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This is Episode 54 – Antebellum Texas – Ready to Secede. – the state and stage is set for secession.  We are getting closer to Civil War.

In the previous episode I discussed how important slaves and slavery was to the economic engine of Texas during the antebellum period. However, it is interesting to note that the majority of Texans did not own slaves and had no participation in the cotton or cash-crop industries. It’s estimated that about only one in four families actually had even a single slave and most had fewer than five. The planters who owned more than ten slaves actually held over half of all those people that were held in bondage in the state.  A percentage of these people also made large profits from their investments in land, labor, and cotton and they played a major role in driving the Texas economy.

            Antebellum Texas gave birth to what would become agricultural Texas.  Agriculture began to develop quickly and steadily with an ever-increasing number of farms being established. Those farmers worked hard to expand  the land that was tillable, which in turn helped to increase the value of their livestock and the total yield of their crops. Of course, slave labor was an important asset and contributor to that economic growth. Unfortunately, during this same time period, industry, finance, and urban growth stagnated. During the decade of the 1850s approximately 1 percent of the heads of households in Texas worked in manufacturing. In 1860, Texas industries produced a meager 6.5 million dollars’ worth of goods, as opposed to the northern state of Wisconsin which produced close to 28 million dollars’ worth of manufactured goods.

Due to the Texas constitutional prohibition on banking, the finance or commerce industry also lagged behind other states and less than 5 percent of the citizens worked in it. Due to the limitations on industry and commerce, the urban areas of Texas were sparsely populated and in 1860 only San Antonio, Galveston, Houston, and Austin could actually be considered cities. Their combined populations of about 23,000 was less than Milwaukee’s.

When we look at antebellum Texas and wonder why there was a failure to create a more diversified economy we find several valid reasons. Geography is one, Texas has a great climate and in both Central and East Texas the soil is very suitable for crop production. The continued reliance on slaves also served to slow down the growth of any type of manufacturing, since plantation production was much more profitable due to lower labor costs. With the plantations being profitable there was no real incentive to expand outside of agriculture. Because the plantation owners were some of the richest most powerful people in Texas, they would have had to lead Texas in any move to diversify the economy. They could see no possible return on their investment that would make them more money than their current system, so they made no effort to change.

The one part of the Texas experience the plantation owners did have a vested interest in seeing improved was transportation. The early settlers of Texas had always used the rivers as their primary transportation routes. While the rivers could be an excellent way to travel during most of the year, heavy rains, or the opposite drought and low levels which helped to expose sand bars, made the rivers very unreliable. The roads, which were nothing but dirt trails turned into massive mud pits during the rainy season, (even now they still become  that way in some parts of Texas)  and so wagon transportation was slow and cumbersome.  In fact, I was often told of how my great-grandfather William Ollie Wilson who was born in 1860 and drove a freight wagon in the 1880s, would normally make the trip from Johnson City Texas to Marble Falls Texas in about 3 days, yet in the rainy season it could easily take him more than a week to cover the same 23 miles.

The obvious solution to the transportation problem would have been railroads, but the promoters of the rails faced tremendous financial difficulties. Early in 1850, the state legislature chartered the state’s first railroad, the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado. It was designated to run from Harrisburg, near Houston, (in fact Harrisburg is now considered a community or neighborhood of Houston) from there it would head westward to Alleyton on the Colorado River. The road reached Stafford’s Point in 1853 and its final destination of Alleyton by 1860. However, most proposed railroad projects ultimately came to nothing. The reasons for their failures are many but one of the primary ones was simple, money. The majority of the promoters wanted the state to help subsidize the construction of the rails. However, a group of Texans led by Lorenzo Sherwood, a lawyer who had been born in New York and immigrated to Texas and who lived in Galveston, were bitterly opposed to using state money for private corporations.

Sherwood proposed that the State build and own a 1,000-mile network of railroads. However, in 1854, a group who favored private ownership managed to convince the legislature to pass a law that authorized the state to grant 16 sections of land to a railroad company for every mile that was built by the company if they had received their charter after the bill’s passage. Sherwood’s group opposed the plan and after he was elected to the legislature in1856 he fought against the bill. However, earlier he had made statements against the African slave trade and  his opponents used those statements to force him from the legislature. Finally in July of 1856, the legislature passed a bill that authorized the state to loan $6,000 to any railroad company for every mile of road they completed.

