The Dance of Freedom: Texas African Americans during Reconstruction

POSTSCRIPT TO PART IV

POSTSCRIPT TO PART IV Crouch believed that the Freedmen’s Bureau agents dispensed justice fairly. They treated the newly freed blacks with respect, and the former Confederates without arrogance or ill will. Working against nineteenth-century beliefs in limited government and the hostility whites felt toward their former slaves, a small number of Texas bureau agents nevertheless successfully administered the nation’s first antipoverty program. Crouch’s Freedmen’s Bureau and Black Texans (Univ. of Texas Press, 1992) takes issue with the more critical and institutional approach of William L. Richter, who sees the army and the bureau agents acting in an imperious and authoritarian manner; for Richter’s views, see The Army in Texas during Reconstruction, 1865–1870 (Texas A&M Univ. Press, 1987) and Overreached on All Sides: The Freedmen’s Bureau Administrators in Texas, 1865–1868 (Texas A&M Univ. Press, 1991). Crouch’s view in 1990 that a full-scale modern history of the Freedmen’s Bureau needs to be written remains true today. Good starting points are the essays edited by Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller in The Freedmen’s Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations (Fordham Univ. Press, 1999). Crouch’s most sophisticated analysis of Texas Reconstruction politics is his critical review essay of Merline Pitre’s Through Many Dangers, Toils, and Snares: The Black Leadership of Texas, 1868–1900 (Univ. of Texas Press, 1985). Here he calls for a prosopographical, or collective biographical, analysis of black Texas legislators and suggests models for analyzing the backgrounds and voting patterns of black Texas politicians and comparing them to those of their counterparts in other states. Carl H. Moneyhon’s Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas (Univ. of Texas Press, 1980; reprint, Texas A&M Univ. Press, 2001) remains the best political monograph on the subject. The most recent study is The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State during the Civil War Era (Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1998) by Dale Baum, which combines thirty-nine tables and nine 256 Freedmen’s Bureau Agents and African American Politicians electoral maps with an array of literary sources, but goes only through the gubernatorial election of 1869. Baum emphasizes the reluctance of white Texans to accept African Americans as equal citizens. Other important essays include Alwyn Barr, “Black Legislators of Reconstruction Texas,” Civil War History (1986); Donald G. Nieman, “Black Political Power and Criminal Justice: Washington County, Texas, 1868–1885,” Journal of Southern History (1989); Randolph B. Campbell, “Grass Roots Reconstruction: The Personnel of County Government in Texas, 1865–1876,” Journal of Southern History (1992); Campbell, “Carpetbagger Rule in Reconstruction Texas: An Enduring Myth,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly (1994). George Ruby, the best-known African American politician of Reconstruction Texas, has been the subject of a number of articles, as indicated in the footnotes of Crouch’s essay. See in particular Carl H. Moneyhon’s essay “George T. Ruby and the Politics of Expediency in Texas” (collected in Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era, edited by Howard N. Rabinowitz [Univ. of Illinois Press, 1982]), which also provides a nice short summary of Texas Reconstruction politics. A prosopographical study that could be a model for a study of black Texas politicians is Thomas Holt’s Black over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1977). For other, less sophisticated studies of local black politicians in Louisiana, Georgia, and other southern states, see note 21 to Chapter 10. Ken Howell has written an up-to-date, critical, yet nuanced biography of Governor Throckmorton: “James Webb Throckmorton: The Life and Career of a Southern Politician, 1825–1894” (PhD diss., Texas A&M Univ., 2005). ...