Alexander Watkins Terrell: Civil War Soldier, Texas Lawmaker, American Diplomat

Alexander Watkins Terrell

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Focus on American History Series Don Carleton, Series Editor

Alexander W. Terrell, 1873, on the brink of his active career in Texas politics after the Civil War. Courtesy of the Center for American History.

Alexander Watkins Terrell


Civil War Soldier, Texas Lawmaker, American Diplomat




LEWIS L. GOULD

University of Texas Press Austin

Copyright © 2004 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2004 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819. The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gould, Lewis L. Alexander Watkins Terrell : Civil War soldier, Texas lawmaker, American diplomat / Lewis L. Gould. p. cm. (Focus on American history series) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-292-70297-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Terrell, Alexander Watkins, 1827–1912. 2. Soldiers—Texas—Biography 3. Legislators—Texas—Biography. 4. Texas—Legislature—Biography. 5. Diplomats—United States—Biography. 6. Texas—History—1846–1950. I. Title II. Series. F391.T24G68 2004 976.4'06'092—dc22 2004007940

Contents Preface

ix

Acknowledgments

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Chapter One: From Missouri to Texas

3

Chapter Two: The District Judge

17

Chapter Three: Civil War, Mexico, and Reconstruction

37

Chapter Four: The Senator from Austin

56

Chapter Five: More Laws for Texas

72

Chapter Six: The Foe of Railroads

101

Chapter Seven: At the Court of the Red Sultan

124

Chapter Eight: The Elder Statesman

145

Notes

169

Bibliography

201

Index

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Chapter One Preface

I

n the spring of 1998, George C. Morris III of Houston, Texas, a great-great-grandson of Alexander Watkins Terrell, asked me to write a biography of his distinguished ancestor. Knowing of Terrell’s central role in key aspects of Texas politics during the period 1877–1912, I agreed to take on this project. Morris and another Terrell descendant, James W. McCartney, also of Houston, provided funding to the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin to cover the cost of my research and writing. Their support was enthusiastic and unstinting, and at no time did they suggest what I should write or how I should interpret Terrell’s career. From the outset one problem confronted me. While Terrell’s personal papers from 1893 to his death in 1912 were relatively complete, the records were sparse from his birth in 1827 until he went to Turkey as the American minister in the summer of 1893. Only a few family letters remain from his youth and early manhood in Missouri. Once he reached Texas in late 1852, there were more letters in the manuscript collections of his friends. Nonetheless, very little documentation existed about his family life, relations with his first two wives, and the difficulties he encountered with his children. In the absence of contemporary letters from this early phase of Terrell’s life, his biographers and other historians turned to his unpublished reminiscences and two articles he published in his final years about early life in Austin, Texas, and his friendship with Sam Houston. Terrell’s account of his months in Mexico in 1865 with the forces of Emperor Maximilian and the French army was published in 1933, and it too became an oft-quoted source for historians of that eventful episode in Mexican history.

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As an individual with a large ego, Terrell wanted to make his mark on the history of his time. However, he was not content with letting his achievements stand on their own. In his memoirs, his public statements, and his writings, he sought to shape the interpretation of what had happened to put himself in the best possible light. The result was a presentation of his career that often varied from the facts. In 1848, for example, Terrell had delivered political speeches in Missouri for the Democratic presidential candidate, Lewis Cass. He also spoke publicly as a Democrat in 1855 and 1857 in Texas. Yet he told audiences in Texas over and over in later years, “I never made a political speech until I was over fifty years old.” On other matters such as whether he was a Unionist before the Civil War (he wasn’t), whether he was a close friend of Sam Houston (he probably wasn’t), and whether he had written a poem eulogizing John Wilkes Booth (he didn’t), Terrell arranged the evidence to support his own view of himself. Sorting out where Terrell exaggerated and where he told the truth was a constant challenge. Yet Terrell did not really need to embellish the record. His life unfolded like a “Who’s Who” of nineteenth-century America. His mother was related to the wife of William Clark, and as a young boy on his way to Missouri Terrell probably met the great explorer. Terrell attended the University of Missouri, read law with a prominent attorney in the state, and held local office in St. Joseph as a Democrat during the height of the gold rush to California. Traveling to Texas with his family in 1852, Terrell again entered politics and helped revive the state’s Democratic organization to meet a threat from the Know-Nothing Party. He was elected a district judge from Austin in 1857, supported secession in 1861, and commanded a regiment as a colonel in the Confederate Army in 1863. Terrell fought in the Red River Campaign of 1864 and faced public charges of cowardice for his role in the Battle of Pleasant Hill. Promoted to brigadier general at the very end of the war, he fled to Mexico and briefly joined the French army supporting Emperor Maximilian. After he returned to Texas in early 1866, Terrell spent four years operating a plantation in Robertson County. Back in Austin in 1871, he built a career as a prosperous attorney, landowner, and businessman. In politics, he fought the Republicans and argued the celebrated Semi-Colon case for the Democrats in 1873–1874. He won a seat in the Texas Senate in 1876 and during eight years as a senator wrote x

Preface

the law that created the educational system after Reconstruction and wrote the law that created the University of Texas with language that provided for co-education and the establishment of the Permanent University Fund; when oil was discovered in the twentieth century on university lands, that provision became the cornerstone of the institution’s multibillion-dollar endowment. Terrell ran an unsuccessful race for the United States Senate in 1886–1887 as an opponent of railroads and corporate power. He returned to the Texas legislature to serve in the House of Representatives in 1891–1892 and was a primary force in the law that established the Texas Railroad Commission. From 1893 to 1897, Terrell served as minister to Turkey in the administration of President Grover Cleveland. His closeness to Sultan Abdulhamid II made Terrell a figure of international controversy during the Armenian massacres of the mid-1890s. Returning to Texas, Terrell reentered politics in his seventies and served two terms in the Texas House. He was the primary author of the Terrell Election Laws of 1903 and 1905. These measures reduced the role of blacks in state politics and cemented the control of the Democratic Party over the electoral process. In the last years of his life, Terrell opposed controversial Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey, supported prohibition and woman suffrage, and served on the Board of Regents at the University of Texas. This brief review of Terrell’s life does not capture all of his interests. He was also the reporter of the Texas Supreme Court for more than a decade, a renowned and popular orator, and something of an intellectual. Never comfortable with organized religion, he attended many Protestant churches but affiliated with none in any sustained manner. By his death in 1912 he had concluded that the religion of Zoroaster had much to recommend it. In many respects, Alexander W. Terrell was an interesting, perceptive individual who reflected the uncertainties and challenges of the nineteenth century in the United States. But a strain of strong anti-black racism ran through his public career and made him an advocate of bigoted policies that history has repudiated. Coming to terms with Terrell required a recognition that he was a fascinating blend of political insight about some of the issues of his time and the repository of many of the worst prejudices of his society. The largest question for a biographer of Terrell is why, despite all of his abilities, he never rose to high state or national office. Terrell xi

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believed that his talents had been overlooked and lesser men elevated to the governorship of Texas and to the United States Senate. Part of his problem was his aloof manner that often came across as condescension and his sense of his own brilliance that struck many of his associates as conceit. But even more important was a tendency toward deceit, excessive cleverness, and meanness toward political enemies. Many Texas Democrats respected and used Terrell’s skills as a lawmaker and legislative draftsman. Few of his contemporaries really liked him as a person, and many distrusted him. Two considerations reinforced these opinions. In a very religious state, Terrell’s evident skepticism about Christianity was a drag on his ambitions. But Terrell suffered from another and more complex political disability. In 1864 at Pleasant Hill, he and his detachment became separated from other Confederates at a key moment of the battle. It took Terrell and his men a day to rejoin their comrades. Within a week, rumors circulated in Texas that Terrell had shown cowardice in the face of the enemy. He never dignified the allegations with a reply, and they were probably not true. But the charge stuck and surfaced when he ran for the Senate in 1886–1887, when he supported James S. Hogg in 1892, when he opposed Joe Bailey in 1906–1907, and when he attacked Governor Oscar B. Colquitt in 1911. The story became part of the folklore of Texas politics to which audiences responded when speakers referred to Terrell and his past. There may have been other Confederate officers for whom such charges became part of their political baggage, but Terrell is the only one for whom the record is so complete and the charge so persistent. So writing the life of Alexander Watkins Terrell turned out to be both an intriguing journey into the career of a political figure who often articulated the attitudes of Texas Democrats, sometimes before they even knew what they thought about an issue, and the story of a man of great ability whose life changed forever on a single afternoon in April 1864. When Terrell’s portrait was hung in the Texas State Capitol, it carried the inscription on the name plate: “The author of more good laws for Texas than any man living or dead.” Nine decades after his death, the verdict on the laws that Terrell wrote is mixed, but there is no denying that he was one of the most influential Texans of his time. In education, election laws, railroad regulation, and legal history, he provided much of the structure for how his fellow citizens

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carried on their daily affairs. Alexander Watkins Terrell’s reputation may have been eclipsed since his death in 1912, but his influence on the state remains important. The narrative that follows is an attempt to explain how he played his part in the affairs of his time and why his career repays closer study.

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Acknowledgments

M

y first debt is to George C. Morris and James McCartney, who asked me to undertake this study and funded it with such unstinting generosity. They provided family documents not available to earlier students of Terrell’s life; they gave me leads to other sources; and they were always encouraging. They gave me complete freedom to interpret their ancestor as I believed appropriate. I very much appreciate their kindness and consideration. I also owe thanks to Don Carleton and Kate Adams of the Center for American History for their unwavering support for my research and their patience with my many queries about the project. At the center I gained from the cooperation and insights of Ralph Elder, Denise Mayorga, and John Wheat. John also helped me with translations of some Spanish documents relating to Terrell’s tenure in Mexico. Linda Peterson was very helpful with securing illustrations for the book. Because of limitations on my ability to travel, I relied on researchers who explored various aspects of Terrell’s life in sources around Texas. Andrea Boardman at Southern Methodist University and Joan Goodbody of Texas A&M University were very helpful in these endeavors. Colleagues at Texas A&M University such as Dale Baum and Andrew Torget assisted me with understanding Terrell’s links with the Freedmen’s Bureau in Robertson County and the process by which he received a pardon from Andrew Johnson. Carl Lingle at the University of Missouri was of invaluable aid in finding important documents relating to Terrell’s undergraduate career. Anne Armour at the University of the South and Mark Frazier Lloyd at the University of Pennsylvania provided needed data about members of the Terrell family. Eric White of Southern Methodist Uni-

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versity aided in my quest for information about the Egyptian mummy that Terrell sent home from the Near East. I have also to thank the staff of the Texas State Library for their assistance with the Terrell Papers and other important records in their care. At the Austin–Travis County Collection of the Austin Public Library, where I did extensive newspaper research as well as looking at county records, the staff members were cooperative and thoughtful in all respects. The collection is an important and underfunded resource of the City of Austin that deserves more recognition than it usually receives. Thanks then to all who assisted me—Ruth Baker, Jennifer Compton, Melinda Curley, Linda Ellis, Molly Freeman, Jane Montz, Rebecca Rich-Wulfmeyer, Margaret Schlankey, Sue Soy, and Eric Travis. Friends and colleagues provided valuable insights as the project developed. Susan Heuck Allen gave me important leads about Terrell’s years in Turkey, and Terry Alford shared information he had collected about his research on John Wilkes Booth. Dale Baum and Michael Parrish read early chapters and saved me from errors of fact and interpretation about the Civil War and Reconstruction. Charles Calhoun read the chapter on Terrell in Turkey and generously assisted with me the fruits of his research into the career of Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham. Bill Childs read a draft of the entire manuscript and gave me the benefit of his wealth of knowledge about the economic and political history of Texas. Thanks too to Thomas Clarkin and Mike Gillette. These scholars are not responsible for the use I have made of their advice and encouragement. As always, Karen Gould has been a source of inspiration and invaluable support throughout the research and writing of this book. Lewis L. Gould Austin October 2003

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Alexander Watkins Terrell

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Chapter One From Missouri to Texas

A

lexander Watkins Terrell never really knew his

father. In August 1833, Dr. Christopher Johnson Terrell, his wife Susan, their three young sons, and their seven slaves lived in the frontier community of Boonville, Missouri. Alex, the oldest boy, was still three months short of his sixth birthday. The family had resided in Boonville for about eighteen months, and their economic prospects seemed good. But life on the frontier was always uncertain, and death could be very close. The Missouri River flowed by the small town named in honor of the famous woodsman Daniel Boone. Laid out in 1817, Boonville had grown in sixteen years into a bustling community of five hundred souls. In a letter to a friend shortly after he came to Boonville, Dr. Terrell called the area “one of the most desirable counties in Missouri.” In addition to his seven slaves, the industrious doctor had already acquired several plots of land in Cooper County.1 Dr. Terrell never lived to see Boonville prosper. The untreated sewage that polluted the Missouri River may have contributed to his death, as the general lack of sanitation in the frontier hamlet accelerated the spread of disease. In 1832 and 1833 the United States experienced a severe cholera epidemic. The disease struck its victims with frightening speed. “To see individuals well in the morning & buried before night, retiring apparently well & dead in the morning is something which is appalling to the boldest heart,” wrote one observer of cholera’s effects in New York State.2 To the surprise and dismay of his family, Dr. Terrell began to show the awful symptoms of cholera in that hot Missouri summer of 1833. On August 15 he had the diarrhea, cramping, and vomiting that warned of the presence of cholera morbus. He could not sign a

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will “on account of the cramping of his hand.” He told his wife to “educate his boys if it required all the estate” and died within hours of the onset of cholera. His funeral took place the same day with “a large concourse of friends” in attendance.3 The death of his father profoundly shocked Alexander Watkins Terrell. Writing seventy-five years later, he recalled, “My first great grief was when at the age of five years I looked in the dead face of my father and then saw the speechless agony of my mother.” The Terrell boys grew up without a father’s guidance and without the economic security that Dr. Terrell might have attained as the population of Missouri and Boonville expanded in the 1830s. Alex and his brothers would have to depend on their mother’s resourcefulness and ultimately their own wits to make their way. Later in life, Terrell would say that “the sons of widowed women made Texas.” Before an audience aware of his own past, he added that “when a desolate widow kisses the brow of her orphan boy, there must be in it some baptismal virtue that consecrates him to usefulness.”4 Until this tragic turn of events, Dr. Christopher Terrell had seemed on the path to personal and financial success in frontier Missouri. He was born in Campbell County, Virginia, on July 17, 1798, into a family with a distinguished lineage in England and deep roots in Virginia. In 1100, Walter Tirel, “an important baron and a fine soldier,” was credited or blamed for having killed King William Rufus in a hunting accident. Two hundred years later, according to one family tale, the Terrells were connected to “King Edward I and his wife Eleanor of Castile.” Noblemen and knights, sheriffs and government officials, the Tyrells and Terrells wove their way into English history until the end of the seventeenth century.5 William Terrell emigrated from Gloucester to Virginia around the end of the 1660s. His son David had a son, David, whose son Edward was the grandfather of Alexander Terrell. Edward Terrell’s second wife and the mother of Christopher Johnson Terrell was a Quaker who disapproved of slavery as sinful. Despite their distinguished heritage and some land and property near Lynchburg, the Terrells did not qualify as aristocrats by Virginia standards in the early nineteenth century.6 Published sources on the family assert that Christopher Terrell received his medical education from the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree as a physician in 1820 at the age of twenty-two. However, University of Pennsylvania Archives reveal that no one 4

From Missouri to Texas

named Christopher Johnson Terrell matriculated as an undergraduate or in the medical school during those years. Probably the young man apprenticed with one of the medical faculty at Penn, a common way to receive a medical education at that time. Dr. Terrell was, by all accounts, an engaging man. He played the flute well, had many good relationships among his fellow Royal Arch Masons, and was “a valued friend, a kind parent and an affectionate husband,” according to his obituary.7 Returning home after his medical training, Dr. Terrell began his practice in Lynchburg, Virginia. The state was still in the midst of the agricultural depression arising from the Panic of 1819, when land values sagged and banks failed. The young doctor decided to move to Penn’s Store in Patrick County, a tobacco-growing center in the Piedmont area near the North Carolina border. In August 1822, Dr. Terrell married Susan Kennerly, the daughter of Joseph and Sarah Kennerly. Despite his mother’s disapproval, Dr. Terrell accepted several slaves as a wedding present from his father-in-law.8 The couple had a daughter, Jane, in 1823 or 1824, and their first son, Alexander Watkins Terrell, was born in Patrick County on November 3, 1827.9 Two more sons followed quickly, John Jay Terrell in August 1829 and Joseph C. Terrell in October 1831. By 1830, Dr. Terrell had decided to take his family west. Economic prospects for younger men in Virginia were still not good, and like many individuals in his age group Dr. Terrell looked westward. He decided to move to Missouri. Admitted to the Union as a slave state in 1820 after the famous Compromise, Missouri offered more chances for an up-and-coming doctor than did the settled world of plantation Virginia.10 In the late 1820s, Boonville, Missouri, was one of the most attractive regions for southerners moving to the west. The small town lay in the middle of the state, along the Missouri River, in what was then known as Boon’s Lick Country. One observer of the area in 1819 called it “the richest considerable body of good land in the territory.” During the 1820s, the immigrants from the upper south poured into the area that became known as “Little Dixie.” The newcomers, said one resident, “appear generally to be persons of considerable property and respectability—having with them slaves and considerable money.”11 There is some evidence that Dr. Terrell may have gone to the Boonville area on an exploratory journey and picked the area for his 5

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family’s destination. In any case, the Terrells embarked for the west during the autumn of 1831. They went along the southern route for migrants, through Tennessee and the Old Southwest. Mrs. Terrell’s father rode with them as far as Nashville. They moved by carriage and wagon, with their slaves doing much of the labor for the party. The four-and-a-half month trip brought heartbreak and trial to the Terrells. North of Nashville, Dr. Terrell contracted typhoid and was bedridden for some time. Their only daughter, Jane, died from the disease at about this time. On the way in Tennessee, Susan Terrell gave birth to their third son, Joseph, on October 31. The travel experiences of their slaves were not recorded.12 By the middle of December, after crossing the ice-covered Mississippi River, the Terrells reached St. Louis, where Dr. Terrell purchased drugs for use in his Boonville practice. There they probably visited Mrs. Terrell’s cousin Harriet Kennerly Clark, the second wife of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Harriet Clark died on Christmas Day 1831, though, and so it is not clear how happy a reunion it was. By January 1832, the family and their now seven slaves had reached Boonville. To his friends, Dr. Terrell reported that “Susan’s health has been good throughout, as also the little boys.” He mentioned hiring out some of his slaves to earn money to support the new residents of Boonville.13 During the next eighteen months, Dr. Terrell acquired land in the Boonville area and then launched his practice. His seven slaves put him slightly above the average of six for slaveholders in Little Dixie in the early 1830s. The exact value of each slave varied. A male field hand was sold for $700 in Clay County two years after Dr. Terrell died. The Terrells’ slaves probably represented several thousand dollars in assets for the family. Although they were not in the planter class in Missouri, either, the family was well off by Cooper County standards at the time Dr. Terrell died.14 Her husband’s death left Susan Terrell alone with three young sons, the slaves, and an uncertain future on the border of civilization. As time would show, however, young Mrs. Terrell had a strong constitution, an iron will, and an instinct for survival.15 Born on March 27, 1805, just outside Lynchburg, Virginia, Susan Kennerly attended a local school taught by a Mrs. Owen. At the age of fifteen, she joined the Methodist Church. The Kennerlys were farmers of Scottish extraction with enough wealth to own a number of slaves and land around Lynchburg. Her cousin’s marriage to William Clark 6

From Missouri to Texas

indicated that the Kennerlys had good connections in the world of the Virginia planter class.16 Although her husband left no will, Susan Terrell inherited the slaves, a house in Boonville, a few plots of land, and a small farm. Their property was, her son Alex later wrote, “enough to make us seem wealthy to the primitive people around us.” With regard to her three sons, Susan Terrell followed out her husband’s dying request to educate them well. “Neither rain, sleet, or snow ever kept us from school which was more than a mile distant,” Alexander Terrell remembered years later.17 Alexander W. Terrell’s childhood years are documented only in his unpublished memoirs, and he omitted from that account some salient aspects of his formative experiences. In 1835, his mother married a local politician and recent widower, Captain Robert Patterson Clark, the circuit clerk and county clerk of Cooper County. The union brought Susan Terrell Clark into the elite circles of Cooper County. The couple had one daughter named Jennie, born in 1836. Robert Clark died in November 1841. Although Terrell did not mention his stepfather in his reminiscences, presumably the Terrell stepsons shared some of the stature in the community that Captain Clark enjoyed throughout the 1830s.18 In Alex Terrell’s memory, however, these years were a time of diminishing economic resources for his original family, as “one by one the family negroes were sold.” He conveyed a sense of young boys working hard to make ends meet for their mother. Terrell emphasized in his recollections religion, alcohol, and education, three subjects he followed closely all of his life. His mother sent the boys to Sabbath School and then to the Methodist Church in Boonville. For Alex Terrell, though he believed that “Christ was sent by God to instruct and save the human race,” he did not then become a Methodist or later in life join any organized church. His distance from a denomination hurt him politically in Texas. A search for lasting spiritual solace marked much of his adulthood, and part of his interest in the Near East and the Holy Land grew out of this quest for understanding of his place in the universe.19 When the Terrell boys came home cold after school, their mother would give them wine or blackberry cordial to warm them. She warned them that the drink “should never be tasted as a beverage.” Alex remembered how at the age of seven he saw a man falling off his horse while drunk. His mother told her son “to look at and pity him 7

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for he could not protect himself and if anyone should rob him he could not tell when sober who had done it.” So, wrote Terrell, “in a long and chequered life,” when he felt “the fondness for strong drink was increasing in me,” he recalled his mother’s words and practiced “self-enforced prohibition.”20 As an adult, Terrell forgot his youthful lesson, drank as he pleased, and smoked heavily. During his service as American minister to Turkey, his habit of tobacco chewing and spitting irritated European diplomats. Until the end of his life, when he became a strong prohibitionist and an advocate of woman suffrage, Terrell opposed laws to regulate liquor sales and personal behavior.21 Walking a mile each day to school strengthened the already sturdy constitutions of the Terrell boys. Alex Terrell joined in schoolyard fistfights after classes. In his memoirs Terrell called himself “a poor student” who preferred “hunting game to studying.” He also recalled “the persuading hazel in the hands of the old Scotch pedagogue, who first instructed me.” Just where he attended school is not clear. Family records link him to Kemper Academy, but the first classes of that institution as the Kemper School were not held until 1844, when Terrell was already a student at the University of Missouri. An earlier Kemper Family School in Boonville probably claimed Terrell as a student.22 There is not much in the available sources to provide a clear portrait of the young Alex Terrell in Missouri. Life without a father could not have been easy for him. He learned to rely on his wits and his speaking ability. He also developed a tendency to exaggerate his accomplishments and a talent for sharp tactics in a controversy. The few remaining family letters suggest that Alex was an aloof young man whose behavior his relatives often struggled to understand. Terrell played down his learning on one page of his memoirs but wrote proudly of his knowledge on another. When it came time to think about college, he noted that he was “well advanced in mathematics, Latin and Greek” but preferred to study the classics in translation. He had read Plutarch, Cicero, Gibbon, and other ancient writers. From his earliest days his speeches would be filled with references to the authors he had read, and his neighbors in Texas both marveled at and sometimes resented his learning. His immersion in books built a lifelong fascination with the Near East and the classical world that would play an important role in his political career and future relations with the University of Texas.23 8

From Missouri to Texas

Alexander Terrell did not discuss slavery as a presence during his formative years. The peculiar institution was part of the atmosphere of daily life, and he seems to have taken it for granted as a normal part of society. Little Dixie did not get its name by accident, and the residents, mainly from Kentucky and Virginia, used slave codes, extralegal violence, and frequent punishment to control African Americans who resisted the system of bondage. In 1860, Terrell told a Bastrop, Texas, grand jury that “slavery has not been a curse, but has resulted in positive blessings, both to the negro and his master.” He felt that way from his childhood, and his view that African Americans were an inferior race remained his position until his death.24 When it came time to think about attending college, young Alex Terrell had only one logical choice. The death of his stepfather in November 1841 left Alex’s mother less well off. During his early teens, the family saw its financial resources dwindle as the slaves were sold off one after another to pay expenses. If Alex was going to pursue a college degree, his best option was the newly created University of Missouri in Columbia in nearby Boone County. So he worked from late 1841 through the fall of 1842 in his mother’s fields “to increase my slender means to meet University expenses.”25 Alexander “Terrill” of Cooper County was listed on the rolls of the University of Missouri as a freshman during the academic year 1842–1843. He was not yet fifteen when he started college, but that was usual in the mid-nineteenth century. The University of Missouri was still a fledgling institution itself. The university was founded in 1839, the first classes were held in April 1841, and the initial full class of male students began work that fall. Alexander Terrell was a member of the second class to matriculate on the Columbia campus. Seventy-eight men were enrolled when he commenced his studies. Women would not be admitted to the university for several more decades.26 Terrell’s academic career at Missouri is also vague. In his memoirs he wrote that he graduated in 1847 and delivered a commencement speech on behalf of the Union Literary Society on “The Dignity of Labor.” University records, including the commencement program itself for 1847, do not show him as a speaker on that occasion, nor is he listed as a graduate of the university. The catalogues for 1844 and 1845 carry him as a student “on select portions of the course,” in contrast to those “in preparation for the full course.” Whether because of money woes or personal distractions, Terrell seems to 9

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have been a sporadic student who never completed his education and did not graduate from the University of Missouri.27 One outside activity engaged his interest. In a culture that prized oratorical skill as the key to political and legal success, college literary societies flourished as training grounds for future speakers. They also socialized young men as Greek fraternities would later do. In these settings, aspiring politicians and lawyers could polish their speaking skills and make a beginning reputation.28 Terrell joined the Union Literary Society, one of two on the Missouri campus, and he remained an active member for the next three years. In his recollections he claimed the status of charter member and said that the Missouri legislature had created the society by a special act. Like their counterparts in other colleges, the members of the society went through precise rituals at each meeting. Members debated such issues as “Would a National Bank be beneficial?” and “Has war been a blessing?” The president then made a ruling that favored one side or the other, and members voted to approve or reject his ruling. Those who broke the rules were fined. On March 8, 1844, for example, Terrell was assessed twelve and a half cents “for not performing his duties.”29 The group’s records indicate that Terrell in 1845 was elected as one of the councillors of the society, but he did not rise to one of the higher offices in the body. His last mention in the society’s papers came on May 2, 1845, when he was listed as absent. Although his memory of his activities at the University of Missouri may have grown hazy late in life, he remained proud of his connection to its early days. He cherished his friendships with such future Missouri politicians as Robert Todd and Odon Guitar. In 1885, he returned to make an important speech about the menace of corporate power at a ceremony commemorating the university’s founding.30 During his years in Texas, Terrell became one of the state’s most popular orators, and he appeared frequently at occasions when leaders were honored or memorials dedicated. He honed these speaking skills in Missouri, and there he learned the art of holding an audience’s attention. He wove examples from the Bible and the classics into his talks, and he developed a voice and presence on which he would rely for decades. Even in old age, Terrell had the ability to speak for two or three hours without losing energy or force.31 At some point, Alexander Terrell decided that the law offered the most professional opportunities for a man of his talents. He looked 10

From Missouri to Texas

to the attorneys in Boonville for the opportunity to read for the law and be admitted to the bar. The most prominent lawyer in the town was Peyton R. Hayden. In his mid-forties during this period, Hayden had practiced with the well-known Whig lawyer Abiel Leonard and was a member of the same political party. His biography says that “the younger members of the bar were greatly attached to him, for he was kind and indulgent to them, and ever ready to assist them with his advice and counsel.”32 Becoming a lawyer was not a difficult process in the mid-nineteenth century in central Missouri. The Missouri legislature had in 1832 removed the requirement that a fixed period of study occur before an applicant could be admitted to the bar. Nine years later the admission of attorneys to practice became the province of state circuit judges. The custom was for an aspiring lawyer to show that he had mastered Blackstone and other legal writings, knew the statutes about Missouri practice, and “seemed honest, intelligent, and personally qualified for practice.” Having met those general standards, admission followed quickly. According to the available sources, Terrell was admitted to the bar in Missouri in the spring of 1849 when he was twenty-one.33 Since Terrell became an effective lawyer in Texas and was the reporter for the state’s Supreme Court for more than a decade, he did more than make a perfunctory study of the law in Missouri. His view of the law was conventional, and he was in no sense an innovator in the legal profession. But he was a talented craftsman and a good attorney.34 By the late 1840s, Terrell had embarked on the political activities that would mark his life for the next sixty years. His family reported that in the 1848 presidential elections he delivered speeches for the unsuccessful Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass. This activity and the rest of his participation in Democratic politics in Missouri would be forgotten when he told Texans that he did not make any political speeches before he was fifty. In all probability he did his political work in his new home of St. Joseph in the northwestern corner of the state. His allegiance to the Democrats was lifelong. The party of states’ rights, white supremacy, and protection of slavery had a natural appeal to the young man. Despite his professional relationship with Peyton Hayden, Terrell does not seem to have ever dallied with becoming a Whig.35 At the age of seventeen, Terrell became engaged to Ann Eliza11

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beth Bouldin, the daughter of “a very wealthy tobacconist” in nearby Howard County. Captain James E. Bouldin was originally from Virginia and had served in that state’s House of Delegates. He later was elected to the Missouri legislature. To please her parents, the couple agreed not to marry until Terrell could demonstrate the ability to support himself. While the couple waited, Ann Bouldin rejected several other suitors who were wealthier than Alex Terrell was at that time. From all accounts, Terrell’s first wife was the great love of his life.36 On January 19, 1849, he and Elizabeth Bouldin were married. A month later he was listed in the local newspaper as one of the managers of “A Grand Fancy Dress Ball.” A three-dollar ticket gained entrance for “a gentleman and two ladies” to an event where “all persons are respectfully requested to appear in Fancy Costume, if convenient.”37 In the spring of 1849 Terrell was admitted to the Missouri bar. A card announcing “Alex. W. Terrell, Attorney at Law, St. Joseph, Missouri” appeared in the local newspaper on November 9, 1849. A week later, through the aid of an old college friend, Terrell was elected Corporation Attorney for St. Joseph. His duties seem to have involved some clerical chores, but he noted in his memoirs that he prospered in the post. He held the position for about a year.38 St. Joseph was one of the major jumping-off places for the trail to California in the late 1840s, and trains of emigrants were a significant element in the economic life of the community. When these travelers ran afoul of the law, some of the fines they paid were assigned to the corporation attorney. Terrell also handled wills and divorces and was a member of the defense team in a celebrated murder case.39 The energetic young Terrell did not wait long before plunging into local politics. In April 1850 he was a delegate to a Democratic county convention. During this period the economic issues that had divided the Democrats and Whigs in Missouri were giving way to the sectional dispute about slavery and its expansion in the western territories. The aftermath of the Mexican War had raised the question of whether inhabitants of the areas seized from Mexico could decide to have slavery. Thus, these subjects were much on the minds of party activists. Among other positions, the members of the county Convention resolved that “the people of a territory when politically organized have a right to make their own laws when the same 12

From Missouri to Texas

do not conflict with the Constitution of the United States, and therefore have the exclusive right to allow or prohibit slavery among themselves.” This language tracked the general position among southern Democrats as the 1850s began.40 Four months later, in August 1850, Terrell was named to a committee to draft resolutions for a railroad project from St. Joseph to Hannibal, Missouri, and to attend a county convention in October on behalf of the rail line idea. When that body gathered, Terrell became the secretary of the meeting. Probably he had some role in drafting the resolutions calling for the issuance of stock and efforts to secure subscriptions for the securities. Throughout his life, Terrell was to be called on frequently to frame resolutions and prepare campaign platforms. He seems to have had a natural affinity for such political chores. Six months later, his brother Joseph Terrell was listed as a member of a committee to solicit subscriptions for the railroad endeavor. On the Fourth of July, Alex Terrell was supposed to read the Declaration of Independence at a railroad barbecue, but his brother stood in for him. Joe was now in his early twenties and was studying the law under Alex’s tutelage.41 As evidence of Alexander Terrell’s continuing affiliation with the Democratic Party, he was one of the signers of a call for a Democratic mass meeting in December 1851 “for the purpose of re-uniting the Democratic party upon its tried and time-honored principles and usages.” The Democratic factions aligned for and against Senator Thomas Hart Benton were trying to find common ground against the Whigs. When the Democrats of Buchanan County met, Terrell moved that a committee be appointed to prepare resolutions and that he be a member of the panel. The resulting document praised Andrew Jackson and endorsed the Compromise of 1850. The language disclaimed “any feeling in common whatsoever, with those who are styled Free Soilers, and Abolitionists.” On the issue of slavery, Terrell’s resolutions contended that “the domestic institutions of each State of this confederacy have a constitutional right to immunity from interference therewith by the general government.” After the resolutions were unanimously adopted, Terrell proposed that delegates be chosen to the congressional district convention. There the young politician stopped. Not yet twenty-five years old, he waited his turn for political advancement.42 During the late winter of 1852, it seemed for a moment that his 13

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turn might be coming. Notices appeared in the St. Joseph Gazette asking Terrell to be a candidate for the Missouri legislature. “Mr. Terrell has always been a true democrat, and one that can be relied on,” said a correspondent who signed himself “Platte Township.” Other letter writers echoed these sentiments in early April 1852. Terrell seemed poised to become a legislative candidate in what was a leading Democratic area of a strongly Democratic state. But then family matters intervened.43 No letters from Terrell himself survive from this period of his life. A few letters from his brother Joseph offer glimpses of Alex’s home life and marriage. In August 1850 Joseph reported that “Alex and his wife are well, you would hardly know him—he has grown so much not only in hith [sic] but in thickness. His wife looks paler and thinner than she did when you last saw her but the babie is the sweetest thing you ever saw.” A month later the census taker recorded that “Alex W. Terrell” was residing with his wife, Ann, their daughter, Constance, and Alex’s brother Joseph. Attorney Terrell owned $2,500 worth of real estate, which would have represented some wealth at that time.44 In their first three years of marriage, the Terrells had two daughters. By the summer of 1851, however, “the youngest girl had already died in the hands of Negrow [sic] nurses,” according to Joe Terrell. He added that “Alex’s wife has also been sick as usual.” Ann Elizabeth Terrell had never been well, and the tuberculosis that would eventually kill her had been present from an early age. In the spring of 1852 her worried husband noted “the hectic flush, the hollow cough, and the night sweats” that meant “consumption had marked my young wife for its victim.” During the mid-nineteenth century, there was no effective treatment, but life in a drier, less humid setting sometimes brought relief for tuberculosis victims. Hearing reports that there was a “genial climate” in western Texas, Terrell decided to relocate his family to that new state.45 He made his preparations during the summer of 1852, though without informing his in-laws about the prospective departure. The Terrells moved southward on September 15, 1852. His “entire fortune” consisted of a wagon, four mules, household belongings, a horse, “a negro girl,” and “just enough money to take me to Austin, Texas.” They went through Arkansas, and as they did so Mrs. Terrell’s health rapidly improved. By now she was pregnant with her

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From Missouri to Texas

third child. As Terrell remembered it more than a half-century later, “Hope with its illusions beckoned me forward.”46 The party faced one hazard at Middle Boggy in the Indian Territory where a swollen creek threatened to delay their progress. A young man named Peel helped Terrell construct a log raft that brought the disassembled wagon and the rest of their goods across the stream safely. A few days later, still in the Indian Territory, Mrs. Terrell’s parents overtook them. They had not believed that Alexander would go to Texas. Although his wife was glad to see her relatives, Terrell was filled with the “sadness which only those can understand, who when poor and too proud to ask help have attempted in vain to get away from wealthy kindred.”47 Fatherly concern for his daughter’s well-being was probably not James E. Bouldin’s only motive in catching up with the Terrells. Like his son-in-law, he saw economic opportunity in Texas and moved there in 1853. During the 1850s, the elder Bouldin purchased extensive land in Travis County and became one of the area’s wealthier individuals. By the time he died in 1876, Bouldin had given his name to an important creek in South Austin and its surrounding neighborhood. Having a wealthy relative for the first decade of his life in Austin provided an important support system for Terrell as a young lawyer.48 Their journey ended on November 2, 1852, one day short of Terrell’s twenty-fifth birthday. They came into Austin, and Alexander Terrell prepared to begin a new life in a new state. Fifty-eight years later, he recalled that “Texas will never look so beautiful as it did in 1852,” when “the prairies were covered with waving grasses, hiphigh, and deer and antelope were daily seen in droves.” With his wife, growing family, prosperous in-laws, and African American slave, Terrell prepared to make a name for himself in Texas.49 His youth and early manhood had given him a strong background for achievement in frontier Texas. A university education, even if incomplete, training and practical grounding in the law, and experience in public speaking meant that he was no novice in the political environment of his new surroundings. It would not be long before his name began to appear in those public communications and political moments that enabled young men to advance in the turbulent affairs of Austin and the larger state of which it was the capital.

