STATEHOOD

0

100,000

200,000

300,000

400,000

500,000

600,000

700,000

Pop. 4,000 2,240 20,700 162,500 212,000 604,000

1800 1821 1834 1848 1850 1860

Texas Population Explosion

Families disembark their wagons for a welcome rest at Fort Concho. As one observer has noted, army forts served "as the oasis in the desert" for many a weary traveler. Courtesy Fort Concho NHL

In order to encourage immigration, the In order to encourage immigration, the state government made the public lands state government made the public lands available at very cheap prices.available at very cheap prices.

Texas perpetuated the land policy of the republic and thereby continued to attract immigrants. In 1854, the legislature passed the Texas Preemption Act, through which the state offered homesteaders 160-acre parcels of land for as little as fifty cents an acre (as compared to the concurrent U.S. price of $1.25 an acre.) (See p. 117.)

POPULATION GROWTH

The first federal census taken in Texas, 1850, revealed that 212,000 persons (including slaves) inhabited the state.

By the eve of the Civil War, the Texas population had tripled to over 604,000.

(See pp. 116-117.)

Group NumbersPercent of State Total

Percent of Group living in Urban Areas

Southern Anglo-American

114,040 53.7 3

Northern Anglo-American

9,965 4.7 11

Negro 58,558 27.5 3

Spanish-surname 11,212 5.3 13

French-surname 1,071 0.5 29

German element 11,534 5.4 32

Other foreign elements 3,900 1.8 23

Other 2,312 1.1 --

(See Table 5.1 on page 118.)

Origins of the Texas Population, 1850

The production of cotton increased from about 58,000 bales in 1849 to 431,463 bales in 1859. While sugar and wool increasingly became cash commodities raised in Texas, cotton remained the state’s staple. Cotton, sugar, and wool constituted the main exports. (See pp. 117, 119.)

BAD ROADS AND BRIDGES = DIFFICULTBAD ROADS AND BRIDGES = DIFFICULT TRASPORTATIONTRASPORTATION

Conditions for travel remained as poor as they had been during the period of the republic, which slowed a nonetheless growing economy. The state government entrusted internal improvements to the counties, but inadequate resources compelled local authorities to let bad roads languish. Besides the sorry shape of the roads, few bridges existed. Water travel was also quite arduous, for Navigation into the Gulf remained treacherous. (pp. 119-120)

Early travelers on a packed stage pause for refreshment during their journey on the south Texas frontier. Image courtesy Kinney County Historical Society.

After the discover of gold in California, entrepreneurs founded stagecoach lines between San Antonio and far off El Paso, but not until 1857 did the first interstate line, the San-Antonio-San Diego (California) Mail Line begin business, though its coaches usually experienced horrendous difficulties along the way to the coast. (pp. 120-121)

The “Jackass Line”

Cotton wagons on their way from the gin to the cotton yard in Elgin. Photo courtesy of Leo Foehner, Institute of Texan Cultures, University of Texas at San Antonio.

ArrierosArrieros

Hundreds of freighting teams operated during the 1850s, many of them handled by Tejanos who forged a reputation as excellent arrieros (teamsters). Because of their skill and lower charges, Texas Mexicans briefly dominated the transportation of food and merchandise between the interior and the Gulf. (p. 120)

In the 1857 “Cart War” resentful Anglos harassed and assaulted Tejano teamsters

Source: http://dixie.texaslee.com/about.htmSource: http://dixie.texaslee.com/about.htm Dewberry Plantation

THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ELITETHE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ELITE

In the 1850s, most of the state’s real and personal property (including slaves) and total wealth lay concentrated in the hand of a small elite that constituted less than 10 percent of all Texans; this group seems to have expanded slightly by 1860. On the eve of the Civil War, 7.1 percent of the population held 56 percent of the state’s wealth. Slaveowners in particular were among the wealthiest Texans, given their high investment in cash-crop farming. Moreover, they exerted undue political influence, for they held a disproportionately large number of political offices. (p. 121)

By 1860 Texas had only 400 miles of track.

