Our Fighting Governor: The Life of Thomas M. Campbell and the Politics of Progressive Reform in Texas by Janet Schmelzer (review)

Janet Schmelzer writes that her new book, Our Fighting Governor: The Life of Thomas M. Campbell and the Politics of Progressive Reform in Texas, “is intended to fill a gap in Texas history and contribute to the monographic literature on progressivism in Texas and southern states” (p. xiv). By devoting sustained attention to the political career of Thomas M. Campbell, a two-term Texas governor who championed Progressive reforms while in office from 1907 to 1911, Schmelzer accomplishes precisely that.

Campbell, an influential lawyer and railroad manager, emerged from the Texas Democratic Party machine during the 1880s and 1890s as a supporter of James Stephen Hogg, the charismatic reformer-governor who steered Texas Democrats toward antitrust laws and railroad regulations. Campbell worked diligently in defense of the party’s reform wing and blunted both the radicalism of the Populist insurgency and the recalcitrance of the party’s conservative bloc.

Campbell escaped from Hogg’s shadow by leveraging his Democratic Party credentials and capturing the governor’s office in 1907. The bulk of Our Fighting Governor covers Campbell’s gubernatorial career, detailing his many legislative accomplishments: antitrust laws, progressive taxation, limits on “foreign” (out-of-state) corporations, railroad regulations, moral reforms, increased school funding, lobbying restrictions, health and sanitation measures, and penal reform. Schmelzer then sprints through Campbell’s final, postgubernatorial years. The former governor agitated for statewide prohibition, maneuvered within the party to rally Progressives in support of Woodrow Wilson, mounted a feeble contest for a U.S. Senate seat, and repeatedly defended his legacy against the criticism of successors, before passing away in 1923.

Schmelzer’s work is a lean and focused political biography. In many ways a throwback to an older genre of “hard” political history, Our Fighting Governor is a matter-of-fact political chronicle that recounts candidates, elections, and legislation. This is workmanlike history. It tells of platform committees, delegate selections, and political appointments. There are no great historiographical interventions, reinterpretations, or analytical innovations. Schmelzer shows how Campbell fit the pattern of Progressive southern governors, for instance, but scholars interested in teasing out the ambiguities of southern Progressivism or discovering how Texas fit into regional patterns will have to look elsewhere. Schmelzer prefers the more immediate world of politics and legislation.

The book has many of the usual drawbacks of this genre of history. Actors outside the leadership of the Democratic Party are largely invisible, and the focus on politicians and the political process contributes to an odd balance of coverage. Schmelzer spends nearly an entire chapter on a last-minute legislative push for penal reform, for example, but a mere two paragraphs on lynching, Jim Crow, and disenfranchisement laws. Schmelzer’s book is generally a glowing account of Campbell and southern Progressivism, recognizing few of the ironies emphasized by C. Vann Woodward or the criticisms of more recent scholars who have cast southern Progressivism in ambiguous terms.

Laws are what interest Schmelzer, and Campbell’s legislative accomplishments “record in perpetuity the progressive agenda of the Campbell administration and the legacy of Campbell as a leader and progressive southern governor” (p. 161). Schmelzer’s work should serve as an enduring resource for political historians of both Texas and southern Progressivism.