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When Texas Was a “Republican” State

By Frank X.Tolbert |

From December, 1869, until the early days of January, 1874, Texas had a Republican governor by federal decree. In those days, Democrats weren’t allowed to vote or to run for office because of their associations with the late Confederate government.

His name was Edmund Jackson Davis, though in 20th century Texas he is most often referred to (especially by Republicans) as “the last Republican governor.” He was also the first, but armchair history, to date, has had a habit of not being very kind to E. J. Davis.

But while the body of mythology built up about Davis over the past century has distorted, in many cases, who the fellow really was, the reality of Governor Davis, as hard historical facts tend to be, is even more outlandish than the legend.

While Edmund Davis was a Republican by affiliation, he would not have pleased many of the 1975 straight-lever pullers in North Dallas. He was a free-thinker who made the social and economic elevation of blacks, among other heretical pursuits (in 1869-74), his cause célèbre when he was governor. He was also a brilliant legislative mind, the architect of some of Texas’ most far-sighted and resilient laws. He has often been called “The Carpetbagger Governor” by histories, though, in reality, he moved to Texas when he was 10, and served as a district attorney in several counties near the Mexican border before entering politics. And like most politicians ahead of their times, he ultimately was done in by his allies as well as his enemies. Even fellow Republican and early supporter, President U.S. Grant, soon found Davis simply too radical to sustain in office.

But if Davis’ tenure was short, his legacy lives on. He was responsible, in 1870, for enactment of the famous Homestead Act, which – even today – exempts family homes, means of transportation, family-sustaining lands, tools and utensils of trade, from forced sale for payments of debts.

More significantly, Davis often made public displays of his sympathy and partiality for the blacks, and this caused much rancor. For example, once while governor he led a parade which a disapproving Austin newspaper described as “a rabble of turbulent Negroes.”

The twilight parade went up Congress Avenue in Austin to the capitol grounds. There Davis made a speech to the blacks on the capitol steps, closing with this advice: “I suggest you form double ranks and march around this building singing the glorious hymn of freedom.”

Thus inspired, the blacks circled the capitol several times, carrying torches and rendering loudly such songs as “John Brown’s Body” and “Rally ’round the Flag, Boys!”

This sort of thing didn’t set too well with the folks at large. Neither did Davis’ frequent spurts of sympathy for hostile Indians, such as the time he commuted the death sentences of two wild Kiowa Indians (Satanta and Big Tree), who had been on many raids on the frontier settlements. (He eventually freed Satanta and Big Tree.)

But ironically, throughout, Davis continued to hold the trust of his constituents, despite their abundant distaste for his governmental style. While many were given to claiming his administration was full of thieves and murderers, one of Davis’ biggest political enemies said, “He [Davis] never diverted one cent of public funds to his own use.”

Another said, “General Davis (he was a Union Army brigadier in the Civil War), the revolutionary schemer, the dangerous public character, reckoned to be even more dangerous because, like Robespierre, of the purity of his personal life.”



Davis really was, from all available evidence, a straight arrow, but oddly, he was elevated to the governorship by a rigged election. In 1869, he beat another Republican, A. J. (Colossal Jack) Hamilton by only 809 votes. (Texas was then under military rule, and there was no Democratic candidate.) An army general, partial to Davis, supervised the ballot tallying, and declared “irregularities” at the polls in counties he believed to favor Davis’ opponent. The votes in these counties were thrown out. Interestingly, the general rigged the election for Davis in hopes of being appointed to the U.S. Senate, which Davis subsequently refused to do.

Davis was aware his election was rigged. But he was a man with a mission. It was a means to an end, that end being to civilize Texas. One of his first moves in this direction was to prohibit hand guns, except on the raw frontier. As he said at the time: “We are the most lawless people on the face of the earth. In New York City, with about the same population as all of Texas, there were 75 or 80 homicides last year [1869]. Here in Texas there were up to 800.”

