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Reference · Person

Richard Coke

Richard Coke (1829 to 1897) was a Texas jurist, Confederate officer and Democratic politician. He was governor of Texas from January 1874 until December 1876 and then a United States senator.12 His defeat of the Republican governor Edmund J. Davis in the election of December 1873, and his inauguration in January 1874 over Davis’s resistance, are treated in the Handbook of Texas as the last step in ending Reconstruction government in the state.34

Early life and career

Coke was born near Williamsburg, Virginia, in March 1829, the son of John and Eliza (Hankins) Coke. He entered the College of William and Mary in 1843 and received a diploma in civil law in July 1848.1 In 1850 he moved to Waco, where he built a reputation in both civil and criminal cases. He married Mary Evans Horne of Waco in 1852; the couple had two daughters who died in infancy and two sons who died before the age of thirty.1

In 1859 Governor Hardin R. Runnels appointed him to a commission on the removal of the Comanches from the Brazos Indian Reservation. Coke sat in the Secession Convention of 1861 and voted for secession. In 1862 he raised a company that became part of the Fifteenth Texas Infantry and served as its captain through the Civil War, apart from a sixty day leave in 1864; he was wounded at Bayou Bourbeau, near Opelousas, Louisiana, on November 3, 1863.1

Provisional governor Andrew J. Hamilton appointed Coke judge of the Nineteenth Judicial District in September 1865. Coke was elected an associate justice of the Texas Supreme Court in 1866 and was removed the following year by General Philip H. Sheridan, the military commander.12

The election of 1873

The Democratic state convention of 1873 nominated Coke for governor on the fifth ballot, the first regular Democratic nomination since the war.3 Two Handbook of Texas articles report different totals for the December vote: 85,549 for Coke against 42,663 for Davis in the biographical article, and 100,415 against 52,141 in the article on the Coke and Davis controversy.14 Each shows Coke winning by about two votes to one, and neither explains the gap. How the vote was collected and certified is the subject of the essay on the canvass that seated a governor.

The state Supreme Court ruled the election unconstitutional in Ex parte Rodriguez, a decision popularly called the Semicolon Case. Davis refused to step down, and Democrats took possession of the second floor of the Capitol.34 Coke took the oath of office on January 15, 1874. Davis made a final appeal to Washington; Grant answered that federal troops would not be sent to keep him in office, and Davis resigned on January 19.4 His opponent’s record is set out in the biography of Edmund J. Davis, and the wider period in Reconstruction in Texas.

Governor of Texas

Coke set out to restore financial order, cutting expenditures on public printing and the state asylums. The cost of protecting the Mexican border and the western frontier offset much of those savings.1 On his recommendation the Fourteenth Legislature created the Frontier Battalion, six companies of Texas Rangers under Major John B. Jones; the essay Guarding the Frontier in 1874 examines how its founding date is documented.5 What the treasury owed when he arrived is examined in a separate essay on the state debt.

He vetoed a popular subsidy bill for the International and Great Northern Railroad despite threats of violence.1 The Legislative Reference Library lists 40 messages, 26 vetoes and 3 speeches from his governorship, which spanned the regular session of 1874, a second session in 1875 and the session of 1876.2 A governor’s message of the period is read closely in A Message to the Legislature, Read Twice.

On Coke’s advice the legislature submitted the question of a constitutional convention to the voters, who approved it in August 1875. The resulting Constitution of 1876 was ratified on February 15, 1876, during his term.6 Under it Coke sat on the three member board that supervised the new public school system, and he spoke at the opening of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas.1 He was reelected governor in 1876 by a margin of about three to one over the Republican William Morton Chambers.1

United States Senate

The legislature elected Coke to the United States Senate in May 1876. He resigned the governorship on December 1, 1876, and Lieutenant Governor Richard B. Hubbard succeeded him.127 He took his seat on March 4, 1877, succeeding Morgan C. Hamilton, and was reelected by unanimous vote of the legislature in January 1883 and again in January 1889.1

In the Senate, where admirers called him “Old Brains,” Coke supported the Bland Allison Act of 1878 and the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. He opposed the Blair Bill for federal aid to common schools, the protective tariff, the suspension of silver coinage and the Force Bill on federal protection of elections.1 He remained active in state politics, speaking against prohibition and returning in 1892 to support the reelection of Governor James S. Hogg against George Clark of Waco, his former campaign manager. In 1894 he announced that he would not seek another term.1

Coke fell ill after exposure while tending his flooded farm in the Brazos valley in the spring of 1897. He died at his home in Waco on May 14, 1897, and after a state funeral was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Waco.1

Sources and scholarship

John W. Payne Jr. wrote the Handbook of Texas article on Coke, first published in 1976 and last revised in 2020.1 Its bibliography cites Merle Mears Duncan’s article on Coke’s death in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly (1960), the State Library’s 1916 compilation of governors’ messages from Coke to Ross, Norman Kittrell’s Governors Who Have Been and Other Public Men of Texas (1921), and vertical files at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.1 The Legislative Reference Library indexes his gubernatorial messages, vetoes and speeches by session.2 The Handbook’s history of Reconstruction and its entries on the 1873 dispute place his election within the politics of the period.34

Rosser Newton, an indirect descendant of Coke, published the biography Richard Coke: Texan with Stoney Creek Publishing Group on November 4, 2024, and the Texas Senate recognized the work in Senate Resolution 520 of the 89th Legislature.89

References

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

  2. Legislative Reference Library of Texas, Governor Richard Coke ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Reconstruction ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Coke and Davis Controversy ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  5. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Frontier Battalion ↩

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

  7. Legislative Reference Library of Texas, Governor Richard B. Hubbard ↩

  8. Stoney Creek Publishing Group, author page for Rosser Coke Newton ↩

  9. Texas Legislature Online, Senate Resolution 520, 89th Legislature, Regular Session, enrolled version ↩