Reconstruction in Texas

Reconstruction in Texas was the period of roughly nine years after the Civil War in which the state’s government, labor system and relationship with the federal government were remade under presidential and then congressional authority.¹ It began with the arrival of federal troops in late May 1865 and in the Handbook of Texas account it ends with the inauguration of Governor Richard Coke in January 1874.¹²

Presidential Reconstruction, 1865 to 1867

President Andrew Johnson appointed Andrew J. Hamilton provisional governor of Texas. Under the president’s plan a convention was to nullify secession, abolish slavery and repudiate the Confederate debt.¹ The Freedmen’s Bureau began operations in the state in September 1865.¹ The Constitutional Convention of 1866 declared secession null and void, accepted the abolition of slavery and repudiated the war debt, but did not grant Black suffrage.¹

On June 25, 1866, voters ratified the new constitution and elected James W. Throckmorton governor over Elisha M. Pease by 49,277 votes to 12,168.¹ The Eleventh Legislature refused to ratify the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments and passed labor laws, known as Black Codes, regulating apprenticeship, contracts and vagrancy. Neither the senators it chose nor the congressmen elected in Texas were seated in Washington.¹

Congressional Reconstruction, 1867 to 1870

The First Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867, placed Texas in the Fifth Military District and declared the existing government provisional. On July 30, 1867, General Philip H. Sheridan removed Throckmorton from office as an impediment to Reconstruction.¹ Under Special Order No. 195 of November 1, 1867, General Joseph J. Reynolds removed more than 400 county officials in fifty seven counties.¹

A new constitutional convention met in Austin from June 1868 to February 1869. The constitution it produced gave the governor extensive powers of appointment and provided for Black manhood suffrage and a system of public education.¹ In the election of 1869 Edmund J. Davis, of the radical Republican wing, defeated Andrew J. Hamilton. After the Twelfth Legislature ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the act readmitting Texas to the Union on March 30, 1870.¹

The Davis administration, 1870 to 1873

The Twelfth Legislature established a statewide police force and a militia, both under the adjutant general, a centralized public school system, and subsidies and bond authority for railroads.¹ Measures against violence, the State Police and the militia above all, produced more controversy than any other part of the program; the force is discussed in The State Police and the Politics of Order. Opposition to taxes and to the administration’s centralizing measures drew moderate Republicans and Democrats together, and Democrats carried all four congressional seats in 1871 and the Texas House in 1872.¹ The Thirteenth Legislature abolished the State Police, curbed the governor’s power to declare martial law, and returned school operations to local boards.¹

End of Reconstruction

In December 1873 Richard Coke, the Democratic nominee, defeated Davis by 85,549 votes to 42,663, according to the Handbook of Texas.¹ Although the state Supreme Court declared the election void in Ex parte Rodriguez, Coke took office in mid January 1874, and Davis left the governorship within days once Grant refused to send troops.² The Handbook of Texas describes Coke’s inauguration as the start of a century of Democratic control of state government.¹ Coke’s own career has a separate biographical entry, and one gubernatorial message from these years is taken apart in A Message to the Legislature, Read Twice.

The convention that met in 1875 replaced the Constitution of 1869 with the Texas Constitution of 1876, which among many other provisions required the legislature to hold its sessions in Austin.³ The history behind that requirement is taken up in Why the Capital Stayed in Austin.

Sources

Carl H. Moneyhon is the author of the Handbook’s overview of the period.¹ Ramsdell’s 1910 study, issued by Columbia University under the same title as this article, appears in the bibliography of the Handbook’s biography of Davis.⁴ Governors’ messages and vetoes of the period are indexed by the Legislative Reference Library, which lists 110 vetoes by Davis.⁵ Related people, documents and institutions are gathered in the reference index.

References

1. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Reconstruction ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷

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

3. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Constitution of 1876 ↩

4. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Davis, Edmund Jackson ↩

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