The six-shooter prohibition ultimately failed, partially because in Texas at that time, it was difficult to define “frontier,” and partially because people simply ignored it. But such reform was an omen of the Davis style which would emerge during the next four years.

If Davis was a liberal thinker in terms of race, he was also open-minded on matters of public morality. During his tenure, a friend, black politician Matt Gaines, was indicted for bigamy in a case probably instigated by his political enemies. Davis not only pulled strings to block the conviction of Gaines, but soon after, pushed through another landmark piece of legislation: Texas’ common law marriage act.

Davis had grown up playing the rugged individualist. An extraordinarily tall (perhaps 6’4″), long-maned, bearded man, he formed a band of pro-Union guerrillas in Mexico during the States War. Davis’ regiment proved bothersome enough to the Confederates to bring him within an inch of his life several times, including the time in 1863, when he was almost hanged.

Perhaps Davis’ most controversial maneuver was his attempt in the late 1860’s to carve Texas into two or three individual states. When Texas had joined the Union, it had constitutionally reserved that option. Davis’ ostensible purpose was to create a state – the western half of Texas – which included frontiersmen alien to the old South and sympathetic to his politics.

This part of the state had many inhabitants of Mexican descent, and also immigrants from Germany, Ireland, France, Alsace-Lorraine, Poland and other European countries. And the principal business was ranching, an endeavor incompatible with the Old South tradition of slavery.

Davis certainly figured that his political future would be safer in his dream state.

In his scheme to create for himself a political fiefdom, Davis had the cooperation of his friendly correspondent in Washington, D.C., Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Republican congressman from Pennsylvania Davis wrote Stevens that blacks would be encouraged to move from their old plantation environments in central and eastern Texas to the public lands in the new western state. He said that most West Texans had been against secession – which was probably true. And Congressman Stevens must have been pleased, too, by the idea of more Radical Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate from the new state.

It has been completely ignored in previous histories, but on July 2, 1868, Thaddeus Stevens introduced H. R. 1351 (40th Congress, Printer’s No. 470), the wording of the bill beginning:

“To provide for the erection of not more than 2 additional states out of the territory of the Stateof Texas . . . Whereas the people of Texas desire to erect out of the territory of said state 2 additional states of convenient size . . . have elected delegates to a convention to form a constitution of government and whereas it is desired that two additional states be formed out of the territory to be bounded and named as follows….”

The new state to be called East Texas was to “begin at a point in the middle of the channel between Gal-veston Island and Bolivar point to the mouth of the San Jacinto River, up the San Jacinto to its confluence with the eastern fork of the San Jacinto, thence up the eastern fork with the western boundaries of the Counties of Liberty and Polk, thence north to the Trinity River and up the Trinity to the mouth of the Bois d’Arc or east fork of the Trinity, thence up the east fork of the Trinity to the northwest corner of Kaufman County, thence north to the southwest corner of Fannin County, thence north with the western border of Fannin County to the Red River. . .” The old northern, eastern, and southern borders of Texas would still obtain for East Texas.

According to the Davis-inspired bill introduced by Congressman Stevens a state called simply Texas would be wedged in-between East Texas and South Texas and would have only about 70 miles of Gulf of Mexico coastline, from Galveston Bay to the mouth of the Colorado River. In contrast, Davis’ new South Texas would have more than half of the Texas coast.

South Texas would have encompassed Davis’ “home towns” of Brownsville, Laredo, Corpus Christi and San Antonio, plus the oldest Polish colony in America at Panna Maria, the Alsatian colony at Castro-ville, and the “capitals” of German emigrants at Fredericksburg and New Braunfels, and, of course, El Paso.

Thaddeus Stevens died a few weeks after introducing the “Texas bill,” and for want of his vigorous sponsorship, it died in committee.

Davis changed his plan. In 1869 before he became governor, he was the president of a convention charged with writing a new state constitution. Under his new scheme, he would use the new constitution as a vehicle to divide Texas into two states, West Texas being all the land west of the Colorado River, as in the Stevens bill, and East Texas everything east of the Colorado.

