The Dance of Freedom: Texas African Americans during Reconstruction

One. “UNMANACLING” TEXAS RECONSTRUCTION: A Twenty-Year Perspective

One “UNMANACLING” TEXAS RECONSTRUCTION A Twenty-Year Perspective Reconstruction historiography has gone through three discernible phases: the Dunning, the revisionist, and the postrevisionist. The oldest interpretation stressed the South’s unfortunate experience with Reconstruction, espousing the view that Radicals had forced full citizenship rights for blacks upon a conquered Southern society. The revisionist argument concentrated upon the successes of the era and the significant contributions made by Afro-Americans; it destroyed the idea that reconstruction was a time of economic rape and plunder. The postrevisionist reaction has stressed the conservatism of national and state legislators and the programs that they enacted. Additionally, the latter school has emphasized the importance of class as opposed to race. Reconstruction really changed little, the postrevisionists argue, leaving black Southerners in a precarious condition.1 In the past two decades Texas Reconstruction scholarship has generated a substantial body of secondary works. Significantly, this new historiography has challenged most historical perceptions and interpretations of the postwar years; most notably, revisionist studies have questioned the classic Dunning school position articulated for Presidential Reconstruction by Charles W. Ramsdell and for the Radical Republican years by William C. Nunn. Although the historiography of Texas during Reconstruction went through similar changes, revisionist works were never fully incorporated into the few general surveys of the state, and the recent appearance of various studies suggests that Reconstruction writing is entering a postrevisionist phase.2 Up to a score of years ago [i.e., around 1970], the body of Texas Reconstruction works was composed of a general study of the Presidential Reconstruction years (Ramsdell), one survey of the Republican years (Nunn), a wide-ranging monograph of the prewar and postwar years that basically accepted the two previous interpretations (Wallace), and a hand- 4 Historiography ful of other essays. Generally based upon a limited array of sources (many times, conservative newspaper accounts), these studies discussed controversial topics such as the Freedmen’s Bureau, the two state constitutions of 1866 and 1869, the law, economics, and a few other related issues, such as the Republican Party and to a lesser extent the state police. All were portrayed in a baneful light. Blacks were almost totally neglected.3 In the last major reassessment of Texas Reconstruction historiography, Edgar P. Sneed in 1969 discredited past interpretations of the postwar years, asserting that Texas historians writing about the postbellum era had “confused sympathy with judgment” and thought it their “duty” to record and convey “folk experience, wisdom, and myth.” In 1974 James A. Baggett, who has written about the birth and growth of the state’s Republican Party, agreed with this observation, contending that “unfortunately, Texas has been plagued by a retelling of the standard unrevised version of Reconstruction. Taking the torch of traditionalism from earlier writers, and unrestrained by historical revisionism,” he continues, “contemporary historians have proceeded to further stereotype the state’s post–Civil War era.” Time changed little in the writing of Reconstruction Texas, Baggett concludes, as “each generation has not rewritten its history, but has merely reworded that of its fathers.” Another writer, Merline Pitre, asserts that the writings of Texas Reconstruction have been “left to the not very tender mercies of Bourbons, or at least to Bourbon sympathizers.”4 A different day was dawning for Lone Star State postwar history almost at the same time that Sneed analyzed the current state of Texas Reconstruction historiography. A spate of theses, dissertations, articles, monographs , and books appeared in the two decades after 1969. The presence of this significant amount of fresh material calls for revisiting Texas Reconstruction historiography. At least four major areas intimately connected with the state Reconstruction process need reevaluation: the United States Army and the Freedmen’s Bureau; politics (mostly the Republican Party); life within the black and white communities; and the county and urban studies. the army and the freedmen’s bureau While earlier writers neglected the Texas occupation army and the Texas Freedmen’s Bureau, both these groups have now become major topics of attention. The army and its operations were a unique “Unmanacling’’ Texas Reconstruction 5 American occurrence during the Reconstruction era; thus, the subject has generated controversial historical perspectives. William L. Richter and Robert W. Shook are the main antagonists on the significance of the military’s presence, but additional writings supplement these scholars’ contributions .5 These studies ask how much influence the army asserted in the social and political spheres...