Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
No institution in Texas ever aroused so much hostility and hatred as the Davis Police. The documented stories of oppressions and incidents are almost endless; the record of a few events tells the tale.
At Galveston in 1871, Governor Davis took personal command of the city police under the Militia Bill, and put this force under the orders of State Police Captain George Farrow. The reason was that a great political rally was being held, and the Governor wanted to keep "order." He did not consult Mayor Summerville, Judge Sabin, or Judge Dodge, the legally constituted local authorities. The local Conservatives were silenced and crushed.
In a scene described as "pandemonium" by a paper, two Radicals, both Negroes, were nominated by "acclamation" by the Party convention. A Conservative, Nelson, shouted that this was a "put-up job." The State Police, under a Negro sergeant, cut off the gaslights and drove the convention out on the streets before the nomination could be overturned or questioned.
When Conservatives tried to hold a rump convention and choose an opposition slate, they were rousted out again by the police. In other conventions, the police impounded or destroyed written ballots.
At another rally, when a Texas Negro tried to speak up for the Democratic Party in Austin, the city marshal strode to the platform and struck him with a whip. State Police stood by, laughing, ready to protect the marshal from the crowd. This meeting ended in a near-fatal shooting scrape between Radical Ratcliff Platt, chairman of the county executive committee, and editor John Caldwell of the
Democratic Statesman
.
At Dallas, a Negro orator also spoke up for Democrats. A mob of other Negroes descended on him, screaming, "Kill the damn dog! Shoot the —— hypocrite!" A deputy sheriff drew his pistol to protect the speaker and was arrested by the State Police for inciting violence. A few white men hustled the speaker away and protected him with guns against knives and razors.
At Paris, two policemen took a young man out of his home and shot him in the back, before witnesses.
At Marshall, two Negro officers killed another white man, an unarmed teen-ager, who ignored arrest. There were fourteen such murders in all.
A real calamity occurred in Limestone County in the fall of 1871. In the town of Groesbeck, a citizen named Applewhite was murdered on the street by four Negro State Police, who apparently were drunk. According to reliable witnesses, one killer shouted, "There is another white son of a bitch I want to kill! I will have the town flowing with white blood before morning!" Flourishing pistols, the police barricaded themselves in the mayor's office, shooting at random at people who came out into the street.
Mayor Zadek ordered all citizens to arm themselves, but despite flaring anger he was able to keep control. Zadek said there would be no mob action; the killers would be arrested according to the law. While a posse was organized, the four police escaped out of town and rode to a Negro settlement. Here they gathered a large body of their fellows.
However, two of the killers were taken by the sheriff and lodged in jail. Although there was some rumbling in the Negro community, Groesbeck was quiet.
In this atmosphere, Radical leaders wrote to Governor Davis that Negroes were not going to be allowed to vote in the crisis. Although the evidence was entirely otherwise—no white
wanted
the Negroes to vote, but no one had broached doing anything about it—Davis reacted violently.
He declared Limestone and neighboring Freestone counties in insurrection and under martial law. He issued a proclamation with inflammatory charges. He did not bother to notify the legislature of this act.
Habeas corpus was suspended in the affected counties, the State Police were sent in, and a fine of $50,000—3 percent on all taxable property—was levied. There was no resistance; the State Police spent their time riding about the counties collecting the fine. It was collected by a police captain and a few men, visiting each homestead in turn.
This was not an isolated case. Huntsville was put under martial law and cowed. So was Walker County. Martial law was declared frequently, and noticeably where anti-Davis elements were vocal or strong. The great bitterness was caused by the fact that in virtually every case, the proclamations were unnecessary. They were political.
L. H. McNelly, who was badly wounded and almost killed while acting against desperadoes as a State Police captain, in an unguarded moment gave a Galveston reporter a damaging view of Davis's declarations of martial law. When asked about conditions in Walker County, which the Governor described as far gone in armed rebellion, McNelly, one of the few honest police officers, suggested the real reason was "money." The Adjutant General was then riding through Walker county with "seven or eight men," collecting fifty cents on each assessed $100 valuation.
These fines were assessed on every resident of the county and collected at pistol point. McNelly drawled that if the county was really in rebellion, Adjutant General Davidson would need an army. When this report was printed, McNelly was forced to retract and claim he had been misquoted.
These practices and perversions of the police power were enormously destructive of law and order. There was hardly a prominent, respected citizen, editor, or minister of religion in Texas who had anything but contempt for the State Police. The statement of one Texas historian that this emboldened actual desperadoes everywhere is, if anything, an understatement of the case. Criminality, in most occupied or oppressed countries, tends to become respectable if it is combined with resistance to corrupt authority. This happened.
In September 1871, John Wesley Hardin, who already had considerable reputation as a gunman and was a known desperado, was arrested by two Negro State Policemen at Gonzales. Although both officers "had the drop" on Hardin—their pistols were on him and his was in his belt—he easily drew and shot them both dead. When the news of this spread about town, a group of citizens gathered about Hardin, and together they "declared openly against negro or Yankee mob rule and misrule in general," as Hardin himself told the story. "We at once got about twenty-five men, good and true, sent for negroes to come along, that we would not leave enough of them to tell the tale . . . from that time on we had no negro police in Gonzales."
The use of black police was too much of a "setting of the bottom rail on the top." Any criminal who shot one turned into a sort of hero.
The elections of 1871 were for Congress. Although armed State Police stood around every polling place and broke up political rallies and demonstrations, this year thousands of white Democrats streamed to the polls. Davis canvasses threw out thousands of votes, including the entire returns of Limestone, Brazos, Bowie, and Marion counties, on specious grounds. Despite this, the Democrats carried every Congressional seat. In a statewide vote of 125,812, the Democratic candidates won by a majority of 24,279.
