STATEHOOD
Texas Population Explosion
700,000
600,000
500,000
400,000
300,000
200,000
100,000
0
1800
1821
Pop. 4,000
2,240
1834
1848
1850
1860
20,700 162,500 212,000 604,000
In order to encourage immigration, the
state government made the public lands
available at very cheap prices.
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
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 160acre 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.)
Origins of the Texas Population, 1850
Group
Southern AngloAmerican
Northern AngloAmerican
Negro
Spanish-surname
French-surname
German element
Other foreign elements
Other
(See Table 5.1 on page 118.)
Percent of
State Total
Percent of
Group living
in Urban
Areas
114,040
53.7
3
9,965
4.7
11
58,558
11,212
1,071
11,534
3,900
2,312
27.5
5.3
0.5
5.4
1.8
1.1
3
13
29
32
23
--
Numbers
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 = DIFFICULT
TRASPORTATION
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)
The “Jackass Line”
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)
Arrieros
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.
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.htm
Dewberry Plantation
THE 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 Texas
Only about one-third of all Texas farms at midcentury 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 mid1850s was to put the
Indians on reservations.
“In his History of Texas (1855),” historian 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.)
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.
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.)
Compromise of 1850
1. Slave trade ended in Washington, D.C.
2. Stronger fugitive slave law
3. Territories from Mexico organized without a ban
on slavery
4. California a free state
5. Texas compensated for giving up land claims
Debating the Compromise of 1850
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.
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 expansion
2. Internal improvements
3. Banks
4. 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-Catholic
3. Pro-Union
4. Distrust of Democrats
Texans attracted to the Know-Nothings
1. Persons in commercial centers of East Texas
2. 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 Democrats
1.
Defended slavery
2.
Championed white supremacy
3.
Advocated states' rights
4.
Endorsed the Knights of the Golden Circle
5.
Condemned the Republican party
Steps to Secession
1.
People's Convention (January 28, 1861)
2.
Ratification referendum (February 23, 1861)
3.
People's Convention declared secession
4.
Houston removed from governorship
Why some southern states seceded
1. Some northerners blamed a Slave Power
conspiracy
2. Some southerners blamed a Republican
conspiracy to destroy southern culture
3. Abolitionists denunciation of slavery as immoral
and southern defense of slavery as a positive good
4. The constitutional issue of states rights
5. Incompatibility of southern and northern
economic systems
6. Conflicts over religion, immigration, and cultural
conformity
Issues of special influence on Texas
1. Increasing profitability of slavery
2. Racial prejudice and fear
3. Increased connection to the Lower South
Texas Politics in the 1850s
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.
The Republican Party was
established in the mid1850s by northerners
who opposed the
geographic expansion of
slavery.
The Schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin
where the Republican Party was first
organized locally in 1854.
1860 campaign banner
Hardin R.
Runnels
Sam
Houston
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.
John C. Breckinridge
Candidate of the
Southern Democrats
John Bell
Stephen A. Douglas Candidate of the
Candidate of the
Unionist Party (A coalition
Northern Democrats of Unionist Democrats, exKnow-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 slavery
2. Racial prejudice and fear
3. Increased connection to the Lower
South
Sam Houston was
forced from the
governor’s office when
he refused to take an
oath of loyalty to the
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 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)
"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 of
Sabine Pass
September 8, 1663
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.)
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 Brackettville
Many 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.
Inscribed on the east face of the monument are the words, Treue der Union ( "TROY-der-OONyen," 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)
http://www.rootsw
eb.com/~txcbduv/
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.