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Although his wife’s illness was the cause of his move to Texas, Terrell probably benefited from the change of scene in his future political career. As a more settled state, Missouri was well endowed with aspiring politicians, and Terrell would not have enjoyed the opportunities for rapid advancement that he soon found in Austin during the 1850s.

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Chapter Two The District Judge

D

uring his first eleven years in Austin, Texas, from 1852 to 1863, Alexander W. Terrell established the political reputation and standing in the community that he would retain for sixty years. Within three years he played a decisive role in revitalizing the Democratic Party to meet the challenge of the Know-Nothings. Two years later he won election as a district judge. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Terrell was a leading politician in Central Texas with ambitions for higher office. But the hostilities with the North disrupted his public career and personal life during the rest of the 1860s. The record of Terrell’s political and legal activities in the 1850s is generally well documented. His relationship with his wife and five young children is less clear. During the period from 1852 to 1863, Terrell acquired slaves and bought property in Austin and Travis County. By 1860 he was comfortable in an economic sense, but his personal circumstances changed when his wife’s death from tuberculosis left him with his children to care for. Still in his early thirties, Alexander Terrell was a strong partisan of the Southern cause. A civil war seemed a remote prospect when Terrell and his family reached Austin on November 2, 1852. They came into a small town of eight hundred people. Travis County, of which Austin was the seat, had been created a dozen years earlier. In 1850 the county had about twenty-five hundred inhabitants, of whom some six hundred were slaves. As residents of the capital of the recently annexed state of Texas, Austinites struggled to convince other localities that their town was the proper place for the operations of state government.1 The Terrells had arrived at a propitious time. Rains were abundant in 1852. Crops were good that year and in the two years that

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followed. As the South expanded westward, Texas, with its rich cotton lands, attracted new settlers. A local editor described these emigrants as “of the best class—many of them bring a large number of slaves. We bid them welcome to Texas, to cultivate its prolific soil, and enjoy its healthy and delicious climate.” Terrell recalled that the city limits were just north of where the University of Texas now stands. Mesquite and brush extended down to the old frame capitol building where the legislature was then in session.2 Politically, Texas was in a period of relative calm. The Democratic Party was dominant and faced so little opposition from the Whigs in the 1852 election that Franklin Pierce easily carried the state with 74 percent of the vote. In the wake of the Compromise of 1850, sectional feelings, while latent below the surface, were quiet. Slavery seemed well established in Texas, with almost 69,000 African Americans in bondage. Travis County’s slave population rose from 594 in 1850 to 2,068 five years later. The way of life in which Alexander Terrell and his fellow white Texans believed seemed assured of continual growth and prosperity. Over the next decade, Terrell would come to own a half-dozen slaves, a fairly typical number for an urban professional man.3 Attorney Terrell’s first task was to gain admission to the bar to practice law in Texas. In his memoirs, Terrell recalled that he was “a poor young lawyer with a helpless family and without money” who supported himself during the winter of 1852–1853 by “a few paltry fees.” He may have done so as a notary public. Presumably he also received some help from his wealthy father-in-law, who already had begun buying land. Meanwhile, Terrell moved forward with establishing himself as a lawyer. He initiated the process on March 7, 1853, when he filed an application to practice law in Texas at the district court in Travis County. Exactly when the court approved his request is not clear, but a card appeared in the Texas State Gazette on June 25, 1853, announcing Terrell’s practice. The notice remained in print until August 13, 1853.4 Two weeks later, another item announced that Terrell had formed a partnership with two prominent Austin lawyers and politicians, Williamson S. Oldham and John F. Marshall. Writing at the end of his life, Terrell gave a dramatic account of how the partnership occurred. Placing events in March 1853, Terrell wrote that the local sheriff came to his office with Peel, the man who had helped

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The District Judge

him during his journey to Texas. Peel was charged with attempted murder for assaulting a man with a knife who, he said, had attacked him. Terrell was asked to defend Peel in the upcoming trial, which he readily agreed to do. The only witness to the event was a man named Abb Lee, a relative of the alleged victim. He was prepared to say that Peel had been the attacker. Terrell’s task was to convince the judge and jury that Abb Lee could not be believed.5 Terrell knew Lee and his questionable reputation for veracity. A few weeks earlier, Lee had hunted for some mules that Terrell had lost. In the course of their conversation, Lee told Terrell a fantastic tale of how he had built up a herd of cattle from a single calf that he had found swallowed by a catfish. During his cross-examination, Terrell asked the witness whether he had told him the catfish story. When Lee said he had, Terrell rested his case. In his summation he said, “If a man could be sent to jail in Texas on the testimony of a witness who had sworn that a live calf had been born from a catfish, I’d either abandon my profession and go fishing or quit the state.” Peel was acquitted and discharged. The next day Oldham appeared at Terrell’s office and the partnership was formed.6 It was a wonderful story, and Terrell later recounted it with his usual flair. The Austin newspapers and available court records, however, contain nothing about the episode which might, given the nature of what Lee claimed, have attracted some attention from frontier newspapers. The actual chronology of the partnership with Oldham and Marshall also makes it clear that the case, if it occurred, took place in August, not March. While the story could have happened, Terrell was probably recounting an anecdote that had gained much in the telling. In any event, Terrell was now on his way as a Texas lawyer.7 His two partners were up-and-coming politicians within the Democratic ranks. Marshall was the editor of the Texas State Gazette, the leading party organ, and he spoke out strongly for Southern rights about slavery. Oldham had just lost a close race for the state legislature. Marshall did not remain in the partnership long; Terrell practiced with Oldham until 1856.8 Terrell then joined Andrew Jackson Hamilton in a law partnership that lasted for a year or so. Hamilton, who was known as “Colossal Hamilton,” was identified with opposition to the more advanced pro-Southern position of men such as Oldham and Mar-

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alexander watkins terrell

shall. Despite their ideological differences, Terrell and Hamilton worked together in a friendly way until Hamilton was elected to Congress in 1859. Writing his memoirs, Terrell recalled that he did not participate actively in politics in this phase of his life except for his race for district judge in 1857. But in fact it did not take him long to become involved in local affairs. His name appeared on a public letter to Ashbel Smith in late January 1854 inviting him to speak on “the commercial and agricultural prospects of the State.” Then in 1855 Terrell became a more prominent player in local and state politics.9 The appearance of the American or Know-Nothing party in Texas in 1854, along with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, heightened sectional tensions within the state and across the nation. Texas Democrats endorsed the Kansas-Nebraska measure as a way of giving slavery a chance to establish itself in Kansas. When Senator Sam Houston became the sole Texas lawmaker to oppose the bill, he alienated many of his constituents. Texans then looked on with dismay as the Republican Party appeared in the North proclaiming the intention to thwart the spread of slavery. More ominous as an immediate threat was the Know-Nothing Party, so called because its members were instructed to say “I know nothing” when asked about their membership. With the demise of the Whig Party, a vacuum arose in state politics for those who did not like the policies of the Democrats. Accordingly, the secret order took hold among a growing number of Texans in 1854 and 1855. Sentiment for the new party flourished among former Whigs, Unionists, enemies of Southern sectionalism, and those who disliked immigrants from abroad. Its most powerful adherent was Sam Houston. In November 1855 Houston said in Austin: “I adopt and admire the principles of the American party. It is the only party in my opinion whose principles will maintain the perpetuity of our institutions.”10 By the spring of 1855, the Know-Nothing Party had gained ground in the state. It held a convention in June 1855 and put forward a slate of candidates in the elections to be held that August. Suddenly the Democrats, who had let their party organization decay with the decline of the Whigs, faced a serious challenge to their dominance. Though many in the party disliked the railroad promotion policies of the incumbent governor, Elisha M. Pease, Democ-

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The District Judge

rats rallied behind him as the best alternative to a Know-Nothing victory. To counter the rise of the Know-Nothings, Travis County Democrats held a “Great Meeting of the Unterrified Democracy at the Old State Capitol” on June 16, 1855. The Texas State Gazette labeled it “a bombshell thrown into the Know Nothing camp,” and for years it lived in Texas political folklore as the “bombshell convention.” Terrell helped to organize the meeting and was one of the members on the resolutions committee. The document the panel produced said that the delegates were “fully alive to the stealthy and to the open attacks of the North upon the integrity of the constitution and rights of the South.” If the territory of Kansas should seek to enter the Union as a slave state and its admission were to be rejected on that account, this would represent “a just cause for the disruption of all the ties that bind the Southern States to the Union.”11 Furthermore, the drafters of the resolutions assailed Texas Know-Nothings “as the enemies of our government” and urged “our Democratic brethren in every county of the State to form democratic associations and seek to root and destroy in the August elections an old enemy that never has, and never will fight twice under the same flag.” A week later at a meeting of Travis County Democrats, Terrell offered a resolution to call a convention of Travis, Bastrop, and Burnet Counties, and he was named to a delegation to meet with Fayette and Bastrop County representatives on July 4 to select a candidate for the legislature. Terrell had found a phase of politics at which he was adept—the shaping of resolutions, the writing of platforms, and the management of conventions. These skills would become a key to his advancement in state affairs in the years ahead.12 Terrell remained active through the summer as his name appeared in public letters asking a prospective gubernatorial candidate to drop out of the race lest he might injure the chances of Governor Pease. Following Democratic success in the August 1855 balloting, Terrell was one of many Democrats who called a “Mammoth Barbecue and Mass Meeting of the Democracy” for the following November. At the gathering, Terrell was present but did not speak. Travis County Democrats held their convention on December 21, 1855, when Terrell was selected as a delegate to the January 1856 state convention. There he was named an assistant to the presiden-

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alexander watkins terrell

tial elector in his judicial district. James Buchanan and the Democrats easily carried the state in the presidential contest.13 Meanwhile, Terrell’s law practice was prospering, and he enjoyed the comradeship of his fellow lawyers in the Travis County bar. In his memoirs, he recounted anecdotes about famous Texans he had met, from Mirabeau B. Lamar to Thomas J. Rusk. Most of all he remembered the practical jokes, the hard drinking, and the laughter that lubricated the day-to-day routine of legal work.14 In early 1857, just as the district court was about to adjourn, a prisoner named Mark Raper was brought to trial on a charge of gambling. Eager to get his case decided, Raper offered to plead guilty and pay a fine. No jurors were available to levy a fine, so Raper decided to be tried by the lawyers then in court. Forming themselves into a jury panel, Terrell and his colleagues agreed on a ten-dollar fine. Andrew J. Hamilton told Terrell that they should frame the verdict in verse with both of them providing alternate lines. The result was: We the jury, lawful men. Fine the prisoners, dollars ten. A guilty man beyond all doubt. To avoid the jail he must pay himself out. This much we’ve said this freezing morn. Your obedient servant, A. V. Horne. Terrell’s penchant for versifying, which found its first public expression here, would mark his later life and political career in unexpected ways.15 Life as an Austin lawyer took a new turn for Terrell in 1857 when he entered elective politics for the first time as a candidate for a judicial position. Early in the year, Terrell was present at the Travis County Democratic convention but declined to be a delegate to the state convention in Waco in early May. He did attend the convention, where he was named to the State Central Committee. The Democrats nominated Hardin Runnels for governor and reaffirmed the principles of the national and state Democratic Party. With Sam Houston likely to make the race for governor as well, the elections of 1857 promised a high degree of excitement and popular interest.16 In the spring of 1857, Judge Thomas H. Duval of the Second Judicial District was named to a post on the Federal District Court. The resulting vacancy had to be filled at the regular state election in August. That put the judicial election, which was usually not a parti22

The District Judge

san question, into the middle of the battle still raging between Democrats and Know-Nothings in Central Texas. A friend of Terrell in nearby Bastrop, George Washington “Wash” Jones, gathered signatures from local lawyers asking Terrell to make the race. Although Terrell later called his decision “one of the most serious blunders of my life,” for a number of reasons he decided at that time to become a candidate. His law practice sprawled over several large counties, and he needed a partner to ensure success. His alliance with Oldham and Marshall had lapsed, and Andrew J. Hamilton had ambitions for a seat in Congress. No other local attorney seemed suitable to Terrell. In addition, attorneys in cash-strapped Texas often received their fees only in land, and land-poor Terrell regarded the judge’s $2,500 annual salary a strong inducement to become a candidate.17 The leading candidate to succeed Duval was John A. Green, who was related to many members of the Austin bar. One brother, Herbert, was “a strong lawyer,” and another, Tom Green, was clerk of the Supreme Court. The Duvals, Greens, and other local families were related by marriage. Terrell faced another obstacle. He would not be thirty years old until November and would thus not technically be eligible under the Constitution. Nonetheless, persuaded by Jones and others and anxious for elective office, he decided to enter the contest. In accordance with the custom of the mid-nineteenth century that made the office seek the man, a number of lawyers, including Oldham and Hamilton, wrote Terrell a public letter on March 18, 1857, saying that they knew him as “one well qualified for that position” and hoped he would “consent to become a candidate.”18 Terrell’s reply, published in the local press, came a week later. He said that he would not “have consented to become a candidate without the endorsement and approval of those of my professional brethren in whose judgment and legal learning I have most confidence.” Their support justified Terrell “in announcing myself a candidate for office—subject only to the decision of a Democratic convention.” The last phrase proved to be a controversial aspect of Terrell’s candidacy. The race between Terrell and Green occurred in the context of the battles between Democrats and Know-Nothings two years earlier. Even more important was the gubernatorial candidacy of Sam Houston, who had alienated Democrats by his attacks on the Kansas-Nebraska Act and his dalliance with the Know-Nothings. Partisan feeling intensified.19 23

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Elections of judges had not been involved with partisan issues before 1857, but the aroused Democrats believed that keeping judicial races out of politics worked to the advantage of the Know-Nothings. By 1857 being an avowed Know-Nothing was a political liability in Central Texas, and Democrats regarded party nominations as their best assurance that the American party would not gain by stealth what it could not secure openly. In the judicial contest, the Texas State Gazette wanted “no milk and water democrat—no fence men—no go-between—no man forsooth, who desires to vindicate his political impartiality by dodging the ballot-box or voting on every side of political issues.”20 The campaign for district judge was hard fought and exciting. Though he had been in Austin fewer than five years, Terrell had already made close friends and some passionate adversaries. A Lockhart newspaper described him as “a large, portly, fine looking man, enjoys rosy health, is dignified and courteous in his manners, and is a sound lawyer.” Another editor said that he was “a man of strong impulses who always strongly espouses his causes and consequently makes warm friends and sometimes provokes bitter resentments.” A picture of Terrell taken in 1857 shows a young man with a high forehead and full goatee staring into the camera.21 From the outset of the six-week campaign, Terrell had the united support of the Democrats in the district’s five counties. Bastrop Democrats lined up behind him on April 6. The Judicial Convention, meeting at Lockhart on May 18, gave him the unanimous backing of Guadalupe, Bastrop, and Travis Counties. Faced with the solid array of Democrats against his candidacy, John Green and his supporters circulated in neighboring counties a secret document attacking Terrell’s nomination by a party convention and seeking to show that Terrell’s cause lacked support among lawyers.22 In response to these assaults, Terrell wrote private letters denouncing “the low down influences that are being used against me.” He accused Green and his family of using their power against him. “I would not take back or deny one jot or tittle of my Democratic faith to secure all the votes in the District,” Terrell asserted. He promised, if elected, to stay out of other elections and “to avoid all participation in political excitement during the term of my office.” The circular assailing Terrell became known as the “Austin Document” and backfired against the Green camp.23 To canvass the five-county district, which sprawled across large 24

The District Judge

portions of what was then known as western Texas, Terrell rode a gray mule (“mouse-colored” was the term frequently used to describe the animal) that became a symbol of his campaign that was identified with him for the rest of his political life. Editorial writers referred to it when discussing Terrell, delegates to political conventions shouted “Mule” when he appeared, and political opponents made fun of it for a half-century after Terrell rode the beast in his canvass. The two candidates met in several debates. Terrell impressed the partisan Democratic press with his growing skill as an orator. In one encounter, Terrell “feathered in upon [Green’s] special pleading in a style that carried the feelings of the crowd to a high pitch of laughter, merriment, and applause.” Terrell dismissed these appearances as political ones when he wrote his memoirs. In addition to his speaking ability, Terrell provided Know-Nothing voters in Hays County with ballots bearing Houston’s name, Terrell’s name, and Green’s name because they were friends of Houston who also supported the Democratic candidate.24 The early signs in the election favored Terrell, and he won the contest with 1,643 votes to 1,284 for Green. Green carried Travis County by about 100 votes, and Terrell ran strongly across the rest of the district. Houston lost the gubernatorial race to Runnels, and the Know-Nothings suffered what proved to be a fatal reverse to their party in the state. Terrell took up his judicial post right away, but one legacy of the campaign lingered as a potential source of future trouble.25 To combat Sam Houston during the campaign, the Democratic Executive Committee had issued a circular urging the defeat of all traitors to the party. Houston denounced the document and its authors. With Terrell in the audience at Lockhart, Houston read out his name as one of the offending members of the committee and said: “He used to be a Whig in Missouri. They tell me that the young scapegrace wants to be your judge. A pretty looking judge he would make, this slanderer of a man old enough to be his father.” At least that was how Terrell remembered what had happened.26 After the election, Terrell had the State Gazette publish a disclaimer saying that “Mr. Terrell has in no manner been connected with the State Central Committee.” Terrell sent the news item to Houston, who “at once answered my letter expressing his regret that he did not know the facts when campaigning through my district” 25

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and said he hoped to know Terrell better. According to his later account, Terrell had transformed a dangerous adversary into a good friend.27 As a new judge, Terrell had to adjust to the pressing demands of his new position. The district judge held court in each of the five counties in April and May and then again in October and November. The work began in Bastrop for two or more weeks, and stints of similar length followed in Caldwell, Guadalupe, and Hays Counties and finally in Travis County. Success for the district judge depended on the quality of the prosecuting attorney, and Terrell worked well with his colleague, George Washington “Wash” Jones. Born in 1828, Jones had been elected district attorney in 1856. A brilliant orator and prosecutor, despite a fondness for alcohol, the youthful Jones won Terrell’s respect. “Texas never had a more upright and patriotic citizen or fearless man,” and Terrell knew no one who was his equal as a prosecutor.28 Looking back on his six years as a district judge, Terrell recalled it as a period “of such exacting labor” that he could not remember it “with feelings of pleasure.” The work consumed ten months of the year with twelve-hour days and meant that he was away from Austin and his family much of the time. He regretted that he did not see his ailing wife and small children. He wrote his memoirs at a time when many of his children were dead, and his son by his first marriage, Arthur Terrell, and the son of his second marriage, Howard Terrell, had both disappointed him personally. This sense of family loss colored his later appraisal of his years on the bench.29 Once in office, Terrell took up his duties with his customary energy. He heard civil and criminal cases and soon satisfied his constituents that he was a fair and hard-working jurist. Within a few months of his taking office, his fellow Travis County Democrats met in convention to elect delegates to the party’s state convention in January 1858. They lauded Terrell as “an upright and impartial Judge” whose “prompt despatch of business” showed “a patriotic and praiseworthy desire to secure the early redress of grievances, and save the people and the State from the onerous burdens of protracted litigation.”30 Terrell’s six-year judicial career divided into two distinct phases. From 1858 through 1860, despite growing sectional tension, he operated in calm conditions. The outbreak of the Civil War disrupted the legal system, and in the second phase Terrell’s military 26

The District Judge

role also took him away from the bench. During the first three years, the routine of civil cases was unending. Terrell dealt with disputes over land titles under Spanish grants and with divorce cases, one of which involved a woman who gave birth to a baby by another man five months after her marriage to the plaintiff. Litigants brought suits over contracts and hauling fees. In June 1858, Terrell’s court had 337 civil cases on its docket as well as three important felony prosecutions.31 In his old age, Terrell remembered three highlights during his judicial tenure. By 1908 his earlier opposition to prohibition had evolved into a commitment to put an end to the liquor traffic. So he emphasized in his memoirs that he and Wash Jones had enforced the state’s laws regulating the sale of liquor and gambling. Jones obtained 400 indictments for gambling and rid the district of liquor dealers by 1860. The crackdown produced such strong resentments that Jones took to wearing a gun while he prosecuted. The existing records in Travis County are fragmentary, but they include such cases as that of John B. Banks, who was indicted for “playing cards in a public house” in June 1858.32 Terrell also stood strongly against mob rule and lynching of white Texans. In 1859 a mob in Bastrop seized a suspected murderer named Tom Middleton, took him from the jail, and hanged him. When Terrell brought the episode before the grand jury, he “portrayed the horrors of lynch law, where the mob is at once the accuser, the judge, and the executioner of its helpless victim,” in contrast “with the humane spirit of the written law which followed the accused at each stage of the trial with the presumption of his innocence.” The grand jury returned indictments against two primary members of the lynch mob. When Terrell opened the indictments a few days later, he was told that “an organized society of lynch law” from Burleson County was coming to Bastrop to free the accused men. Terrell rallied local citizens of Bastrop against the invaders of their county. Fifty men volunteered, and the Burleson County group dispersed.33 One other case that Terrell often liked to recall from his days as a judge involved the indictment of a slave named Cuff by a Hays County grand jury in 1858 on a charge of arson. Cuff had allegedly burned a cotton gin. Facing the death penalty, the slave had few allies. His owner was convinced of his guilt and would not provide funds for a lawyer. Terrell appointed Andrew J. Hamilton and 27

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Charles S. West, who obtained a change of venue to Austin. As Terrell heard the evidence at the trial, he doubted that Cuff was guilty, but the jury brought in a verdict of guilty and a sentence of death. Defense counsel moved for a new trial. Terrell took the motion home to consider it.34 His deliberations that evening persuaded him that he had “defined the rules governing circumstantial evidence too strongly against Cuff.” Unable to sleep, he rode to the jail at midnight to talk with the defendant. When Terrell entered his cell, Cuff remarked: “Sir, I have been praying to see you, and I know’d you’d come.” Their conversation aroused further doubts in Terrell’s mind, and he ordered a new trial. Before that proceeding could occur, another slave confessed to the arson and Cuff was released. Twenty-eight years later, Terrell met Cuff again during his campaign for the Senate in 1886 and received his political support in Bastrop County.35 During his first three years as district judge, Terrell won over many of those who had been his partisan critics in 1857. In June 1858 the Seguin Mercury observed that “Judge Terrell gives as general satisfaction in the discharge of his duties as any District Judge in the State of Texas.” The Texas State Gazette under John Marshall also remained a staunch supporter. After the August session of court in 1858, the Southern Intelligencer, which had not been friendly to Terrell, concluded that Terrell had “demeaned himself with commendable patience, and an earnest disposition to investigate.” In his years as district judge, Terrell laid the foundation for the popularity he would enjoy with Central Texas voters for the next half-century.36 The placid rhythms of the judicial routine continued through 1859 and into the first half of 1860. By the middle of the year, however, personal tragedy altered the direction of Terrell’s life. Since their arrival in Texas eight years earlier, Ann Terrell had enjoyed an apparent respite from tuberculosis. In these years she had given birth to another daughter and two sons. Large families were common in the nineteenth century, and Ann Terrell’s tubercular condition does not seem to have precluded her frequent pregnancies. Little other information about the Terrell marriage survives except for his later laments about the time he spent away from home as a judge. By the spring of 1860, Mrs. Terrell’s disease had reappeared, and she was reported to be “very ill and apparently sinking.” Terrell spent four months at home in the spring and summer nursing his wife. Governor Sam Houston joined other members of her Baptist 28

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congregation when she received her last communion. She died on July 16, 1860. Her husband was left with five children, the oldest just ten. Terrell’s mother, Susan Penn, was now living with the family in Austin, and presumably she played a role in caring for the children during the years that followed.37 Terrell’s personal loss came as Texans faced the sectional crisis that would soon erupt into Civil War. His own views of the approaching conflict are in some dispute. Writing in the early twentieth century when he was in his eighties, Terrell cast his recollections of his friendship with Sam Houston in a form that has led several historians to describe Terrell as a “Unionist.”38 However, during the secession crisis, Terrell was known as a supporter of leaving the Union, and he delivered at least one speech in favor of the Southern cause. Like many Southerners at the end of the nineteenth century, Terrell in later life muted his ideological identification with the Confederate cause. While he argued that the South had been justified in its struggle for the principle of state rights, the slavery issue slipped into the background. The record shows, however, that Terrell was neither a backer of Houston nor a Unionist. The longest contemporary statement of Terrell’s attitude toward slavery came in the fall of 1860. He delivered a charge to the Bastrop grand jury that reflected his views on “the peculiar institution” from the perspective of a jurist who now owned six slaves himself. He instructed the jurors to consider “whether the involuntary servitude of negroes is right or wrong.” If it was wrong, then Southerners had no right “to denounce those who seek to eradicate it as an evil.—- if on the other hand it be right, then it becomes the duty of all to labor with untiring zeal for the protection of slavery, and to secure each man in the vested right to his negro against the combined assaults of the world.”39 Terrell argued that “slavery has existed from the remotest antiquity” and that it was “the natural condition of the negro when thrown in contact with the white race, and no other relation can exist between them consistent with the interest of both.” Thus, the judge continued, “slavery has not been a crime, but has resulted in positive blessings, both to the negro and his master.” At that time, Terrell was considering a petition from a free black, George Whitney, to be reinslaved. The case provided evidence for Terrell that “when not tampered with by misguided white men the slave is for the most part contented and happy.”40 29

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A few weeks earlier there had been a statewide scare about a potential slave revolt. Coming in the wake of panic already sweeping the South in reaction to John Brown’s raid in Virginia, rumors of burnings and abolitionist plots to poison the water supplies of white Texans led to the execution of two dozen whites and fifty African Americans. The so-called “Texas Troubles” were an example of social hysteria rather than a genuine uprising. Nonetheless, they were real to Terrell, and he advocated that anyone inciting slave revolts should be hanged. For an individual charged with such a deed the state should have “to establish by the evidence of a white man that he entertained sentiments hostile to the institution of slavery— that fact being thus proven, the evidence of a negro should be admitted to convict him.” An indicted abolitionist could not complain of this process, “for it would be conferring on him the exclusive benefit of a practical result of his own teaching, which seeks to place both races on a political equality.”41 To meet these threats, Terrell concluded, “everyone should be watched with the utmost vigilance who will express sentiments unfriendly to the institution of slavery, and when it is found that such a one has attempted to render the slave discontented with his condition, it will become your duty to indict him.” Terrell advocated other indictments for anyone selling alcohol to slaves or trading with them. By taking these steps, the grand jurors “will give security to property, and at the same time preserve the supremacy of the law.”42 Since few private letters of Alexander W. Terrell remain from this period of his life, the origins of his attitude toward slavery can only be surmised. He had spent all of his early years in a society where bondage was accepted and the dominant position of whites assured. To Terrell and other white Texans, the alleged mental inferiority of African Americans was a fact not to be questioned. The beliefs he had adopted as a young man on this point never really changed. Late in his life he wrote: “Amongst unprejudiced men who knew the negro in slavery, the opinion is well nigh universal that after forty years of freedom and education he has not advanced morally but retrograded.”43 That same month Terrell joined other Travis County Democrats in organizing a Breckinridge and Lane Association to support the presidential ticket of the Southern wing of the party, John C. Breckinridge and Joseph Lane. Most Texans of a secessionist bent endorsed that ticket and opposed the efforts of Sam Houston to rally 30

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support for the Unionist candidate and former Whig John Bell. Texas Democrats agreed that if Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president, their state should leave the Union. On election day Breckinridge won 75 percent of the Texas vote. Lincoln’s election as president put the secessionist movement in Texas and the lower South into motion. As the campaign to secede gathered momentum, Terrell listened to Sam Houston’s speech on December 17 from the Governor’s Mansion. Houston had reluctantly agreed to call a special session of the legislature for January 21, 1861, and in his remarks he warned “that civil war would surely follow secession, and would result in the destruction of slavery.” Without ever saying so directly in his memoirs, Terrell left the impression that he agreed with the governor and with the vote against secession “in every one of the five counties of my judicial district.”44 Yet in February 1861 Terrell was listed in local newspapers as a speaker in favor of secession at an Austin rally. A year later, in a speech on behalf of the Confederate cause, he denied that a citizen had a right to denounce the government “when it is defending its own existence” and when the citizen is asserting that “his allegiance is due to its foes.” As Terrell put it in 1862, explaining his earlier secessionist stance, “when Texas was seceding from the old Union, I pronounced the exercise of this latter right, misnamed a right, to be moral treason.” Clearly, Terrell never identified himself in 1861 and 1862 with the cause of Unionism.45 As a sitting judge, he did not take a direct part in the convention that led to the secession of Texas from the Union during the early months of 1861. In Terrell’s recollections, what Governor Houston did to block secession and to entertain overtures from Abraham Lincoln was based on what other people told him after the war rather than his own participation as Houston’s ally. No affirmative evidence exists that Terrell was a Unionist. His recollections of his friendship with Houston were also written long after the deaths of anyone who could have contradicted him.46 Once the war began, Terrell showed no sign of hesitation; he wanted to serve in the army. At the age of thirty-three, he was active and vigorous. Believing in the Southern cause, he also knew that a war record would be a political necessity in the future. One obstacle, however, was his official position. His brother Joe, now an attorney in Fort Worth, wrote their mother in August: “I hope Alex will not 31

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join the Army, he can do more good for the Country by a faithful discharge of the duties of his office than in any other way.” On the other hand, with the war in progress, Texans believed that the work of civil courts should be suspended while men were in the military. Local judges such as Terrell came under pressure to hear only criminal cases for the duration of the fighting. With his court responsibilities diminishing, Terrell explored ways in which he might raise a regiment and serve as its commanding colonel.47 In the meantime, Terrell once again performed as a public spokesman for his fellow citizens of Travis County. On July 4, 1861, he delivered an address at the capitol that was so well received that it was immediately printed. Terrell invoked the spirit of the original colonists and the Declaration of Independence to illuminate the current crises of the Confederacy. The Continental Congress, he said, “promulgated no utopian theory of freedom as alike applicable to every race, whatever its condition or capacity,” nor did that body attempt “to make white that which God had created black.”48 The speech reflected the gulf that had opened between North and South by 1861. The North, Terrell contended, had succumbed to the intolerant spirit that had burned witches in colonial times. In earlier times that attitude had acted “to explain the mysteries of free love; to make strong women unsex themselves.” Now it sought “to make Infidelity and Religion shake hands over a desecrated Constitution, and a broken Union.”49 The Southern states had “solved the great problem which the statesmen of Europe had essayed in vain” and knew “that capital and labor harmonised in their borders.” Yet the people of the North were not content “to doom to endless poverty the suffering millions of their own race under the crushing power of concentrated capital, they longed for more extended fields of usefulness.” Here for the first time Terrell’s suspicion of corporate power found expression in his political rhetoric. What he said mirrored standard Southern criticism of the more industrial North, but in Terrell’s case the indictment of that region carried over into his arguments against business interests once the fighting ended.50 After reviewing Northern aggressions, Terrell told his audience, “We are today engaged in the second war for independence, resisting the demands of centralization, fighting battles for self-government, and upholding the cause of constitutional freedom.” To win this struggle, Terrell cautioned that Confederates must work togeth32