The Radicals disputed one seat, that of William T. Clark against D. C. Giddings.
Governor Davis issued a certificate of election to Clark, the Radical, over Giddings, the Democrat. The contest went on in courts and in Congress for some months, until, on the overwhelming evidence, Giddings was seated.
In the aftermath of this dispute, the United States District Court in Texas indicated Davis for vote fraud and for issuing fraudulent election certificates, both offenses under the Federal Enforcement Act. Garland, the Federal District Attorney, was a Republican, but he had no intention of quashing these indictments. Garland had expressly warned Davis against issuing the false certificate when Davis had "tried him out" after the election.
The Governor's confidence in going ahead was well founded. The Washington
Chronicle
, a Republican paper in the capital, printed that the indictment was "obviously meant as an insult to President Grant." In very similar circumstances in Arkansas, Grant had removed both a Federal district attorney and a U.S. marshal who had presented evidence against Governor Powell Clayton of that state. Now, Davis, Senator J. W. Flanagan, and Texas Secretary of State Newcomb, together with the deposed Congressman, Clark, wrote the President to dismiss Garland.
Morgan Hamilton heard the rumors, and went to the United States Attorney General. The honest Radical said bluntly that Garland's dismissal from office would be in fact telling all Federal officers to ignore dirty work where high Party politicians were concerned.
Hamilton then departed Washington on a brief trip. The day he left the capital the President dismissed Garland and appointed a replacement. The appointment was rushed through the Senate before the Texas Senator returned.
When the Davis election fraud case came up, the new Federal attorney presented a very strange case. No documentary evidence was presented to the jury; it had somehow been mislaid. Nor was the principal witness for the prosecution called to testify. Davis was acquitted.
Now, the Davis administration was beginning to show the strains of several years in office. Despite high tax collections, the treasury was bankrupt. This fact startled a number of Radicals in the Texas House. They formed an investigating committee, which reported "reckless disorder in the treasury" and the regular use of public funds for "private ends." Treasurer George Honey kept few books. An indictment was prepared for him, but Davis had this quashed. The Radicals now had to face their second national election. They approached the fall of 1872 with anger and dread. One problem was that too many former supporters, even Radicals, were demanding honesty and cooperating with the enemy. It was still possible to surround polls with Negro police, but it was becoming impossible to pull the shenanigans of 1868 and 1869. There was even a certain coolness emanating toward the Texas statehouse from Washington.
Radicals ran on the "just and honest" administration of U. S. Grant, and on the "personal integrity and incorruptibility" of E. J. Davis, as their platform read. Swarming Democrats gathered at Corsicana, vowing to "remove the abuses under which our people labor."
Just before the election, Adjutant General James Davidson suddenly departed the state. A hasty check of the State Police chief's accounts revealed a shortage of $34,434.67. General Davidson turned up some time later in Belgium, whence he never returned. The State Police again surrounded the polls on election day, but there were visible signs of confusion and morale failure in their ranks.
The votes were counted with the usual problems, but Democrats threw the state to Horace Greeley over Grant, and elected a majority of the state legislature. They won a large edge in the House, and a majority of three in the state senate. The governorship was not at stake.
The thirteenth legislature approached Austin with more determination than rejoicing. There was deep sentiment to impeach Davis—the Democrats and Conservatives had both the evidence and the voting strength. But caution won out. A very real fear of Presidential intervention pervaded the state. Everywhere, men said that Washington would reimpose military rule if its friend in the governor's mansion were touched. All through these years there was a noticeable hesitation on the part of Democrats to assert their rights. Their former humiliations and the constant appellation of "rebels" hurled at them hurt—and few of them felt they had any hope of justice from the North. Only slowly did the term "reb" assume intimations of distinction, and the old "rebel" spirit break forth.
The "rebel legislature" contented itself with demolishing the Radical program. One by one, every Radical act was repealed. The School Act was revised—there was too much good in it for the destruction some wanted: to wipe out the educational bureaucracy and return the schools to local, county control.
In a scene of great emotion, the Police Act was overturned. The House went against it by 58 to 7, and the Senate by 18 to 7, thus passing the repeal over Davis's veto. Significantly, most Republicans joined the Democrats; only diehards dared to vote for the Davis Police.
John Henry Brown, who authored the repeal, wired his hometown newspaper: "The police law is abolished over the Governor's veto. Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, good will towards men." One editor became almost incoherent over the news. He wrote: "The people of Texas are today delivered from as infernal an engine of oppression as ever crushed any people beneath the heel of God's sunlight. The damnable police bill is ground beneath the heel of a indignant legislature."
Word of the demise spread from town to town like wildfire. Bonfires were lit, saloons were packed, guns were shot off in some localities till dawn. Former State Policemen sensibly disappeared. As one wrote sourly in his letter of termination: "I find great rejoicing over the repeal of the Police law, by the
Ku Klucks, murderers, and thieves." No doubt there was. But the whole population seems to have rejoiced as well.
Davis had to run for reelection in 1873. The hostile legislature redistricted the state, simplified the registration procedures, and called for polls to open on the first Tuesday in December.
James Throckmorton, John H. Reagan, and a number of prominent Democrats nominated a Confederate veteran, Richard Coke, for governor. By this time, the Conservative Republicans had disappeared; most shunned the term and joined the Democrats. E. J. Davis still possessed great power. He had thousands of appointed officeholders, the Negro vote, and Federal influence. But the Democrat Party approached the December election as a great crusade.
Rupert Richardson wrote of the election of 1873: "The genius of legality had forsaken the people; men practiced fraud unashamed." What seems to have happened is that the Carpetbaggers had taught the Texans how. Democrat politicos bluntly indicated that power would be won depending on who outfrauded whom. No practice was ignored.