentiment in Texas, as elsewhere in the American South throughout the Civil War era, lacked a common ideology or shared agenda. Although prewar unionism was a prime source of anti-secessionists, wartime dissenters, and postwar Republicans, the term “unionist” is a misleading description of the political struggles that took place during these years. The precise point at which a Texan ceased to be a unionist varied initially according to his assessment of the value of the American Union, and later according to the ability of the United States government or the Republican party to promote his interests. Because the motivations of unionists were remarkably diverse, the inherent weaknesses of unionism perhaps guaranteed its failure in party building. Of far more interest are the attempts, for whatever reasons, by various leaders and groups throughout the turbulent years of secession, war, emancipation, and Reconstruction to create a viable political alternative to the dominant Democratic party.

Historians of the American South have found anti-secessionists, wartime dissenters, and Republicans or “scalawags” difficult to pin down and describe. Many were persistent Whigs who were emotionally incapable of supporting the Democratic party. Others were nonslaveholding or upcountry farmers and lower class whites who lived in the poorest regions of the South and often harbored resentment toward the planter elites. A few were prewar political leaders, prominent men from old wealthy plantation areas, or urban merchants promoting a modernized New South. Others have been uncharitably described as just “nobodies.” Counterparts for each of these groups can be found in Texas. The Lone Star State was not unlike other states of the Confederacy, but Texas was also distinctive in that it was the only Southern state with an international boundary, an extensive western frontier, and a sizable population of Mexicans and Germans. Although Texas dissenters must be included in what Professor Carl Degler has aptly labeled the “other South,” they dissented, so to speak, with a characteristic “Texas twang.”[1]

This book defines more precisely the distinctive nature of political dissent in Texas during the late antebellum, wartime, and immediate postwar period. It represents the first attempt to compare the leadership of the legendary Sam Houston, and other prewar unionist politicians who followed in his footsteps, such as Elisha M. Pease, Andrew J. Hamilton, and Edmund J. Davis, with the electoral basis of the state’s politics before, during and after the war. Although historians have noted many reasons for Houston’s spectacular comeback victory in the 1859 gubernatorial election, few have analyzed the composition of his coalition, especially in terms of previous voting alignments in the late 1850s. None has detailed accurately the degree to which Houston voters embodied a unifying sentiment, or how and why they rapidly unraveled after John Brown’s raid and the resulting breakup of the national Democratic party. Scholars have documented how Texas politicians during the war years faced new problems and rehashed older ones within the confines of their collective memories. Nevertheless, questions persist concerning the extent to which late antebellum voting alignments, especially the “no-vote” cast in the state’s secession referendum, influenced or shaped the outcome of major wartime elections. Although in the immediate post war years the story of the gradual melting away of the old prewar opposition to the “Southern Rights” Democrats has been told elsewhere, obstacles remain in the task of uncovering the extent to which anti-secessionist sentiment remained intact during Presidential and Congressional Reconstruction.[2]

A broad theme and recurrent pattern unify the saga of Texas unionism. Innate frailties within Houston’s 1859 anti-Democratic coalition led to its double collapse. Texas unionism shattered first during the secessionist movement and then splintered again after the war when confronted with black freedom. During the secession crisis the forces of reaction from the political right tested the mettle of men who, in rejection of the Democratic party, had voted for Houston. After the war the subsequent pressures of radicalism from the political left during Congressional Reconstruction challenged the resilience of white Texans who otherwise might have joined the Republican party. Both the formation of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery aimed to bring about extraordinary and unprecedented change during this period. The former sought to isolate Texas from the contagion of abolition by taking the state out of the American Union. Paradoxically, the failure of secession and Southern independence unleashed the very transformation that Texas disunionists had tried to prevent. A second revolution began with the emancipation of the slaves and culminated with efforts during Congressional Reconstruction to give them full civic and political rights. Republican party control or “scalawag” dominance of the Texas government became the most controversial era in the state’s history, and represented, at most, an unfinished remodeling of Texas society.[3]

Many Texas secessionists considered their attempt to obtain independence to be a revolution in the image of 1776. Their commitment to secession and probable war in 1861 was not, however, a revolution in the usual sense of the word. Their purpose was in the broadest sense to preserve, not alter or change, existing institutions. Foremost among these institutions was slavery, which constituted the cornerstone of their cherished “Southern way of life.” In effect, the Texas secessionists launched “a counterrevolution of independence” to avoid the possibility of any harm being done by the Republican party to the value of their slave property. On the other hand, emancipation and subsequent policies of Congressional Reconstruction inaugurated genuine and unmistakable revolutionary change. In the two years following the end of the Civil War, Texans found their way of life severely disrupted by the emancipation of the slaves. Then, in March of 1867, they found their world completely turned upside down by the First Reconstruction Act adopted by the United States Congress. In seeking to win and protect new freedoms for former slaves, Northern Republicans initiated extraordinary undertakings aimed at radically transforming social and political structures throughout the South.[4]