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er. “Let the devil of party strife be buried under our feet with his face turned downwards.” The military should be subordinate to the civil power, and the rule of law observed. Yet if the South lost, they faced a terrible fate. The conquering North would impose “the despotism of military force,” and “your women looking around you for their neighbors among enfranchised slaves would scorn you for degrading them and their children to negro equality.” Happily, the South, with Virginia as its first line of defense, would prevail because “constitutional liberty expelled from most governments on earth, finds now her abiding place among the Confederate States of America.”51 A month later, Terrell gave to the press a letter he had received from Edward Burleson Jr., then a major with the Confederate forces on the Red River. In his private reply to Burleson, Terrell filled in his friend on the political situation and the upcoming election between Governor Edward Clark, who had succeeded Sam Houston, and Clark’s major rival, Francis R. Lubbock. Terrell called Clark “a drunken governor” and predicted correctly that Lubbock would win the race. Suspicious of the Unionists in Central Texas who had not rallied to the Confederate cause, Terrell found “throughout the state generally” that public opinion was ready “to fight to the death.”52 For Terrell, getting into the war proved a protracted process. In November 1861 he was announced as “Colonel of the 8th Texas Regiment” for the duration of the war. A week later, however, it turned out that the competition from regiments designed to serve in Texas for only twelve months had stymied recruiting of Terrell’s regiment and one other. He was reported to be “unwilling to resign his position on the bench and take a command for a less period than the war.” If he did so and the regiment was then disbanded, Terrell would have neither a judgeship nor a military command.53 While his future military role remained in limbo, Terrell once again addressed his fellow citizens in Austin on January 17, 1862. He and his colleague Thomas J. Devine made speeches. In his remarks Terrell reiterated some of the themes of his July 4 oration. Lincoln was “a brainless despot,” and “slaves have been stolen from our sister states and armed for our butchery.” He again invoked examples from the American Revolution to inspire his listeners against the “selfrighteous thieves, who with the name of God on their polluted lips, are seeking to destroy an institution that He sanctioned upon earth.”54 Terrell warned those in Austin and throughout Texas unsympa33

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thetic to the Southern cause not to oppose the Confederacy with either outright defiance or passive resistance. He decried the naysayers who forecast defeats to come. “I know that the heavens are black, but if you will but look, you may see through the rifted clouds, the stars of hope, which give promise of a bright tomorrow.” Texans of all opinions should rally to the Confederacy and what Terrell styled “regulated freedom.” Partisans of the South wanted “no milk-andcider champion in this their hour of danger and death: No canting apologists from those who have been outraging and butchering our women and children.” He arraigned former leaders in state politics and journalism who had been prominent before the war and now were silent. “Our victories do not cheer them. They dream dreams and see visions of our subjugation.” But as for the future, Terrell envisioned the Confederacy victorious and predicted a time when “Religion and regulated Freedom, hand in hand with Science and the Arts, covered the land and hallowed it.” The editor of the State Gazette said of Terrell’s talk “that every one who commences its perusal will never stop, until he has devoured the whole of it.”55 A month later, Terrell went on a mission to the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, at the behest of Governor Lubbock. He brought a letter in which the governor complained about the recruiting problems caused when efforts to raise regiments for the duration of the war conflicted with the efforts of “colonels who were raising men for shorter periods than the war.” The round trip took Terrell more than a month, but he was back in Austin by April 5, 1862, with “a good account of affairs at Richmond, in the way of military preparations.”56 Anxious to play an active military role, Terrell joined the staff of Brigadier General Henry E. McCulloch as a captain and volunteer aide-de-camp in June. Before he left for his duties, he gave a friend and the state comptroller, Clement R. Johns, his power of attorney to receive his judicial salary and to allocate $50 per month “for the benefit of the wives and children of the soldiers from Travis County in the service of their country.”57 Freshly appointed to the rank of general, the forty-five-year-old McCulloch commanded the Eastern Subdistrict of Texas from his headquarters at Tyler when Terrell joined his staff in mid-June 1862. Soon thereafter McCulloch took his forces to Little Rock, Arkansas, to head off a threatened Union thrust into that state. For the remainder of the year, McCulloch’s men stood as a barrier to 34

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Federal troops. During the summer, Terrell performed various assignments, one of which involved disposing of confiscated Union property at Shreveport, Louisiana, that Confederates had seized. Meanwhile, he asked his friends at home to tell him whether he needed to hold court that fall. “If I am not discharging the duties of the office, so neither am I enjoying its profits.”58 Amid his military work, Terrell learned from his friend Wash Jones that Austinite John Hancock, a Unionist sympathizer, faced assassination from militant Confederate vigilantes in Central Texas. According to the account he furnished to Terrell thirty years later, Jones rode to Arkansas and implored Terrell to save Hancock, a fellow attorney. “Terrell, I know there is no love between you and Hancock,” Jones said, but “you can save Hancock, I can’t.” Terrell agreed to do so because, as an aide who was in the camp on a voluntary basis, he could depart on his own. He “rode 50 miles per day” and arrived in Austin just in time to save Hancock’s life. Hancock went to Mexico in 1864. Terrell said later that the episode helped him understand how Unionists were unfairly persecuted during the war. However, the timing of Jones’s letter during Terrell’s Senate race in 1886 was probably not a coincidence, and little other evidence exists of Terrell’s concern for the rights of Union sympathizers.59 In October 1862, McCulloch’s men moved from their camp below Little Rock toward Helena, Arkansas, to intercept a large Federal force. “We all believed that a big fight was ahead,” Terrell later said, but the main body of Union troops evacuated Helena and avoided battle. In December, McCulloch was reduced to commanding a brigade. Terrell again turned his attention to getting a commission on his own. He rallied support for an appointment as a colonel in the army while leaving open the small possibility that he might run for reelection as judge. Finally, he received his commission as a lieutenant colonel on March 31, 1863, and was placed in command of a battalion. By mid-June 1863 the unit was enlarged to a regiment, the Thirty-fourth Texas Cavalry, and its formal organization took place on June 30, 1863, with Terrell as its colonel.60 Terrell’s departure for active duty ended the first phase of his life in Austin. He would not resume residence in the Texas capital for nine years, during which he experienced military defeat, political exile, and a second marriage. He would finally return to public life after a stint as a farmer. The eleven years he spent in Austin after his arrival in Texas in 1852 established the broad outlines that his career 35

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would take for the next fifty years. Election as a district judge gave him a strong political base in Central Texas that he never lost. Identification with the Democratic Party placed him in the state’s dominant partisan organization. Skill as an orator made him a visible advocate for the majority opinion on ceremonial occasions. Ambitious for advancement and still in his mid-thirties, Terrell seemed to have a promising future as he rode off to join his regiment at Navasota, Texas.

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Chapter Three Civil War, Mexico, and Reconstruction

I

t was one of those small, apparently unimportant moments in the fog of war. At the Battle of Pleasant Hill on April 9, 1864, Alexander Terrell and the men of his Company H rode ahead of the others in their regiment as the unit moved toward the Union lines. The Confederates were proceeding down a small road where pine forests loomed on either side. Terrell and his men passed out of sight of their comrades as the colonel commanding Terrell’s regiment and two others ordered the main body to move leftward. In the confusion of the moment, Terrell and his men were separated from the others, cut off by the Federal troops, and forced to spend the next twenty-four hours circling back to their own lines.1 The episode had no significance for the outcome of the battle or for Terrell’s performance as a volunteer officer in the Confederate forces. He continued to lead his regiment until the end of the war and was promoted to brigadier general in May 1865 as the Confederacy collapsed in Texas. Nonetheless, the incident at Pleasant Hill had a decisive impact on Terrell’s life. Within days of the episode, political enemies in Central Texas learned from other soldiers that he had allegedly shown cowardice in the face of the enemy and had dodged the battle. Letters of support from his fellow officers and denials of any lack of bravery did not still the whispers and later the public allegations. For more than four decades, Terrell had to live with the stigma of alleged cowardice under fire. To the end of his life, Terrell smarted from the slurs on his honor. The charge became an enduring part of his political baggage and was a recurring obstacle in his thwarted hopes for statewide office. His unit was officially known as the Thirty-fourth Regiment, but

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its popular name was Terrell’s Texas Cavalry. Composed of ten companies and about four hundred men out of a nominal strength of seven hundred soldiers, the regiment had been created from several independent companies. When he first addressed his new command in June 1863, Terrell had the men assemble “in 3 sides of a square,” and he offered them the opportunity to elect him as their leader or choose one of their own to command. By 1863 the practice of electing officers was less common than it had been during the early days of the war, but Terrell’s gesture was a shrewd stroke. Terrell wrote to a friend, “No one appeared as I received the unanimous vote of the regiment.” He added, “The Regiment is of pretty good material & half of them have seen service.”2 Official records made in February 1864 at the only formal muster of the regiment described Terrell in this period as “5 feet, 9 inches tall with hazel eyes, dark complexion, dark hair.” Arthur Fremantle, the British soldier who met him in May 1863, called the Texas colonel “a clever and agreeable man.” His men did not record their experiences with their new commander, and little remains to indicate his leadership style in camp or the field. Managing several hundred men was a task that took time to learn, and Terrell had no previous formal military training. He spent a good deal of time away from his unit at intervals during the rest of 1863. Within a few months, he would be asking a friend on the headquarters staff to find him an appointment on the permanent courts-martial for the Confederate troops west of the Mississippi River. “I am better suited for it than the place I hold,” he concluded.3 For Civil War colonels, managing a regiment could be a full-time regimen of drill, immersion in battle tactics, and supervision of logistics. While no records remain of Terrell’s performance during 1863, his letters to friends and superiors indicate that he spent some time away from his men on other assignments for the Confederate command. How much time he devoted to hands-on command is difficult to estimate. Whether this pattern raised any questions among his men about his fighting spirit is also unknown. The general situation of the Confederate forces in Texas in 1863 reflected the shift in military fortunes that occurred during the early summer. Two weeks after Terrell assumed command of his regiment, General Ulysses S. Grant captured Vicksburg, Mississippi. Union forces had control of the entire length of the Mississippi River. A Texas congressman at Richmond said that the commander of the Trans-Mississippi District, General Edmund Kirby Smith, was now 38

Civil War, Mexico, and Reconstruction

in sole charge of this vast region “to be governed according to his discretion and to be sustained by its own resources.”4 The states of Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas formed a huge military district. Insufficient in strength and cut off from the other theaters of the war, the Confederate troops could not help their comrades in the East. The Union high command believed that defeating the enemy in Virginia and other eastern states of the rebellion would quickly produce the end of resistance in Texas as well. Nonetheless, the Trans-Mississippi presented serious issues for Washington. The North coveted the cotton grown there for its mills, the presence of French troops in Mexico under Emperor Maximilian posed the threat of a possible Confederate alliance, and many in the North harbored the dream that there was Unionist sentiment in Texas. These considerations led to Union thrusts into Louisiana in 1863 and 1864. Terrell would face combat during the second such strike, the Red River Campaign.5 During the summer of 1863, Terrell’s regiment was assigned to various duties such as locating deserters and preparing for a possible Union invasion of Texas. In mid-August the regiment was directed to dismount and serve as infantry to quell a mutiny at Galveston. Although Texas soldiers hated to be separated from their horses, they responded to Terrell’s personal assurances that their unit would be “permanently retained as cavalry,” and they performed the mission.6 In early September, Kirby Smith offered Terrell another demanding role in the war effort. The problem of cotton plagued the Trans-Mississippi District. On the one hand, the Confederacy wanted to limit the amount of cotton grown so that the available land could produce food for the armies and the general population. The government also sought to deny cotton to the Union war effort through the contraband trade. On the other hand, the Union economy needed cotton and would pay for it, while the South required both the hard cash and the manufactured goods that cotton sales could provide. As a result, an illicit trade in cotton, winked at by both sides, emerged in 1862 and 1863.7 To get control of the process and to secure money and supplies for his district, Kirby Smith set up a Cotton Bureau in August 1863 that would trade cotton on behalf of the Confederacy. Smith asked Terrell to become the first head of the bureau. Terrell left his men and traveled to Houston to consider whether to accept the challenging assignment to lead the Bureau.8 39

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While Terrell was away in mid-September, the officers in charge of the regiment received orders to send more men to Galveston in a dismounted capacity. Faced with the prospect of being permanently treated as infantry, a number of unhappy soldiers spoke up against the order. They protested that they would never get back on their horses once they had agreed to dismount. By the next day more than one hundred men had deserted. Terrell sent some of his loyal officers and men after the missing soldiers and captured some of them. An irritated Terrell told Guy M. Bryan on September 16 that in view of his men’s performance, “I fear that I shall never make a Regiment that will reflect credit either on the country or myself.”9 The conversations that Terrell had with officials in Houston about heading up the Cotton Bureau persuaded him that he could not “under existing circumstances accomplish results” that General Smith desired. He believed that Texas had for the preceding two years been “fleeced by speculators, as buzzards would fleece a carcass,” but he had been asked too late to make a difference in the cotton trade and had declined the post. After stating his reasons for refusing the Cotton Bureau, Terrell asked Bryan to secure him a place either on General Smith’s staff or the permanent courts-martial that was being organized for the Trans-Mississippi. In his letter to his superiors, Terrell expressed his general displeasure with those who were profiting at the expense of the Confederacy. His attitude and language foreshadowed his later suspicions of corporate power after the war.10 Terrell did agree to serve with a friend and fellow attorney, Thomas J. Devine, on a committee to report about the cotton issues to Smith. Terrell even suggested Devine as a possible person to head the Cotton Bureau. By this time, Terrell had become something of a political player in Texas affairs. In October 1863, he conveyed a message from Texas Governor-elect Pendleton Murrah asking Galveston attorney William P. Ballinger to serve as the next secretary of state. Ballinger had been talking with Terrell about the Cotton Bureau during this period, and his initial impression of the colonel had not been favorable. “Terrell doesn’t impress me as candid & straightforward,” Ballinger wrote in his diary. “He is plausible & has the air of being explicit decided & frank, but I think he is indirect.” Although Ballinger and Terrell would be political allies in the future, his reservations about Terrell’s character would be echoed by other politicians in the years ahead.11 Terrell and Devine finished their report in December 1863 and 40

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forwarded it to the army command. In it they discussed the ways in which General John B. Magruder, commander of the Texas military district, had attempted to regulate the cotton trade in the interest of the army. These efforts came to nothing when the Confederate Secretary of War authorized “the unrestricted exportation of cotton to Mexico.” The two authors defended Magruder and deplored “the spectacle of capital in the hands of speculators, aliens, and traitors seeking investment abroad through the medium of cotton.” The report had little impact on the unsavory manner in which the cotton trade in Texas operated.12 In his letter conveying the written report to Guy Bryan, Terrell noted that his investigation had lined up against him “the influence of capital in the hands of the speculating and unscrupulous,” including one man “who was recently my friend & is now speculating through the 2nd war of Texas.” Terrell left out the man’s name but promised that “he will in due time receive my attention.”13 By early 1864 Terrell no longer wanted to be involved in rooting out the pervasive corruption in the cotton trade. Although his course was regarded by Kirby Smith and his staff as “vacillating,” Terrell wrote, “I can do more good fighting the invader of my home than in hunting thieves.” During the rest of the winter of 1864, Terrell’s regiment was moved around Texas in anticipation of Union action. The active strength of the regiment stood at 435 officers and men in February. By early spring, Terrell’s tour of active military duty arrived.14 The Union forces under General Nathaniel P. Banks were moving farther into Louisiana and Arkansas along the Red River. They sought the capture of much-needed cotton for Northern mills, the freeing of slaves, and greater Union control of Louisiana and its political future. To meet the threat, the Confederate forces under General Richard Taylor prepared to give battle at the town of Mansfield, Louisiana, which provided an excellent defensive position. Terrell and the 360 men in his regiment reached Mansfield on April 5.15 Terrell’s participation in the battles of Mansfield (April 8) and Pleasant Hill (April 9) became a controversial episode in his life because of events that occurred during the Pleasant Hill fight. From that encounter came attacks on Terrell’s personal courage that were whispered about during his political career and then erupted into public view in 1892. What happened is difficult to reconstruct, but it seems Terrell was more likely the victim of the confusion of combat than a coward. 41

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Throughout the events of April 8 at Mansfield, Terrell and his soldiers fought bravely in a bloody engagement. When the battle reached its height at mid-afternoon, Terrell’s force charged on foot across the open field into devastating Federal fire. After the Union lines broke, Terrell led his unit in pursuit of the fleeing enemy. Nothing in his conduct on April 8 produced any censure from those who observed him under fire. At an early stage of the fighting, a Union sharpshooter pierced Terrell’s coat with a minie ball, but he was unharmed. By nightfall, the combat ended.16 The next day the Federal troops under Banks retreated toward Pleasant Hill to the south, with Terrell’s regiment as one of the pursuing units. By 4:30 in the afternoon, Terrell’s force was proceeding down a country road toward the Union position. Trees on both sides of the pathway made it easy for one part of a detachment to lose sight of those ahead or behind in the line of march. At this point Terrell and Company H of his regiment were in front of the other Confederate forces. Colonel William P. Hardeman saw that the main force of the two regiments under his command plus a substantial portion of Terrell’s regiment were about to be cut off by Federal soldiers. Hardeman ordered John C. Robertson, Terrell’s lieutenant colonel, to “move out your regiment, we are encompassed on three sides.” Robertson failed to convey Hardeman’s order on to Terrell, and he along with Company H became separated from the rest of the Confederates. To onlookers it appeared that Terrell and his men were certain to be captured, but they eluded the encircling Union soldiers. After a night’s march behind Union lines, Terrell and Company H rejoined the regiment the next morning.17 During the next six weeks, word of what happened to Terrell came back to Central Texas. Apparently what had seemed a routine battlefield occurrence became transformed into a tale of Terrell deciding to duck a fight. On June 8, 1864, a letter from one of Terrell’s officers, Major Hiram S. Morgan, appeared in the Houston Telegraph denouncing the “malicious, slanderous falsehoods” being circulated about Terrell in the counties around Austin. A month later another officer, John J. Moncure, wrote to the Weekly State Gazette to assail the Unionist enemies of Terrell in Central Texas who were taking “advantage of the fact of his having been cut off at Pleasant Hill by his own daring and bravery, to suit their own malignant purposes of cowardly perverting it to his injury.” The newspapers did

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not contain the actual substance of the whispering campaign against Terrell, only these published rebuttals.18 As the tale circulated, it gained another element that was damaging to Terrell. According to a witness at the battle, a Confederate force under General Xavier DeBray met Terrell during the Red River campaign. Whether it was during the Pleasant Hill struggle or at another point is not clear. Terrell reportedly said to DeBray: “General, don’t go over there, you will be shot all to pieces by the federals.” DeBray’s response was that “those were the people he was hunting and double quicked his troops.” This anecdote, at best secondhand, did not surface until the 1892 political campaign and probably exaggerated what occurred. But it does suggest the slanders that Terrell had to confront from his fellow Texans after 1864.19 A key question in this whole episode is why the criticisms of Terrell gained any credence at all. Only a scrap of possible evidence remains. In the spring of 1864 Mary Maverick of San Antonio wrote to her son Lewis, a Confederate soldier: “I hope you won’t be brigaded with [James B.] Likens and Terrell since they openly assert that they will not fight. Judge Terrell appears a cultivated and nice gentleman, but I suppose had little to do with raising his rgt & has not been with them much.” Such sentiments, if in more general circulation, might have made the attacks on Terrell seem plausible.20 Several other high-ranking Confederate officers confronted charges of cowardice on the field of battle during the war. None of them lived into the early twentieth century as Terrell did or saw the allegations against them endure as long as the ones that Terrell faced. His only allusions to the episode in his memoirs were elliptical, and he did not address the charges in public during his long career. What could he have said? A debate over his conduct would do him no good, and there was no practical way to refute what were really no more than insinuations. Terrell simply had to live with the nagging problem and do the best he could by his performance to make it go away. Alas, for him, it never did. Terrell’s regiment itself played a useful but undistinguished role in the battle of Pleasant Hill. Their losses for both Mansfield and Pleasant Hill were light, a condition that may have contributed to the stories about Terrell’s apparent reluctance to experience combat. For Terrell in the midst of the Red River campaign, there was no time to respond to the slurs on his character, to the degree that he

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knew about them. The regiment took part in skirmishes with the retreating Union troops over the month that followed, including engagements at Blairs Landing, Monnett’s Ferry, and Mansura, until the Red River campaign ended on May 20. On May 18 Terrell told Guy Bryan that the “campaign which is about to close with the disappearance of the enemy at Shreveport is one of the most remarkable on record.” He said that General Hamilton Bee had been a failure, but his successor, General Bagby, was a worthy replacement. Terrell told Bryan that he now felt suited for higher command. “In an army where colonels cannot sometimes spell in two syllables, I do not often expect to [see] nerve & capacity united.”21 At the end of his letter, Terrell sent Bryan a copy of “a complimentary order” that Bagby had issued about him and asked that it be published in a Shreveport newspaper, preferably one “which has most circulation.” He sought the favor, he told Bryan, because “I am here in the dust & heat of a wilderness & have no newspaper correspondent to puff my command or protect my reputation.” By this time Terrell was surely aware of the aspersions that had been cast on his martial record.22 During July, Terrell spent time on a court-martial for a cotton speculator, Andrew McKee, for espionage, treason, and aiding the Union cause. The court convicted McKee, who later eluded punishment. With Guy Bryan back from a trip to Virginia, Terrell asked his friend to put in a good word on his behalf with Kirby Smith as well as to find him some six-shooters and clothes for his men. Terrell hoped for promotion to brigadier general and reported that his officers were confident that he retained the respect of his troops. “If the vote had been taken any day before sunrise during the 40 day campaign,” Terrell wrote, “I would not have lost a dozen votes in my Regiment, & this was while we were fighting every day.”23 In August, Terrell again wrote Bryan about the situation of the Confederate troops west of the Mississippi. If an attempt were made to cross the river to assist Rebel forces fighting in the East, Terrell warned that a substantial number of desertions would follow. Again, he hoped to be recommended for promotion since he was now commanding a brigade rather than a regiment. In some instances, promotion occurred without waiting for official word from Richmond, but Terrell concluded, “I scarcely expect an application of that rule to myself.” Should the recommendation fail, however, “I shall resign as soon as some discarded fool who has been banished from the other 44

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side of the Miss. River is placed in immediate command of me.”24 Terrell was not promoted, but he was given official command of a brigade that consisted of his regiment, the First Texas Cavalry, and the Thirty-fifth Texas Cavalry. This assignment indicated that his superiors had faith in Terrell’s abilities. During mid-September 1864, Terrell and his men encountered a large Federal force at Morgan’s Creek in Louisiana and fought a delaying action. A similar skirmish occurred a month later. Terrell’s performance as a commander was criticized by an army inspector in November who said that the brigade lacked discipline and committed “depredations upon the people of the area.” In fact, the report went on, “from want of discipline and restraint they roam at will over the surrounding country.”25 These comments had no effect on Terrell’s Confederate career. His brigade spent the winter of 1864–1865 at Alexandria, Louisiana, and the force remained there until they moved to Grand Ecore in February. Two months later, in early April, the men were given a sixty-day furlough about the time that word arrived of Robert E. Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865.26 How good a military commander had Terrell been? The Pleasant Hill episode clouded his record during and after the war. The evidence suggests that he was competent in the field but hardly an inspired combat leader. Promotions came, as did criticism. Nothing indicates that Terrell was more than an adequate officer who did his job during the waning years of the Confederacy. In state politics, Terrell rarely used his military record as a means of getting votes, and that was probably a wise decision. The period that followed was one of great confusion as Confederate officers in the Trans-Mississippi District debated whether to fight on, surrender, or pursue the war against the North by other means. The most attractive option involved an alliance with the Emperor Maximilian and the French army in Mexico. If a war should ensue between Mexico and the United States, the remnants of the Confederate Army could use the French troops as a way of inflicting a defeat on the Union forces. Though there were many erroneous assumptions about the strategy, some militant Confederates were eager to explore its possibilities.27 Alexander Terrell was one of these die-hard Confederates in the spring of 1865. Two years of fighting had strengthened his devotion to the Southern cause, and he resented the anti-slavery actions of the 45

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Lincoln administration. Forty years later, during the early twentieth century, Terrell wrote an account of his expedition to Mexico at “the court of Maximilian.” Published in 1933, two decades after his death, the memoir has become an oft-cited, first-person account of the exodus of former Confederates south of the border. While it is valuable for understanding how Terrell viewed the episode later in his life, the narrative also plays down the Southern militance and anti-Union fervor that Terrell brought to Mexico in 1865. The contemporary record indicates that Terrell sought to enlist the French as allies in the ongoing struggle against the North until it became obvious that the French government had no interest in a confrontation with the United States.28 Terrell’s activities during May 1865 attracted some press attention. Early in the month his brigade passed through Marshall in East Texas. After commending the brigade’s appearance, the editor wrote that “the talented and accomplished Colonel has the reputation of having one of the best disciplined regiments in the service.” Just what happened to Terrell’s men from this point on is not clear. In his memoir, Terrell indicated that the brigade continued to march westward while he stayed on in Marshall. The men dispersed on May 14 at Wild Cat Bluff near Athens, and when Terrell reached the camp on May 15 he found only a single teamster and abandoned equipment.29 In the summer of 1865, when he was offering his services to the French in Mexico, Terrell gave a different account of what happened. “My brigade was never surrendered but disbanded by men each soldier taking home an Enfield rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition, they were ordered by me to keep their arms concealed.” Some of this language may have been flattery to impress the French. Other evidence of Terrell’s interest in Mexico was his attendance, as he notes in his memoir, at a meeting in Marshall on May 15 where Generals Jo Shelby and George Flournoy along with other officers decided to go into Mexico with volunteers and seize part of the country. The idea was to establish a second Texas in cooperation with the followers of Benito Juárez or make “a free will offering to the United States.” As stated, the rationale was implausible because the Juárez forces had no incentive to agree and the administration of President Andrew Johnson was uninterested in such a scheme. In any event, Kirby Smith rejected the idea when the officers put it to him.30 According to Terrell, he and like-minded Confederates then decided to meet in Austin in mid-June and go to Mexico. He did not 46

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say in his memoirs what he would do there, but his motives, he wrote, were to avoid “an era of oppression.” He and his friends sought “a foreign country with feelings reckless of consequences.” Meanwhile, on May 16 in one of Kirby Smith’s last acts, he issued promotions, one of which elevated Terrell to brigadier general. Since the honor could not be officially approved by a Confederate government that no longer existed, Terrell’s promotion, like so much of his Civil War service, had an ambiguous character.31 The next day Terrell wrote a public letter that appeared in the Marshall Republican on May 19. The occasion for the letter was a request from Wash Jones and his men that Terrell become a candidate for the governorship of Texas in the state elections to be held that summer. Of course, these elections were scheduled before the war ended and Reconstruction intervened. In his response, Terrell said that the issue was “whether Texas will be permitted to choose a Governor at all.” For his part, he intended “to move with the true men, who will not be slaves, to seek with arms in their hands, homes which will be denied here, under laws which announce universal confiscation of property as the penalty for defending all that is dear to man.” Terrell’s reference was to the recently adopted Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, and he promised, “My command will not be surrendered whatever may be the fortunes of the future for the Department.” The same newspaper contained a notice requesting volunteers for “Terrell’s Brigade of Texas Cavalry,” which could be found “in Navarro County, or on the march Westward.”32 During the next two weeks, Terrell either disbanded his brigade or found out that it had disbanded without him. At no time did he give his parole to the Union forces or participate in the formal surrender of the Confederate troops in the Trans-Mississippi. Terrell believed that Confederate officers faced the possibility of imprisonment or other penalties for their part in the war, and these apprehensions fed his desire to leave for Mexico.33 On May 31 he was in Georgetown, about twenty miles north of Austin. In a hasty note to his brother Joe Terrell, Alexander wrote, “I will be off at once with Dave Bouldin for Mexico.” He would wait for his brother about thirteen days. “All is anarchy. The army all disbanded.” Terrell advised his brother, “Bring no families & if you can come with me with others & a pack mule.” Telling Joe that “we have been separated long enough we will now get together,” he urged him to “start at once.”34 47

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Joe Terrell did not come, and Alexander made his own preparations. The situation of his young children is not clear from the available evidence; presumably they stayed with their grandmother in Austin as they had during the war. To introduce himself to the court of Emperor Maximilian, Terrell obtained a letter from Governor Murrah that accredited himself and General William P. Hardeman to the Imperial authorities. “The prolonged struggle made by the people of the Southern States of the American Union to preserve the right of local self-government has ended in their defeat,” Murrah wrote. He told Maximilian that the two men would seek “a soil and climate adapted to the agricultural pursuits to which our people are accustomed.” Once they found such land, they would bring other families to Mexico. If they failed, Murrah asked Maximilian to see them off to Brazil. The letter was then wrapped up and hidden in the lining of Terrell’s boot.35 Terrell and his party left Austin on June 17 and reached Monterrey eleven days later. There they met other refugee Confederates including General John B. Magruder, Jo Shelby, and Sterling Price. They remained in the city through July 4, celebrating Independence Day as exiles. Terrell then proceeded on to Mexico City, where he sought an audience with Maximilian himself. After seeing the emperor, Terrell began negotiations with the French army about a position with their forces.36 By July 1865, the French had been in Mexico for three years and were still the main prop supporting the Maximilian government. Napoleon III had launched the imperialistic adventure as a way of enhancing the power and esteem of his nation on the world stage. With the United States embroiled in civil war and because of the military prowess of the French army, the empire had reached a temporary ascendancy in Mexico during the early months of 1865. Once the South had been defeated, however, the position of the French and Maximilian became more tenuous. If the United States threw its weight behind the cause of the government of Benito Juárez, there would be little the French could do to avert the collapse of Maximilian and his ramshackle regime. By the summer of 1865, the weakness of the French situation was becoming evident to Napoleon III’s soldiers. Still, the Confederate soldiers might be turned to profitable use in the event of a confrontation with the United States, and it did not hurt to listen to what men like Terrell had to say.37

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During his political career in Texas after Reconstruction and in his memoirs, Terrell gave the impression that the French army had approached him about serving as a “chef d’bataillon” and acting as a go-between for the empire and the Americans living in Mexico. In a conversation with a key aide to a French maréchal, Terrell and his friend George Flournoy were asked, if war came between the empire and the United States, to “establish a recruiting station far enough south of the Rio Grande to escape observation” and thus recruit exConfederates “through emissaries in Texas.” Terrell called the notion that the Confederacy “might rise again under foreign aid—a foolish dream of exiles in a foreign land.” His role thus took on a certain aura of appealing pathos.38 In 1865, however, Terrell approached the idea with more seriousness. He and Flournoy made proposals to the French in August 1865 about becoming officers, and Marshal François-Achille Bazaine responded positively for two reasons. By giving Terrell and Flournoy commissions, he would see to it that the Americans would not form insurgent bands or join Juárez. They could also serve as recruiting officers for more disgruntled Southerners to join the imperial forces. So Terrell did receive the rank of “chef d’bataillon” in September 1865, and his appointment was publicly announced.39 Terrell’s proposition to the French had a clandestine aspect as well. In a letter to the high command, he suggested that he should be allowed “publicly to dissolve my connection with the French army.” Since news of his appointment might have reached the United States, severing his ties would “prevent yankee suspicion of my future purposes.” He should be given six months’ pay and allowed to return to Austin, where he would not be required to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. From the provisional governor of Texas, his friend Andrew Jackson Hamilton, he could “obtain accurate information of the plans and purposes of the yankee government at all times” and could gather intelligence about “every secret filibusterous enterprise intended for Mexico.” Terrell then added: Should war begin between France and the United States I would be on the ground and would fall on the right flank of the yankee force on the Rio Grande in 30 days with from 2 to 4000 cavalry and open communications with your forces at Piedras Negras or Monterrey.

