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control of the State on the terms proposed by President Johnson in 1865. The convention could well consider whether much harder terms would not be imposed upon the whites if, by their continued opposition, they should succeed in defeating the effort of Congress to reconstruct the State.

The governor advised the convention to declare all pretended acts of secession, and all laws in aid of the rebellion null and void from their inception, and urged it to repeal at once all laws that discriminated against persons on account of color, race or previous condition. All debts of the State outstanding at the commencement of the rebellion should be paid, but all incurred in aid of it should be repudiated. To every inhabitant of the State, who had not forfeited his rights by participation in the rebellion, or by conviction for crime, equal political and civil rights should be secured, and those who had participated in the rebellion should be temporarily disfranchised to such an extent as would place the political power of the State in the hands of those who were loyal to the General GovernFree public schools for the education of every child in Texas should be immediately established and be liberally supported; and every citizen of the State, who had not previously received a reasonable amount of land out of the public domain should now be given a homestead.

ment.

But the most startling information given by the governor was of the moral and social condition of the State. He declared that crime had never before been so prevalent, and that the condition of things had become so alarming that the people, in many instances, had taken the law into their own hands.1 So terrible was the reign of crime and lawlessness that the convention appointed a special Committee of Investigation, which made its report on the 1 Governor's Message in the Journal, 12-17.

380.

PREVALENCE OF CRIME.

thirtieth of June. Within three years, as this report shows, there had been over nine hundred homicides1 in the State; three hundred and seventy-three freedmen had been killed by whites, yet only two whites had been killed by freedmen.

The evidence disclosed that a very large portion of the murdered whites were Union men, and that the criminals, with remarkably few exceptions, were disloyal to the Government.2 The multitude, who had participated in the rebellion, disappointed and maddened by their defeat, were intensely embittered against the freedmen on account of their emancipation and enfranchisement, and against the loyal whites for their persistent fidelity to the Union. They were determined, by every means promising success, to resist the establishment of any State government, republican in form, and it was their purpose, even by desperate measures, to create such a state of alarm and terror among Union men and freedmen as would compel them to abandon the advocacy of impartial suffrage or to flee from the State. This feeling of animosity prompted and inspired them to many murders, unrestrained as they were by any fear of retribution.

In few localities in the State was there absolute freedom of speech. Union men dared not declare their sentiments. In many places they held public meetings only when supported by Federal troops, but generally they dared not hold them at all. Their assemblies had frequently been broken up and fired upon. Judges on the bench had been murdered simply because they were loyal men.3 Hundreds had been compelled to fly from their homes to escape

1 Total number of whites, 470; of freedmen, 429; Journal, 194. 2 Journal, 195.

3 Judge Black, 1867, Uvalde County; Milton Biggs, appointed judge of Blanco County, 1867.

assassination. The mass of testimony on the persecution suffered by the freedmen was overwhelming. In very many parts of the State they were wantonly maltreated and slain simply because they were free and claimed to exercise the rights of freedmen. While engaged in harmless amusements or in their usual occupation, or sitting quietly in their homes, they were suddenly attacked by those whom they had never seen before. White men had been known to drive over the country, shooting the freedmen wherever they met them. The churches of the blacks were burned over their heads; their cabins were destroyed; their crops trampled upon; their wives and children mutilated and left for dead. Organizations of disloyal men, leagued together for the purpose of murdering loyal citizens, kept the State in a reign of terror. In three years there had been two hundred and forty-nine indictments for murder, found in the district courts, but only five convictions, and for the nine hundred murders known to have been committed since the conclusion of the war, there had been but one capital execution according to the form of law, and this was the execution of a freedman. In some thirty counties the combination of lawless men openly defied the civil authorities. County officers were often involved in acts of violence, or connived at them, or wilfully neglected to make arrests. In one county, the sheriff belonged to a band of murderers, and the sheriff of another lead a body of desperadoes.

But these obstacles to the punishment of criminals did not wholly explain the failure of civil government in the State. Juries would not convict disloyal men for offenses committed against Union men and freedmen, neither would they award judgments against those who had been identified with the rebellion. If the court charged in favor of the freedmen, the jury would commonly decide

382

THE RESPONSIBILITY.

against him, contrary to the law and the evidence. The spirit of moderation which the commander of the fifth military district had shown had worked disaster in the State. It had practically amounted to the suspension of the military power, and criminals, who entertained little fear of the civil courts, interpreted the new condition of things as a license for the perpetration of all manner of villainies. The responsibility for this change was fixed, by the committee, upon President Johnson, who, charged by the law to keep the peace and to afford protection to life and property, and having the army of the United States to assist him, had failed. He was accused of persistently refusing to try criminals; of rejecting the prayers of the governor of the State and of the Commanding General of the District1 for adequate tribunals, and of turning a deaf ear to tried and persecuted loyal citizens. To his charge, the report laid the death of hundreds of the loyal citizens of the State, "a responsibility that should load his name with infamy and hand his very memory to coming years as a curse and an execration."2 In the face of persecution, social proscription and death, the loyal men of the State had stood firm in their devotion to the national government, and claimed its protection. It had not. been granted them. The committee concluded its long report with a resolution, requesting the president of the convention to forward a copy to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, that Congress might afford the State relief."

No less discouraging was the report of William Alex

1 Major-General W. S. Hancock.

2 Journal, 203. The language of the report is closely followed. It gives details of the crimes committed. One thousand copies were reprinted for distribution.

3 The Report is printed as Senate Miscellaneous Document No. 109, 40th Congress, Second Session, 1867-1868.

ander, the Attorney-General of the State, who corroborated the appalling details reported by the committee, and called their particular attention to the pretended laws against the freedmen based upon the rejected constitution of 1866. The main object of those who had made that instrument, he said, was to restore African slavery in the modified form of peonage. The so-called labor law of the State provided expressly for such a system, though without using the term, but modelled after the system which had recently been abolished in Mexico by the liberal party. Persons of color could not testify in all cases, and, under the pretended law, they had no more rights than free persons of color had enjoyed during the existence of slavery. The law specially declared that they were not citizens. They were forbidden to carry fire-arms on enclosed land without the consent of the owner; a law intended to operate against them alone. Their children were excluded from the schools and from the assistance which the State gave to indigent whites. Only white settlers could receive donations of public lands, and white men only could serve on juries, although the rigor of this pretended law had been somewhat softened by the military commander of the District.1 The mode of corporal chastisement which the apprentice law permitted, was intended to be inflicted only on the blacks. They were by law to ride, if at all, in special cars, but this law had likewise been annulled by military order.2 The vagrant act was particularly intended to make their reduction to slavery easy, and the laws for the employment of convicts for petty offenses and for employing convict labor on railroads, were cunning devices to enslave them. The stay-law prevented them from collecting their wages, and the law which gave a lien on the crop 1 Brevet Major-General Griffin. 2 General Griffin.

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