Fort Worth: A Frontier Triumph

23. Redemption, 1870-1872

CHAPTER 23 Redemption, 1870.,1872 1870 IT WAS EARLY January of 1870. General Reynolds, military commander of Texas, proclaimed without making public the election returns, that Davis was elected governor and that the Texas Constitution of 1869 had been adopted. He also announced the names of the four congressmen elected. Three of these were radical Republicans and the fourth congressman , J. c. Conner, was a carpetbagger but a member of the Democratic party. And to further intensify displeasure of conservatives was the fact that radicals had won control of both houses of the legislature. Hamilton, candidate for governor of the conservative Republicans, believed with all of his followers that he had been counted out. Conservatives did not contest the election, although it was known that fraudulent acts were committed by the registration boards stacked with Davis men and by Federal soldiers in attendance at all the polls. On January 8, General Reynolds appointed to office the successful candidates of the election. They were to hold their offices as provisional officers until the Constitution of 1869 became law. The legislature convened on February 8, ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, and elected two senators to the United States Senate. For Fort Towners, that April was more invigorating than usual. Early issues of the April newspapers informed readers that Texas was BOOK V readmitted to the Union. President Grant had signed, on March 30, the act of Congress admitting senators and representatives from Texas to Congress, thereupon the "provisional government of Texas" with its "provisional officers" moved into the status of full-fledged sovereignty. On the sixteenth of the month, General Reynolds formally terminated military rule in Texas. It was not a time for unrestrained exaltation, for Reconstruction had not ended, the sharp thinkers of Fort Worth told their fellow townsmen. They were right, for in future years the historians would give January 1874 as the date for the end of Reconstruction in Texas. Fort Town's legal analysts gave as their reason that in a republic the majority rul~s, and many of their townsmen remained outside the political pale. The Twelfth Legislature was convened by Governor Davis on April 26, 1870. It wrote into law the radical Republican program, violating the new constitution by postponing until November 1872, both the regular election for congressmen-which would have been held in the fall of 1870, and the election of state officers, which should have occurred in 1871. By this latter act they prolonged the rule of the radicals elected in 1869. This legislature, whipped by radicals into a mood of unwarranted overbearance, arrested and excluded temporarily a part of the minority of eleven Democrats and three conservative Republican members who blocked their acts. The legislature, by an enabling act, gave the governor power to appoint district, county and city officers; gave him a state police force, provided for the organization of a militia, and empowered him to use it by invoking martial law in any county. (Governor Davis would abuse his police power until 1874, by using Negro policemen to supervise political rallies and elections.) The legislature further wantonly gave land and money to railroads, and spent Texas into bankruptcy. Wisdom, however, guided some of its acts, making provisions for good roads and education. Fort Towners that winter, kept an eye on these affairs in Austin, remarking that politically, there was much to perplex a man. On the other hand there were material blessings for which to be grateful. The population of Tarrant County was 5,788, and assessed value of taxable property was $1,392,877. Greater attention was being given to farming 16,000 acres in cultivation in the county. Wheat was becoming an important crop. More cotion was being raised, and the market price was rising-a condition promising a new opportunity for making a little CHAPTER 23 money, which the enterprising Major Van Zandt grasped. He bought a cotton gin and established it on Judge Terry's property. Sterling P. Clark said he brought in the first bale of cotton his father raised, to Van Zandt's gin, located on present East Fifth Street in the vicinity of the Acme Fast Freight Depot which would be built in years to come, near the spur of Highway 287. In 1870 a new decade was breaking with new opportunities. This was the thought which powered the six feet of energy that was William Jesse Boaz, Confederate veteran...