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Terrell’s force would be his brigade with their hidden arms. While not his preferred plan of action, the proposal offered “the only path of usefulness open before him.”40 Bazaine gave Terrell six months salary from his “secret funds” and instructed that the Texan be considered as being on a “mission in the Mexican service.” He was sent to Mexico City to receive instructions and arrived there in early October. Privately, some French officers questioned whether Terrell “should be paid in advance for services that perhaps he will not render.” Terrell met with Bazaine in October and resigned his provisional commission. In his memoirs, Terrell recorded that he was “supplied with gold by the French government,” so presumably the issue of his pay was resolved favorably. On October 21 the announcement appeared in an English language newspaper in Mexico City that Terrell had “resigned his provisional position as member of the Staff of the Territorial Division of San Luis Potosi.”41 Terrell was playing a double game with his Mexican hosts. By professing his sympathy for France and hatred for the “yankees” he induced the French army to supply him with funds that would enable him to return to the United States, go to Washington, and seek the pardon that he needed from President Andrew Johnson. By September 1865, Terrell was aware that Reconstruction under Johnson was proceeding in a conciliatory way toward Southerners. At the same time, he could see the fragility of the French presence in Mexico. While still hating the North for its emancipation of the slaves, Terrell was shrewd enough to understand that he could go home and make a new life for himself in a way that would not have seemed possible in May 1865.42 The issue of Terrell’s connection with the French army would, however, plague him during his years in state politics. There would be charges that he had taken an oath of allegiance to the French that rendered him ineligible to be an American citizen. Terrell always denied that he had done so, and the evidence indicates that he did not take the final step of severing his formal allegiance to the United States.43 Before he left Mexico, however, Terrell learned about a poem memorializing John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, that was circulating among Southern sympathizers. The eulogy to Booth, written by an Illinois Democrat named Alfred W. Arrington, was composed in late April 1865, just after Booth’s death at the hands 50

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of soldiers. A press report said that Booth’s body would be buried in the Potomac River or at sea so that no trace of it would remain. The erroneous story stirred the hatred that Arrington felt for the fallen president. Its nine stanzas began with a rhetorical flourish: Give him a sepulcher Broad as the sweep Of the tidal wave’s measureless motion; In the arms of the deep Lay the hero to sleep ‘Mid the pearls of the fetterless ocean. The remainder of the poem spoke of one who “dared break the sod of the Black-o-moor god” and who had “died for the weal of the world ‘neath the heel/Of too many a merciless Nero.” Its Confederate attitude and dislike for Lincoln and African Americans appealed to Terrell’s resentment of the North and its leader. He kept a copy of the poem and may at times have wished that he had written it himself. Meanwhile, the partisans of Benito Juárez watched Terrell, as they did all the Confederate emigres, and knew of his military ambitions and his attitude toward the Booth poem.44 On October 22, Terrell met with the American chargé d’affaires in Mexico City and discussed a return to the United States. He said that his position with the French army had only been “for the purpose of preventing the Southern refugees who might come to Mexico from joining the guerilla bands which infest and lay waste the country.” Terrell resigned once he discovered that the number of exiles was exaggerated. He noted as well that Andrew Johnson’s lenient amnesty policy had indicated that it would be safe to go home.45 Terrell then sailed to Cuba with other Confederate exiles including General Hamilton Bee and former governor Edward Clark. At Havana on November 7 he took the oath of allegiance to the United States, in which he promised to “abide by and faithfully support all laws which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves.” Terrell also told the American consul that he had “important information” for President Johnson. Three weeks later, after a voyage to New York and a journey to Washington, Terrell met with Johnson and informed him of French naval dispositions at Vera Cruz. His pardon came through the same day. By the time Terrell reached Washington, rumors circulated that 51

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the French would withdraw from Mexico. His connection with Marshal Bazaine and the French army slipped into the past. Like many Southerners, Terrell did what he believed necessary to secure a pardon. In private he remained bitter about emancipation and its effects on his personal financial situation.46 Terrell’s movements over the next several months are obscure. He probably spent time in Washington and New Orleans through the early months of 1866. In mid-March a Democratic newspaper in Austin reported that he had come back to Texas to stay. “The Judge is an affable and courteous gentleman,” noted the editors, “and his well-known abilities as a jurist have reflected much credit upon the judiciary of our state.” In a private letter to Ed Burleson, Terrell wrote, “I have had a long and gloomy tramp since I saw you, but I do not regret it.” Evidently Terrell did not tell many people that he been pardoned, because his political enemies continued to say erroneously that he had been paroled in 1865 but not pardoned.47 Terrell reached Austin during the proceedings of a constitutional convention called to write a new fundamental document for the state in light of the outcome of the Civil War. Andrew Johnson had named Andrew J. Hamilton as provisional governor in 1865, and Hamilton had attempted to carry forward the president’s lenient reconstruction plan. Public opinion among Texas Democrats, however, favored a minimum compliance with the dictates from Washington and the maximum defiance of any attempt to move beyond the emancipation of slaves and the legal end of bondage. As a result, the convention delegates, dominated by Democrats, agreed that slavery had died but declined to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment or repudiate slavery. They also limited the legal rights of blacks and looked to a return of slavery under the guise of a system regulating African-American laborers.48 After the convention concluded its work, voters were to cast ballots in state elections to be held in June 1866. The gubernatorial candidate of the Conservative Unionists, as the Democrats called themselves, was James W. Throckmorton, a pre-war Unionist who had fought for the Confederacy. To promote his chances, a number of convention delegates caucused and drafted a letter urging Throckmorton to run. Terrell was one of the signers of a document that praised Throckmorton’s “opposition to negro suffrage, and the hasty and inconsiderate elevation of the negro to political equality.” Republicans, the letter went on, “have declared their intention to 52

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reduce us to a condition of territorial vassalage, and to place us below the level of those who were once our slaves.” Throckmorton readily agreed to be a candidate.49 Terrell identified himself with the anti–Radical Republicanism of the Conservative Unionists. He resented the loss “of the property made by hard efforts by the freeing of negroes.” He wrote that he had done “the best I could to preserve our right to make laws for ourselves, but failed, and I see but little to hope for in the future.” Terrell said that he could make money practicing law in Austin, “but I see much to make me dissatisfied.” In May the Republican press in Austin tweaked Terrell about his Mexican service and accused him of “moral treason” for first volunteering for and then renouncing service with Maximilian. Later that year Terrell moved to Houston, where he opened a law partnership with J. C. Crosby. His brother Joe Terrell said that Alex “has now what he has always needed— Experience, and a little knowledge of adversity.”50 In his new home, Terrell remained as unsympathetic to Reconstruction and the broader role of blacks in public life as he had been in Austin. He argued cases about the workings of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the government agency designed to assist former slaves in the transition to freedom. Terrell eventually told friends that he could not tolerate seeing freed slaves sitting on juries. His decision was in part the result of his romance with Sallie Mitchell of Robertson County, the daughter of a prominent planter and a recent widow. Marriage offered Terrell the chance to pursue a career apart from the law and politics. “I found it more congenial with my nature,” he later wrote, “to direct negroes in the field than to bow before them and call them ‘gentlemen of the jury.’”51 Terrell married Sallie Mitchell in 1867 and moved with her and his children to her family’s cotton plantation in Robertson County in the middle part of the state. It was a happy marriage. Joe Terrell, who visited his brother for four weeks in early 1869, reported that “Alex’s wife is one of the best women I ever saw. She troubles herself as much about his children as if they were her own.” By that time, Sallie Terrell was pregnant with their first child, a daughter they named Bessie. A son, Howard, followed a year later.52 Although Terrell’s operation of the plantation was a success, his financial relations with his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Mitchell, were not good. In the first year, according to his recollections, he produced a return of $20,000, but at his wife’s behest he gave the money 53

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to her mother. His memory of the degree of his success was probably somewhat inflated. In the years that followed, Terrell realized more gains for himself. By the time he left Robertson County, he had regained some of the wealth he had lost during the Civil War. Terrell was not a “plantation owner” because the land remained in the name of his mother-in-law. The money he made did, however, make Terrell one of the wealthier citizens of the county. Moreover, the farming experience strengthened Terrell’s conviction that agriculture was the foundation of the state’s economy and culture. Working with African Americans in the fields reinforced his belief that whites were naturally superior to the former slaves.53 During Terrell’s residence there, Robertson County experienced the political upheavals of Reconstruction. A cotton-growing center where slavery had been strong, the county suffered in the agricultural depression that followed the war. Whites and blacks vied for power. The Freedmen’s Bureau that dealt with the transition from slavery to freedom was active in the area. On September 12, 1868, Terrell had to pay $75 in gold after a black man filed a lawsuit that was referred to the bureau. A year later he was one of the signers of a letter in support of the gubernatorial candidacy of Andrew Jackson Hamilton. Hamilton was running as a conservative Republican against Edmund J. Davis, the candidate of the more radical Republicans who favored greater rights for African Americans. “It is time that every voter should realize that no means will be spared to carry the Davis faction into power by leading astray the ignorant colored vote,” said the letter. Despite such opposition, Davis won a narrow victory. Two years later, Terrell was named to a place on the Democratic State Executive Committee from Robertson County as the party regained its supremacy and sought to drive blacks out of politics. A black Republican in the county wrote in March 1872, shortly after Terrell moved to Austin: “I feel like a man standing on a board at sea. He doesn’t dare to lean either way,—if he does he’ll sink.”54 While he lived in Robertson County, Terrell sometimes deviated from an uncompromising opposition to Reconstruction. In March 1870, for example, he cooperated with the local army unit in trying to locate the murderer of one of their officers. He also supported relocating the county seat from Owensville to Calvert, a move that served Terrell’s economic interests. He justified the shift on the grounds that almost “the entire colored population of the county & the planting interest” backed the change. In this case, Terrell 54

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endorsed what the historian of the county later styled an initiative of “scalawags” in the area.55 By 1871, Sallie Terrell was pregnant with her third child. She and the baby died, leaving Terrell with seven children and his mother-inlaw to support. Once again he had to bury a wife. Nothing now held him to Robertson County. In January 1872, Terrell was back in Austin, where he purchased a home and brought his children and his mother-in-law. Four months later he entered into a partnership with the prominent Travis County attorney Alexander S. Walker. He told his family “that he was having a bust of his deceased wife made.”56 With his return to Austin, Terrell took up the threads of his life where they had been when he entered the army in 1863. He had fought for the Confederacy and seen his courage questioned. The defeat of the South had depleted his estate and left him embittered at the sudden emancipation of his slaves. He had pursued the dream of a new life in Mexico and then tried a second profession as a farmer. Now he was back in Austin as a skilled lawyer, a Confederate veteran, and a staunch Democrat. These qualities would make him a key player in Texas politics for the next four decades. The most important intellectual commitment that Terrell brought out of the Civil War was to his renewed belief in the inability of black people to take part in politics and public life. During his years as a legislator and public advocate of Democratic policies, his most sustained campaign would be to restrict the rights of African Americans to influence the state’s government. As segregation worked its way into the mainstream of Texas, Terrell would play a key role in drafting legislation that produced a one-party state based on the principle of white supremacy.

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Chapter Four The Senator from Austin

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lexander W. Terrell and his family returned to a

more vibrant and expansive Austin than the one he had left nine years earlier. The city’s population was booming, from 4,400 in 1870 to 10,400 by 1875. A steam railroad, the Houston and Texas Central line, had arrived on Christmas Day of 1871. The major streets were still unpaved, and a pontoon bridge connected the two sides of the Colorado River. But a general sense of optimism pervaded the town.1 Economic expansion and political turmoil provided ample business opportunities for Austin’s lawyers. In his partnership with Alexander S. Walker, Terrell had allied with one of the key figures in the local Democratic Party. A year older than Terrell, Walker had been elected judge of the Seventeenth District in Georgetown in 1862. After the war, Union forces ousted him because of his opposition to Reconstruction. He relocated to Austin in late 1865 and helped launch the Democratic Statesman newspaper, which under different titles at different times became a major editorial voice for Texas Democrats. Republicans labeled Walker one of the leaders of the “Austin Ring” that ostensibly dominated local politics. “A states’ rights Democrat,” Walker shared Terrell’s views about racial issues. The firm was known as Terrell and Walker, and they handled the usual run of civil cases and represented criminal defendants. They were also much in demand for work on behalf of the State of Texas, such as in the case of Cardenas v. Texas that involved title to large tracts of land along the Rio Grande.2 Terrell purchased a home and property near Austin for $12,000, and his family was reunited there. Howard and Bessie, the young son and daughter from his second marriage, along with his mother-in-

The Senator from Austin

law, joined the surviving children from his first marriage. His daughter Constance had married Abner Cook Jr., the son of a prominent Austin architect, in 1867. They lived in Austin. A daughter, Lilla, and a son, Arthur, made up the rest of Terrell’s family.3 Terrell bought and sold land actively during these years and attained a level of prosperity that put him among the city’s elite. The 1888 tax rolls, for example, listed him with some $26,000 in land holdings and six hundred cattle worth $3,000. Years later a critical newspaper editor said that Terrell “was the first man in Austin to put his money into town lot speculation.” By the 1890s Terrell also had an interest in a prosperous dairy that his son Arthur operated. There is some evidence that Terrell’s affluence aroused resentment among his neighbors, though not enough to hurt him politically in his periodic races for legislative office.4 Terrell also played a significant role in the cultural life of the Texas capital city. In 1874 he was chosen to present the annual awards of the Calhoun Literary Society of the Texas Military Institute because, as a speaker, “the judge is peculiarly happy in efforts of this kind.” There were occasional references to Terrell’s churchgoing habits. In 1878 a newspaper item noted that “Major Walton and Judge Terrell were present to hear the Rev. Mr. Shepard preach on hell Sunday. We don’t know how they stood it.” By all accounts, soon after his return to Austin, Terrell had regained the prestigious position in community affairs he had attained before the Civil War.5 When Terrell resumed his political activities, the Reconstruction movement in Texas was in decline as the inherent electoral strength of the white Democratic Party reasserted itself. The effort to create a Republican Party based on black voters, white men interested in economic development, and dissidents from the Democrats had proved unsuccessful. The influx of Democrats from other Southern states had swamped the Republicans, and intimidation and violence had suppressed the number of African Americans in the electorate. From the beginning of the gubernatorial administration of Edmund J. Davis in 1869, the Democrats had attacked Republican rule through legal and extralegal means. The opposition sought to tie up the governor and his allies in endless litigation and criminal prosecutions.6 Terrell and Walker soon became leading figures in the Democratic attempt to cripple Davis’s regime in the courts. In the town of Seguin, Democratic lawyers refused to appear before a district judge to argue cases relating to the enforcement of a new state school tax 57

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enacted in 1871. The judge, Henry Maney, responded with a series of contempt citations that placed the protesting attorneys in jail. Terrell and Walker applied to the Texas Supreme Court for writs of habeas corpus to get their clients, including John Ireland, a future governor, out of confinement. Underlying the legal actions was the Democrats’ desire to block the free school system created under Davis.7 Two other cases reflected the role that Terrell played in the legal battles between Republicans and Democrats as the Davis administration neared the end of its control of the state government. In one embarrassing episode for Governor Davis, the state treasurer, George W. Honey, was alleged to have misused state funds in his care during the spring of 1872. Davis appointed a replacement while Honey was out of the state, and court cases ensued to determine which man was the legitimate state treasurer. Terrell appeared for Honey’s successor in a civil suit about the matter.8 When Honey was indicted on criminal charges of embezzlement in June 1872, Terrell was one of the three local lawyers who defended him during the four-day criminal trial that took place in February 1873. Terrell was an aggressive examiner of the prosecution witnesses. Since the former treasurer had now become an enemy of Governor Davis, an acquittal served the purposes of the Democrats. The jury of ten whites and two blacks took three minutes to find Honey not guilty. The Daily Statesman said that “the arguments of the counsel for the defense showed legal ability, learning, talent, and powers of oratory rarely ever met with.”9 Terrell played an active role in the election campaigns of 1872. Beyond the presidential and state races, a spirited contest raged over the permanent location of the state capital. Houston, Waco, and Austin vied for the prize. Terrell decided to write a poetic manifesto in favor of his hometown. It would be the first of several examples of political verse with which he would be identified. The many stanzas of “A Night in Houston or The Devil at Work” appeared on September 24, 1872, as an anonymous offering. The poet, sleeping in Houston, awoke to hear a dialogue between a Houston politician named John T. Grady and the venerable Ashbel Smith, whose career went back to the Texas Revolution. The wily Grady, who represents all that Terrell disliked in Reconstruction politics, says at one point:

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We’ll buy the negro vote, and move The State House to the town we love, And anchor it at Houston. When Smith agrees that the capital should be moved, Satan appears and warns the two men not to go through with the plan: Nothing I care for living man, Yet do I shudder at your plan, Your State House dream. Texas would storm my castle gates, And Hood’s gray boys would conquer the fates, To stop your scheme. Austin will keep the State House there, Mid skies of blue and mountain air, And waters clear. A greater power than you or I Will guard the archives high and dry— Away from here. Terrell’s labored verses amused Austin readers. Their city retained the capital when the votes were tallied.10 The Democrats were intent on regaining the governorship in 1873. They yearned to oust Davis, whom they despised for his advocacy of racial tolerance to the freedmen. To run against the incumbent, the Democratic Party chose Richard Coke, a Confederate veteran, even though he was identified with the interests of several of the railroads that had entered the state after the war. Terrell and others who were suspicious of the political influence of the rail lines put aside their qualms about Coke’s allegiances. “I labored zealously for his nomination, under what I concede to be a sense of duty to the country,” Terrell told jurist and party leader Oran M. Roberts in November 1873 as the election neared. Despite his reservations about Coke, Terrell hoped to become attorney general if the Democrats were victorious.11 With population trends running in their favor as whites entered Texas after the Civil War and with the race issue as their primary card, the Democrats won a decisive victory as Coke beat Davis by a two-to-one margin on December 2, 1873. The Democrats gained control of the legislature and looked to remove Davis from the governorship even before his four-year term ended in April 1874.12 59

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Complicating the Democrats’ transition to power was a constitutional challenge to the law under which the election had been held. A resident of Houston, Joseph Rodriguez, had been arrested for voting twice in the contest. Rodriguez’s lawyers asked the Texas Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that the election law passed in March 1873 had violated the State Constitution of 1869. In that document the wording about elections stated: “All elections for State, District and County officers shall be held at the county seats of the several counties, unless otherwise provided by law; and the polls shall be opened for four days, from 8 o’clock A.M. until 4 o’clock P.M. of each day.” In the election law, the number of days for voting was reduced to one. The ultimate legal question turned on whether the semicolon separating the two clauses divided them into a first section about the election that lawmakers could modify and a second section about days the polls were open that could not be altered in a statute. Thus the litigation became known as the “Semicolon Case.”13 The case came before the Supreme Court and its three Republican justices on December 22, 1873. Terrell was one of the Austin lawyers arguing the case on behalf of the State of Texas and therefore against the interests of the Republicans. In his remarks, Terrell charged that the real aim of the suit was “to make a platform broad enough and strong enough to sustain the advancing footsteps of another federal reconstruction.” Terrell and his fellow Democrats believed that Davis and the Republicans sought to provoke a crisis that would cause the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant to intervene and perpetuate a Republican state government. In fact, Terrell told the court, “even the children of Texas know that such is the object of this proceeding.”14 Terrell contended that the court should defer to the legislative power to set election times and places. That issue was a political question that the elected representatives of the people should decide. At the end of his statement, Terrell criticized his former law partner A. J. Hamilton, who was making the case for Rodriguez. His opponent, Terrell said, was using “the more insidious approaches of judicial construction to stifle again the popular voice and substitute a reign of anarchy.” In closing, Terrell struck the same theme: “Let not anarchy take the place of order, and violence supplant quiet and security.”15 In his response, Hamilton rebutted Terrell’s case about the juris60

The Senator from Austin

diction and the autonomy of the legislature. He defended his own course during Reconstruction and asserted that he needed no lessons in patriotism from his opponents. “I never fought against the flag of my country,” Hamilton answered. Then in a direct slap at Terrell, he added: “Neither did I learn these lessons in a foreign land, in Mexico, under a carpet-bag emperor, who was afterwards shot for interfering with the constitutional rights and liberties of a free people.”16 Eighteen years after these events, questions arose about Terrell’s exact role in the proceedings. Terrell was a key supporter of Governor James S. Hogg in his heated race for renomination against conservative Democrat George Clark. In a March 1892 speech, Clark charged that after Richard Coke’s election Terrell had asked the incoming governor “to surrender to the Supreme Judges of the Davis administration, and keep them in office.” Clark went on to say that Terrell had left for a court commitment in Lampasas rather than face the possible violence that then loomed in Austin. No charge could be more damaging than consorting with Republican jurists of the disgraced Davis regime and allowing them to finish out their terms. The other allegation capitalized on the persistent charges of Terrell’s “cowardice” in the Civil War at Pleasant Hill.17 Terrell wrote to Coke at once, recalling that he had visited him in Waco in early 1874 to convey some political news. He reported that one judge of the Davis Supreme Court would ensure that the panel ruled in favor of the Democrats in the Rodriguez case if he “could be taken care of,” presumably through not being removed when Coke took office. Coke denounced the proposal, as Terrell remembered it, and the incoming governor said of the judge “I will see him in h—l first.” In his response, Coke’s memory tracked Terrell’s, and he added that “the patriotism of your motives and purpose in visiting me at Waco cannot be questioned.” The exchange of letters sustained Terrell’s version, but not in a way that refuted all the elements of Clark’s charge. Terrell decided, however, not to answer directly what Clark had alleged about his role in the run-up to the Rodriguez decision. That this episode became so widely known indicates that by the mid-1870s some politicians regarded Terrell as something of an opportunist.18 The Supreme Court handed down its decision on January 5, 1874. The judges ruled that the December election was void and in the process rejected Terrell’s position. The Austin attorney was outraged: 61

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The telegraph has already announced the sickening spectacle of a Supreme Court arrogating to itself the power to pass on the validity of a general election at which the Legislative Department provided for its succession in office, and virtually crystallizing power in the hands of a beaten minority by attempting to prevent succession in coordinate Departments. The opinion is a slobbering lame thing, in which positions are demolished which no one assumed, principles announced which no one denied and a result reached with no argument or authority to sustain it.19 The political answer to the decision, Terrell said, was for Governor Coke and the legislature “to meet, & go on until we find Federal bayonets & then stop nothing short of this.” Democrats agreed with Terrell’s conclusion. They realized that Davis had no tangible support in the Grant administration or in Texas for another election or an effort to withstand the convening of the Democratic legislature. As a result, the Democrats regained control of state government in mid-January, and Davis had to leave the governor’s office. “The storm has blown over and there is a calm,” wrote a Democrat.20 Terrell had little part in the political scene for the next few months until the summer of 1874, when Oran M. Roberts was named chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court. In his letter informing Roberts of his likely selection, Terrell asked the judge not to commit himself “on the subject of the Reportership for the Sup[reme] Court until after I see you.” A month or so after Roberts’s appointment was announced, Terrell and his law partner became the seventh designated Supreme Court reporters.21 The position was a lucrative one. In April 1874 the legislature had established the reporter’s position and arranged for its funding. For each volume of Supreme Court decisions produced, the reporter was paid $3.00 per page. Since the number of pages could run well over eight hundred in a single volume, that meant that Terrell and Walker could receive as much as $2,400 once or twice per year. In addition, the two men were provided with four hundred copies for sale to lawyers whom they could charge about $5.00 per copy. Charging a rate of $6.00 per volume would cause them to lose the contract. So Terrell and Walker could earn between them $4,000 to $8,000 depending on the number of volumes published and sold. At

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a time when the wage rates for an average worker might be between $12.00 and $25.00 a month, Terrell and Walker were doing very well with Supreme Court reporting as the base of their legal practice.22 The work occupied Terrell for most of the next two decades. He and Alexander S. Walker prepared Volumes 38 to 52, and then Terrell served as the eighth reporter, responsible for Volumes 52 to 71. The last volume was published in 1889. Reporting and annotating the court’s decisions was a demanding assignment and one that drew on Terrell’s legal skills. He cooperated closely with the justices to determine which cases were of the most public or professional interest and thus merited the greatest attention. With the court sitting in Galveston, Tyler, and Austin each year, simply assembling the various decisions was a task of some complexity. At the outset of their tenure, Terrell and Walker had to decide whether to cover the opinions of the “Semicolon Court,” which had become discredited among Democrats because of the Rodriguez decision. Although some wanted these Republican rulings forgotten, in early 1875 Terrell and Walker, with Chief Justice Roberts’s encouragement, brought out the volumes that included those decisions.23 Compiling the volumes required that Terrell adhere to relentless deadlines. In the summer, he left the sweltering heat of Austin for cooler climes such as Wisconsin to assemble the majority opinions and dissents into complete volumes. The responsibilities became so burdensome in 1877 that Terrell offered to give Walker all of his district and federal court practice “and report exclusively myself.” As Terrell corresponded with the editors of law journals around the country, the reputation of Terrell and Walker as legal reporters spread. A historian of the Texas Supreme Court called Terrell “the ablest of those patient and efficient officers who have left their lasting impress upon the official reports of that august tribunal.”24 Over time, however, the work with the Supreme Court brought Terrell some private criticism within the ranks of the Texas bar. While pulling the manuscript for the reports together in the cooler Midwest made sense from the point of view of comfort and convenience, it aroused a certain degree of envy from attorneys who could not afford to leave the state during the torrid summer. Terrell’s use of the Minnesota printing firm of West and Company irritated Texas printers who saw a lucrative business going outside the state. That Terrell and Walker gained so much money from the sale of the vol-

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umes struck other attorneys as unfair. By the end of the 1880s, the latent discontent would cause Terrell to lose the position when the legislature changed the terms under which cases were reported. Terrell did not become involved in politics until the year 1875 was almost ended. Travis County officials asked him to prosecute Mark Tiner, accused of killing an Austin policeman. Tiner was convicted of manslaughter. Terrell also joined other Austinites in sponsoring the construction of a two-story office building opposite the location of the Statesman. In a legal case held over from his days in Robertson County, Terrell lost a jury verdict and was assessed $105 in a surety matter.25 After the ouster of Davis and the end of Republican rule in Texas, the Democrats were determined to rid themselves of the Constitution of 1869 that the Republicans had written. The 1874 legislature ordered that a constitutional convention meet in 1875 to prepare a new fundamental document for the state. When the delegates assembled in September 1875, Terrell was there as a formal lobbyist for one economic interest and as an informal advocate for the state’s Supreme Court.26 Terrell served as an attorney for the Galveston Wharf and Cotton Press Company, which controlled the flow of commerce through the state’s major port. The company wanted its dominant position in Galveston commerce to be protected. Terrell confronted a campaign led by his old comrade in Mexico, George Flournoy, to restrict the company’s right to extract tolls from shippers who used its facilities. On October 21, 1875, Terrell appeared before the Committee on Private Corporations and contended that the basis of the attack on the company was to help railroads. He argued that if the convention or the legislature penalized the company, a suit would be brought in federal court that such measures violated the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment “in the arbitrary taking of this property without just compensation.” Using the amendment in this way was a little incongruous for an opponent of Reconstruction, but Terrell told Roberts that he believed his contentions were “sound.” Terrell seems to have protected the wharf company from damage. However, his work for this monopoly would be used against him politically in the 1890s when he spoke out against the power of corporations. The episode did represent an apparent contradiction with Terrell’s stance against railroads and monopolies in future years. His defense seems to have been that he was simply serving the interests of his client.27 64

The Senator from Austin

Terrell also acted as a de facto lobbyist for the Texas Supreme Court in an attempt to stave off plans to reduce salaries for the justices, cut the size of the court from five members to three, and have voters elect the judges. As he told Oran Roberts, he would get to know “the disposition of every lawyer and prominent man in the convention touching the court as organized and if erroneous impression which merit correction exist in any quarter will at once apply through the proper channel the corrective.”28 That proved easier to promise than to achieve. Terrell found “a spirit of positive hostility to Lawyers” among those he called “the Ruta-baga element” that “promises nothing good.” Even within “the intellectual minority” there was a tendency to “go a-granging on every pretext” in response to the political power of the Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange, in the state. The agricultural depression of the 1870s had given the Grange great influence in the deliberations of the convention. While Terrell shared the suspicions of corporate power that animated the Grange in Texas, he, like Oran Roberts, worried about increasing the influence of poorer whites in the state’s growing cities and towns. For Terrell, however, the major threat to the Democrats remained the newly enfranchised black population from Reconstruction that he wished to control and in the end remove from politics. The Constitution of 1876 specified the composition of the Supreme Court as three elected members with salaries fixed at $3,000. Terrell immediately started work to promote Roberts’s candidacy for the Supreme Court when new elections took place in February 1876. To scare off possible challengers, he placed news items in the Austin paper indicating that Roberts had extensive statewide support. The strategy worked and Roberts won the election.29 Terrell’s life took an important turn in November 1875 when his political allies and the Austin business community urged him to run for the Texas Senate. With controversial railroad issues involving the capital likely to arise in the 1876 session, the city’s elite wanted a dependable spokesman to defend their interests. “It is opposed to all ideas of what is best for myself,” Terrell said, and he vowed not to “scramble for a nomination.” He told friends, “Whether I draw a long or short straw, I would not desire to serve beyond one term.”30 Like many other Gilded Age politicians, Terrell wanted to have the nomination seek him rather than making an overt statement of his interest. He did not have to do so. An exchange of public letters 65

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appeared in the newspapers in which a group of influential leaders asked Terrell to run and he agreed to be a candidate. A week later The Daily Statesman noted: “Judge Terrell, it appears, has no open opposition for the Senate, and this is very properly the case. He is a lawyer and gentleman of the highest order of intellect, and would maintain a position as a legislator second to none.”31 No opponent appeared to block Terrell’s progress, and he won the Senate seat easily in the February balloting. The editor of the Statesman observed that Terrell was “a man now in the prime of life, and with a naturally brilliant and a growing intellect he will carve out a bright road for the future.” When he took his place in the upper house, Terrell had to draw lots with other senators to determine the length of his term, and he picked a two-year span. Terrell found that lawmaking suited his talents. He enjoyed the cut and thrust of debate, he understood how to shape a bill to achieve his goals, and he worked well with his fellow legislators. In debate, he was a formidable antagonist, and crowds often gathered in the gallery to see him perform when a controversial issue was at stake. As a legislator, Terrell understood the art of compromise and proved willing to adjust positions for the sake of a victory. He once told his colleagues that “consistency is the virtue of fools.” It was a phrase that opponents would throw back at him when he became more involved in state politics.32 Within a few months it was evident that the Austin lawyer had found a key place in the state’s public life. When the legislature met on April 18, 1876, Terrell had two major priorities—to make changes in the jury system to reduce the role of black citizens and to pass a law establishing a new educational system for the state. The jury issue was Terrell’s first significant initiative. While the 1869 constitution had specified that a witness in a criminal case could not be excluded on grounds of race, the issue of blacks on juries was a controversial one. The 1875 constitutional convention left the problem up to the next legislature, and Terrell stepped forward to lead the forces of change toward exclusion of black Texans. Mindful of his experiences in Houston with African-American jurors, the new senator crafted a clause that would remove illiterate blacks from jury pools without mentioning their race. “An inability to read or write,” the key language read, “shall be sufficient cause for challenge” of a juror, “without being charged to either party.” Thus

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either attorney in a civil or criminal case could remove blacks without penalty to his client.33 Critics of the measure focused on this provision in the legislature, and Terrell defended his bill on May 22, 1876, when a proposal to strike the illiteracy provision was debated. “Since 1869,” he said, “trial by jury in Texas has been a mockery and a snare.” The impact of the law on blacks, or those Terrell called “the colored element,” who had been freed a decade earlier, was the crux of the debate. Terrell asserted that the law “applies to every race without regard to ‘color or previous condition.’” In his conclusion the Austin senator maintained that the section of the law “was demanded by the highest interest of society, nay of civilization itself.” His audience knew what he meant when he said in his last sentence: The mass of ignorance enjoying the elective franchise (through no choice of ours) now makes with its terrible strain the experiment of free government to tremble in its every fiber—let us, while we can, relieve the jury box from this fearful pressure ere it is too late. Terrell’s fellow lawmakers then passed the bill with the illiteracy language intact. Once the measure became law, blacks began to disappear from jury pools and the court processes. Since many blacks could not meet the literacy test that Terrell’s measure had imposed, officials simply stopped calling them for jury panels. The state courts sustained the law in the face of challenges to its validity. Terrell had produced the long-range change in the racial balance of Texas juries and courts that he had promised in 1876.34 A second issue relating to black Texans was public education. Here Terrell became involved with a new education law that he often mentioned later as evidence of his own good faith in dealing with African Americans in Texas. The Constitution of 1869 had authorized a state-supported public school system, and the Davis administration had set it up in 1871. The taxation arrangements to finance the law had been one primary target of Terrell’s legal practice during Reconstruction. Two years later, when the Democrats regained control of the legislature, the school system was abolished. Then the Constitution of 1876 essentially did away with public schools. Compulsory attendance was dropped, and community schools, open during times when crops were not harvested, were favored over

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locally financed public schools that were open six to nine months out of the year.35 Implementing these concepts into specific legislation became the task of the 1876 legislature, and Terrell took the lead in writing the new school plan for the state. A state school fund was established, derived from poll taxes and public land sales, and Terrell allocated one-quarter of its revenues to establish community schools. In the provision that Terrell admired and often referred to in later years, the law specified that “the available public free school fund shall be appropriated to each county for the education alike of white and colored children, and each race shall receive its just pro rata, as far as practicable, in each county, according to the number of children of each race within scholastic age.”36 In his old age, Terrell called this measure “the first public free school law ever adopted by a democratic legislature in the South that gave free education an equal measure alike to negro and white children.” While the language of the law set forth such treatment of white and black students, in practice white residents often took a larger share for their community schools. By exempting local taxation revenues for support of community schools, the law also ensured that existing community schools would be underfunded. Since segregation was also mandated, blacks did not receive anything close to equal education. In his praise for the law in 1906, Terrell noted that whites had spent $15 million to educate black Texas children over that thirty-year span, which came to $500,000 per year for the entire state population of African Americans. While the law was better than nothing, the state of education for Texas blacks remained poor during Terrell’s lifetime. Expenditures for white schoolchildren in the state were four or five times as much as for their African American counterparts.37 The most contentious issue of the 1876 session reinforced Terrell’s growing reputation as an outspoken enemy of corporate power. After the Civil War, railroads had penetrated the state as part of the effort to create a transcontinental line through the southern part of the United States. The most notorious company in the state was the Texas and Pacific, owned by the railroad operator Thomas A. Scott, who also controlled the Pennsylvania Railroad. By 1876 the financial fate of the Texas and Pacific Railroad hinged on its ability to obtain an extension of the time it needed to build its track across Texas and thereby fulfill the terms of the generous land grants it had received 68

The Senator from Austin

from the state in 1871 and 1873. These grants specified that the railroad would be given twenty sections of land per mile only if it completed construction by a certain date. The legislature had granted extensions of time in 1874 and 1875, but various delays left the T&P unable to meet the terms of its commitment to the state when the Seventeenth Legislature convened in April 1876.38 Adding to the urgency for the railroad was the bitter competition between Scott and the president of the Central Pacific, Collis P. Huntington, for control of the southern railroad route to the Pacific. Huntington and Scott were both ruthless men, and the competition between them utilized all the legal and extralegal weapons of the late nineteenth century. If Huntington could block the T&P’s request for an extension in the Texas legislature and then in Congress, where he was seeking a federal subsidy, he would inflict a wounding defeat on his rival. Huntington wrote in March 1876 that he was “doing all I can to demoralize Scott in Texas.”39 Whether Huntington’s efforts included direct financial inducements to lawmakers who opposed the Texas and Pacific cannot be verified. Friends of the T&P complained privately that “city papers and Austin lobbyists—friends of the International and of Huntington”—were behind the opposition to the extension. While many of the proponents of the T&P questioned Terrell’s motives in debate, his stance was consistent with the opposition to unbridled railroad and corporate power that he had already manifested for several decades. There is no evidence that he profited personally from his support for the Huntington position.40 The battle between Huntington and Scott came down to the issue of the precise date when the legislature adjourned. If Scott could extend the time for the T&P to meet its commitment beyond the date when the lawmakers left Austin, he would win. On the other hand, should Huntington arrange an adjournment before the T&P bill could be acted upon, Scott would lose. Huntington won the first round when the legislature passed a joint resolution on July 15 mandating that adjournment occur on July 31. Scott’s forces worked to move the adjournment date back while also pushing the measure to extend the T&P’s land grant.41 In the Senate, the bill to extend the deadline for the T&P and to shift the adjournment back came up for action four days after Huntington’s apparent success. As a leader of the anti-T&P contingent, Terrell prepared to make a major statement before his colleagues. Two 69

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days before he was to speak, however, his daughter Bessie, who was approaching her ninth birthday, died suddenly. The Statesman called this child of his second marriage “a pretty and intelligent little daughter” and paid tribute to the “all-absorbing devotion of the father.”42 Notwithstanding his deep personal loss, Terrell delivered his speech as planned on July 19. He said that at no time in his life had he felt “more like withdrawing from its antagonisms and strifes than at this hour,” but “the interests of [his] constituents” drove him on. The land grant to the Texas and Pacific had been made in 1871 when, as he put it, “the whole machinery of State government was directed by the vote of emancipated slaves who were themselves the blind instruments of designing adventurers.” The legislature was giving away land to railroads that would be needed in the future for the state’s school fund. “In whatever light we regard this effort to perpetuate the land reservation of over twenty millions of acres for the benefit of a railroad corporation, it strikes me as unstatesmanlike and wrong.” In the end, Terrell said that he could never vote to relieve a corporation owned by non-resident speculators, which has been treacherous to every promise ever made—whose unblushing exactions are only equaled by its treacherous designs, and whose road if ever completed will do nothing for the prosperity of Texas, after exhausting the remnant of the common property.43 Terrell’s impassioned speech won him editorial praise in Austin, but the bill to rescind the July 31 adjournment date went forward in the Senate. On July 22, a senator alleged in debate that Terrell was opposing the T&P to help friends in Austin make a financial gain. In an angry exchange, Terrell said, “If anybody on earth shall charge me with other motives than those of honor and duty, he tells a blistering falsehood, and it shall stick and rot in his festering throat.”44 A week later, Terrell was part of a minority in the Senate and House that saw the pro-Scott forces use a parliamentary maneuver to keep the legislature in session beyond July 31. The House adjourned and then reconvened, which kept the session going. While the minority members tried to avoid a quorum call when the legislature resumed, the majority prevailed. Terrell and his allies talked about resigning in protest, but in the end they gave in and the T&P achieved its extension. Despite the setback in the T&P battle, Terrell had done well in 70