An opposition Texas newspaper editorialized: “As presiding officer of the body [the constitution-writing convention], General Davis undertakes to cut the state into 2 parcels and create the lupine State of West Texas to suit his own political purposes…”

He even had the audacity to have printed a very liberal (in the contemporary meaning of “liberal”) constitution which he’d written for West Texas.

President U.S. Grant thwarted him. A Boston Post correspondent in Washington, D.C., wrote (and the story appeared in some Texas newspapers) that “it was only through direct interference from President Grant that Davis was prevented from making his State of West Texas a reality.”

According to the Boston Post story, President Grant “notified Davis that the convention had been assembled under provisions of the Reconstruction Laws to form a new constitution for one state and not to divide Texas into more states . . . President Grant remarked that he thought one Texas was amply sufficient to have on hand for the present, and from reports on lawlessness the President doubted if Texas was ready for civil government.” (Grant may have been influenced by his friend, General Phil Sheridan, who was quoted as saying: “If I owned Hell and Texas, I’d rent out Texas and live in Hell.”).



Certainly the state during the Davis administration was often in violent turmoil. One newspaper wrote that stagecoach robbers might soon publish “proceedings” in a house organ, and in the same joking vein said that the Czar of Russia then lived in constant fear of assassination “but if he wishes a safe life the Czar should come to Texas and go into the stagecoach holdup business.”



Among Governor Davis’ closest black friends was G. T. Ruby, a native of New York City and never a slave. Ruby was well-educated and a brilliant orator. Davis wanted Ruby to run for lieutenant governor on his ticket in 1869, only it was ruled that the Galveston politician was too young to qualify. While he was in the state senate, Ruby often was the presiding officer.

Some of the black legislators had been freedmen before the war. One of these was Richard Allen. He’d run away from the bondage in Louisiana and set up as a contractor in Houston. He was quite successful. For one thing, he built the first bridge over Buffalo Bayou in the Houston city limits.

The black legislators tried to serve their white constituents fairly. One of the first bills Richard Allen entered was for pensions for veterans of Texas’ Revolutionary army of 1836. Few, if any, Negroes derived benefit from this legislation. Senator Gaines, a preacher, offered as his first legislation a bill making it a misdemeanor to sell liquor near a college campus. One of Senator Ruby’s first bills was to incorporate a horticulture society in Galveston.



Edmund Davis didn’t vamoose from the Austin scene after he was defeated for a second term as Governor. He stayed on and entered in the private practice of law. Mrs. Davis was a social and cultural leader in Austin. Davis continued to be the top Republican in Texas until his death in 1883, although he was beaten in another bid for the governorship in 1880, and was an unsuccessful candidate for the congress in 1882.

A young lawyer named Gardner Ruggles, son of a Confederate general, handled legal affairs for the Davis family. Mrs. Gardner Ruggles said: “Despite his Union Army service and all the troubles when he was governor, Davis was well-liked and popular in Austin.”

Mr. and Mrs. Davis went to West Point in 1881 to see one of their sons, Britton Davis, graduated from the U.S. Military Academy. Britton was as individualistic as his father. For instance, he insisted on using a cowboy-type saddle rather than a regular Army one while serving as commanding officer of some Indian scouts in frontier wars of the 1880’s. Britton wrote an excellent book on his Army experiences called The Truth About Geronimo, published by the Harvard Press.

The other son, Waters Davis, became a prominent El Paso businessman and a champion amateur golfer.

Edmund Davis died on February 7, 1883, and he was buried in the State Cemetery in Austin on the highest hill in that resting place of Texas’ great men and under the tallest monument. The 1883 Texas Governor, John Ireland, a former Confederate officer and once a very active foe of the Davis administration, spoke the eulogy. And, naturally, there were thousands of blacks at the funeral.

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