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133 CHAPTER 4 William Longworth, Republican Villain by Richard B. McCaslin T he scholarly effort to retrieve an accurate history of Reconstruction from the intellectual dustbin to which it had been consigned by popular memory has advanced rapidly in the last fifty years or so. Republicans are generally now seen as reformers, local politicians who supported reform are no longer considered scoundrels, and most Freedmen ’s Bureau agents are considered to have been well-intentioned, if not entirely ready for the tasks to which they were assigned.1 In fact, the revisionist push has been so effective that historians might well question how the South, and even the nation, was able to embrace a perception of Reconstruction as an era of overzealous or even venal reform. Perhaps even more important, how could Southerners justify violence against such well-intentioned reformers? But if one wants to appreciate the complexity of Reconstruction, one has to accept that, like most myths, there is a kernel of truth in the depiction of it as an era of malice and greed. William Longworth, while he escaped being the target of violence himself, became the evidence for the many in Texas who forgot the promise of progress embedded in Reconstruction, reacted violently against the reformers, and later remembered only the bitterness of the period. During Reconstruction, county officials, who continued to address the needs of Texas communities more often than any state or national administrators , faced a daunting task. Economically, whites struggled with losses that were difficult to recoup after the emancipation of all slaves, while financial obstacles for the latter often proved impossible to overcome . Prejudices developed by whites toward blacks as slaves did not end with emancipation, contributing to a violent white backlash. Efforts of national agencies to promote change further divided people. Some local leaders did well, but Wilson County seethed under the ambitious hold of Longworth, while the community of Sutherland Springs lost its prominence as the county seat and endured a decade of decline.2 134 Richard B. McCaslin Race relations between whites and blacks provided the context for the bitter political battle that ended with the removal of the county seat from Sutherland Springs. Joseph H. Polley had “about twenty slaves” when the Civil War ended, and his actions were typical of those with large numbers of slaves in the region. He told President Andrew Johnson in his application for an executive pardon that he freed his slaves after June 19, 1865, when Gen. Gordon Granger promulgated the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas. He signed labor contracts, the terms of which he described as “fair and liberal,” with six former slaves. The agreement with Polley obliged these men to work through December 1865, when Polley purchased forty head of cattle from one of the six, Cato Morgan, who had bought the animals while he was a slave with money earned by hauling goods. Morgan and some older blacks continued to work for Polley for several years.3 Many of the freed blacks in Wilson County relocated a short distance from their former owners and organized five colonies. Polley and Gray Jones Houston supported one such group by providing land on Cibolo Creek for a settlement between Sutherland Springs and La Vernia. Called Do-See-Do, it contained stores, a school, and a brush-arbor church where Morgan, although illiterate, delivered a non-denominational sermon every Sunday. Most of the ex-slaves farmed, but some were blacksmiths and mechanics. Whites in the region found that many freedmen did not want to work as employees, no matter what wages were offered. The blacks seemed to prefer the semi-autonomy of sharecropping or independently plying their crafts. At the same time, many black wives and single mothers made some money by washing clothes for white families.4 Not all whites accepted emancipation gracefully. John Sutherland, founder and namesake of Sutherland Springs, wrote to his daughter-inlaw more than a year after the war that not having slaves was a great hardship . He remarked that “My family is still complaining owing to having all the work to do and not being accustomed to do such.” Three years later, his daughter Sarah reported that they had hired “a freedman to cultivate a part of the field but he is too lazy to do much.” She noted that her brother Jack—a Confederate veteran who farmed, worked as a carpenter, and operated a store—did better with his black laborers. Economic need may have made him more...

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