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his first session in the Texas Senate. His work on the jury bill and his education law drew editorial praise from the ever-friendly Daily Statesman in Austin. “He has served his constituency faithfully and well, and was regarded by the members of the Senate as the most intellectual man in that body.” During the summer of 1876, a brief flurry of press speculation mentioned Terrell as a possible candidate for Congress, and the Williamson County delegation endorsed him for the Democratic nomination. That is why Terrell secured a letter from officers in his regiment rebutting the charge that he had shown cowardice at the battle of Pleasant Hill. Yet Terrell did not want to go to Washington, and the boomlet subsided. Eager to see a new state capitol building constructed and financed through the sale of state lands, Terrell hoped to serve an additional session in the Senate to press for those legislative goals.45 Terrell probably miscalculated at this juncture. Several terms in Congress would have raised his statewide visibility and laid the groundwork for higher offices either in Austin or Washington. Serving in Congress would have established him as a credible party leader in a way that serving in the legislature could not do. His skill as a legislative operator would probably have enabled him to develop a leadership role in the national House of Representatives, where Democrats were usually the majority party. Instead, he chose to remain where he was. That left him without much name recognition outside of Austin and little opportunity to build a statewide base for future races. His work in his first session as a senator had produced important results. The jury bill proved to be a major step toward the exclusion of black Texans from the legal system. Following that result, Terrell would campaign in future sessions for a poll tax and other restrictions on African Americans to keep them from being a force in state politics. The education bill also created a school system that lasted for many decades. Non-Texans might criticize the absence of a publicly supported system of education, but what Terrell had done was what a majority of Democrats in the state would endorse during the 1870s. The provision of the law directed at blacks proved to be largely cosmetic. Had Terrell not been in the Senate, something like these laws would probably have been enacted, but he put his own stamp on the measures. Future sessions of the Senate would see Alexander Terrell write more legislation that shaped public policy in Texas. 71

Chapter Five More Laws for Texas

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lthough the racial issues that dominated Texas politics during Reconstruction remained a key element in Terrell’s career through the late 1870s and beyond, newer economic concerns were reshaping the policy debates for the state’s Democrats. The hard times growing out of the Panic of 1873 caused by overexpansion of railroads—low prices for cotton and a shortage of cash and credit across the state—along with resentment against railroads spurred the emergence of a new political force, the Greenback Party. Drawing inspiration from the agrarian organization the Grange, that party opposed the retirement of paper money (with its green-backed paper) issued during the Civil War. Greenbackers argued that doing so would intensify the deflation of the Southern economy that was already in progress. Signs of Greenbackism appeared in Texas in 1876. By mid-1877 Greenback clubs were growing rapidly. If the new party joined forces at the polls with the remnants of the Republicans, Democratic dominance could be put at risk.1 Terrell shared the suspicion of non-Texan corporations that the Greenbackers felt, but he had little sympathy for their inflationary answers to the state’s economic problems. More important, any linkage with the Republicans and their black supporters aroused his deepest fears and resentments. During 1877 he sought to emphasize his agreement with aggrieved feelings of his rural constituents while not abandoning his Democratic faith. A major statement of his views came in a long speech at Georgetown in October 1877. He told the audience that he opposed immigration agencies to lure Eastern workers to Texas and that the state should encourage agriculture, keep its young people on the farm, and remain free of the idle mass-

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es who spread social discontent in the North. In another speech two months later to some visitors to the state, Terrell praised Texas, “where the spindle can hum in the field which grows staple.” As a result, his state welcomed capital and had no labor strikes. The appeal to Texas nationalism and to the agrarian roots of his constituents helped Terrell stave off the Greenbackers as the election neared in 1878.2 Getting the Democratic senatorial nomination presented no real difficulty for the incumbent. By late July he told O. M. Roberts, “I have now the endorsement by precinct meetings, of every precinct in this senatorial District.” Travis County Democrats gave their support to Terrell, and on September 21 the party members of the district made Terrell’s nomination official. Meanwhile, the Democrats statewide had selected O. M. Roberts over Governor Richard Hubbard and J. W. Throckmorton, the two leading contenders before the party’s convention. The choice of the “Old Alcalde,” as Roberts was known, satisfied both the pro- and anti-Greenback factions in the party. Terrell then cautioned the elderly nominee: “Do not undertake to make a general canvass during this weather. It would kill a much younger & stronger man than you.”3 Terrell had hoped to campaign for Roberts if he did not face “the combination of Radicals & Greenbackers—-now numerous.” Instead, he found himself in a more demanding race with the Greenback nominee, A. D. Bentley. The challenger went after Terrell for having held the positions of Supreme Court reporter and senator at the same time. To counter Bentley, Terrell delivered a number of lengthy addresses around the district. In a time when most Texans still valued oratory, Terrell could hold an audience for three hours as he discoursed on money, corporations, and race. In his remarks Terrell defended the public school law and contended, using an attorney general’s opinion, that the Supreme Court reporter did not hold a state office that disqualified its occupant from also serving in the Texas Senate.4 Another issue that Bentley raised involved the jury law. Since his chances of victory depended on uniting the dissident farmers alienated from the Democrats with the Republicans and their AfricanAmerican allies, Bentley charged that Terrell’s jury law was aimed at making it harder for black citizens to serve as jurors in criminal cases. Terrell and his defenders cited the school law as evidence that he was not anti-black and then praised the jury measure for having 73

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reduced lawlessness and violence. Six weeks before the vote, Terrell feared that the union of “the greenbackers & the black militia of E. J. Davis” might defeat him.5 In November 1878 Terrell “carried every county” in the district and had an overall majority of about one thousand votes. He outpolled the Democratic candidate for Congress, John Hancock, who lost a hot race to Wash Jones. In analyzing the outcome for incoming governor Roberts, Terrell released some of the outrage he felt against Bentley and the effort to build a Republican-Greenbacker coalition. “My vote was a white man’s vote,” Terrell reported. “I do not think I received 50 negro votes out of 1500—The barefaced villany of the gutter snipe-tramp & negro element on election day beat any thing I ever saw—Please think what can be done to purify the ballot box—On what line shall the effort be made? Unless some flank movement can be made on the mass of ignorant negro voters, we will soon be at Sea in Texas.”6 In the Sixteenth Legislature that met once in regular session and again in a special session during 1879, Terrell pushed forward with the two issues that most concerned him. He became an unsuccessful advocate for a poll tax to reduce the influence of black Texans in elections. Terrell also sought to specify how a new state capitol building would be constructed through the sale of several million acres of the state’s public lands. He pursued these goals during a session in which Governor Roberts insisted on deep cuts in state expenditures. Texas faced chronic indebtedness and a steep decline in revenues because of the ongoing agricultural depression.7 Terrell depicted the poll tax as an effort to clean up the political system from the lingering effects of Reconstruction and to raise much-needed revenue. Under the measure’s provisions, a voter would have to show election judges that thirty days prior to the election he had paid all his poll taxes for the year. Only then could he cast his vote. The Senate approved Terrell’s resolution by a vote of 14 to 9. In the House, a similar proposal was defeated in part because of the perception that the change was aimed not just at blacks but also at the poor. As Representative Ben Williams, himself an African American, put it in debate, the poll tax resolution “don’t strike at any particular class or color. It simply strikes at the man who has nothing.” Terrell was defeated, but he would return to the poll tax.8 On the question of the state capitol building, Terrell introduced a bill to create a Capitol Board, headed by the governor, to supervise 74

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the transfer of public land to a contractor or contractors for the new structure. More than three million acres in the Panhandle were reserved to pay for the capitol. Terrell took an active interest in the process by which the capitol was built both because of the economic impact on Austin and because of his commitment to the state’s future. As was his custom, he sometimes drafted legislation to advance the creation of the structure and then left colleagues to introduce the actual bill. Critics later charged that Terrell had a financial interest in the construction of the building and represented the syndicate that was involved in the process. Terrell vigorously denied these allegations.9 The cost-cutting drive of the Roberts administration put Terrell’s 1876 scheme for the state’s schools under intense pressure. Like many of his fellow Democrats, Terrell concluded that reducing the state’s debt came before support for public education. In debate, Terrell linked the poll tax to the school crisis as a way of keeping Radical Republicans and Greenbackers from bankrupting the state through too much funding for public education. Once again he blamed Northern tramps along with blacks as a source of illicit votes. His colleagues did not support Terrell’s efforts to cut school appropriations, but Governor Roberts vetoed the bill that allocated money for the schools. The governor insisted that only one-sixth of the revenue from selling public lands be allocated to schools. The legislature gave in, and the system of public education in Texas rapidly deteriorated.10 During this legislative session, Terrell also spoke out about an issue that influenced Texas politics throughout the rest of his life. A joint resolution came before the Senate submitting a constitutional amendment to the people on the prohibition of alcohol. Like many conservative Democrats, Terrell at this point was a strong defender of the sale and consumption of liquor and an opponent of government interference with personal liberty. He warned that “the cold water vegetarian” might lead to the decline of civilization. “The Turks were once a powerful and progressive people. Mahomet prohibited the use of wine. After centuries of total abstinence, look at their physical and moral decay. A degraded race, they have been crushed by the rugged Russians, and maintain their foothold on the map of Europe through the jealousy of the rival Christian powers.” This speech, luckily for Terrell, was long forgotten when he became minister to Turkey in 1893.11 75

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Terrell’s other arguments against prohibition were more familiar to opponents of liquor control. The state would lose tax revenues, political alignments would be disrupted, and the Democrats would be divided. The anti-liquor cause reminded Terrell of abolitionism and its allies free love and spiritualism. “I cannot vote to prohibit the use to man of a beverage which the Savior himself once made by his miraculous power, to cheer the heart of a bridegroom and his guests, and against the temperate use of which He never uttered a word during all his pilgrimage on earth.” Terrell remained true to his wet views during the rest of the nineteenth century.12 Since the death of his second wife in 1871 Terrell had not cut much of a figure in the realms of Austin society, where parties took place and romantic relationships flourished. The newspaper recorded his frequent political speeches, his addresses to local literary societies, and even his occasional visits to church. In 1877 Terrell wrote comments in his letterbook when he attended a public lecture by Theodore Tilton, the New York editor of The Independent whose wife had accused the clergyman Henry Ward Beecher of sexual advances. Tilton came, Terrell concluded, “with his own infamy upon him to preach morality & make money.” Hearing his remarks did not erase the skepticism that the Texan felt. On the personal side, if Terrell had any romantic interests in Austin women during the 1870s, there is no trace in his papers that have been preserved.13 By mid-1880, Terrell was approaching his fifty-third birthday with a successful law practice and a flourishing political career. His two daughters from his first marriage, Constance and Lilla, were grown and married; his son Howard from his second marriage was nearing adolescence. Although Terrell had ambitions for the United States Senate in the mid-1880s, he felt lonely and his life seemed empty without a female presence. Marrying a woman who was in her early twenties was unlikely, given Terrell’s age, but a slightly older single female might offer him better prospects.14 Terrell had known former governor E. M. Pease since the 1850s, and the two men were friendly even though Pease had become a Republican after the Civil War. His daughter, Julia Pease, was twenty-seven in 1880 and still unmarried. Interested in art and cultural issues, Julia told her mother in July 1879: “Don’t be alarmed at any questions regarding matrimony—I have no serious intention of saying the all-important ‘yes’ to any one at present.” Terrell did not know her feelings, of course, and in the early summer of 1880 he 76

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began to press his suit with “Miss Julia,” whom he had known socially for some years.15 He did so mostly by letters, as Julia and her family spent the summer in New England to escape the Austin heat. Terrell promised to keep her informed about “the news of the day” in Texas. He provided little gossip to her, but in a series of missives shared with her his feelings about his life and his own future. “The ways of its people, grouped in what we call society are not to my liking, and I don’t think that either my ways or myself ever suited it,” he told her in July 1880. In one of their conversations, Terrell had asked her whether she was engaged, and when she told him she was not, he expressed “the wish to know you better.” In his letter he told her that “unuttered thoughts and shadowy hopes, vain perchance, and delusions, whose expression would only excite astonishment, press for utterance.”16 When Terrell did not receive an answer to his letter within two and a half weeks, he started another missive in which he attributed any surprise or offense “to a nature somewhat insecure” that was “not much given to epistolary correspondence.” If she was offended, she should burn his letter and he would remain someone who “has lived so long a stranger to sympathy and love.” Two days later, he received Julia’s answer and once more returned to his ardent pursuit. He told her that he felt compelled to say “that my regard for you was more than mere friendship or admiration.” Terrell assured her that he was not “engrossed in politics,” would leave the Senate once the state capitol building was under way, and hoped “to realize the dream of my early youth and find leisure for literary employment.”17 In her next letter, Julia Pease did express surprise at Terrell’s romantic interest in her because she was “neither handsome nor brilliant.” Although Terrell tried to assure her that was not the case and once again told her “I love you,” Julia Pease apparently ignored these pledges in her response. As a result, Terrell’s suit ebbed away into friendly news of Austin and its people. In the course of one letter, he mentioned how he and a mutual friend might have guided her to New York to look at the discoveries that Heinrich Schliemann had derived “from the ashes of Troy.” Terrell’s fascination with the Near East foreshadowed his years in Turkey in the mid-1890s, when he would be friendly with Schliemann’s rival Frank Calvert.18 By mid-November 1880, Terrell told Julia Pease that because of her rejection letter he had “regained to a degree” what he called 77

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“that calm philosophy which sometimes enables us to smile at our misfortunes.” In December 1880, despite some personal misunderstandings arising from Austin gossip about their interrupted courtship, their platonic friendship had resumed, and they once again saw each other socially, suitably chaperoned, into the early part of 1881.19 Meanwhile, the political arena still claimed Terrell’s attention. He had supported the Democratic presidential candidacy of Winfield Scott Hancock in 1880 and was correspondingly disappointed at the triumph of James A. Garfield and the Republicans. “The election would seem to establish,” he told Julia Pease, “that this is a Nation, rather than a union of states, but the history of our race is not encouraging for the long continuance of any powerful Nation as a republic.” If the Republicans resumed Reconstruction, he planned to move west to “the Pacific Slope, or go north of the Ohio River,” presumably to cooler climes.20 In the short run, Terrell faced the opening of the Seventeenth Legislature when it convened in its regular session on January 11, 1881. The meeting proved to be a high point in Terrell’s lawmaking career because of his key role in the creation of the University of Texas. He also gained public prominence because of his positions against prohibiting alcohol and for employing female clerks in the state government. As before, he served as chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Public Buildings and Grounds Committee. Terrell renewed his efforts for a poll tax, but his colleagues stymied his initiative as they had in the past.21 Growing popular sentiment for restrictions on liquor traffic led to proposals to submit a constitutional amendment for prohibition to the voters in 1881. In the Senate debate, Terrell once again stood as the most articulate advocate of the wet position. “I am opposed to all sumptuary laws of any character,” he told the Senate. “When governments begin to prohibit to man the right to determine what he shall eat, drink, or wear, it will end, if not checked, by its invasion of domestic life, and prescribing the forms of prayer.” Terrell’s remarks in the Senate evoked much press comment, and his identification with the anti-prohibition cause affected his U.S. Senate hopes in 1886–1887.22 Despite his general social conservatism at this time, Terrell was more receptive to equal treatment for white women in his state. A campaign to employ female clerks in the all-male state capitol pro78

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duced a debate over gender that found the Austin lawmaker in the camp of expanded opportunity for women. As the father of two adult daughters, he had developed more awareness of the restrictions on women at this time. Thus, Terrell called the measure “a requirement that the weak and helpless of our race should have equal opportunities for laboring for our State.” He noted that “the Southern girl is no longer fanned by her slave, but like that slave must labor for her bread with no vantage ground but that which her intellect and education affords.” Despite adoption by the Senate, the proposal failed in the House.23 Terrell’s identification with women’s rights proved more decisive in the debates over the creation of the University of Texas. While there are a number of rivals for the credit of authoring the bill to establish the university, no dispute exists that Alexander W. Terrell was the most persistent and effective proponent of coeducation during the legislative deliberations in the winter of 1881. Had Terrell not exerted his influence, it is clear that the University of Texas would have been an all-male institution during its formative years. Terrell was equally important in achieving a substantial land grant for the new institution. On the question of the location of the medical school, he may have been the key player in placing that branch of the University of Texas not in Austin but in Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico.24 Sentiment to establish a state university in Austin had been building since the 1875 Constitutional Convention had asked for the founding of “a university of the first class” in the capital city to be called “The University of Texas.” Texas A&M, which had been authorized in 1871 and began operation in 1876, was to be a branch of the proposed university. The Constitution also allocated a land grant to fund the new institution. After his election in 1878, Governor Roberts pressed for the lawmakers to set up the university, and he enlisted the support of the Texas State Teachers Association to rally public opinion. Following his reelection in 1880, Roberts stepped up the drive for the university in the 1881 legislature.25 Almost from the moment that the university was established in March 1881, a number of legislators claimed credit for writing the law. Terrell did not draft the original bill, but in 1884 he told his brother Joseph that he had in the course of the legislative process about the university written “every syllable that either established or endowed it.” Along with O. H. Cooper, Joseph C. Hutcheson, and 79

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R. W. Wynne, Terrell played a major part in shaping the overall legislation. By the time of his death, some Texans were calling Terrell “the father” of the University of Texas.26 Where Terrell’s participation was central was on the issue of coeducation. Although Governor Roberts had called for the new university to be “open for females, as well as males,” most of the other lawmakers envisioned an all-male institution along the lines of the Texas A&M student body. While coeducation existed at some state-supported colleges and universities in the North and Midwest, the expectation was that Texas would opt for male students only.27 Terrell’s reasons for his commitment to women at the University of Texas varied over the years. In 1911, before an audience of university alumni, he recalled being “deeply concerned with the question of co-education” and impressed with its success at his alma mater, the University of Missouri, since women were admitted in 1871. Austin gossip later said that Terrell was trying to impress the woman who later became his third wife. Since Anna Jones was still married to another man in 1881, that explanation seems unlikely. Terrell could as well have been trying to show Julia Pease his interest in the role of women. The most credible explanation is that as the father of two adult daughters, Terrell saw coeducation for white women as a desirable social goal.28 The university bill came before the Senate on February 11–12, 1881, and Terrell wrote the amendment specifying that the university would be open “to male and female on equal terms.” He let another senator introduce the amendment. In the House of Representatives, after intensive negotiations, the members agreed to support the admission of women in return for language vesting power not in a university president but in a chairman of the faculty. That was a trade-off that Terrell was glad to make.29 In one feature of the university bill Terrell proved unsuccessful. Although the main university was to be located in Austin, some legislators and their constituents wanted the medical department to be placed elsewhere in the state. During the Senate’s deliberations, Terrell was one of six members who opposed an amendment to give voters the right to determine whether the medical branch could be placed away from Austin. After the Senate voted to hold such an election, the House concurred. An election about the location of the university and the medical branch was scheduled for September 3, 1881.30 80

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Following the formal adoption of the University of Texas bill on March 30, 1881, Governor Roberts submitted his first set of appointments to the new Board of Regents. Among them was former governor E. M. Pease, whose selection came at Terrell’s suggestion. He promised to “see to its confirmation” and hoped that “no considerations growing out of party asperity in the past” would persuade Pease “to hesitate about accepting it.” Naming Julia’s father to the board would be a nice touch for Terrell to accomplish, but he soon found the promise “more than I could perform.” If his name was submitted, Pease would be defeated by unhappy Democratic senators still chafing about the former governor’s role in Reconstruction and his Republican allegiance. A hasty withdrawal took place, and Roberts sent in another candidate. “It is mortifying for me to be compelled to write this,” Terrell told Pease, “but the race of damned fools is not yet extinct.”31 The enactment of the university bill had been a major success for Terrell. He could look back with pride on the measure itself, the inclusion of coeducation, and the arrangements that gave the Board of Regents operating control over the university and its funding. Terrell intended to see in the next session of the legislature that he made greater provisions for funding the university through increased land grants. The first task that he and the other friends of the university faced was winning the election to place the university in Austin and to keep the medical department there as well. To achieve that result, Terrell joined with other prominent Austinites on April 6, 1881, to create an executive committee of thirteen to manage the canvass. In May, Terrell was named with Alexander P. Wooldridge and Walter Tips to handle publicity for the pro-Austin forces. A few days later, on May 11, the three men traveled to Houston for the annual convention of the Texas Press Association. To their surprise, Terrell’s colleagues learned that he was telling people that Austin would accept having the medical branch placed elsewhere as long as the capital city got the main university. “Yes, it would be selfish for Austin to want the whole thing,” Terrell said. He believed that this concession would help voters in Houston and Galveston decide to select Austin as the site for the main branch, whatever their opinion about the medical school. The election results bore out his political judgment.32 When word reached Austin of Terrell’s stance, however, his sug81

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gestion “proved to be exceedingly unpopular with the townspeople.” Terrell bowed out of the campaign, but the influence of his Houston comments lingered. Two weeks before the voting, Wooldridge assured a “mass meeting” in Austin that “Judge Terrell’s preference for locating the medical department on the coast was merely a personal predilection on his part.” The result of the vote did place the university in Austin and the medical branch in Galveston. Despite being right politically, Terrell suffered a temporary setback with his constituents. More important, among Austin’s political elite doubts grew about his character that would injure his chances in the United States Senate race four years later.33 An unexpected event enabled Terrell to offset any loss he might have encountered with his local supporters. President James A. Garfield, who had been shot on July 2, 1881, died on September 19. A week later the citizens of Austin held a memorial service for the slain chief executive at which Terrell was the first speaker. Mindful of lingering bitterness about the Civil War, he mourned the death of the president of all the American people and hit a note of sectional reconciliation. In his concluding passage, he mentioned a cemetery he had seen in Madison, Wisconsin, where the graves of Confederate prisoners who had died in a nearby military prison during the war received the same “tender care” from the women of the town as the slaves of their Northern counterparts. The speech attracted wide praise for its tone and sentiment.34 As the end of Terrell’s second Senate term approached in 1882, he began to consider his political options. A race for the national House of Representatives was one possibility, but much would depend on how the district was set up when the legislature reapportioned the state at the next legislative session. Another term in the Texas Senate could leave Terrell well positioned when the term of United States Senator Samuel Bell Maxey ended in 1886. With a secure base in Central Texas, Terrell could capitalize on his anti-corporation views to gain support in North and East Texas.35 Fate gave him an opportunity to press his legislative program in 1882. On November 9, 1881, the Texas Capitol Building went up in flames. To construct another headquarters for the state government, Governor Roberts summoned the legislature into a special session on April 6, 1882. The lawmakers were asked to appropriate money for a new capitol and to redistrict the five new congressional seats

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growing out of the state’s population expansion reflected in the 1880 Census.36 During the month that the legislature spent in Austin, Terrell devoted much of his time trying to pass a bill allocating the new University of Texas a land grant of two million acres. The Austin senator delivered a lengthy address on behalf of the measure on April 19, 1882. “Hewers of wood and drawers of water for others we must remain,” Terrell said, “unless advanced education shall relieve us.” Terrell saw the bill to passage in the Senate, but the shortness of time and opposition in the House caused the legislation’s death.37 The university land bill did have one adverse result for Terrell that wounded him politically some years later. Terrell concluded that the man responsible for the bill’s defeat in the House was his Senate colleague Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross of Waco. Terrell expressed his bitterness at what he believed Ross had done to block the measure and said, “My remarks were repeated to him by a tale bearer.” The two men quarreled and had stopped speaking to each other when Ross was elected governor in 1886. Although Terrell later conceded that he might have been wrong about Ross’s actions, he had made a bitter foe who would exact his revenge in 1892.38 Terrell strongly defended the interests of Austin in the apportionment battle that left San Antonio and the capital city in the same congressional district. Nonetheless, his efforts failed. The new arrangement meant that an Austin candidate for the House seat would have problems getting the Democratic nomination against the choice of more populous Bexar County. Terrell also endorsed a bill to establish a board of railroad commissioners to oversee the state’s burgeoning rail lines, but it too failed to pass. Despite these setbacks, when the session ended in early May, the Statesman praised Terrell’s “singular ability in passing through the senate all the bills to which he devoted himself.”39 If Terrell had any ambitions for a congressional seat, he renounced them in a public letter in early June and indicated that he would accept another senatorial term. Before he turned to the campaign, personal tragedy once again beset Terrell. His oldest daughter, Constance, had married Abner Cook Jr., the son of the noted Austin architect, in 1867, when she was seventeen. The couple had five children. In July 1882, Constance became ill and died within a week. Terrell was at her bedside with the rest of the family when

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death came. Her funeral procession “was one of the longest ever seen in Austin.” Of Terrell’s eight children, only his son Arthur and his daughter Lilla from his first marriage and his son Howard from his second remained. Howard was a difficult son, and his problems would worsen as the years passed.40 The road to a third senatorial term was not as smooth as it had been for Terrell in the past. He faced one challenger for the nomination in Barclay Martin of Williamson County. Martin charged that Terrell had supported a poll tax and was not a sincere advocate of railroad regulation. In a stinging response, Terrell said that his opponent “fishes like a guttersnipe in the garbage for votes.” Since Martin had claimed that the endowment of the University of Texas was already large enough, Terrell responded that Martin knew as much about the issue as “a blind sow does about the ten commandments.”41 During the summer, Terrell attended the Democratic state convention and supported the candidacy of “Oxcart John” Ireland, even though he was not friendly with the party’s gubernatorial nominee. A colorless campaigner, Ireland faced a strong Independent opponent in George Washington Jones, Terrell’s old friend and colleague. Enough discontent remained about the sluggish Texas economy to give Jones a chance if he could unite the disaffected farmers and the remnants of the Republican Party, led by Edmund J. Davis.42 Terrell’s tenure in the Senate had aroused some grievances that briefly surfaced when the Travis County convention met on August 19. A motion to instruct the delegates to vote for Terrell at the district convention was proposed. Joseph Stewart, a local Democrat, spoke against the idea. He disagreed with Terrell’s votes on schools and prohibition and added that “his private character fails to meet my approbation.” The convention responded angrily to these attacks on Terrell. After the instructions for Terrell were made, Stewart withdrew from the delegation, and his motion calling for rotation in office was defeated.43 The reasons for Stewart’s dissent are not clear, but his actions reflected the undercurrent of suspicion about Terrell’s integrity and motives that followed him in Texas politics. No specific evidence remains of what in Terrell’s “private character” alienated Stewart. But there would be other times when Terrell’s integrity and character would be questioned. Perhaps Stewart was making an oblique reference to Terrell’s record in the Civil War.44 In any event, when the district convention met on August 31, 84

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Barclay Martin withdrew as a candidate and Terrell easily defeated another token challenger from Williamson County. To run against Terrell the Independents selected Colonel Bingham Trigg, a local lawyer and former Travis County attorney under the Republicans. Trigg raised the issue of whether Terrell was working for the Capitol Syndicate that was financing and building the new official structure. Terrell published an exchange of letters showing that he had done a minor legal service for the firm without receiving any pay for his time.45 E. J. Davis was running as the Independent candidate for Congress, and he and Terrell debated several times during the fall. During his main speech Terrell assailed Davis for his reliance on black voters and stated that the Democrats had actually done more for that group of citizens. “Education is now doing its work, and the black man, no longer led to the polls by his Republican master, is thinking for himself.” While black Texans could not expect admission to the University of Texas, Terrell supported “a university for colored youths.” With a substantial number of African American voters in the district, Terrell muted his suspicion of their qualifications to vote and their right to be in politics. In his appearances against Trigg and Davis, Terrell was declared the winner in the Democratic newspapers. The result of the election gave Terrell a decisive victory for a third senatorial term. Ireland defeated Jones for governor, though the Independent candidate got a substantial vote, and Davis lost his congressional race against John Hancock.46 When the legislature convened in January 1883, Terrell again chaired the Judiciary Committee. He supported Richard Coke for reelection to the United States Senate. Because of reapportionment, Terrell had to draw lots for his term. He picked a two-year term and by now had decided that he would aim at a U.S. Senate seat in 1886 rather than continue in the Texas Senate.47 In the new legislature Terrell sought to pass his poll tax amendment. The measure received an unfavorable report from the committee on constitutional amendments. Terrell made his reply in a speech on February 13, 1883. He did not mention black voters, but his language needed no translation for white Texans. “Though liberty requires elections,” he said, “yet when they are not controlled by intelligence and patriotism they become the most terrible enemy.” The minority report failed, and the poll tax as a means of restricting black voters languished for two decades.48 85

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Terrell had success with another of his legislative priorities. His bill to allocate one million more acres of land to the University of Texas passed with only three negative votes. He made sure as well that the university grant received equal treatment with earlier land grants to veterans of the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War. The land grant bill then passed the House and became law. Terrell was one of the prominent citizens of Austin who helped the university open its doors in the fall of 1883. At the same time, he opposed a constitutional amendment directing more tax revenues to the public schools.49 At the outset of the session Terrell introduced a constitutional amendment to create a railroad commission but the proposal died after an adverse committee report was issued. This action added to Terrell’s growing reputation as an enemy of corporate power. The Austin senator spoke out against a law to lease convicts to private contractors who would in turn construct public buildings such as the new capitol and the insane asylum in Austin. While Terrell supported leasing prisoners to farmers, he opposed doing it for private businesses that would otherwise employ free laborers. “When you make commerce of a man that a State may reap profit, the criminal curses in his heart your barbarity, and the whole object of law is defeated.” The contract did not become law.50 One bill that Terrell opposed would have allowed husbands and wives to be witnesses in their divorce cases. The Judiciary Committee came out against the change in state law, and Terrell’s comments were widely noted. “We do not believe that modern innovations on the law of divorce in many states tend to the improvement of the marriage relation,” he contended. Furthermore, the new law would “destroy that unlimited confidence without which there would be no happiness in married life.” Terrell feared that couples would not marry “with that deliberation and judgment which a partnership for life should inspire.” The bill did not pass.51 During the winter of 1883, Terrell’s public thoughts on marriage had a private dimension. He was moving toward his third marriage with a woman he had known for some years. Anna H. Holliday was a native of Mississippi who had married Thomas J. H. Anderson and raised three daughters and a son on her husband’s plantation outside of Hearne in Robertson County. Terrell probably met her in the late 1860s or early 1870s. After her first husband’s death, she married the Confederate veteran and Texas Ranger John B. Jones in 1876. He 86

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died in 1881. Interested in gardening, devoutly religious, and well connected in Austin society, Anna Jones was about ten years younger than Terrell and renowned as one of the city’s most attractive women.52 They were married in a small private ceremony on April 25, 1883. His sister-in-law told Terrell’s mother that the union was “too good to believe till we knew it was really true.” Terrell deserved “to have some of the happiness of this world, as his has been a sad checkered life. She is so good, so able, and so true a woman that she can be but a suitable companion for him.” The marriage lasted, despite occasional tensions, until Anna Terrell’s death in 1908.53 One more brief special session of the Senate occurred during Terrell’s term in January 1884. On the open range of the state, the use of barbed wire for fencing had led in 1883 to a spate of fencecutting and sporadic violence against large cattle companies. Deaths in the dispute raised public alarm about the state’s tolerance for lawlessness. Governor Ireland, beset by those who favored and opposed a free range and free grass, called the lawmakers to Austin to grapple with the issue. Terrell did not join those farmers and settlers in West Texas who wanted the right to graze and water their cattle anywhere they pleased. He introduced a complex bill to regulate legal relationships on the range and to create a system of “commissioners of pasturage” to enforce the law. These men would impose penalties for the crime of cutting and burning fences and burning grass.54 Terrell defended his approach in a major speech on January 21, 1884, on behalf of his stock regulation bill. In it he confronted the problem that dominated his Senate campaign for the next two years. He wanted to tap into the political discontent against railroads, land corporations, and Eastern investors, but at the same time he needed to affirm his standing as a defender of property rights, limited government, and law and order. His speech warned that “Communism, rank and dangerous, is abroad among the people” in the free grass campaign that put private property in jeopardy. Accordingly, he said, law breakers must be punished.55 At the same time, he assailed private corporations for grazing cattle on Texas school lands without paying leases to the state. His bill looked to punish lawbreakers who cut fences and also the cattle companies that fenced the range illegally. The Austin senator wanted to preserve Texas as an agrarian community without large cities and immigrants from the cities of the North. He told his colleagues, 87

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“The man does not breathe who can assert that he ever heard me utter one word in favor of the policy of establishing land corporations.” Despite Terrell’s eloquence, the complex and unwieldy bill failed, and the legislature enacted other measures to curb illegal fencing and grazing.56 With the adjournment of the special session, Terrell’s eight years in the Texas Senate ended. His accomplishments had been significant. He created the basic educational framework for the state, wrote the law to regulate juries, and was the major drafter of the bill establishing the University of Texas. The construction of the Texas Capitol grew out of a law that he introduced. In the area of elections, his continuing attempt to institute a poll tax had failed, but he remained committed to a restricted franchise. His reformist impulse for white Texans expanded opportunity and produced constructive results; his belief that black Texans should not be part of state politics made him one of the leading exponents of white supremacy. During his tenure as a senator, Terrell had become more disillusioned with corporate power in the state, and he was widely regarded as the most visible opponent of that interest group in the legislature. Now he hoped to use that reputation as a stepping-stone to national office. He planned to make a public campaign to succeed Senator S. B. Maxey in 1887, and during the rest of 1884 he put his affairs in order so that he could launch that unprecedented canvass in 1885–1886. In so doing, Terrell would once again shape the agenda of Texas politics in the Gilded Age.

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Alexander W. Terrell at age thirty.

Terrell and other Confederate exiles in Mexico, 1865. L to R: Cadmus Wilcox, John B. Magruder, Sterling Price, Alexander Watkins Terrell, Thomas C. Hindman. Courtesy of the Center for American History.

The Senate passed Terrell’s bill creating the University of Texas during this session. Terrell is in the left column, third from the bottom. Courtesy of the Center for American History.

Former governor Francis R. Lubbock (left) stands next to Terrell. John H. Reagan sits next to the portly patron of Texas progressivism, James S. Hogg. Courtesy of the Center for American History.