Railroad building in Texas lagged behind that of other states in the 1850s. (p. 120)

Labor organizations in Texas before the Civil War were only faintly present.

Between 1848 and the eve of the Civil War, lands worked by slaves produced lucrative returns for planters, the profits auguring cotton’s and the slave system’s westward expansion.

Slavery in TexasSlavery in Texas

Only about one-third of all Texas farms at mid-century had slaves as part of their workforce. Texans constituting a planter elite (landholders who owned more than 100 slaves) amounted to only a small minority. In reality, the 20 percent of planters heading the list of slaveowners monopolized 96 percent of the entire Texas population. Most Texas slave owners held fewer than five bondspeople. (See pp. 117-118.)

In 1850, the U.S. census counted 58,161 blacks in Texas; the next decennial enumeration listed 182,566. The increase made slaves the fastest-growing segment of the population; indeed, slaves constituted more than 30 percent of the state’s inhabitants by 1860. (p. 122)

This document permits the transportation of four slaves from the port of New Orleans to the port of Galveston, Republic of Texas.

The reverse side, listing the slaves, is signed by Ashbel Smith, a medical doctor who had been Surgeon General of the Republic of Texas and was later a founder of the U.T. Medical School.

Many Native Americans welcomed African Americans into their villages. Even as slaves many African Americans became part of a family group, and many intermarried with Native Americans - thus many later became classified as Black Indians. Therefore Black Oklahoma evolved in many areas as biracial communities within Indian nations. This is a unique history, which developed in many of the western communities where the two groups came together.

Juan Cortina and his supporters occupy Brownsville and proclaim the Republic of the Rio Grande. Cortina sought the restoration of all former Mexican land between the Nueces and Rio Grande.

Cortina initially defeats a force of Texas Rangers and local authorities, but when they are reinforced by army troops, he retreats into Mexico where he wages a guerilla war for another ten years.

The state government’s official policy toward Indians in the mid-1850s was to put the Indians on reservations.

Hovering goddess-like above the westward moving pioneers, this allegorical female came to symbolize the virtue of taming the western frontier, what some considered America's "manifest destiny." Painting entitled, "American Progress," by George Crogutt, 1873. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

“In his History of Texas (1855),” historian Henderson K. Yoakum Henderson K. Yoakum “portrayed Texans as a people nourished by American democratic institutions and possessed of an industry and energy then breaking a path for civilization and republican institutions. To Yoakum, Texans were ably helping to fulfill the United States’ manifest destiny. (Calvert, De León & Cantrell, 130.)

John S. "Rip" Ford. As a captain of Texas rangers, Ford played a critical role in protecting the Texas frontier.

“Narratives portrayed the conflict as one in which while families defended themselves from marauding Indians instead of one in which Anglos moved and occupied Indian land. (Carrigan, p. 74.)

The Indian Fighter (1955) starring Kirk Douglas.

In the 1850s, the Telegraph and Texas Register remained the state’s best-known newspaper. (p. 131)

Elise Waerenskjold.

Before the Civil War the government of Texas maintained the university endowment, but it took little action to establish a university campus until much later. (See p. 131)

The largest religious denominations in Texas before the Civil War were Methodists and Baptists.

Church leaders prior to the beginning of the Civil War tended to defend slavery.

See page 132.

The compromise of 1850 (proposed by Henry Clay): the slave trade should be ended in the nation’s capital; a strong fugitive slave law should be passed; the territories acquired from Mexico should be organized without prohibiting the importation of slaves into those regions; and California should be admitted into the Union as a free state. For Texas, the most important economic consequences of the Compromise of 1850 was the payment of the state’s public debt in return for Texas’s surrender of its claims to New Mexico. (See pp. 133-134.)

Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky proposed the Compromise Measures of 1850, a set of five bills favoring compromise among the states on the issue of slavery. President Millard Fillmore signed all five measures into law.