            Even though the state finally decided that it was ok to help private corporations build railroads, very little progress was actually made. In fact, by 1860 only 400 miles of operating railroads existed, and almost all of it came out of Houston. Only two of the lines, one that ran from Port Lavaca to Victoria (both towns along the gulf coast) and one that served Harrison County did not connect in some fashion with Houston. Texas simply did not have the necessary capital to build a truly expansive railroad system. The state also lacked an industrial base that could help produce the building material needed, or enough of a population and a diversified economy that could justify the investments. This would remain the situation until after the civil war, when in 1865 railroad building would commence again.

            During the antebellum period, the role  of Texas women was largely defined by the traditions that had been imported from the old south. The perfect Texas woman was considered to be a homemaker and mother, pious and pure, strong and hardworking, and just as, if not more importantly, docile and submissive. She was admired, but she had absolutely no political rights and was almost a non-person under the law.  A woman could not serve on a jury, be a lawyer, or even witness a will. The one area they did have significant rights was in property. They were able to retain title to any land and slaves they might have owned before marriage. They also had community property rights to any and all property acquired during their marriage. They had full title to all properties that they received after a divorce or the death of their husband. Because of these rights, there were Texas women who headed families, owned plantations,  and managed large estates. They were not all passive and submissive.

Due to the  southern state influence, many Texans belonged to churches that were much like the old evangelical churches of their southern roots. The one denomination that did outnumber any other was the Methodists. In fact, by 1860 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, as it was called after the denomination had a northern southern split in 1844, had over 30,000 members. The Baptist denomination was the second largest  group, followed by Presbyterians, Non-denominational Christian, Cumberland Presbyterians, Catholics, Lutherans, and Episcopalians. These groups all provided spiritual and moral guidance and offered in many cases educational opportunities. Probably one of the most significant roles they played was that they brought people together and encouraged social interchange which helped to relieve some  of the isolation and loneliness that many faced in their daily rural life.

            People think today’s Texas political environment is strange, it has nothing on what it was like during the antebellum period. Politics there were a mirror image of the state’s prominent Southern economic and social structure. The 1845 Constitution permitted all adult White males, regardless of whether they were taxpayers or owned property to not only vote, but also to hold any state or local office. However, the reality was that much like today, the richer a person was, the more likely they were to hold office and, in this case, the wealthy slaveholders were in almost complete control of the entire state’s politics. In one sense, they did achieve control democratically because they were voted in, but the reality was their wealth gave them so much power they didn’t have to convince non-slaveowners to support them. This also created an aristocracy that once again made Texas much like the states of the old south.

            Between 1846 and 1861 almost every man who governed Texas was a Democrat. In 1845, Guy Bryan  wrote, that “We are all Democrats, since the glorious victory of that party, who fearlessly espoused our cause and nailed the `Lone Star’ to the topmast of their noble ship.” Their claim on ownership of the Texas political world became even more pronounced once the Whig party did not enthusiastically support the war with Mexico and did support President Zachary Taylor when he denied the 1849-1850 Texas claims to New Mexico’s territory.  Between 1845 and 1861 Democrats won every presidential and gubernatorial election. The only time their control was challenged often came when Sam Houston became involved.

In 1855, the Democratic party was finally challenged for control of the Texas political system by the American (Know-Nothing) party. As I mentioned in previous episodes, the Know-Nothings, were an antiforeign, anti-Catholic organization that had its roots in the Northeast. It first appeared on the scene in Texas during 1855 and attracted many Whigs. The Whigs who watched as their party fell apart as a result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, helped to grow the party. The Know-Nothings supported Lieutenant Governor David C. Dickson for governor in 1855 and forced the Democrats to call a hurried state convention and unify in support of Governor Pease. While Pease easily defeated Dickson for Governor, the new party did have success in state and local elections. After the failed campaign of Millard Fillmore before the 1856 presidential campaign, the Know-Nothings lost much of their support and quickly faded into insignificance.

It was during this time period that Texas politics began to focus on pro and anti-union issues.  Sam Houston, who  was in the U.S. Senate at this time was a strong believer in the union, and due to his stance on this issue it was not certain that he would win re-election to the senate. Instead of running for the senate in1857 he chose to run as an independent for governor. He was defeated by Democrat Hardin R. Runnels, who hailed from Mississippi and held strong states’-rights beliefs. Runnels defeated him 32,552 to 28,678 and it was the only election Houston ever lost.

Once in office, Runnels initiated an aggressive policy toward the tribes that lived in Northwest Texas, and in 1858-1859, his policies were responsible for more bloodshed on the frontier than at any other time since 1836. However, in 1859, in retaliation, the Comanches began a series of raids on unprotected frontier settlements. Runnels actions and the reaction of the tribes led many Texans to become dissatisfied with his administration. Runnels’s also helped to stoke sectional tensions as he endorsed an extreme version of states’ rights, and along with other leading Democrats, including John Marshall, state party chairman and editor of the Austin State Gazette, began to advocate for ultra-Southern policies such as reopening the African slave trade.