During Terrell’s service in Constantinople, he had only a small staff. His doorkeeper posed for a formal photograph that reflects the exotica of the Middle East that drew Terrell to the Turkish post. Courtesy of the Center for American History.

There were few informal photographs of the sultan. This posed image, taken during Abdulhamid’s youth, appeared on numerous postcards and popular memorabilia throughout the Ottoman Empire. Courtesy of the Center for American History.

A. A. Garagulio was Terrell’s dragoman, a combination of aide, interpreter, and sounding board for the American diplomat in Constantinople. Courtesy of the Center for American History.

Mary P. Eddy was a Christian missionary and physician. Terrell obtained permission from the sultan for her to practice in the empire. Courtesy of the Center for American History.

The mummy that Terrell brought back to Texas is housed at Southern Methodist University. Courtesy of Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University.

Alexander Terrell, John J. Terrell, and Joseph C. Terrell, photographed in the early 1900s. Courtesy of the Center for American History.

Howard Terrell, the son whose gambling and philandering made him a continuing trial to the father. Courtesy of the Center for American History.

Terrell and granddaughter Mary Terrell in a photograph taken around 1912. Courtesy of the Center for American History.

Terrell and philanthropist George W. Brackenridge in San Antonio in early 1912. Courtesy of the Center for American History.

As an important leader for Texas, Terrell was buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. However, as was true of so much of Terrell’s career, even that honor was flawed—the birthdate on his headstone is incorrect. Courtesy of the Texas State Cemetery Photo Archives, Austin, Texas.

Chapter Six The Foe of Railroads

I

n the winter of 1884, Alexander W. Terrell wrote his brother Joe in Fort Worth, “State politics is a dirty business. If ever I start again it will be in Washington City.” Colleagues in the Texas Senate had told him of their support for a United States Senate bid, but he added, “That is a long way off & I don’t suffer myself to think of it.” In fact, the next U.S. Senate election was three years away. The incumbent, Samuel Bell Maxey, would be up for a third term. A somewhat colorless figure, Maxey was likely to face strong opposition in the 1887 legislature, and it would not be easy for Terrell, with only Central Texas as a secure base, to prevail in a statewide contest. In mid-1884, the issue of his running for Congress again arose, but Terrell quashed the talk with a letter to the Statesman denying that he was a candidate. “I do not desire the nomination, and wish my friends to look in some other direction.”1 While deliberating about his political future, Terrell dealt with other concerns during the first half of 1884. He and William Walton, an Austin attorney, argued “a big land suit” in nearby Georgetown. Terrell had “a silver water pitcher” stolen from his home. “The negro Simpson,” in the words of the Statesman, was convicted of the crime and received seven years in the state penitentiary. Finally, a prospective historian of the state, Frank W. Johnson, died and left instructions in his will for a history of Texas to be published. As one of the four named executors, Terrell was designated as the likely author and took charge of Johnson’s research materials.2 In mid-June, the University of Texas held its first commencement exercises, at which Terrell was one of the featured speakers. His lengthy oration reviewed the history of education from antiquity. In

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the course of his remarks, he injected some contemporary comments. “The wild thrust for money-getting is the dominating passion of the age everywhere, and humiliating as the truth is, we seem to be increasing wealth more rapidly than we progress in true refinement and civilization.”3 During the speech Terrell also twitted “the few carping placehunters who periodically ride to the halls of legislation on the necks of little children.” These men promised “the paradise of elementary education for mediocrity” and sneered “at the great work of university education by the State for those, whether many or few, whom God hath marked for leadership.” The final speaker was Governor John Ireland. Long an opponent of “Oxcart John,” Terrell knew that the governor was also thinking of becoming a candidate for Maxey’s seat. Ireland hit back at Terrell. “A good deal has been said about an antagonism between the free schools and the University. I do not think there is any and should not be. The man who attempts to array one against the other is a friend of neither.” The Statesman reported that “Judge Terrell was frequently applauded during his eloquent and masterly address,” but the Texas papers also noted the encounter between Terrell and the governor.4 Terrell served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention that nominated Grover Cleveland for president. The rest of the summer he spent in Wisconsin and Virginia preparing a volume of Texas Supreme Court reports and visiting his family. He celebrated with other Texas Democrats the victory of Cleveland over James G. Blaine in 1884. He addressed a happy crowd in Austin when the results of the close election showed Democratic success. “The bright sun of democracy,” he said, would “sweep the storm-clouds of misrule away,” and the nation would have “a government of equal rights to all, and exclusive privileges to none.”5 As the Senate race loomed, Terrell made another sally at Governor Ireland when the cornerstone of the new capitol building was laid on March 2, 1885. The governor was the featured speaker, but Terrell and Oran Roberts were not among the distinguished guests. In a story that appeared a few days after the ceremony, Terrell was said to have composed a poem in Latin, had it set on a copper plate, and then placed the souvenir in the cornerstone along with the gold pen that Terrell had used to sign the laws creating the new building. The first verse of the poem read:

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When Roberts governed Texas well The land in peace was tilled; This pen then wrote the laws that tell The builders how to build; It ordered all these spacious halls And, without taxing, built these walls. Three more verses completed the poem. Terrell released the poem to the editors of the Statesman, and Austinites enjoyed the joke at the governor’s expense. In fact, the objects were not placed in the cornerstone, but Terrell had made his polemical point. Whether it served Terrell’s long-term interest to irritate his potential rival was at least questionable. In a contest in the legislature to elect a senator in 1887, Terrell might need the second-choice votes of Ireland’s partisans.6 In running for the U.S. Senate, the major problem that Terrell confronted was what a modern political consultant would call “name recognition.” Despite his lengthy career in state politics, the Austin hopeful was not well known outside of Central Texas. He needed to make himself more familiar to Democrats in North and East Texas. From that assumption followed another decision. He could not hope to receive the votes of the legislators who would elect a senator in January 1887 unless he could demonstrate popular enthusiasm for his candidacy. Terrell decided that he would have to launch a public campaign for the Senate and conduct an extensive speaking tour of the state in mid-1886. Such an approach had not been seen in Texas Democratic politics.7 In 1885, however, Terrell had to lay the groundwork for his campaign. An invitation to deliver an address at the University of Missouri on June 1 provided Terrell with an ideal setting to state his views on corporate power and the dangers that it posed for the nation. The audience would be a friendly one, the Literary Societies of the University. Terrell’s theme was “Labor and Corporations: A Great Social and Political Problem,” and he spoke for several hours on these controversial issues.8 While he conceded the beneficial economic effects that corporations provided, he arraigned them for breaking down agricultural civilization, encouraging the growth of cities, and corrupting politics. Private corporations were, he said, “inimical to civil liberty,

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which is so largely dependent on the virtue of man, because they demoralize from head to foot those who embark in them, and because they educate and indoctrinate their corporators with their heartless principles of action.” These comments reflected Terrell’s longstanding suspicion of these economic institutions and their base in the state’s cities.9 The criticism that Terrell offered of corporations did not lead him to radical conclusions. He looked to an aroused public sentiment, with the aid of “a free press” that would insist that the “great carrying corporations are subjected to a control which will make them understand that a chartered right to the exclusive use of a road implies some rights in the people, for whose convenience it was built, and will squeeze the water out of the stocks, to which human labor now pays tribute.” To galvanize the public to support such policies, Terrell praised higher education but did not lay out any specific answers such as a railroad commission or other regulatory measures.10 Throughout his remarks, Terrell was careful to separate his ideas from the doctrines of the Knights of Labor and attempts to organize workers through boycotts and strikes. He knew that his political enemies would accuse him of radicalism, so he warned that “men have a right to organize and refuse to perform labor for inadequate prices; but they have no legal or moral right to intimidate others who are content.” Whether such disclaimers would disarm potential critics remained to be seen. After the speech was delivered, Terrell and his family spent the summer out of the Texas heat and did not return to Austin until October.11 The Missouri speech attracted a good deal of attention in Texas, and Terrell’s name became more widely recognized. Four newspapers published his speech in full, and excerpts appeared around the state. The ever-loyal Statesman said that the speech “contains arguments that may be flatly denied, but they can never be successfully refuted.” The Galveston News, the voice of conservative Democrats, devoted several editorials to the address and contended that the true answer for the evils he mentioned did not lie “in struggling to restore the impossible from the past and contemplating the inevitable of the present and future in the spirit of wholesale and utter destruction.” Despite these adverse comments, the Lampasas Eagle seemed to be correct when it observed that “Judge Terrell’s address has set the people of Texas to thinking.”12 104

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By the time Terrell got back to Austin in October 1885, his improving Senate chances attracted attention from conservatives fearful of his anti-railroad views. He started his campaign with a statement to a Galveston Daily News reporter in late January in which he attacked Senator Maxey’s record on patronage issues and closeness to corporations. An East Texas newspaper wrote that Terrell’s “opposition to rings and jobs will wake up the natives and put to flight the small politicians with whom he is very unpopular.” Terrell’s problem as a candidate, according to the editor of the Lockhart Register, was he was “the brainiest man in the State, but the people, somehow, have not unlimited confidence in him.”13 The formal opening of Terrell’s Senate run came on April 8, 1886. Before an appreciative crowd, he charged that “few men see the extent of uncontrolled corporate power or the danger it breeds. This day in Texas it appropriates your school lands and boldly defies your constitution with its methods, and there are no laws of the state to prevent.” To meet the evils of the railroad, the legislature should “create a commission carefully selected so as to be safe against the influence of the powers they are designed to control.” After careful study, the commissioners should “fix a rate of freight charges that would yield, after paying expenses and repairs, a liberal interest on the actual value of the road.” Railroads should not be able to charge above a maximum rate that the commission established.14 Terrell’s announcement came in the shadow of a regional railroad strike that the Knights of Labor had called against the Texas and Pacific and other railroads that financier Jay Gould controlled. The Knights were an organization that sought to enlist industrial workers to their ranks, and their militancy frightened many middle-class Texans. While there was some popular support for the strike, the railroads used the courts and strikebreakers to end the Great Southwestern Strike in a bitter defeat for the Knights. The Haymarket Riot in Chicago on May 1, 1886, in which several policemen were killed, added to the national animus against labor radicalism. Terrell was far from radical in his reform ideas, but that did not inoculate him from charges that his anti-railroad sympathies had a taint of communism and socialism.15 Conservative Democrats assailed Terrell and other anti-railroad party members for their alleged sympathies with lawlessness. Terrell sought to counter these charges when he said, “If there ever was a time when the wage workers of America should be calm, patriotic, 105

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and patient it is now.” He added that “Texas has no soil on which the wild doctrines of the commune can take root.” Terrell was referring to the Paris Commune of 1871, which symbolized for many Americans the inherent dangers of class conflict. Despite these assurances, Terrell’s candidacy suffered in the wake of the strike and its attendant tensions.16 Terrell’s decision to make an active campaign also drew criticism from the supporters of Senator Maxey and Governor Ireland for his lack of respect for political customs. The Statesman responded that “Judge Terrell does not have his retainers and the intriguing politicians and whippers,” and he did “nothing through hidden channels, which course along dark ways.” His opponents were not so fastidious. Whispering campaigns began again about his Civil War record, his stay in Mexico, his legal work for the Galveston Wharf and Cotton Press Company, and his alleged hidden desire to run for governor. The Civil War slurs hit Terrell at his most vulnerable point. Despite these attacks, the grand state lecturer of the State Alliance of Texas, George W. Belcher, said in early June, “The farmers are tooth and toe-nail for Terrell.”17 The first test of Terrell’s strength came in June. Travis County Democrats chose delegates to the state convention in August and selected legislative candidates for the fall. Terrell was expected to do well in this contest. If Terrell’s enemies could defeat him on his home ground, his chances in the state legislature for the U.S. Senate would evaporate. The contest turned on whether the pro-Terrell forces would have the votes to instruct legislative aspirants to vote for their man in January. Newspapers reported that Governor Ireland, operatives of the railroads, and friends of a San Antonio banker named J. T. Brackenridge were making a coordinated effort to undermine Terrell. John Hancock was used as an alternative to Terrell to draw off his appeal among the anti-railroad wing of the party. None of it worked. When the precinct results came in on June 5, 1886, they proved a complete triumph for Terrell’s campaign. The Houston Post called the outcome “no small victory for that distinguished gentleman.”18 Through June and into July 1886, Terrell took his campaign to the people. At Houston on July 1, he said, “The great question of the hour is how we can rescue the rights of the people from the despotism of monopolies.” Two days later twenty members of an “antimonopoly convention” met at Waco and endorsed Terrell for the 106

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Senate. In a speech on July 6, he said that Governor Ireland “has been backing and falling from the calls of duty, like a mule from a hot branding iron, while the usurpers have remained happy on millions of acres of school lands unleased.” As for Senator Maxey, Terrell charged that he had been friendly to railroads and aided them with votes for lavish land grants. There was no evidence, Terrell said, that the incumbent ever “had any special trouble with the powers of monopoly.”19 At Waco on July 10, Terrell proclaimed that he opposed subsidies, tariffs, and “undeserved pensions” as “the speckled progeny of the general welfare clause” of the Constitution: “Agriculture must assert and enforce its right to exchange the products of distant communities over our iron highways without being oppressed.” These comments caused a Republican newspaper in San Antonio to conclude that Terrell was “making the dry bones of the ring ridden Democracy of Texas rattle like dried peas in a gourd, as he brings the hammer of his facts and the sledge of his logic, with no uncertain hand, upon the frail foundation of their dwelling place.”20 One stop on Terrell’s campaign swing brought back memories of his years as a district judge. While in Bastrop to visit one of his supporters, state Representative Hiram Garwood, Terrell saw “a tall, powerful Negro” enter the lawmaker’s office. Taking Terrell by the hand, the man said: “Judge Terrell, don’t you know me? Don’t you remember how you saved a negro’s life in slave times, when negros had few friends?” It was Cuff, whose innocence Terrell had established in 1857. Now a prosperous farmer in Bastrop County, Cuff promised that he would turn out “the vote of every colored man in this county.” He intended “to see them all and make them vote” for Garwood “because he is your friend.” Cuff was as good as his word, and Garwood was returned with a large majority to vote for Terrell in the Senate race.21 Another echo from Terrell’s past proved less supportive. In midsummer, former congressman and Unionist John Hancock announced his candidacy for the Senate. Just as in the Travis County delegate race, Terrell became his primary target. Hancock alleged that Terrell was still an attorney for the Galveston Wharf Company and in business with Jay Gould in a cotton compress venture in Austin. Terrell countered that he had only worked for the wharf company during the constitutional convention in 1875 and that he had invested in the compress company without any knowledge of 107

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Gould’s alleged involvement. The two men went back and forth over the issue of whether Terrell had helped Hancock during the Civil War and their respective records in that conflict. The discussion of these issues provided ample fodder for newspaper columns but probably distracted Terrell from the main issues of his campaign. Any revival of issues relating to the Civil War did not serve Terrell’s interests.22 The Democratic state convention met on August 10, 1886, with Laurence Sullivan “Sul” Ross leading a field of five for the gubernatorial nomination. He won the contest as the influence of the Texas Farmers Alliance was being felt within Democratic ranks. Terrell and his allies tried to have language favorable to the creation of a railroad commission inserted in the platform. They had to be content with a pledge to enact laws to curb railroad abuses. Terrell also used the gathering to demonstrate his popularity with rank-and-file Democrats.23 During the debate on August 11 over the platform, delegates began calling out “Terrell” and “Mule,” recalling Terrell’s first campaign and his long association with the mule he had ridden. A motion was adopted to allow candidates for office to speak, and Terrell came to the podium for fifty minutes. “Texas was the bit and [Jay] Gould held the reins,” he said. He called railroads “a heavier burden than the public debt.” There was some grumbling about a senatorial candidate being allowed to speak, but on the whole his appearance proved a popular success. The Houston Post said that Terrell “stands to-day the foremost candidate for the high office to which he aspires.”24 The problem for Terrell was how to translate popular endorsement from the audiences he addressed to specific votes within the legislature. In that respect, the low opinion that some politicians had of him undercut his Senate prospects. Since neither Maxey nor Governor Ireland had gained much ground by the autumn of 1886, Terrell seemed as likely a choice to win the Senate seat as any of the major declared contenders. His speeches during the fall of 1886 continued to draw friendly crowds. As usual in the 1880s, the Democrats won the governorship and easily controlled the legislature that was to assemble in January 1887. A stalemate in the senatorial voting appeared probable. In such a struggle, Terrell hoped to become the choice of those lawmakers who admired his anti-railroad position.25 Then, to the dismay of Terrell and his followers, Congressman 108

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John H. Reagan indicated in November a willingness to become a Senate aspirant. Reelected to his House seat, Reagan was a former member of the Confederate cabinet. More important, “the Old Roman” was involved in the legislation to establish the Interstate Commerce Commission that would pass Congress a few months later. Coupled with his endorsement of a wider use of silver as a means of inflating the currency and raising crop prices, Reagan’s record of actual achievement on the railroad issue trumped Terrell’s anti-monopoly rhetoric. Reagan was also popular in East Texas, an area where Terrell had not developed a following. Whatever momentum Terrell had built up with the legislature sagged after the appearance of Reagan’s trial balloon.26 Out of public view, Terrell did not help his chances with former governor Oran M. Roberts when he repeated a student’s anecdote about “the Old Alcalde” from his law class at the University of Texas. According to the student’s account, Roberts had expressed “novel views” about “the death of Moses.” Terrell recounted the tale to “some very strict people” in nearby Georgetown, a center of orthodox Methodism and the location of Southwestern University. The institution was a rival of the University of Texas, and the story of Roberts’s alleged blasphemy soon formed the subject of attacks on him and the university. To say the least, Terrell was indiscreet in his conversation. Roberts heard about what had happened and asked Terrell for an explanation. Whether Roberts took political vengeance is not clear, but the episode did not help Terrell erase the impression that he could not always be trusted with confidences.27 With the Senate elections at hand, the assaults on Terrell intensified. The question of his service in Mexico reappeared. Had he taken an oath to Maximilian that would disqualify him to serve in the Senate? He wrote to George Flournoy to secure a letter attesting that he had not sworn allegiance to a foreign power. Critics also charged that Terrell “has pandered to the lawless elements of society.” Beyond that, Terrell was convinced that his three rivals, all of them incumbents, were using the promise of the patronage at their disposal to injure his senatorial chances.28 As the legislature convened in January 1887, the press handicapped the Senate race. The Dallas Morning News noted that Maxey, Reagan, and Ireland were incumbents with offices to provide. “The unofficial Terrell has been left like a short boy, very hungry for the high persimmon indeed, but with nothing but his wits and his native 109

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modesty to aid him in storming the persimmon tree.” A week before the balloting opened, a reporter observed that “there are no railroad men, here or elsewhere, who are straining a point to get Terrell elected.” The rail lines seemed to prefer Reagan, with all his flaws from their point of view, to the more passionate Terrell.29 When the nominations began on January 25, Terrell was described as “that courteous gentleman and eloquent orator” who did not deserve “the calumnies that had been circulated against him reflecting upon his sincerity.” Terrell’s friends predicted that he would have twenty-five votes on the first ballot and would go up from there to attain the sixty-nine needed for victory. That forecast proved correct on the first ballot. Seven senators and eighteen representatives voted for Terrell on that tally. However, on the second ballot on January 26, he sagged to nineteen. Three senators and three House members defected. One of Terrell’s supporters then withdrew his name from contention “for a time.” Terrell’s votes were scattered among the other three candidates on the third ballot to keep him a viable compromise candidate in the event a deadlock ensued. Another twenty-one ballots followed with no winner over the next several days.30 On January 28, Governor Ireland withdrew and Terrell was again placed in nomination. Terrell received thirty-six votes on the next two ballots and reached his high-water mark of thirty-seven votes on the third ballot. After Terrell slipped to thirty-one votes on the day’s fourth tally, he again had his name withdrawn. Following Terrell’s departure, Reagan won the two-man race with Maxey and secured the Senate seat.31 The outcome left Terrell bitterly disappointed, especially after Reagan resigned his seat in 1891 to return as the chairman of the new Texas Railroad Commission. In Terrell’s memoirs he attributed the defeat to the preference of the Maxey and Ireland supporters for Reagan as “the lesser of two evils.” Terrell believed that he was the real champion of railroad reform and a commission. Reagan had snatched away a prize that should have gone to Terrell. There was something to that argument. Yet Terrell did not show any real strength outside his Central Texas base, and it is hard to see where the thirty-plus votes that he needed would have been found. His strategy of attacking Ireland and Maxey publicly with such intensity meant that their supporters were unlikely to turn to Terrell over Reagan.32 110

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The importance of Terrell’s losing senatorial effort lay beyond the immediate result. His defeat at the hand of the railroads intensified his desire to see greater regulation. Over the next four years he pushed hard for the creation of a railroad commission. In that sense, Terrell’s campaign provided part of the foundation on which James S. Hogg built his gubernatorial race in 1890. As he had before and would do again, Alexander W. Terrell pioneered controversial issues in Democratic politics in Texas but did not secure the personal political benefits for himself. Democrats were glad to use his oratorical and legislative talents, but questions about his reliability and unease about his character held him back from statewide office.33 The Senate defeat also left Terrell in poor health, a condition that continued for the next six years. Exhaustion from the rigors of the campaign was one element. Terrell was also approaching his sixtieth birthday in what had been a strenuous life. Some of the remedies he used to relieve his ailments may have made him feel worse. He apparently used calomel as a purge daily to move his bowels, and there were complaints of bladder problems as well. The local press referred on occasion to Terrell’s infirmities, and there were suggestions that his speaking abilities suffered as a result.34 To ease the pain of the legislature’s rejection, Terrell sought “executive favor” from the Cleveland administration during the winter of 1887. He hoped for an appointment to the new Interstate Commerce Commission, but it became clear that a Texan would not be selected to that body. Then the idea of a diplomatic appointment arose. Would he be interested in the post of minister either to the Ottoman Empire or Austria-Hungary? The Turkish post paid $12,000 annually. Terrell’s voracious reading and philosophical questioning on religious issues had fed a fascination with the Near East. A diplomatic prize would enhance his standing in state politics and give him a chance to perform on the international stage.35 Terrell wrote to the White House himself to emphasize his loyalty to Cleveland’s civil service policies. Meanwhile, Senator Coke, Terrell’s local congressman, Joseph D. Sayers, and John H. Reagan pushed his candidacy with Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard. A Missouri friend said that “no gentleman in the Mississippi Valley would more befittingly in culture, worth, or bearing represent our great country in a distinguished foreign court.” Unfortunately for Terrell’s chances, the Cleveland administration was besieged with eager Democrats hoping for a prize diplomatic patronage position. 111

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On March 21, Bayard wrote that “the number of states exceeds the number of diplomatic appointments and the applicants as you may suppose far outnumber the places.” Accordingly, the secretary of state added, “I am not able to tender you a position in the diplomatic branch.” However, the contacts Terrell had made within the Cleveland administration would be useful when he pursued the Turkish post again in 1893.36 Within a few weeks of this setback, Terrell experienced another personal loss. His mother-in-law, Elizabeth Mitchell, died after a brief illness. Her will gave her grandson, Howard Terrell, some property, the rents from which would provide him with $1,500 annually until he married or turned twenty-three. She also asked him “to live as an honest, sober, and upright man all the days of his life.” Even in his teens, Howard Terrell had shown signs of the gambling habit and eye for the ladies that would make him such a trial to his father as an adult.37 Terrell was soon swept back into politics as a familiar issue divided Texas Democrats. The question of prohibition had been gathering strength in the state since the late 1870s as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Prohibition Party sought to have the legislature submit a constitutional amendment to the people that would, if adopted, outlaw any production, sale, or barter of alcoholic beverages anywhere in the state. The 1887 legislature bowed to these pressures and submitted a statewide prohibition amendment to the voters in an election to be held on August 5. The drys and wets in the state geared up for what proved to be an intense contest. Pressed by his health problems and the need to restore his law practice, Terrell confined himself to writing public letters in favor of the anti-prohibition cause.38 In April he issued a statement denouncing “the idea that all the people of Texas shall abstain from pressing the juice of the grape which the Creator has given us” because “one man in a hundred will abuse this bounty and get drunk.” Such an approach, he said, was “not consistent with my views of Democratic government or of rational reform.” The day before the voting another letter from Terrell appeared in the Galveston News. It explained his absence from the campaign even though he remained “an uncompromising opponent to a prohibition amendment to the Constitution.” With Terrell on the sidelines, the anti-prohibition forces defeated the proposed

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amendment decisively. The prohibition issue receded from the forefront of Texas politics for a decade and a half.39 Later in 1887, Terrell became part of an unsuccessful effort to secure a place on the United States Supreme Court for the chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, A. H. Willie. Instead, President Cleveland named L. Q. C. Lamar to the vacancy. Terrell then looked ahead to 1888 as an opportunity to press his personal campaign to have the Democratic Party endorse a railroad commission for the state.40 Before that happened, however, Terrell encountered another controversy that cast a shadow over his future. Construction on the State Capitol Building was far enough along that formal dedication ceremonies were held on May 16, 1888. Terrell was the featured speaker in part because of his legislative work to get the structure built with the use of Texas granite. After several days of preliminary festivities, Terrell spoke at noon on May 16 before a large crowd that included Governor Ross, former Governor Roberts, a host of Texas politicians, and a delegation from Mexico of leading generals and public officials from the government of Porfirio Díaz. As was his custom, Terrell spoke for several hours about the Texas Revolution and its heroes. They had “crushed the pride of Mexico at San Jacinto” and while doing so had repulsed “the savage foe” to create their capital city on the hunting grounds of the Comanche.” He alluded to Santa Anna as “still red from the massacre of the Alamo.” The Mexican guests were not pleased with these comments to the unhappy recent past, and a brief newspaper controversy ensued about whether what Terrell had said was a breach of good taste. More important for Terrell, the Mexicans returned home and looked into their records about his service with Maximilian in 1865. Their researchers turned up information about the John Wilkes Booth poem, which they put aside in case Terrell was ever again in the news.41 By this time, Terrell’s friends in Austin knew of the existence of the Booth poem. One newspaper reference to it probably appeared in the Statesman earlier in the decade. There is a clipping in the papers about a branch of Terrell’s family that says “Senator Terrell was an exile in the land of the Aztecs when he composed these lines.” The clipping can be assigned to either 1883 or 1886, but it does say that Terrell both had a manuscript of the poem and was its author.

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Since he had told A. S. Walker in 1865–1866 that he had not written the poem, perhaps now, when the poem would be popular in postReconstruction Texas, Terrell did not mind being called its author within the social circles of Austin. The connection with the poem also offset the unpleasant association with the battle of Pleasant Hill.42 The state elections in 1888 did not pose major challenges for the Democrats. In the wake of farm discontent over low prices for cotton and a persistent drought in West Texas, dissident party members, along with former Greenbackers and some Republicans, sought to mount a threat to the candidacy of Governor Sul Ross. That effort did not achieve much at the polls. Meanwhile, agitation over high railroad rates and corporate monopolies gathered some momentum during the spring of 1888. Terrell hoped to have the Democratic state convention in August adopt a platform plank calling for creation of a railroad commission.43 John H. Reagan applauded Terrell’s efforts and urged him “to continue the fight with the transportation companies in the interest of the people.” The senator wanted him to be a delegate to the convention “and aid in shaping of its platform of principles.” When the Democrats convened on August 14, Terrell was a delegate but was not named to the platform committee. Nonetheless, he was present when the panel began its deliberations. Some of the delegates expressed doubts about hearing Terrell’s arguments on behalf of a railroad commission plank. He was, one critic observed, “desirous of putting a few quills in his wings to soar in some way.” In the end, Terrell was allowed to make his case. One unfriendly delegate asked him: “Did you ever introduce a railroad bill while you were a legislator?” Terrell replied crisply: “Three times.” Despite Terrell’s passion, the committee only adopted language that favored “the enactment of laws” to restrict railroad profits to “a fair interest on the money invested” and to prevent discrimination among localities.44 Serving as a presidential elector for Grover Cleveland, Terrell spoke for Democrats in the fall, and the party’s state nominees secured another victory. While Texas went for Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison put the Republicans back in the White House. Any diplomatic appointment for Terrell was at least four years away. Meanwhile, he chafed at the timidity of his party on the railroad question and asserted that the Democrats must do more to protect the people. “In my judgment,” he wrote Guy M. Bryan in November, “it can be 114

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done so far as railroads are concerned only by a State Commission.” He volunteered to help Bryan write a bill “that would meet every constitutional objection and give relief.” He was tired of “platform hypocracy” and predicted a popular revolt like the one that made Sam Houston governor in 1859 if the legislature did not act.45 In the 1889 legislature the resentment of members of the Texas bar at Terrell’s lucrative arrangement to report Supreme Court decisions resulted in major changes for the position. To justify the action the new law cited “the loss resulting to the state from the present system of reporting and publishing.” Because of uncertainty about the copyright, a Missouri publisher was able to reproduce the volumes and sell them to Texas lawyers at a lower cost. Unhappiness with Terrell’s personal profits and reliance on a Minnesota publisher to print the original volumes is evident in the legislation. Under the 1889 changes, the salary for the reporter was fixed at $3,000 annually and the volumes were to be sold through the secretary of state. After the law passed, Terrell did not expect to be reappointed, and his partner Alexander S. Walker was named instead.46 The 1889 legislature spent a good deal of time debating measures to create a railroad commission for the state. In the course of the controversy, attention focused on Terrell’s role in arousing public opinion behind the proposed law. One lawmaker referred to “the mysterious influence of ‘Judge Terrell’s mule’ in the matter of working up opposition to the railroads.” Terrell did not just work behind the scenes. After Oran M. Roberts cast doubt on the constitutionality of a commission, Terrell issued a public letter in late February defending the right of the legislature under the Texas Constitution to enact regulatory legislation. Terrell argued that the Constitution’s language saying that the legislature “shall” fix maximum freight rates “contemplated the appointment of agencies to protect the people against oppressive charges.” The railroad commission laws were defeated, but a constitutional amendment expressly stating that the lawmakers could supervise the railroads was submitted to the voters for the 1890 elections.47 Faced with a decline in his legal work after the end of his term as Supreme Court reporter, Terrell discussed with Guy Bryan the possibility of writing a history of Texas based either on the earlier work of Frank Johnson or on his own research. He hoped that Bryan, a member of Stephen F. Austin’s family, might allow him use of Austin’s papers so that Terrell might “engage in the work of writing 115

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a history of Texas.” Terrell added that “such has been my purpose for a long time,” and to that end he was “now building in the country not for a family home but a place to seclude and write.” Terrell ended up with Johnson’s notes and papers, but the projected history of the state was never completed.48 Terrell did comment on Stephen F. Austin’s role in Texas history when he was the featured orator at the presentation of a portrait of the founder of Texas. Mindful of the controversy a year earlier about his remarks on Mexicans, Terrell noted that “those who were of Spanish origin had been for nearly one hundred years instructed by the priesthood in all that pertained to the history and the literature and science of the period.” His remarks were full of praise for Austin, whose “slight but singular form” possessed “a vital force like that of Hastings and Pizarro, equal to every hardship, and courage equal to every danger.”49 While Terrell practiced law and sought to recover his health in 1889–1890, a new political figure was emerging in state politics as a potential candidate for governor in 1890. Attorney general since 1887, James Stephen Hogg was thirty-eight in 1889 and had already gained a statewide reputation as an opponent of non-Texan railroads and land corporations. Tall and heavyset (at more than 250 pounds), Hogg was a fiery orator who could articulate the feelings of Texas Democrats disturbed about corporate influence. He became identified with the idea of a railroad commission as a remedy for these problems, and his announcement for governor in April 1890 meant that the race would turn on that issue. If Hogg were elected and the constitutional amendment passed, the 1891 legislature would have a mandate to enact a commission statute.50 By the end of the 1890s, the forces of agrarian protest were gathering strength in Texas. Low cotton prices and the burden of paying off loans and mortgages drove many farmers to economic despair. The Farmers Alliance, which drew on many of the same sources of support as the Grange but was more militant in its program, had won converts. Its leaders debated whether to remain loyal to the Democrats or establish a third party. Railroad regulation became one of the key issues for voters unhappy with the existing political system. Democrats feared that if they did not do something meaningful about the railroad issue, the alliance might result in a third party.51 Terrell and Hogg were natural allies on the railroad issue. Since 116

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they both lived in Austin, the written record of their cooperation is sparse, but the two men became close friends in 1887 during Hogg’s first term as attorney general. Terrell had a large influence on Hogg’s approach to railroads, and the Austin lawyer’s role as an adviser to the gubernatorial aspirant became an editorial issue for conservative newspapers during the race for governor in 1890.52 By midsummer, Hogg’s nomination for governor was assured as his potential opponents fell away or withdrew from the race. Since a railroad commission bill would be before the legislature in January 1891, Hogg wanted reliable allies in the Texas House of Representatives, and he prevailed upon Terrell to become a candidate from Travis County. The Statesman predicted that “he will be nominated without trouble, possibly unanimously.” When the Democratic county convention met on July 26, 1890, Terrell led the field of four candidates with 122½ votes, and he became one of the two nominees. In the fall election, Terrell again secured a strong plurality of the votes cast and was returned to the legislature.53 Hogg easily won the governor’s race over Republican opposition and prepared to implement his program of change when the legislature assembled in late January. In addition to the central issue of the railroad commission, the lawmakers also addressed a number of other topics. Among them was a law to ban aliens from owning land in the state. Another was a measure mandating that railroads provide separate cars for white and African-American passengers. Terrell supported the alien land law, apparently without much thought as to its constitutionality. He also endorsed the segregation measure. Once again the poll tax amendment was debated, and Terrell spoke out strongly for its adoption. According to a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, Terrell made it clear that “the chief object in view was to collect the tax on the wooly scalp.” The poll tax amendment did not emerge from the legislature.54 The key issue to which Terrell devoted most of his time was the proposed railroad commission law. While the governor wanted the regulatory agency to set rates and inspect business operations of Texas companies, the crucial point became whether the commission members should be appointed or elected. Hogg wanted an appointive panel so he could choose the commissioners to get the commission started. The governor and his supporters feared that elected commissioners would be more subject to political and financial pressure from the railroads. The Farmers Alliance, however, 117

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sought an elected commission so it might run candidates for the openings. Opponents of the new commission, seeing that some bill would pass, hoped that elected members would be more responsive to railroad persuasion.55 During the first three weeks of the session, Representative Thomas J. Brown of Grayson County led the governor’s forces in the House. He worked with senators on the language of an acceptable bill and in the process made concessions to the pro-railroad side. As a result, Terrell and other lawmakers close to Hogg rewrote the bill to conform to the governor’s wishes. By February 24, a reporter observed that Terrell’s influence “in the house has been steadily growing from day to day. He is now the leader of the majority.”56 That day Terrell offered a substitute for the commission bill then under consideration. His measure provided for an appointed commission, and it rebuffed efforts to insert language allowing railroads to go to court to overturn commission rulings without a trial. The House adopted the Terrell substitute on March 2. In the Senate, Hogg and his allies had to make concessions. The most important one provided that railroad commissioners would be elected starting in 1894. The governor also wanted to bar commissioners from running for other statewide offices for two years after leaving the agency. That too failed in the Senate. Terrell served on the conference committee that assembled the final bill that passed the legislature on April 3, 1891. In its ultimate form, the railroad commission law embodied the broad outlines of what Terrell and Hogg had sought in the way of regulation. As Terrell told an audience in Georgetown a year later, “Never was a bill more carefully considered than your commission law, as it now exists.”57 Terrell might have expected that his leading role in the 1891 legislature would have solidified his standing with his constituents and won praise from the Austin Statesman. He rested at his home in Del Valle after the session concluded in April 1891, but within a few months he found himself under an attack from an unexpected source. The publisher of the Statesman hired an editor who was critical of Hogg and Terrell. Instructed not to change the editorial policy of the newspaper, which had been friendly to the governor and Terrell, the new man decided while the publisher was on vacation in the East to assail the two politicians.58 The occasion for the attacks on Terrell was the discontent among

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Austin businessmen and other capitalists across the state with the alien land law that the legislature had passed. That measure was seen as discouraging foreign investment in Texas and driving established British corporations, for example, from the state. On August 4, 1891, members of Austin’s business community met to discuss steps to be taken against the law. Terrell was present and spoke briefly. As the Statesman’s reporter put it, Terrell said that “as to the alien land law itself, he had voted for it, it is true, but he had only read it thoroughly in the last few hours.” The editor wrote two days later: “It is a pity to have to say that the once brilliant Terrell was rambling, incoherent, feeble, and really commonplace.” The newspaper hoped that a friend of Terrell’s would “prevent such pitiable, public exhibitions of impaired intellectuality in the future.” The editor also noted Terrell’s large landholdings in the Austin area and the prosperous dairy that his son Arthur operated and suggested that his attacks on alien landowners might be self-interested.59 Faced with assaults on his character and judgment, Terrell wrote a lengthy letter to the Galveston Daily News defending his support for the alien land law. “The Statesman charges me with being a demagogue because I oppose land mortgages to aliens,” Terrell said. “All men who oppose the efforts of the money power to change our institutions must sooner or later bear whatever opprobrium attaches to that epithet,” he added. Terrell said that he would still vote for the alien measure, perhaps with a few minor alterations. Meanwhile, he wrote, “I have long since passed the meridian of life and seek no office. If ever again elected to one it will come unsought.”60 The return of the Statesman’s publisher to Austin ended the personal attacks on Terrell in 1891. The newspaper did become for a time opposed to Governor Hogg and more critical, though not insulting, in its coverage of Terrell himself. Like other intimates of Hogg, Terrell knew that 1892 would begin a renewed confrontation between the governor and his conservative enemies within the Democratic Party. At the same time, the People’s Party, formed out of the Farmers Alliance, criticized the governor over the decision to make the railroad commission appointive. The Populists also wanted Hogg to endorse their subtreasury plan to support cotton prices, but the governor refused to do that also. As a result, Hogg was likely to face a People’s Party opponent in the 1892 general election.61 Within the Democratic Party, Hogg’s main challenge came from

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George Clark, a railroad attorney known as the “Warwick” of the conservatives. A former state official who had been appointed to several posts, Clark asked the voters to reject the railroad commission and “turn Texas loose.” Facing such opposition, Hogg called the legislature into special session in 1892. One task that the lawmakers faced was filling a United States Senate seat. After the railroad commission bill passed, Hogg persuaded John H. Reagan to leave his Senate seat to head the new agency. To take Reagan’s place, Hogg did not name Terrell but instead selected an East Texas lawyer and longtime friend, Horace Chilton. Some press observers suggested that Terrell resented being passed over. During the 1892 special session, Congressman Roger Q. Mills was elected to fill out the remaining year of the six-year term after Chilton withdrew. Terrell was not a candidate and agreed to vote for Mills only if a majority of his Travis County constituents gave such instructions at primaries on March 19, 1892. They did so.62 George Clark launched his campaign against Hogg with a speaking tour that began in Weatherford on February 27, 1892, and continued for the next month. The conservative newspapers praised his strictures against the governor and his attacks on Terrell over his role in shaping the railroad commission law. Hogg’s allies were unimpressed with Clark as a candidate, but they did not believe his assaults should go unanswered. Since the special session of the legislature that began on March 14 would keep Hogg in Austin, his campaign managers concluded that a surrogate should rebut Clark. “Judge Terrell should get out as soon as possible,” wrote one Hogg supporter. “Judge Clark jumped on with both feet at Ft. Worth.” Terrell went to nearby Georgetown on March 19 to speak at the district courtroom that was “packed to its utmost capacity.”63 Terrell was in excellent form before a crowd that on occasion “almost went wild.” Of Clark he said, “Warwick, in search of the early worm, has left his roost too soon.” Yet, Terrell predicted, “an unbought people will not select for a governor one whose mind has been trained in the corporate harness, no matter how honest or intelligent.” He defended Hogg, who had “provoked the resentment of the lawless element of Texas.” Had Hogg deferred to business, “he could have served four years without their abuse and then perhaps retired to some literary office conferred by his own appointees.” This remark was seen as a reference to Hogg’s predecessor, Sul Ross,

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who after leaving the governor’s office had been named president of Texas A&M. To Terrell’s embarrassment, the press interpreted the comment as including Oran M. Roberts, who had left the governorship to become a professor of law at the University of Texas.64 In his speech, Terrell denied that Hogg had dictated the substance of the railroad commission bill, and he defended the appointment of commissioners. He noted that Clark himself had only held appointive state offices, and therefore his passion for election was suspect. “So far as anybody knows,” said Terrell, Clark “is at this moment faithfully following the instructions of his clients, as he crows while abusing your legislature like a barnyard bantam in the operahouses of our cities to the applause of admiring speculators.” Despite Clark’s claims to being a disciple of Thomas Jefferson and an opponent of paternalism, he was no true friend of the Democratic Party. The “great agricultural masses” of Texas would not be fooled, because “no jackdaw of the corporations can strut with Jeffersonian plumes without their detection.”65 The Georgetown speech delighted Hogg’s friends, and the governor received letters asking that Terrell’s “great masterly speech” become a major campaign document. The conservative press, on the other hand, assailed Terrell. The reporter for the San Antonio Daily Express called him “an arch insinuator from the apocrypha to the apocalypse in politics, an inventor of political insinuations of the most artful contrivance.” The Dallas Morning News said that his speech reflected “a baleful eloquence suggesting a poisoned condition of heart and intellect.”66 Clark and Ross both fired back at Terrell with explicit charges that he had been a coward during the Civil War at Pleasant Hill. “While he was shirking the duty of a patriot,” said Clark, “I was in Virginia with my breast bared to the bullets of the enemy.” Clark’s assault on Terrell grew bitter and personal. “When the country called for Sul Ross his white plume could be seen waving far in the front of the line, standing under the South’s flag, ready to die for his country, while this man, when he went into action and smelt the aroma of villainous saltpetre was so frightened that it took his regiment two days to find him.”67 Terrell denied that he had attacked the appointment of Oran Roberts as a law professor though he was less clear about Ross. Terrell’s enemies charged that he had in fact favored an elected railroad

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commission and that he had been a mouthpiece for the Galveston Wharf Company. Clark also brought up his role in the Semicolon Case as a further example of Terrell’s opportunism.68 A few days later, Sul Ross weighed in with a reply to Terrell’s charges. He called Terrell “a political bankrupt” who was renowned, quoting Bret Harte in “The Heathen Chinee,” “for ways that are dark and [for] tricks that are vain.” Ross said that until Terrell refuted “the open charge of arrant cowardice” made against him by Clark and others, “the chastisement of his insolence would reflect less credit upon any one than to strike in anger a woman.” In reply, Terrell’s friend published the 1876 letter from J. C. Robertson, but the consensus seemed to be that Terrell had gotten the worst of this exchange. For a man of Terrell’s pride, the allegations against his honor must have been a painful blow.69 Perhaps because of the embarrassment of this controversy, Terrell slid off the front pages during much of the rest of 1892. Reports of poor health appeared in the Austin papers. In Austin he told Guy Bryan that “physical infirmity and press of personal affairs” had held him back from writing on Frank Johnson’s history of Texas and presumably from state politics as well. Now he intended to get back to work on the project. A month later he wrote Bryan again that on his farm in Del Valle he heard “only at rare intervals the boiling of the political cauldron and this suits me best for the methods of the hour are not to my liking.” Terrell’s silence caused the Dallas Morning News to speculate that he had lost sympathy with Hogg and a “faction that surely must have inspired his contempt if it has not aroused his apprehension of danger to personal and property rights in Texas.” In the face of mocking queries about why he did not climb on his “mouse colored mule” and enter the campaign, Terrell remained aloof.70 In the 1892 election, the Democrats and Grover Cleveland carried Texas as expected. Hogg won a plurality of the votes in a threecornered race for governor with Clark and Thomas L. Nugent, the nominee of the Populists. Victory for the Democrats nationally revived Terrell’s hopes of a diplomatic post and the chance to display his talents in a wider arena. By year’s end he was exploring the possibility of becoming minister to Turkey. Although his role in the Hogg campaign of 1892 had been brief, Terrell had reason to be satisfied with his part in state politics from his unsuccessful race for the Senate in 1886–1887 down to the 122

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Hogg-Clark encounter. More than any other Democrat except Hogg, he had been identified with the anti-railroad, anti-corporate sentiment that swept through a large portion of the party at the end of the 1880s. Never a Populist, Terrell had little regard for the subtreasury plan or the growing clamor to inflate the currency and raise prices through the free coinage of silver. On the railroad issue, however, he had been an ideological leader for regulatory change and in 1891 had put his ideas into law. These successes had come at some personal cost. Terrell had to endure the humiliation of seeing his war record become a political football. The exertions he made also impaired his health and set back any ambitions he might still have held for statewide office. How comfortable Terrell would have been with the angry politics of Texas Democrats and Populists between 1893 and 1896 in the midst of a severe depression is another matter. But that problem did not arise for him. His nomination as minister to Turkey took him away from the partisan strife over silver and gold. Instead, he entered the bewildering world of the “Eastern Question” and the fate of the Ottoman Empire with its turbulent religious tensions. In the process, Alexander W. Terrell would become as famous and controversial a historical figure as he had ever been in Texas.

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lexander W. Terrell’s chances for a diplomatic appointment in the second Cleveland administration were much better than they had been six years earlier. As one of the larger southern states in its electoral votes, Texas merited recognition in early 1893. A cabinet selection from the Lone Star State was unlikely, but the state’s Democrats could reasonably expect at least one overseas post of some prominence. The major foreign prizes in Great Britain, France, and Germany were upgraded to ambassadorships in 1893, but these prestigious and expensive slots were outside the reach of any Texas applicant. An appointment to the next rank of minister in Europe or the Near East seemed attainable if the Texas congressional delegation united behind a single candidate.1 By early 1893 the delegation, though divided on many policy issues, was working hard for Terrell’s success. The first option considered was for a consul-general post, but Terrell was advised to try for the openings of minister either in Greece or Switzerland. Terrell made it clear that he wanted to travel to the Near East to pursue his interest in the history and art of the ancient world. The prospect of a posting to the Ottoman Empire had special allure. In early April, Terrell’s congressman, Joseph D. Sayers, met with President Cleveland and told him that Terrell was “backed by the entire Texas delegation and that they, each and every one of them were sincere in your support.” On April 12, 1893, Cleveland sent Terrell’s name to the Senate, and his confirmation came a few days later.2 Alexander Terrell joined a diplomatic corps that the new secretary of state, Walter Quintin Gresham, headed for President Cleveland. A longtime Indiana Republican, Gresham had become a politi-

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cal maverick in the early 1890s after serving in Chester Alan Arthur’s cabinet a decade earlier. He supported Cleveland in 1892 and was then tapped for the State Department. Gresham had no voice in diplomatic appointments. Since he had not been involved in Terrell’s selection, there was no strong basis for the two men to collaborate effectively. In fact, he and Terrell neither liked nor trusted each other during the two years of Gresham’s tenure. Terrell’s freewheeling personal style grated on the secretary of state, who later confided to friends that the Texan had been a poor choice for the Turkish post.3 Terrell’s health had now recovered some of its former vigor, and the prospect of a diplomatic assignment to the Turkish Empire was most appealing. He would be able to visit the Holy Land as part of his duties, and he would be at the center of one of the key flash points of European diplomacy. Denied the chance at a national role in the Senate, Terrell could now perform on the world stage at the highest levels of international relations. His sense of his own talent, never small, told him that he was ready to hobnob with diplomatic leaders on an equal basis. Turkey offered him a chance to fulfill another goal. He wanted to collect ancient artifacts and bring them back for the University of Texas. He may have intended to make these acquisitions the basis for additional personal recognition from the university. Terrell’s role in locating the medical school in Galveston rather than Austin had strained relations between him and officials at the main campus. A collection of books and art from Anatolia would gratify his own fascination with the Near East and remind Austinites of what he had done to found the university in the first place. Before he started on the long journey to Turkey with his wife and one of his stepdaughters, there was much to do. His son Arthur, no longer drinking excessively, would manage Terrell’s farm and thriving dairy business. Alexander S. Walker would see to the finances and Terrell’s political standing. His daughter Lilla was employed at the State Capitol. Only his son Howard, now in his early twenties, remained a source of concern because of his gambling and roving eye for women. Terrell would not be gone for four years at a stretch. Ministers received periodic leaves of absence, and Terrell planned to travel in Europe and the Middle East as well as return to Austin to monitor his affairs. There were some obstacles to overcome before his departure for 125

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Turkey on May 27, 1893. The Mexican government had protested his selection because of the remarks he had made at the State Capitol dedication in 1888. If that nation objected formally to Terrell’s presence in the diplomatic corps, his position could be compromised. In a speech to a meeting of Confederate veterans in Houston on April 21, 1893, Terrell sought to make amends to Mexico. “When dedicating the state capitol,” said Terrell, “I declared to the assembled veterans of the republic that they had rescued the land from barbarism. Some people, through ignorance or personal malignity, construed the remark as insulting to Mexico.” Terrell said that he was speaking about Texas Indians, not Mexicans, and Santa Anna, though “a butcher,” was not representative of Mexico. He also apologized to the Mexican government privately, and the episode was closed.4 When Terrell’s appointment was announced, the editorial response to his selection was predictable. “A riper scholar, a more polished gentleman, a better diplomat, could not be found anywhere,” gushed the editors of the Daily Statesman when they heard about his candidacy in March. Harper’s Weekly said he was “regarded as a speaker of force and an earnest student of political economy.” The Dallas Morning News was more cynical about the selection: “Judge Terrell has been shelved, banished to the Bosporous [sic], given Turkey in a foreign land. He will not be in anybody’s way when the next senatorial contest approaches.” The editors of the Morning News may have been overly skeptical, as Terrell was an unlikely statewide candidate based on his experience in 1887.5 Terrell seems to have regarded the diplomatic mission as a chance to show his fellow citizens in Austin that he was a much bigger individual than they recognized. He wrote about his feelings in a letter to an Austin woman. He had made few new friends because he belonged “to the tribe of old fogies” and had lived “until the grave yard has most of my friends.” As a result, he was “no longer needed by Austin to adorn her with public works,” and, he added, “My life and movements are alike of indifference to most of her people.” Otherwise, he had few reasons to regret his departure for Turkey. Terrell’s welldeveloped sense that he had not received due recognition in Austin, the state of Texas, and the United States for his intellect and accomplishments would carry over into his service in Turkey.6 The journey to Constantinople took almost three weeks by boat and train in 1893. While Terrell was on his way, the issue of the John Wilkes Booth poem and Terrell’s alleged authorship broke in the 126

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national press. How the news got out is not clear. It may well have been leaked from the Mexican government, or perhaps political enemies of Terrell in Austin sent information to Eastern newspapers. Editors outside of the South were quick to denounce Terrell for his bad taste and slight to the memory of Abraham Lincoln. A Democratic newspaper in Illinois called his selection “an odious nomination,” and the Washington Post quipped that “the case of A. W. Terrell shows how dangerous it is for a Texas statesman to write poetry.” In the course of the public discussion, questions arose about whether Terrell was in fact the poem’s author. The Washington Post made a good case for A. W. Arrington and his authorial connection. The Austin Statesman, based on the assurances of A. S. Walker, asserted that Terrell was not the author and that he no longer held Confederate views. To prove their case, the editors of the Austin paper reprinted Terrell’s eulogy to President James A. Garfield in 1881.7 When Terrell heard of the furor upon his arrival in Turkey, he offered his resignation to the Cleveland administration. Secretary of State Gresham responded that “it would be undignified for one in your position to take public notice” of what the newspapers were saying about the Booth poem. Terrell was giving “undue weight to the matter.” Gresham assured him that “the public has ceased to think seriously of what anyone did or said during our horrible Civil War.” Gresham was right. The controversy did die away, but it was not the kind of start to his diplomatic career that Terrell had anticipated.8 Terrell had not written the Booth poem, but he had enjoyed the local publicity and notoriety about his alleged connection with its Confederate sentiments. To a degree, the link with these verses offset the continuing imputation of cowardice from the war itself. After 1893 Terrell wrote his own poetry and did not again associate himself publicly with Booth. Nonetheless, the poem, which has remained an underground favorite with modern-day neo-Confederates, is still often tied to Terrell. The new minister reached the Turkish capital in mid-June 1893 and soon found his official duties to be demanding and complex. American diplomats abroad were expected to obey all the rules of the Department of State. They were not to comment on internal events in the country where they were stationed, they had to refrain from writing letters home meant for publication, and above all they had to shun public controversies. In reporting to Washington, where money was tight, long telegraphic messages were to be the exception 127

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and not the rule. “Precision of statement, and conciseness in presenting the subject so that an instruction of a few lines will categorically meet the case would be very helpful,” a State Department official told Terrell in 1895 after he sent a discursive dispatch. As for the envoy’s papers and memoranda, those documents were to be treated securely and not shared with friends and relatives. One by one, Terrell flouted all these rules.9 Terrell took his post in a country that stood in the center of European diplomacy during the mid-1890s. The Ottoman Empire was seen as “the sick man of Europe,” and its apparently shaky future drew the interest of the great powers. For Christian missionaries, Turkey also seemed a ripe area for conversions of the Islamic population. Among the predominantly Christian Armenian population in the empire, resentment and revolution smoldered. The ruler of Turkey and the spiritual leader of the Muslim faith was Sultan Abdulhamid II, who reigned from 1876 to 1909. Known as “The Red Sultan” or “the terrible Turk” to his European and American critics, Abdulhamid ruled his empire from within his ornate Yildiz Palace and was visible to the public only during his weekly Friday prayer ceremony (selamik). By the mid-1890s Abdulhamid had become a figure of almost demonic proportions to large portions of society in Europe and the United States.10 The actual condition of the Ottoman Empire under Abdulhamid II in 1893 remains controversial. One scholar describes the Sultan as “a manipulator rather than a tyrant” and calls his reign “a golden age for foreigners and local non-Muslims.” Within the state itself, many Muslims felt that their religion was under assault from outside forces, particularly from the West. Currents of unhappiness with the process of economic modernization and with European influence were already in motion during the 1890s. The military weakness of the United States in the Near East made Turkish-American relations a diplomatic sideshow for Washington. Nonetheless, the issues of religious conversion and ethnic cleansing that he confronted foreshadowed what the American people and their government faced in the age of terrorism 110 years later. The caliphate that terrorist Osama bin Laden sought to restore a century later was embodied in the government of Abdulhamid II.11 Being the American representative in Constantinople brought more perplexing difficulties than Terrell realized when he sought the post. Because he was a minister, he ranked below the ambassadors of 128

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the major powers in the city’s diplomatic corps. If Terrell was waiting to see the Turkish foreign minister, for example, and an ambassador from one of the major powers appeared just as Terrell was about to go in, the foreign diplomat would have precedence over the American envoy, and Terrell would have to cool his heels.12 The United States did not have a legation of its own, and Terrell had to rent quarters for himself. At first he lodged at the Hotel Londres close to his offices, and then he moved to other hotels during his stay. His personal staff was small, and much of the work fell on his shoulders. He had a secretary, James W. Riddle, but Terrell depended most on his third secretary, the dragoman, a Turk named A. A. Gargiulo, for translations and crucial assistance in dealing with the Ottoman bureaucracy. An American traveler described Gargiulo as having “the reserve of the Jesuit, the wisdom of a philosopher, and the self-obliteration of the ideal dragoman.” Terrell did not speak French, then the language of diplomacy, so he was dependent on others for the niceties of procedure and language. The rest of his staff consisted of two Turkish guards, a doorkeeper, and a messenger. All in all, Terrell told Joseph Sayers, “This post is full of duties and responsibilities.”13 In the hierarchy of nations represented at the Ottoman court, the United States stood as one of the lesser powers compared with Great Britain, France, Russia, and Germany. The United States had no territorial ambitions in the Near East, and Turkey posed no threat to Washington on its own. Yet the two nations had a contentious relationship. The major problems were related. The fifty or sixty active Christian missionaries and their families in the Ottoman Empire wanted the right to pursue converts in the Muslim country and to receive full American protection from any violence or reaction at the hands of the Turks or their government. These missionaries had the support of such religious groups in the United States as the American Board of Missions, the Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the American Bible Society. The missionaries disclaimed any effort to undermine the sultan and his regime. “These missionaries and their associates have been uniformly friendly to the government,” said one of their members in September 1893. Their persistent efforts to convert Muslims to Christianity, however, put them at risk for reprisals and violence from the majority population.14 The Turks regarded all Protestant missionaries, but especially those from the United States, as a threat to the political and social 129

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stability of the empire. The government monitored what the missionaries wrote and said, regulated Christian institutions in Turkey such as Bible House and Robert College, and sought to counteract efforts to convert individual Turks. In 1892 the sultan said of all missionaries, “The only way to fight against them is to increase the Islamic population and spread the belief in the Holiest of Faiths.”15 The Armenian minority wanted even more from the Turks than did the missionaries. Christian in their religion and intense in their nationalism, Armenians chafed under the oppressive Turkish rule. The more militant among them wanted to revolt against the sultan and establish independence either alone or with the help of one or more of the great powers. To follow their cause, Armenians emigrated to the United States, became American citizens while raising money for arms, and returned to Turkey, where they reasserted their original allegiance to the nation. When the Turks arrested them for any rebellious activities, they then invoked their American citizenship as a defense. They relied on the Treaty of 1830, which said that American citizens would not be molested and if charged with a crime would be subject to trial by the American minister or consuls. Sorting out whether the Armenians were victims of Turkish injustice or revolutionaries was a constant burden for Terrell. He came to believe that the situation of the Armenians was similar to that of Reconstruction because he “had seen the resentful violence of a proud and dominant race, caused by enforced reforms for a subject race, which was increased by the arrogance of the enfranchised negroes, and which resulted in Kuklux outrages.” The Turks were the equivalent of white Southerners, and the Armenians were the Middle Eastern counterparts of African Americans after slavery.16 Terrell spent the second half of 1893 getting into his routine as minister to Turkey. He had to deal with the accumulated “complaints of nearly three hundred missionaries scattered across Turkey and Asia Minor,” and he had “worked hard to even things up.” The case of Anna Melton, a woman who was assaulted while in the interior, took up much of his time in trying to bring her attackers to justice. One of his early successes was in securing an imperial decree (called an irade) that allowed Dr. Mary P. Eddy to become the first woman to practice medicine in the Ottoman Empire. As he dealt with the treatment of missionaries in general, Terrell received praise for his diligent efforts on their behalf. However, Terrell’s lack of a strong religious faith and his evident skepticism about the motives of 130

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the missionaries made these evangelists wary of the new American minister.17 Although he had presented his credentials to the sultan and his government upon arriving in Constantinople, Terrell did not have an opportunity for an extended personal meeting with the nation’s ruler until December. When Terrell’s wife and stepdaughter were about to return to the United States because another of Mrs. Terrell’s daughters was pregnant, the Terrells received an invitation from the Sultan to come to a dinner on December 23, 1893. Terrell decided that the social occasion offered him a chance to show the sultan his plainspoken American manner and to ingratiate himself with the Turkish monarch. In that way, the Texan could steal a march on the European ambassadors, help his country, and gain credit for himself. Here was Terrell’s opportunity to show what he could do in the international arena.18 This venture into personal diplomacy proved a fateful decision for Alexander Terrell. He tied his official career to the honesty and faithfulness of the sultan and did not fully consider the possibility that he might become a dupe rather than prove to be a wily negotiator. Convinced of his own charm and eloquence, Terrell was oblivious to a personal habit that made him tolerated rather than welcomed at the sultan’s palace. As part of his heavy smoking, Terrell spat tobacco fragments repeatedly and in all directions. The president of Constantinople Woman’s College remembered Terrell as “a blustering representative of the class that smokes and expectorates indiscriminately,” and she reported that Terrell once “injured a valuable Oriental rug” at the palace by his habit. The sultan and his court thus found Terrell unpleasant to have around, and the sultan on at least one occasion indicated to Terrell his personal displeasure at what the American minister had done. Nonetheless, it took several days for Terrell to realize he had been rebuked. Yet he did not stop smoking.19 When the state dinner took place on December 23, the sultan went out of his way to flatter the Terrells. His wife and stepdaughter each received a medal from the order of Chefakat. The family had no way of knowing that the sultan used these awards to disarm female guests from the West. Terrell described his host as “a spare man with emaciated features—the complexion of a Syrian—the nose and face of an Armenian.” Terrell began what the British ambassador called “an oration on the art of government.” In the letter he wrote 131

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to his wife to help her remember what had happened, he reported that he had said to the sultan: “I will have no motive to deceive you. Of one thing you may rest assured, viz when asked for the truth I will not lie to you—and I think that sometimes [it is] hard for truth to reach the ears of rulers.” At that point, the Sultan bowed his head, a gesture that Terrell took for agreement with his frank views.20 The British ambassador, Sir Arthur Nicolson, was less impressed. Aware that the sultan was being criticized in the “Transatlantic press” over his harsh treatment of missionaries, Nicolson concluded that the show of deference to Terrell’s honesty had been staged for the Texan’s benefit. “All this comedy has, however, persuaded this hitherto uncorrupted minister that the Sultan is the best man that ever breathed and only his agents are vile.”21 Terrell made two crucial mistakes in his approach to the sultan. He overrated his persuasive powers and failed to recognize that national policy, not personal relations, governed what the Turks did with and to missionaries and Armenians. Believing that the Sultan was sympathetic and his advisers misguided was a familiar response to despotic regimes, but it misled Terrell about the real situation. Again and again Terrell would endeavor to persuade the sultan to change his own policies on the grounds that the monarch’s aides had deceived him or that he had not heard the truth about events. Second, Terrell erred in telling missionaries and others in the Constantinople community that he had forged a special, personal relationship with the sultan. These claims angered the groups opposed to the sultan in and out of Turkey and tied Terrell’s reputation to the good behavior of the sultan and his government. As time would show, that was not something on which the American minister to Turkey could rely. In other respects, Terrell was an unconventional diplomat. He made personal copies of all of his dispatches and sent them home to his wife. Of one of these transmissions he said, “It is risky to send it for it violates instructions” and departmental procedures. He was worried that if he did not keep good private records he would be at a disadvantage if the State Department criticized his performance. While his wife was on her way home, Terrell instructed her to meet with the editor of the religious journal The Independent and give his side of recent diplomatic events. He even prepared a memorandum in his own hand for her to share with the editor. On at least one other occasion he wrote an indiscreet private letter that found its 132

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way into newspapers. The habits of a lifetime were hard to break. Terrell approached diplomacy as if it were a Texas political campaign where rules did not apply and only victory mattered. His indiscretions soon began to stir doubts about his performance for Walter Q. Gresham, and his chief assistant, Alvey Adee.22 That unhappiness led to a rebuke from Washington about Terrell’s performance. In December 1893 he sent the State Department a dispatch about the status of naturalized American citizens of Turkish origin. In it he discussed some expansive language he had used comparing the United States Constitution and the constitution of Great Britain and also said that he had told the Turks that a particular course of action would be “bad for Turkey.” Gresham called Terrell’s remarks about Britain and the United States “not only unnecessary but inaccurate.” As for his second statement, Gresham wrote, “The whole declaration implied a disposition on the part of this Government to adopt an attitude of intervention in Ottoman affairs which is neither our interest nor our policy to assume.” The episode deepened Terrell’s dislike for Gresham but does not seem to have changed his attitude or method of approaching the Turkish government.23 By early 1894 Terrell was persuaded of the bad intentions of the Armenians who, “fresh from revolutionary societies in Philadelphia & New York, have done more injury to the missionary cause than anything else.” The Armenians who plotted against the Turkish government did often contemplate violence against their enemies, and their methods could have a desperate quality to them. Nonetheless, the harsh Turkish treatment of the minority Armenian population did more to foment discontent than Terrell realized. He told his wife in early 1894 that “the Sultan has the sulks about the Armenian question” and was “led by designing fools who hurry him on to his doom.” A year later he exploded in a letter to Mrs. Terrell that the “Armenians are as a race the most ungrateful people and the grandest liars on earth.”24 Throughout the winter of 1894, Terrell sought to have Washington direct the American Navy to send a warship or two to Turkey to impress the sultan with the power of the United States. He chafed at the slowness of responses from the State Department and complained in mid-February that “the government at home is not sustaining me as it should to compel the Turk to behave himself.” How Terrell intended to balance a show of force with his policy of conciliating the sultan was not discussed. A month later, Terrell felt that 133

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matters in Turkey had stabilized sufficiently that he could take his long-anticipated leave of absence. He told his wife, “I want to leave while on top, & if the home government don’t feel comfortable, I am willing to step down and out.”25 During these early months of his tenure in Constantinople, Terrell also pursued his goal of acquiring artifacts and historical relics for the University of Texas. In October 1893 he traveled to the island of Prinkipo in the Sea of Marmara. During a visit to a Greek monastery there, he bought a Greek manuscript Bible dated to the tenth century. For the time being he held onto the book, which he intended to present to the university. Terrell also made contacts in the English-speaking community in Constantinople about his collecting interests. Through the American consulates across the Ottoman Empire he hoped to widen his collecting to include an Egyptian mummy and other examples of the art and culture of the ancient Near East. If all went as he planned, the University of Texas would reimburse him for his work on its behalf. Terrell left Turkey in early April 1894 and arrived in New York almost three weeks later. He went to Washington to report to Cleveland and Gresham. The president “expressed himself satisfied with the way our interests had been protected in Turkey.” If Gresham cautioned him about his diplomatic activities, Terrell did not note it in his letters to his wife. He also heard from Congressman Joseph D. Sayers “that there is a pronounced expression outside of the White House at my success in turning back the tide of Turkish prejudice.”26 Terrell had been gone while the Panic of 1893 and ensuing depression had convulsed the nation. He was in Washington as Jacob Coxey’s army of the unemployed was completing its journey from Ohio to the capital. “It is a fearful spasm of folly,” Terrell told his wife. “Just such a demonstration preceded the reign of terror in France 100 years ago, and it began, as in this case, with no thought of hurting those in power.”27 Terrell spent some time in Lynchburg, Virginia, seeing his mother and other relatives. While his health had been better during his stay in Turkey, he still suffered from recurrent problems with his bladder. A visit to his nephew and namesake, Dr. Alexander W. Terrell, brought a diagnosis that the calomel he had long used as a purge contained so much mercury that it was affecting his bladder. If he reduced his dependence on the calomel, Dr. Terrell advised, his problems might well clear up.28 134

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The next stop was Austin, where Terrell had a banquet in his honor and briefly reentered Texas politics. He composed a public letter to a Democrat who had mentioned his name as a possible candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1894. Terrell denied any such ambitions and then ended any chance of such a race with a lengthy defense of President Cleveland’s monetary policy. The inflationary doctrine of free silver had taken hold among Texas Democrats and Populists in the mid-1890s because it promised to raise prices for cotton farmers and make their debts easier to repay. Cleveland had rejected all such programs, and Terrell applauded what the president had done: “Those in Texas who seek to make unlimited silver coinage without safeguards an issue now, are hurrying the people along to a policy which, if adopted, would be disastrous to every interest, and the advocacy of which would unite every business interest against the Democracy.” The letter and another one that followed it effectively ended any political hopes that Terrell had. A defender of the gold standard was not going to receive political recognition from Texas Democrats in 1894.29 Terrell returned to Washington and once again had an interview with Cleveland. The White House was pleased with his public defense of the president. He was not able to meet with Gresham before he departed. In a letter Terrell asked the secretary of state to support his request to the president for the appointment of his grandson Bouldin Rector to be a marshal for the legation and to serve as a clerk. That wish was not granted, nor did Terrell get any more funds for rent to get a better facility for the American legation in Constantinople. All that Terrell really had to go on as he returned to his post were the words of Grover Cleveland as they parted: “Keep out of trouble and protect the Missionaries.”30 In addition to the diplomatic issues he faced upon his return to Turkey in mid-July 1894, Terrell brought a heightened resolve to collect artifacts for himself and the University of Texas in the time that remained of his assignment. During August he sent the university the tenth-century Greek Bible that he had obtained. A few months later he promised university officials that he could secure “Babylonian tablets (all of which are translated), or Greek sculpture, small statuary, and illustrated Greek and Egyptian art” if only the regents of the university could provide him with funds.31 Terrell went in November 1894 to what was believed to be the site of ancient Troy at Hisarlik. He used the sultan’s steam launch and was 135