Debating the Compromise of Debating the Compromise of 1850 1850

Compromise of 1850

1. Slave trade ended in Washington, D.C.2. Stronger fugitive slave law3. Territories from Mexico organized without a

ban on slavery4. California a free state5. Texas compensated for giving up land claims

Influences on Texans’ Transition from Jacksonian Nationalists to

Secessionists

1.Reaction to the Whig party

2.Reaction to the Know-Nothing party

3.Increasing influence of Lower-South Culture

4.Reaction to the Republican party

Whig party

1. Economic expansion2. Internal improvements3. Banks4. Loyalty to the Union

Why Texas Democrats opposed the Whigs

1. Whigs opposed the annexation of Texas

2. Whigs opposed Texas’s territorial claims

3. Northern Whigs opposed slavery

Know-Nothing Party

1. A secret fraternal organization that became a political party.

2. Nativist, anti-Catholic3. Pro-Union4. Distrust of Democrats

Texans attracted to the Know-Nothings

1. Persons in commercial centers of East Texas2. Planters, lawyers, and merchants attracted by

the idea of state banks and federally financed internal improvements

3. Those who benefited financially from the federal military presence in West Texas.

4. Unionists

Both Whig and Know-Nothing parties divide between North and South on the issue of

slavery.

Deep-South Democrats1. Defended slavery2. Championed white supremacy3. Advocated states' rights4. Endorsed the Knights of the Golden Circle5. Condemned the Republican party

Steps to Secession1. People's Convention (January 28, 1861)2. Ratification referendum (February 23, 1861)3. People's Convention declared secession4. Houston removed from governorship

Why some southern states seceded1. Some northerners blamed a Slave Power

conspiracy2. Some southerners blamed a Republican

conspiracy to destroy southern culture3. Abolitionists denunciation of slavery as immoral

and southern defense of slavery as a positive good

4. The constitutional issue of states rights5. Incompatibility of southern and northern

economic systems6. Conflicts over religion, immigration, and cultural

conformity

Issues of special influence on Texas1. Increasing profitability of slavery2. Racial prejudice and fear3. Increased connection to the Lower South

Politically, the majority of Texans before the Civil War considered themselves Democrats.

The Whigs briefly existed in Texas, attracting professionals, merchants, and prosperous planters.

In the mid-1850s, the Know-Nothing party attracted many Texans with its criticism of immigrants and Catholics.

See pages 134-135.

Texas Politics in the 1850s

The Schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin where the Republican Party was first organized locally in 1854.

1860 campaign banner

The Republican Party was established in the mid-1850s by northerners who opposed the geographic expansion of slavery.

Hardin R. Runnels defeated Sam Houston for the governorship in 1857 on a platform supporting the reopening of the African slave trade. Runnels resided in Old Boston and was buried in a family cemetery in Bowie County in 1873. In the election of 1859, Houston put Runnels on the defensive by criticizing the latter’s inadequate protection of the frontier, highlighting Runnels’ wishes to see the slave trade renewed, and reminding voters of the governor’s preference for secession. Sam Houston’s victory in the 1859 gubernatorial race was hailed as a tribute to Unionism. Unfortunately, it was Houston’s last political position.

Hardin R. Runnels

Sam Houston

John C. BreckinridgeCandidate of the Southern Democrats

Stephen A. DouglasCandidate of the Northern Democrats

John BellCandidate of the Unionist Party (A coalition of Unionist Democrats, ex-Know-Nothings and former Whigs)

Disintegration of the Democratic Party.

Texas Democrats faced an excruciating decision over which Democrat to support. By the summer of 1860, however, most Texans began to swing over to Breckinridge, who most closely mirrored the sentiments of pro-slavery Texans and seemed most likely to win. (See p. 137) Abraham Lincoln

Issues of special influence on Texas

1. Increasing profitability of slavery2. Racial prejudice and fear3. Increased connection to the

Lower South

Sam Houston was Sam Houston was forced from the forced from the governor’s office when governor’s office when he refused to take an he refused to take an oath of loyalty to the oath of loyalty to the Confederacy.Confederacy.

