The Governor's Hounds: The Texas State Police, 1870–1873

1. Murder: An Inalienable State Right

Violence has ever been associated with Texas. When it was controlled by Spain and Mexico, officials commented about the area’s outrageousness. The causes for individual Texans’ propensity toward brutality, especially after the arrival of immigrants from the United States until the twenty-first century, have often attracted the attention of writers. Texas violence has been characterized as extensive, and the state’s “reputation for lawlessness” has been repeatedly chronicled. The frontier milieu, reinforced by both a Southern and a Western heritage, “produced a habit of self-redress more deeply ingrained” than anywhere in the country, claimed C. L. Sonnichsen. The early Texan moral code propagated the belief that “‘revolvers make all men equal.’”1 To attempt an explanation of the level of mayhem and its causes in Texas from the entrance of the first Anglo settlers through the Reconstruction period is an almost insurmountable challenge. Texas was truly a vast frontier region where law and order, although important, never seemed to be adequately enforced. Violence fluctuated with the changing political and geographical environment. Before the Civil War, lawlessness functioned through a code of Southern honor.2 Weapons were commonplace, and to be armed was to be ready for any contingency. Outlaws and gangs infested the region, but local residents would occasionally band together with lawmen to eradicate these too frequent pests. 1 Murder An InAL ienAB L e StAte RiGht THE GOVERNOR’S HOUNDS 8 One nineteenth-century traveler came as close as anyone to explaining why Texas experienced so much violence. He discovered the citizens to be like the weather, “a perpetual enigma, a tissue of contradictions.” When the other members of the Confederacy surrendered, Texans wanted to fight. An individual would jeopardize his life for a friend, but would immediately turn around and defraud another of six months’ wages. Texans did “everything for honor,” “nothing for justice,” and broke more laws than anyone else. Fervent believers in six-gun equality, they frequently resorted to its judgment. This Texas was a “land which has spilled so much blood for the gusto picaresco literature of the million.”3 The Civil War, emancipation of the slaves, and the subsequent upheaval that characterized Reconstruction irrevocably altered violence patterns. Although the Democrats complained that the real necessity was the protection of settlers on the Indian frontier to the north and west (internal outrages would be disposed of by local authorities), in actuality those inhabitants facing the Native Americans were safer than a black individual living in East Texas. Those who vocalized their unionism in the postwar years also became the subject of dishonorable intentions. But to explain why the level of violence became so outlandish is a Sisyphean task. The complexity and diversity of confrontations between all classes and races in Reconstruction Texas boggle the mind. The Lone Star State had been widely touted for its wayward ways long before the Civil War. After all, the Republic had been born through revolution. The isolation of the frontier and its attendant culture perpetuated the idea of self-defense and “no duty to retreat.”4 The new majority of the inhabitants, many of whom transported slaves, were of a similar cultural background, which tended to be violent, honor-driven, and thus tumultuous. The legacy of the South’s defeat and the destruction of slavery added fuel to an already lawless reputation. Throughout its history as a colony, a Republic, and a state, the central authority that controlled Texas sanctioned a citizen force of soldiers to combat violence, particularly against the Native Americans, but occasionally to pursue criminals. The leaders of Texas, under whatever flag, almost always focused upon external and not internal upheaval. Texans sporadically concerned themselves with the inner turmoil that afflicted their society, but it never received the same attention as those who threatened the borders of the state or the protection of those who desired to extend the frontier. Even though lawlessness and crime might become a serious concern, only rarely was a special force created to combat its deleterious effect. MURDER: AN INALIENABLE STATE RIGHT 9 Under Spanish rule, the idea of organizing citizens on the frontera to combat Indian incursion originated in 1713. These military units evolved into “flying squadrons” or compañía volante, which defended Texas and adjacent provinces. Members of these frontier regiments enjoyed a special status, but service was demanding. Individuals were required to possess a musket, two pistols, a saddle, blanket, spurs, hat...