            This led to the 1859 governors’ race where Runnels and Lieutenant Governor Francis R. Lubbock ran on the ultra-southern platform against Sam Houston and Edward Clark who ran as Independents or Union Democrats. Independent or Union Democrats. This time, Houston defeated Runnels, 33,375 to 27,500. Some historians credit this victory due to a lack of pro-Southern extremism among Texas voters, but the reality is that Houston’s personal popularity and the damage that Runnel’s aggressive frontier policy caused most likely played major roles. The reality of this is seen in how the legislature selected Louis T. Wigfall as United States senator. Wigfall was a native of South Carolina, openly supported secession and was one of the most bitter enemies that Sam Houston had.

Sam Houston did try to bring Texas to a degree of moderation. In his inaugural address, he said “When Texas united her destiny with that of the United States, she entered not into the North, nor South. Her connection was not sectional, but national.”  While Houston was correct about how Texans initially felt about being a part of the union, by 1860 the Old South has become so ingrained in Texas culture that secession was inevitable. Hard cord southerners were in complete control of the Democratic state convention in 1860 and the delegation they sent to the national convention in Charleston, South Carolina was headed up by Runnels and Lubbock. When Stephen A. Douglas and others proposed a platform that called for popular sovereignty to decide the issue of slavery in the territories, the Texans and other  Deep South delegations walked out. As a result, the Democratic party ended up  nominating Douglas for the Northern part of the party, while John C. Breckinridge was nominated by the Southern part. This effectively split the party and caused considerable confusion among the national voters.

In contrast the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln on a platform opposing the spread of slavery. Conservatives from the upper South formed the Constitutional Union party whose goal was to unite those who wanted the union to stay together. Sam Houston did receive consideration for the presidential nomination for the new party but he eventually lost to John Bell of Tennessee.

Texas Democrats supported the southern democratic candidate Breckinridge and threatened to secede if the “Black Republican” Abraham Lincoln won. Meanwhile, another group, who wanted to continue with the traditional unionism of the Whigs, Know-Nothings, and Sam Houston’s Independent Democrats, but who did not oppose slavery or Southern interests turned to Bell and the Constitutional Unionists in the hope of preventing disunion.

Their argument was that secession amounted to revolution and would probably hasten the destruction of slavery rather than protect it. This group was a decided minority from the outset, and their cause suffered further in the summer of 1860 when a series of spontaneous fires broke out in North Texas. This created an outbreak of public hysteria that became  known as the Texas Troubles. I mentioned this in a previous episode when I spoke about events that many claimed were slave revolts or insurrections. As a result, multiple slave and white suspects were lynched by vigilantes before panic began to subside. “It is better,” said one citizen of Fort Worth, “for us to hang ninety-nine innocent (suspicious) men than to let one guilty one pass.”

            In the election of 1860 Breckinridge defeated Bell in Texas by a vote of 47,458 to 15,463, carrying every county in the state except three-Bandera, Gillespie, and Starr. Even though Abraham Lincoln received no votes in Texas, due to the number of votes he received from the free states, he was elected president. His victory was the final spark that ignited a massive and almost spontaneous popular movement that ended up seeing Texas leave the Union. In staying true to antebellum heritage as an integral part of the cotton industry, in 1860 Texas joined other Southern states in secession and war.

That’s going to do it for today, I hope you’ve enjoyed, and if not enjoyed at least learned something you might not have known before about the Hidden History of Texas. Next episode it’s war, and I’ll talk about what the Texas leaders said at the time as to why they wanted out of the union.

Please subscribe to the podcast. If you want more information on Texas History, visit the website of the Texas State Historical Association. I also have four audiobooks on the Hidden History of Texas, The Spanish Bump Into Texas 1530s to 1820s,  Here Come The Anglos 1820s to 1830s, Years of Revolution 1830 to 1836. And, my latest A Failing Republic Becomes a State 1836-1850. You can find the books pretty much wherever you download or listen to audiobooks. Just do a search for the Hidden History of Texas by Hank Wilson and they’ll pop right up. Or visit my website https://arctx.org. By the way if you like audiobooks, visit my publisher’s website there’s an incredible selection of audiobooks there. In addition to mine you’ll find the classics, horror, science fiction, mental-health, and much more. Check it out visit https://ashbynavis.com

Thanks for listening y’all