5TH TEXAS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY, CO. K

The two highest-ranking Texans in the Confederate army were Albert Sidney Johnston and John Bell Hood.

Texas-Mexico Trade RoutesTexas-Mexico Trade Routes

Texas was economically important to the Confederacy because the Confederacy was able to conduct foreign trade through Mexico by way of Texas. (See p. 142.)

Cotton bales on Matamoros wharf arrived across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas

(background)

In the fall of 1863, Confederate forces under the command of Lt. Richard Dowling turned back a much larger Union invasion force at the battle of Sabine Pass. (See pp. 140-141.)

"There is no parallel in ancient or modern warfare to the victory of Dowling and his men at Sabine Pass considering the great odds against which they had to contend" Jefferson Davis

The Battle The Battle of Sabine of Sabine PassPassSeptember 8, 1663September 8, 1663

In Gainesville (Cooke County), North Texas Confederates—responding to reports of a plot by members of the Peace Party to take over local ordnance depots and to revolt at the same time that Unionists forces invaded Texas from Kansas and Galveston—executed some forty-two alleged conspirators (most of the innocent) in October 1862 and proclaimed martial law in the county. (See p. 145)

The so-called “Battle of Nueces” was actually a massacre of German Unionists near BrackettvilleThe so-called “Battle of Nueces” was actually a massacre of German Unionists near BrackettvilleMany German Texans continued to support the Union and organizations during the war such as the Union Loyal League. Many Texans loyal to the Confederacy targeted German Texans for any outward sign of disloyalty or subversion, even as hundreds of German Texans from West Texas enlisted in the Confederate ranks.

Through the Union Loyal League, “German Unionists endeavored to destabilize the Texas Confederacy and reinstate Union authority, by military means if necessary. Expectedly, Austin officials considered the Union Loyal League a danger to Southern security; in July of 1862 they ordered a company of Confederate cavalry and Texas state troopers into the Hill Country to suppress League activities. Many Germans found the Confederate effort to establish law and order through arrest, detention, and violence so odious, however, that some sixty-one of them opted for flight into Mexico on August 1. Convinced that those fleeing the country were part of the seditious sentiment overrunning the German [west] counties, Confederate troops gave pursuit, overtaking the Unionists on August 10…. In what came to be known as the “Battle of Nueces”—a brief skirmish resulting in fatalities on both sides—the Confederate forced the Germans to surrender. Subsequently, and on their own initiative, a handful of Confederates foully murdered some of the German survivors. (Calvert, De León & Cantrell, 143-144)

At the Battle of Nueces, Confederate forces killed nineteen German Texans were killed and wounded nine. The nine wounded settlers were later caught and executed. The bodies of the nineteen were left unburied and in 1865 after the war had ended, residents from Comfort went and collected the remains and returned them to Comfort for a proper burial. Their remains are now at the site of the Treue der Union ("Loyal to the Union") Monument.

http://www.rootsweb.com/~txcbduv/

Inscribed on the east face of the monument are the words, Treue der Union ( "TROY-der-OON-yen," or "Loyal to the Union"). The west face of the obelisk lists those believed to have died at the Nueces battle site (honors Gefallen am 10 August 1862), the south face those killed at the Rio Grande (Gefallen am 18 Oct. 1862), and the north faces lists those allegedly hanged (Gefangen, genomen, und ermordet --"Captured, taken prisoner, and murdered"). The monument lists thirty-five names, but the exact number killed, and the manner of their deaths, obviously will never be known. (http://www.hal-pc.org/~dcrane/txgenweb/nueces.htm)

Some 24,000 Texans perished during the four years of fighting. The war left a legacy of deep personal hatreds. Many sought to continue to fight the Northern Army of Occupation through terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan.