Edmund J. Davis

Edmund Jackson Davis (1827 to 1883) was a Texas judge, Union Army officer and Republican politician who held the governorship of Texas from January 1870 to January 1874.¹² His administration substantially enlarged the role of state government, notably through a State Police force and a centralized school system, and his defeat by Richard Coke in December 1873 was followed by a brief standoff over whether he would leave office.¹³

Early life and judicial career

Davis was born at St. Augustine, Florida, on October 2, 1827. He moved with his family to Galveston in January 1848, read law, and was admitted to practice in the fall of 1849 after moving to Corpus Christi.¹ From 1849 to 1853 he was an inspector and deputy collector of customs at Laredo. In 1853 he became district prosecutor of the Twelfth Judicial District at Brownsville, and about 1856 Governor Elisha M. Pease named him judge of that district, a post he held until 1861.¹ In 1858 he married Elizabeth Anne Britton; the couple had two sons.¹

Civil War

Davis opposed secession in 1861 and refused the oath of loyalty to the Confederacy, and the state vacated his judgeship that April.¹ He left Texas in May 1862, met President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, and on October 26, 1862, received a colonel’s commission to raise the regiment that became the First Texas Cavalry (U.S.).¹ Confederates seized him at Matamoros in March 1863, an incident that caused diplomatic trouble with Mexico until he was released. He took part in the Rio Grande campaign late in 1863 and was promoted to brigadier general on November 4, 1864.¹

Reconstruction politics

After the war Davis sat in the Constitutional Convention of 1866, the body that elected James W. Throckmorton its president before Throckmorton won the governorship that June.¹³ Davis was president of the Constitutional Convention of 1868 to 1869, where he supported restricting the political rights of former secessionists, expanding the rights of Black Texans, dividing the state, and the ab initio theory that laws passed since secession were void.¹ The removal of James W. Throckmorton in 1867 and the military reorganization that followed are summarized in the overview of Reconstruction in Texas.

In the 1869 governor’s race Davis, leading the radical wing of the Republican party, defeated Andrew J. Hamilton of the moderate wing in a closely disputed race. General Joseph J. Reynolds declared on January 11, 1870, that Davis had received a majority of 800 votes.¹³

Governor of Texas

The Legislative Reference Library dates his term from January 8, 1870, to January 15, 1874.² His program called for law and order backed by a State Police and a restored militia, public schools, internal improvements, bureaus of immigration and geology, and protection of the frontier, and each measure drew attack from Democrats and from Republican opponents.¹ Its authorized strength under the July 1870 law was 257, but it never enrolled even 200 men.⁴ Deploying police and militia at polling places, and placing several counties under martial law, drew widespread condemnation from the administration’s opponents; the legislature repealed the police law on April 22, 1873.³⁴ The force and its record are the subject of the essay The State Police and the Politics of Order.

The school law of 1871 created a centralized system of public schools, and enrollment peaked at 129,542, or 56 percent of the scholastic population, in 1872 to 1873.³ Davis also vetoed railroad subsidy bills on the ground that the state could support only one line, and legislators of both parties joined to override him.³ The Legislative Reference Library records 110 vetoes from his governorship.²

The 1873 election and the standoff

Democrats took the House of Representatives in the 1872 elections, and the Thirteenth Legislature dismantled much of the Republican program.³ In December 1873 Davis sought reelection and lost to Richard Coke by about two to one; Handbook articles report the tally variously as 85,549 to 42,663 and as 100,415 to 52,141.³⁵ How the count was assembled is examined in The Canvass That Seated a Governor.

When the state’s highest court voided the election in Ex parte Rodriguez, Davis maintained that he was entitled to serve out a four year term.⁵ His successor took the oath on January 15, 1874. A last request for federal troops brought a telegram from President Ulysses S. Grant declining to intervene, and Davis gave up the office four days after the inauguration.⁵ The exchange is the subject of A Telegram From Washington Ended a Standoff, and the winner’s life is treated in the article on Richard Coke.

Later life

From 1875 until his death Davis headed the Republican party in Texas as chairman of its state executive committee.¹ He ran for governor again in 1880 and lost to Oran M. Roberts, and he lost a race for Congress in the Tenth District in 1882. He was nominated collector of customs at Galveston in 1880 but declined the post.¹ He died in Austin on February 7, 1883, and is buried in the State Cemetery.¹

Sources

Carl H. Moneyhon wrote the Handbook of Texas article on Davis; its bibliography cites Ronald N. Gray’s 1976 Texas Tech dissertation on Davis, William C. Nunn’s Texas Under the Carpetbaggers (1962) and Charles W. Ramsdell’s Reconstruction in Texas (1910).¹ A report on violence in 29 counties, prepared for Davis by Adjutant General F. H. Britton in April 1873 while repeal of the police law was pending, survives in the State Archives.⁶ Further figures of the era appear in this site’s reference section.

References

1. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Davis, Edmund Jackson ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶

2. Legislative Reference Library of Texas, Governor Edmund J. Davis ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Reconstruction ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

4. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, State Police ↩ ↩²

5. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Coke and Davis Controversy ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Evolution of the Texas Rangers, Reconstruction in Texas, 1865 to 1874 ↩