What the reader will find in the following pages is mainly an inquiry into the voting behavior of Texans in a series of elections, including Houston’s dramatic defeat of a pro-slavery Democratic incumbent governor in 1859, the calamitous decision of Texans to leave the Union in a statewide popular referendum held in 1861, and the remarkable election of Edmund J. Davis, a radical Republican scalawag, to the governorship in 1869 with the support of tens of thousands of newly enfranchised African Americans. The use of regression equations to estimate voter transition probabilities from one election to the next meticulously tracks the course of subsets of voters in subsequent elections. The probable impact, for example, of opponents of secession in 1861 can be discerned in wartime or postwar elections. The quantitative methodology employed thus permits far more nuanced conclusions than impressionist generalizations which have too long encrusted Texas political history. This methodology also provides a more comprehensive picture of the rapport between the posturing of politicians and the attitudes of various social, economic, and religious groups within the Texas electorate. One need not be a connoisseur of statistics to understand the analysis of Texas politics which follows, because the mathematical procedures used in deriving estimates of voting behavior are relegated to notes and tables which can be examined or ignored at the reader’s choice.

The Texas voting returns and comparable demographic information analyzed here--in conjunction with more traditional evidence--also expose the social dynamics of political dissention, including its appeal among men who owned no slaves, were born in Mexico or Germany, or lived on the western frontier. The results thus help to identify those Texans who rejected the Democratic party and secession on the eve of the Civil War, were antagonistic to the Confederacy during the war, and became Republicans during Reconstruction. The statistical techniques generate estimates of probable rates of voter participation, which, in turn, are useful in reaching conclusions about the mobilization of new voters and the apathy of others. In addition, the estimates provide an objective foundation for determining the magnitude of voter fraud and manipulation--a very important issue given the state’s violent and bloody political history. A thorough investigation of the 1869 governor’s race, one of the most controversial and consequential elections ever held in Texas, provides a solid foundation for debating the probabilities that radical Republicans stole the election. It also reveals the extent to which voting irregularities, especially intimidation of black voters by Democrats and former Confederates, could have shaped the outcome of the election.

In short, this book explains why Sam Houston’s triumphant anti-Democratic coalition arose and why it fragmented during the secession crisis only to reemerge weaker than ever during Reconstruction. It evaluates the social and economic basis of voting in the secession referendum, and appraises the extent to which intimidation of anti-secessionists shaped the state’s decision to leave the American Union. By examining the subsequent voting behavior of Confederate Texans, this study shows precisely how antebellum alignments and issues carried over into the war years. By investigating the impact on the state’s electoral politics of President Andrew Johnson’s policies and the ensuing broad program of revolutionary changes under Congressional Reconstruction, it exposes the degree to which the “Union Republican” ballots cast in the 1866 gubernatorial election represented a subset of the 1861 vote cast against secession and clarifies the limits to which radical Republicans, in turn, attracted prewar anti-secessionists and supporters of the hapless 1866 Union Republican ticket. The findings of this book serve to illuminate the most turbulent political period in the history of Texas and interpret both the weight of continuity and the force of change that swept over it before, during, and immediately after the American Civil War.

 Endnotes:

1. Carl N. Degler, The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1974), 99-263 (quotation on p. 195). There is a considerable literature on the nature of political dissent in the antebellum, wartime, and postwar South. For a synthesis of the scholarship devoted to the scalawags, see Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1867 (New York, 1988), 297-303. See also: Thomas B. Alexander, “Persistent Whiggery in the Confederate South, 1860-1877,” Journal of Southern History, XXVII (1961), 305-29; William L. Barney, The Secessionist Impulse: Alabama and Mississippi in 1860 (Princeton, 1974); Steven A. Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (New York, 1974); David H. Donald, “The Scalawag in Mississippi Reconstruction,” Journal of Southern History, X (1944), 447-60; Otto H. Olsen, “Reconsidering the Scalawags,” Civil War History, XII (1966), 304-20; and Allen W. Trelease, “Who Were the Scalawags?” Journal of Southern History, XXIX (1963), 445-68. For Texas, see James Marten, Texas Divided: Loyalty & Dissent in the Lone Star State, 1856-1874 (Lexington, 1990).

2. For a discussion of the voluminous literature on Texas politics during the Civil War period, see Randolph B. Campbell, “Statehood, Civil War, and Reconstruction, 1846-76,” in Walter L. Buenger and Robert A. Calvert, eds., Texas Through Time: Evolving Interpretations (College Station, 1991), 165-96.

3. Ibid., 196.

4. James M. McPherson, Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York, 1982), 129-32 (first quotation on p. 132); and Randolph B. Campbell, A Southern Community in Crisis: Harrison County, Texas, 1850-1880 (Austin, 1983), 192-97 (second quotation on p. 193).