Death of a Carpetbagger: The George Washington Smith Murder and Stockade Trial in Jefferson, Texas, 1868–1869

Plan of the calaboose in Jefferson, Texas, where “carpetbagger” George Washington Smith was murdered on October 3, 1868. Map from the collections of the National Archives, Washington, D.C. *jan 09 11/26/08 12:00 PM Page 262 *Christopher B. Bean earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of North Texas and now teaches military history and the Civil War and Reconstruction at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. 1 Journal of the Reconstruction Convention which Met at Austin, Texas, June 1, A.D., 1868, vol. 1 (Austin: Tracy, Siemering, and Company, 1870), 111 (first quotation); D. Campbell to Governor E. M. Pease, September 5, 1868, Records of the Governor Elisha Marshall Pease, Texas Office of the Governor, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission (second quotation ; hereafter cited as Governor Pease Correspondences); John Highland, “Texas Collection,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 45 (Oct., 1941): 197?198; Willie Lee Rose, Slavery and Freedom, ed. William W. Freehling (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 78; Alabama State Journal, Jan. 30, 1869; New York Tribune, Sep. 18, 1868; New York Times, Oct. 25, 1868; Report of Maj. O. O. Howard to the Secretary of War, Oct. 14, 1868, United States House of Representatives, Annual Report U. S. War Department, 1868, 1052, H. Exec. Doc. 1, 40th Cong., 3rd Sess. (Serial 1367; hereafter cited as Annual Report); Campbell to Governor E. M. Pease, Nov. 3, 1868, Governor Pease Correspondences, Marshall Texas Republican, Dec. 4, Dec. 11, 1868; Edward C. Henshaw to Lt. Charles Vernon, Dec. 1, 1868, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869, Registered Reports of Operations and Conditions, NovemberDecember , 1868, M821, reel 28 (National Archives; hereafter cited as Bureau Records); D. Campbell to C. Caldwell, Sep. 1868, Governor Pease Correspondences. According to Gen. J. J. Reynolds, commander Death of a Carpetbagger: The George Washington Smith Murder and Stockade Trial in Jefferson, Texas, 1868–1869 Christopher B. Bean * “I f I owned hell and Texas I would rent out Texas and live in hell.” In these words, General Philip Sheridan, commander in Texas after the Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided the former Confederacy into five military districts, summarized his view not only of the state’s unbearable climate, but of political and social conditions that existed in the post-war Lone Star State as well. Of the eleven former Confederate states, none had a more difficult time coming to terms with emancipation and suffered more lawlessness and violence than Texas, particularly the state’s northeastern counties, where loyal white men, both carpetbaggers and scalawags, and freedmen experienced almost constant violence. “There has not been . . . the slightest change in the feelings and determination upon the destruction of the Radicals,” declared one Unionist leader in 1868, “they only await a more favorable opportunity.” Contemporaries viewed the region as one infested with armed banditti, thieves, cutthroats, and assassins. One could not pick up a newspaper without reading of murder, assassination, and robbery.1 Vol. CXII, no. 3 Southwestern Historical Quarterly January 2009 *jan 09 11/26/08 12:00 PM Page 263 The Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camelia, the Knights of the Rising Sun (KRS), and outlaw gangs led by men such as Ben Bickerstaff and Cullen Baker exemplified this kind of violence in the most spectacular way. Doubtless, the greatest short-term deficiency of local Republican authorities was their ineffectiveness in countering this threat. As historian Carl H. Moneyhon concluded in his most recent work on Texas during Reconstruction, the future of the Republican Party in the Lone Star State depended on the ability of the party to protect the former slaves and white Unionists from such force. Unfortunately, in spite of efforts such as the creation of a state militia, the efforts to protect the freedmen from white violence proved too much for the fledgling party of Lincoln. In the end, federal authorities also appeared unwilling or unable to protect those threatened by such violence, despite the occasional anti-Klan campaign or deployment of troops to problem areas.2 For decades, historians of Reconstruction generally viewed Republican governments in the South as...