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accompanied by an escort of Turkish cavalry. Terrell seems to have taken this imperial largesse for granted without much thought to what the missionary community might think. At Hisarlik he met and became friendly with Frank Calvert, a British citizen living in Turkey and serving as an American consular agent. Terrell became convinced that Calvert, not the more famous archaeological explorer Heinrich Schliemann, was the “real discoverer of ancient Troy.” Finding Calvert in need of money, Terrell saw his chances to acquire a collection of antiquities for the university at a very low price. He sent a bevy of letters to his friends and political allies in Texas urging them to make it possible to purchase Calvert’s collection.32 Terrell had a good idea for enriching the University of Texas with Calvert’s collection, but his request for discretionary funds could not have come at a worse time in the history of the institution. With the Texas economy flattened as a result of the Panic of 1893 and the agricultural depression, the university was living on starvation rations. In his final message to the legislature in January 1895, James S. Hogg said of the university that “this great institution does not possess sufficient resources to efficiently maintain it.” The total support from the legislature in the 1895 session was $25,000.33 Thus, the $3,000–$5,000 that Terrell sought for acquiring Calvert’s collection was a staggering sum under the circumstances. His pleas for assistance did not move the Board of Regents to favorable action. Terrell wrote that it was “a burning shame that when Texas can supply her university with things that no money can buy elsewhere—and for a small cost, that Calvert’s collection is not secured.”34 Efforts to interest the Smithsonian Institution in Washington in Calvert’s materials also collapsed when that federal museum pleaded a lack of funds. Terrell had to be content with such purchases as he could make on his own. The American acquired “an inscribed marble block” with a “funerary inscription” from “a turbaned Turk who was lazily plowing a yoke of buffalo.” That item he donated to the university in 1898. Put away in a cabinet, it was not found again and researched until the mid-1990s. Calvert also gave him three Greek vases that came to the university at Terrell’s death in 1912.35 The episode proved another anticlimax in Terrell’s relations with the University of Texas. The regents thanked him for the Greek Bible, but otherwise the university gave him less recognition than he believed he merited. Oddly enough, Terrell’s experiences as a dis136

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gruntled donor foreshadowed other similar instances in the life of the university in the years ahead. The whole episode would remain a sore point with Terrell for the rest of his days.36 Terrell’s collecting in the autumn of 1894 and winter of 1895 came at a time when his professional duties threatened to make him an even greater source of controversy among the missionaries, the Armenians, and the Department of State. In late August and into early September 1894, Turks and Armenians clashed at Sassoun as a series of massacres of the Armenians began that would stretch across the next two years. Because these violent acts against the Armenians are now seen as a kind of rehearsal for the genocidal policies of the Turks during World War I, they have become a matter of heated historical debate. Armenians attribute the most brutal motives to the sultan and his government; defenders of the Turks shift the blame to the Armenians and their revolutionary goals. Europeans who investigated the subject during the 1890s generally concluded that the sultan and his government orchestrated the massacres and encouraged the slaughter of thousands of Armenians. Even Terrell himself by late 1895 had decided that the reports of the slaughter were accurate. “In the Ottoman Empire,” he wrote to an Austin woman, “is now being enacted the most terrible drama in the history of our race. St. Bartholomew’s in France was not so terrible.” He estimated the death toll as between 50,000 and 100,000. But that was not how he felt in late 1894 and early 1895.37 For Alexander Terrell, the natural initial disposition was to believe the Turkish explanation and to doubt the validity of the Armenian claims. The sultan’s aides assured him that the Armenians were rebels and that the army was simply dealing with revolutionary violence as any legitimate government would do. Such a position was defensible for an American diplomat before all the facts were in, and Terrell’s effectiveness would have been compromised if he had come out publicly with criticism of the sultan and a defense of the Armenians. But as was his customary practice, Terrell repeated to Americans and Europeans in Turkey his doubts that the Turks were at fault. These statements only confirmed what the Armenians and the missionaries already believed. Terrell had been coopted by the Turks and had become their sympathizer. If they could have read his private correspondence, their worst fears would have been confirmed.38 When the European press carried detailed reports of the alleged atrocities, Terrell’s silence on the question prompted a telegram 137

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from Washington on November 25, 1894: “Although the occurrences in question are alleged to have taken place in September last, you have not so far telegraphed or written on the subject.” Terrell replied three days later that the “reports in American papers of Turkish atrocities at Sassoun are sensational and exaggerated.” But in four days he had to backtrack. “Information from British ambassador indicates far more loss of lives in Armenia attended with atrocities than stated in my telegram of 28th.”39 As a result, the Armenian massacre issue became a major irritant in Terrell’s relations with Walter Q. Gresham and the Cleveland administration. From the end of 1894 into the spring of 1895, his relations with Washington deteriorated. In response to the charges of a massacre, the Turkish government named a commission to probe the allegations. At first the sultan sought through Terrell to have one of the American consuls accompany the panel on its inquiry. The Turks also agreed to have British, French, and Russian representatives go along with the commission. Then the Turks backed down because of their fear that other European countries, signatories to the Treaty of Berlin of 1878, would also want representation with the commission. Since there might be “a European character” to the panel, the Turks cooled to the idea. Once again an initiative in which Terrell was involved had faltered.40 Meanwhile, the Armenians attacked Terrell in the American press in mid-December 1894. They claimed he would not give them protection, and they quoted the secretary at the American legation to the effect that Terrell was “the most faithful of all the Sultan’s Turks.” The State Department rebutted these tales and claimed that Terrell’s “Americanism” was always “of the most vigorous sort.” Yet in private Gresham and Alvey Adee found Terrell more and more of a nuisance. He sent long telegrams that ate up the department’s slender budget, and he failed to respond promptly to other messages. On one dispatch Gresham wrote to Adee that Terrell’s work was “slovenly.” The secretary of state concluded that “there is danger Terrell will embarrass himself & his Gov’t” with his comments to the sultan.41 The first four months of 1895 brought Terrell a series of rebukes from Gresham. On January 30, 1895, the secretary warned him to show “increased prudence and reserve in discussing questions of continental policy.” Two weeks later the minister was told to “scrupulously abstain from saying or doing anything” that might 138

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suggest that the United States was trying to influence how the Treaty of Berlin was being implemented. Terrell then indicated that the opposition of the missionaries might justify shifting him to another diplomatic post, to which Gresham tartly replied, “What the missionary element may think of the attitude of this government, or of your acts as its representative, seems no adequate reason for your transfer to another mission.” The State Department further humiliated Terrell that spring when it released the volume of Foreign Relations with Gresham’s reprimand about his language in the December 1893 dispatch. The document spurred press criticism of Terrell. By early April 1895 a State Department aide told Thomas F. Bayard, the American ambassador in London, that “the Secretary is very much displeased with Terrell’s conduct in Constantinople.”42 During these months, Terrell chafed under the public attacks of the missionaries and the criticism of his superiors. He poured out his frustration in letters to his wife along with the rough drafts of his dispatches that he regularly sent her. Of one such missive he said: “I violate the letter of duty in sending it to you, but not its spirit for I know it is safe.” He applied for thirty days’ leave in March and thought often of resigning because of the criticism he received. The Armenians and their missionary allies sought to have Washington pursue “a more aggressive policy” that would “extend the sway of the Prince of Peace, with gun powder.” In mid-May, he learned that the State Department would not give him a leave in view of the unsettled conditions in Turkey. For the time being he would have to remain at his post.43 At this juncture Terrell received an overture from the sultan that tempted him to abandon his official position and become a press agent for Turkey. Writing to his daughter Lilla, Terrell noted that the Turkish monarch had asked him to recommend a man who would travel around the country “to write up truthfully his observations of men, customs, freedom of conscience, protection of all religions, and the progress in civilization now being made.” Terrell wondered if he should resign and take on the work himself with Lilla as a traveling companion. “I think without telling any lies I can do a great good—shed new light upon the Empire of Islam, have a trip that will be a memory and make perhaps 5, or $10,000.”44 Wisely, Terrell did not follow up on the sultan’s proposal. Resignation would have been a personal disaster, and taking on the assignment for the Turks would have destroyed his credibility. Terrell’s 139

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confidence in the good faith of the sultan and his government would not have outweighed the impression that the Turks had bought his name and reputation for their own purposes. Secretary of State Gresham died on May 28, 1895, and Attorney General Richard Olney succeeded him. Terrell regarded Gresham by this time as “no account,” and so the news of his passing was not a disappointment. Relations with the new secretary of state were more harmonious for Terrell. The minister was traveling around the Near East at the time, collecting artifacts and writing travel accounts of the Holy Land for Texas newspapers. With the change at the State Department and the volatile condition of affairs in Turkey, Terrell told his wife: “I do not think I can get away at all this summer— things are too uncertain.”45 In May 1895 the European powers urged the sultan to institute reforms to alleviate the grievances of the Armenians. With the tacit support of the Russians, who had no interest in seeing an independent Armenia on their border, the sultan stalled on any specific actions through the next four months. Then in late September and early October 1895 an Armenian demonstration in Constantinople was met with a harsh Turkish response. Hundreds of Armenians were killed. Terrell wired Washington: “Much terror exists. I think Porte will be able to restrain fanaticism.” The next day, in a more detailed message, he reported that “a reign of terror has existed here for three days among the Armenian population and fears are yet entertained that all Christian races here are in danger from Moslem fanaticism.”46 Yet Terrell remained convinced that the violence was the result of Armenian and missionary agitation. He wrote that “permanent security and order” were impossible in Turkey because of “the rancor of race and religious hatred, now more bitter than ever. But above all by the schemes of the Armenian anarchists who will never rest while certain of the sympathy of the Christian world.”47 Terrell continued to be assailed in the press. In late October he sent a message to Congressman Sayers and Senator Roger Q. Mills denying that he was neglecting the missionaries and the dangers they faced. His closeness to the sultan also drew fire. “The attack on my personal relations with the Sultan deserves only contempt,” Terrell said. Under increasing criticism from the press and congressional Republicans, the State Department felt compelled to issue a defense of the American minister’s performance. The New York Tribune, long 140

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critical of Terrell, said that he had done his duty “bravely, wisely, and as completely as it was possible for him to do.”48 By the end of 1895, concern about the Armenian massacres and the situation in Turkey grew more intense in the United States. Republicans in Congress discussed potential American involvement in the Turkish crisis. More newspapers assailed Terrell for having done “the bidding of his master in suppressing news in order to condone the Grand Turk’s terrible crimes against modern civilization.” To dampen this outrage, Olney sent Congress a message supporting Terrell’s record in Constantinople in mid-December. Already embroiled in a crisis over Venezuela with Britain, the White House was not looking for another military commitment, much less in Asia Minor.49 In January 1896 Clara Barton of the American Red Cross agreed to go to Armenia to distribute food and supplies to the massacre victims. At first the sultan’s government refused to allow her into the country as an official representative of the Red Cross. Terrell interceded with the Porte, and Barton was allowed to do her work as long as it was not carried on under the formal auspices of the Red Cross. Barton’s stay in Turkey until August 1896 led to a friendship with Terrell that continued until her death.50 Terrell was formally granted a leave in March 1896 and prepared for the journey home. Before he did so, however, his brother Joseph in Fort Worth made public a portion of a letter that Terrell had written. In it Terrell remarked, “England has played her cards badly. All the massacres could have been avoided had her policy been different. Besides this, the American press and American Congress, in abusing the Porte, will destroy my influence here.” When these comments appeared in the Washington Post, they caused a stir in the capital. More important, the episode added to the belief in the missionary community that Terrell had to go. When he reached Austin in April, Terrell expected to have a month in Austin to see to his personal affairs. On May 12 he received a telegram from the State Department requesting his immediate presence in Washington.51 The summons to Terrell was a response to requests from laymen associated with the Protestant missionaries for a meeting with President Cleveland to discuss a possible replacement for the Texan. One of his main accusers was the missionary Henry O. Dwight, who had earlier supported Terrell but who now believed that the minister had become a liability. The interview took place on Friday, May 15, and 141

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participants told the president that Terrell “has his limitations” and was “entirely wanting” in “diplomatic resource.” If Terrell could be persuaded to resign, that would allow for a more experienced envoy to take his place. So when Terrell arrived in Washington, he found his governmental position under assault. As a newspaper story put it, Terrell was accused of “low and gross habits, of using profane and vulgar language, and blustering, domineering manners which are said to be exceedingly offensive to the Turkish officials, and to all who have been at the legation.” The missionary leaders wanted “some one who is more familiar with the usages of polite society, and whose Americanisms are tempered with refinement.” In other words, a non-Texan was required.52 The Texan fought back in public and private. He told Cleveland that he was facing “a conspiracy to secure a missionary tool in my stead.” Letters were sent to the president attesting to Terrell’s abilities, and one supporter called “the movement against Mr. Terrell an injustice that ought not to be countenanced.”53 The attack on Terrell failed. Cleveland and Olney did not want a greater role in Turkey at a time when the Cuban insurrection against Spain was a major foreign policy question. The tiny American Army could not go to Asia Minor, and the Navy could have only a pinprick effect at best. With the likelihood that a new Republican administration would be taking over after the fall election, the White House concluded to leave Terrell where he was until a new president could address the matter of American policy toward the Near East. Terrell returned to his post in Constantinople in June.54 In October 1896 Terrell’s critics resumed their attack as massacres convulsed Turkey. The New York Times said in an editorial that Terrell had been “a most unfortunate failure” as a diplomat and had failed “to realize the degree to which he was being deceived by the Porte.” Once again Terrell had his defenders who wrote to the newspaper to praise his record. In late November, with William McKinley and the Republicans soon to take office, Terrell sent Cleveland his resignation to take effect on March 4, 1897, “or as soon thereafter as I can be relieved.” He assured Cleveland that if the president did not approve of his official conduct, the resignation could be accepted at once.55 The diplomatic situation did require that Terrell remain in Turkey through the spring of 1897. He turned in another formal resignation to Cleveland in February 1897, agreed to wait until his 142

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replacement was on his way, and left Constantinople for the last time on July 15, 1897. Terrell arrived back in Austin on August 3, and a week later his friends gave a banquet in his honor. The Austin Statesman said that he had “been welcomed home after four years of arduous labor in a foreign country in a manner that should bring pride to the heart of any man.”56 Terrell had decided to write about his Turkish experiences, and he soon published an article in Century Magazine about Sultan Abdulhamid. Terrell called him “the ablest sovereign in Europe” and recounted their interviews. As to the Armenians, Terrell knew that the sultan “did not have it in his nature to be needlessly cruel.” In all, it was a picture of the sultan as Terrell believed he had known him in Constantinople. On that personal relationship the Texas diplomat had staked his diplomatic career and personal reputation.57 The four years in Turkey had given Alexander Terrell access to the highest levels of European and American society. Distinguished visitors from corporate magnates to royalty passed through his legation. He had seen the Holy Land and the ruins of the ancient world and had brought back some of their treasures to Texas. Terrell’s desire to play a large part in the world had been more than fulfilled.58 His record as a diplomat was a mixed one. Hardworking and conscientious, he had more than done his official duty in Turkey. There is no evidence that American policy suffered because of anything he did or did not do. He protected missionaries and Armenians to the fullest extent of his limited power as a minister. On the other hand, Terrell was not suited to the constraints and rigors of diplomatic life. He spoke off the cuff, was indiscreet in public and private, and took criticism personally that he should have ignored. A lifetime of leaving no slight unanswered ill prepared him for the reticence and forbearance that was the lot of an American envoy in a foreign court. Terrell reflected the amateurish quality of American diplomacy during the 1890s, when there was no professional foreign service and overseas posts were patronage plums to be handed out to the party faithful or large contributors. Because of the controversial nature of the Turkish Empire and the heightened awareness of that country’s treatment of its minorities, Terrell came under the equivalent of a diplomatic microscope. His weaknesses might have been overlooked at a more tranquil posting like those of most of Cleveland’s appointees. As it was, Terrell was a focus for international attention. Most of all, Terrell overestimated his personal charm and ability 143

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to impress the sultan as an honest, trustworthy diplomat. He was not simply a dupe of the monarch, as missionaries and Armenians charged at the time, but neither was he as skeptical and detached as he should have been in evaluating the conduct of the Turkish government. The pageantry of the sultan’s court and the healthy doses of flattery he received from Abdulhamid turned his head. His comparison of the Armenian-Turkish tension to what he had experienced in Texas during Reconstruction showed elements of the racial stereotypes he had earlier applied to African Americans in his home state. Terrell’s stay also illustrated many of the assumptions Americans held toward the Ottoman Empire. The missionaries saw Turkey as a field for conversions despite resistance from the Muslim population. The Armenians wanted the United States to facilitate their breaking away from Ottoman rule. The absence of effective military power constrained Washington from intervention, but if the United States had had the means to exercise power in the Near East, the Christian groups would have pressed for the freedom to challenge the rule and theological dominance of the Ottoman rulers. However much Terrell had been taken in by the sultan, he exercised more self-restraint in his attitude toward the Turks than did many of his fellow citizens eager to spread the blessings of Christianity into the Near East. Still, for Alexander W. Terrell it had all been a fascinating chapter in his tumultuous life. He returned in 1897 at the age of seventy with his health improved, his finances in good order, and his memories enriched. It might have seemed time to retire to his farm and do the writing he had long planned to accomplish. Instead, in the last phase of his public career, Terrell became the architect of changes in the state’s election laws, emerged as a champion of prohibition, and served on the Board of Regents of the University of Texas. His contributions to his adopted state were far from over.

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hen he returned from Turkey in the summer of 1897, Alexander W. Terrell was a few months short of his seventieth birthday. He was still vigorous, and his health had even improved during his stay in Constantinople. During the next five years, he and his wife traveled to spas and cooler climates during the summers. Otherwise, Terrell spent time at his home in Del Valle, where he began the writing he had long wanted to do. Poetry, articles about the famous men he had known, and his own memoirs, all were written during this period of relative quiet and reflection. Politics were not forgotten, but after the excitement of the mid1890s, the Texas Democrats had become less receptive to Terrell’s anti-corporate positions. Led by Colonel Edward M. House of Austin, the dominant Democratic faction emphasized taxation and regulatory policies friendly to business. Meanwhile, the rise of Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey added to the scene another personality with whom Terrell did not get along. When Bailey won a United States Senate seat in 1901, it signaled another setback for the forces formerly loyal to James S. Hogg. For the moment, Terrell had no real political base.1 Family issues pressed for Terrell’s attention. His son Howard, now a lawyer in Boonville, Missouri, had a wife, Dora, and two small children, whom the elder Terrell cherished. Howard Terrell, however, was a compulsive gambler and womanizer. He forged checks, stole money from his father, and cheated merchants in Boonville. By 1902 he had deserted his family and moved to the Philippines. There he took up with an actress whom he passed off as his wife. Alexander Terrell supported his daughter-in-law and her children in Fort Worth until his death in 1912.2

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Terrell’s mother died in January 1901 at the age of ninety-six. She had resided in Lynchburg, Virginia, for the last twenty-five years of her life with her son J. J. Terrell. Each Christmas her three sons assembled to see her for the holidays. She remained lucid with a good memory until her last brief illness, which the family attributed to stress from the sudden death of a young relative. When he received the news of her sinking condition, Alex Terrell hurried to her bedside, but she died before his arrival.3 During these years away from the center of state politics, Terrell remained a sought-after speaker for ceremonial occasions. In June 1898 he again addressed the University of Texas graduates, this time on the subject of land and its relation to democratic government. Terrell spoke for several hours in an oration studded with references to John Locke, Henry George, and figures from European history. His ability to hold an audience had not diminished. “The populations of great cities are a menace to free institutions,” he proclaimed. Municipal governments, he warned, were dominated by “a discontented majority, composed of foreigners, who are averse to agriculture, adventurers, the indolent, the reckless, and the unfortunate.” On the other hand, he said, “the farm is the nursery of conservatism.” Terrell’s suspicions of cities, minorities, and African Americans would be important elements in his quest for changes in the state’s election laws after 1902.4 In September 1899 Terrell again spoke out about monopolies and the menace of trust power. “The great question,” he told his audience at Hancock’s opera house in Austin, is “industrial freedom for Texas” and “the emancipation of white labor in Texas.” His lengthy examination of the problem led him to recommend the repeal of state laws favoring private corporations, a clear statement in law that “every private manufacturing and trading corporation is a standing menace to the liberties of the people,” and the enactment of laws to bar such enterprises and their products from the state. Citizens could achieve all these results if they instructed their legislators to act when the lawmakers next convened. Thus, he said, “the mercenary politician and the groveling peon of deceptive platforms” could be defeated.5 As with earlier Terrell statements, the speech was reprinted around Texas. One writer told the Houston Post that Terrell was “one of the brainiest men in Texas and thoroughly conservative.” The editor of the Laredo Times said that he “has furnished the means for 146

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several men in Texas to ride into power and place. Hogg stole his mule.” The sense that Terrell had been an important figure in the history of the Democratic Party would dominate comment about him during his last decade. In the political climate of Texas in 1899, the speech had no impact on government policy.6 Terrell began work on his memoirs with the intent of producing a chronicle of his public career. As he confronted the task, however, he made some decisions that affected the development of the narrative. He dwelt in greatest detail on the first ten years of his life in Texas and wrote perceptively about the distinguished state leaders he had known, such as Sam Houston, Ashbel Smith, and Oran Roberts. His comments were revealing about what he had experienced and the way he wished that history would view his life. He spent many pages on his travels in Mexico in 1865, and by late 1903 and early 1904 he was sharing portions of that section in presentations to local audiences.7 Terrell did not delve into his Civil War experiences, explaining: “So many histories have been written of the Civil War that only a brief reference to its causes and consequences seemed appropriate.” He thus spared himself the need to examine the events at the Battle of Pleasant Hill. The only allusion he made to that moment was in reference to the life of James Pinckney Henderson, the governor of Texas in 1846, who fought in the Mexican War. At the Battle of Monterrey, in Terrell’s words, Henderson “had the misfortune to be separated from his command, the embarrassment of which must be felt to be appreciated.” Terrell also structured his recollections to suggest that he himself had displayed Unionist sympathies. By this time some of Terrell’s bitterness about the Civil War years and Reconstruction had ebbed.8 Similarly, Terrell decided not to write about his experiences in Turkey and referred readers to the pertinent volumes of the Foreign Relations series instead. Nor did he go into his accomplishments as a “judge and legislator.” Those areas, he wrote, “are matters of record.” These self-denying decisions made his recollections most valuable for understanding the historical personalities of the 1850s, when Terrell’s life was still full of promise, and for the Mexico adventure.9 Terrell was very conscious of growing older, and he often wondered how history would remember him. He sought in religion to find reassurance about the survival of the spirit after death. In his memoirs Terrell asserted that “the greatest blunder of my life was in 147

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failing to unite with some Christian church and thus secure the helpful influence of some Christian association.” He prayed each night “to the Unseen Ruler of the Universe” to “ask pardon for my sins” and said he “would give the world for the simple faith of my childhood.”10 In 1900 Terrell grappled with these issues in verse. The lengthy poem that resulted was “The Soul.” It ran through twenty-nine stanzas as its author went back and forth between skepticism and faith before concluding that God and Jesus Christ would at the judgment day save his soul: This trusting soul can ask for no more Than to keep its faith sublime;— The loved and lost have gone before, And wait for me on the restful shore That borders the stream of time.11 While the poem received a favorable response when it appeared in newspapers and magazines in Texas and around the nation, it did not assuage Terrell’s own fears about his destiny. Throughout his last decade, his faith in Christianity wavered. In his diaries he wrote, “It would have been better for the Christian world if Darwin, Huxley & that school of scientist had let alone their doctrines of the ‘Survival of the Fittest’ for they have enlarged the field of doubt & done nothing to help me.” Terrell kept searching for answers until a few months before his death.12 In his public role, Terrell remained a celebrity. When national leaders came to Austin, Terrell was involved in the preparations and the ceremonies. Terrell served on the executive committee to make arrangements for the visit of President William McKinley in May 1901 during the president’s nationwide tour. As befitted a former member of the diplomatic corps, Terrell rode in the third carriage in the procession with Secretary of State John Hay. Four years later, when President Theodore Roosevelt was in Austin on his way to a hunting trip, Terrell was less involved and was placed in the seventh carriage with the reporters and photographers covering the occasion.13 As a living link to the heroic period of Texas history, Terrell became a favored orator for memorial addresses on deceased statesmen. He delivered speeches in the legislature on Senator Roger Q. Mills in 1903, Senator John H. Reagan in 1905, and Governor James 148

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S. Hogg in 1906. Texas independence formed the theme for another major commentary on March 2, 1905. In those remarks Terrell evoked the romance of the early years of statehood and recalled the great men of Texas he had known.14 By 1902, in his seventy-fifth year, Terrell sold his Del Valle farm and moved back to a house in Austin. In March he announced his candidacy for one of the two seats in the Texas House from Travis County. He told his prospective constituents that he had decided to reenter elective politics because “the ballot box must be purified or our free institutions will soon disappear.” The key to curbing the power of corporations, in Terrell’s mind, was eliminating the influences that were corrupting the electoral process. In this last legislative effort, Terrell renewed his call for agrarian values to come first in state politics and reasserted his belief that white voters must act to reduce the impact of black Texans on elections.15 Terrell’s political reappearance came at a time when racial proscription in Texas had gained renewed appeal for Democrats. With the Populist threat waning and segregation hardening, removing African Americans from politics seemed a logical next step. With Terrell on the sidelines, others had pushed for a poll tax in 1899 and 1901. The legislature had submitted a constitutional amendment to impose a poll tax in 1901, and the measure would go before the voters in the fall of 1902. The amendment specified that the tax had to be paid by February of an election year. The purpose of the levy was to decrease the number of blacks, Hispanics, and poor whites voting and to increase the power of Democrats relative to other parties. Terrell supported the amendment as “only the first step toward purifying the ballot box.”16 Time had not mellowed Terrell’s antipathy toward black Texans and their role in state politics. “No climate could give a white man a skull almost as thick as a buffalo’s, convert his straight hair into kinky wool, or impart the repulsive odor that makes the Negro a disagreeable bed fellow,” he wrote in 1908. Terrell believed that political control of African Americans should be achieved through legal means and without reliance on the evasions practiced in other Southern states: “If the white race is ever forced to change the legal status of the Negro it should be done openly—boldly and not by evading the law with fraudulent devices.” That spirit animated Terrell’s approach to election laws when he returned to the legislature in 1903.17 Beyond racial aspects, Terrell was also concerned with how his 149

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fellow white Democrats wielded the existing election procedures to their own advantage. The faction that Edward M. House led would call county primaries early in an election year to build up momentum for conservative candidates. Accordingly, Terrell wanted to make primaries open to voters who had paid their poll tax and to create a uniform date for holding Democratic primaries. He also sought to tighten the law against allowing individuals or corporations to pay the poll tax for voters. That practice was widespread in the counties along the Mexican border where political bosses controlled the electorate. These counties regularly delivered massive majorities for the statewide candidates who had made deals with South Texas leaders.18 Terrell received a personal demonstration of the potential abuses of the convention system in his own locality in 1902. A primary in the four-county senatorial district saw a Democratic candidate, J. H. Faubion, defeat his rival, Lee J. Rountree, by several thousand votes. When the senatorial convention assembled at Burnet on June 25, however, the delegates from the four counties split over the two candidates. The twenty-one delegates from Burnet and Williamson counties cast all their votes for Rountree. The twenty delegates from Travis and Lampasas counties gave Faubion their votes. Rountree was declared the nominee. Terrell was a delegate and denounced the procedure for frustrating the will of the Democratic rank and file. In August the Travis County executive committee met and decided that Faubion was the candidate whose name should be placed on the ballot.19 Democratic discord gave beleaguered Republicans an unexpected opportunity to field their own senatorial candidate who might capitalize on the situation. In the course of an August meeting that failed to come up with a challenger to Faubion, an African-American Republican named King Rogers assailed Terrell’s motives in running for the Texas House. According to the reporter for the Statesman, Rogers said, “Niggers what can’t push the pencil are dead birds in the pit” as far as voting was concerned if Terrell got his way. When the dust had settled from these various maneuvers, Faubion was on the ballot, Rountree ran as well, and an independent candidate also vied for the Senate seat. The episode underscored for Terrell what could happen when a primary decision was overridden in a convention.20 Upon his reentry into politics, Terrell once again plunged into the policy issues of his party as one of the Travis County delegates to the state convention in Galveston in mid-July. The Rountree dele150

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gates from the senatorial district kept him off the platform committee, but Terrell spoke from the floor in favor of an amendment to the platform, proposed by Thomas M. Campbell of Palestine, prohibiting the use of child labor. Terrell hoped to get some sort of child labor law adopted in the 1903 legislature. He sought information about the issue and possible wording of a law from at least one proponent of the reform after his convention address.21 At a pre-election rally in Austin, Terrell told the crowd, according to a reporter, that Democrats were “friendly to the darkies and it was to their interest to vote the democratic ticket.” When the ballots were counted, Terrell received 3,751 votes and was elected as one of the Travis County representatives. Faubion won the Senate seat. The poll tax amendment passed by a two-to-one margin and produced the reduction in minority voting and the overall size of the electorate that its proponents intended. The Republican Party had shrunk to an ineffectual faction, and most of the former Populists who voted drifted back into the Democratic ranks.22 The Twenty-eighth Legislature convened in January 1903 and heard the new governor, S. W. T. Lanham, outline the modest agenda that Colonel House and his allies sought. Terrell did achieve passage of the child labor law in a watered-down form. His main focus was on the new election bill, and he knew that passage would not be simple. As the Dallas Times Herald noted, the legislature had to respond to the popular demand among white Democrats for a genuine primary. “Give us the real thing in a shape of a general primary election. The people can get along without the assistance of political bosses. Hon. Alexander Watkins Terrell has work cut out for our statesman at the coming session of the legislature.”23 Terrell became the chairman of the Committee on Privileges and Elections. He could thus manage the bill’s progress in the House. At one point when he failed to obtain consent to proceed with the measure, he abruptly resigned the post. His friends on the floor persuaded him to rescind the hasty gesture. The election bill itself was much amended before it passed the House in mid-March by a vote of 70 to 29. The Senate added another 101 amendments and deleted some key sections as lawmakers tried to protect their own interests. Fearful that the bill would die if it went to a conference committee, Terrell decided to accept what the Senate had done. He convinced the House to concur in the Senate action by a vote of 66 to 46. Terrell told reporters that “while the bill has been considerably weak151

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ened, it is the foundation of a law which will go far toward eradicating corrupt practices.”24 As adopted, the law provided for stricter enforcement of the poll tax and created a uniform day for primary elections. In a key move, Democratic county committees could set standards for participation in a primary, which meant that black voters could be and thus were excluded. The “white primary” became a standard feature of selecting Democratic candidates. The Terrell Law, as it was immediately known, also specified procedures for operating the elections, such as a mandatory secret ballot, and for taking control of the working of elections out of the hands of the parties. Where the measure fell short, Terrell said, was in making it hard for independents to get on the ballot, in not providing for election poll watchers, and in failing to state that election judges in the general elections must be from different parties. In a key omission, the law made it discretionary rather than mandatory for parties to hold primaries rather than rely on conventions in selecting their candidates.25 Given his partial achievement of electoral change in 1903, Terrell decided to run for another term in 1904 to finish his work. He defended his record in a February speech in Fort Worth to the County Judges and Commissioners Association. He rebutted charges that the new law was too complicated. The expenses that the elections posed were the price of honest government. “I refused to vote for ten years past, except for presidential electors,” he told his audience, “for I was unwilling to have my vote killed by that of a vagrant Mexican or Ethiopian, who was corralled and paid for.” The new law provided “a check on state conventions and political trusts.” While it was “a thousand times better than the old law,” it needed further changes. “The state belongs to farming and pasture people,” Terrell concluded, “and if this election law shall rescue it from the dominion of ring politicians and political trusts and restore power to those who own it, my cup of rejoicing will be full.”26 The spring of 1904 saw a sensational murder in Austin that confirmed for Terrell his anti-black attitudes and the need for electoral change to curb African-American voting. A young woman in nearby Manor, Lulu Sandberg, was raped and murdered. A black named Henry Simmons was accused of the crime, captured, tried, and executed, all in a space of less than two weeks. For Terrell, the lesson of the event was that blacks in Austin did not reveal the presence of the suspect when he took refuge in a saloon. Terrell maintained that “no 152

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instance can be shown when a black rapist has ever been informed on by one of his own race; on the contrary they always conceal the Negro criminal when they can.” In fact a black woman disclosed where Simmons was hiding, and blacks identified him for the police. After a three-minute trial, Simmons was executed in expedited procedures designed primarily to stave off a lynch mob.27 Terrell announced his candidacy for a second House term in June 1904 in a circular letter to Travis County Democrats. He wanted to amend the 1903 law to have the state bear the cost of elections, to make county primaries mandatory rather than voluntary, and to ensure a system of independent poll watchers. He also called for greater regulation of “the low dives, liquor joints and gaming halls that disgrace our towns and cities.” He cited the Simmons case as a rationale for his position: “No negro reared on a farm and kept there with a hoe in his hand, has ever been hung for rape.” All establishments serving liquor should be regulated “through high license” fees and “vigilant supervision.” The race issue, as well as his family experiences with alcohol, had moved Terrell away from his earlier opposition to prohibition on the county or state level.28 The 1904 elections returned Terrell for a second term. Because of illness he could not file his statement of election expenses incurred, but he was ready to accept the penalties of his own law. With the legislative session opening in January 1905, he wrote to his fellow lawmakers to secure their ideas about the best way to amend the election statute. The future progressive Thomas B. Love of Dallas sent Terrell a draft of the law “for the purpose of submission to you as a proposed part of your amended law.”29 Terrell joined Love and Lyndon Johnson’s father, Sam Ealy Johnson, in the House of Representatives that assembled for the Twentyninth Legislature. While changes to election law occupied most of Terrell’s attention during the session, he moved away from his previous opposition to prohibition during a debate about a bill to keep minors out of pool halls. Austin, he said, had an abundance of “hell holes” that needed to be regulated. While he still called himself an anti-prohibitionist, Terrell’s suspicion of the liquor trade had grown both because of the race issue and because of the problems his two sons faced with alcohol. On another subject, a new county was created near the Big Bend area of the state, and the committee on counties recommended that it bear Terrell’s name. While Terrell believed that naming a county for a living person was “a bad precedent,” he 153

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conceded that “it was pleasing to reflect that my associates thought well of me.” The legislature did wish to honor their colleague, and Terrell County was born.30 Terrell’s bill to restore the deleted sections of his 1903 election law was introduced in January 12, 1905. This time around Terrell’s opposition had a powerful ally. The new speaker of the House, Francis W. Seabury, came from South Texas, where election fraud was imbedded in the political culture. On March 17, Terrell accused Seabury of trying to kill the bill “as an old and avowed enemy” of the legislation who was “still fighting it with the help of a few other members on this floor.” The Dallas Morning News reported the daring attack on the speaker as “perhaps, the first time in the annals of the state that a member of the legislature got right out, unsheathed his sword and assailed the Speaker face to face, specified what he was talking about and particularized as to what his grievances were.” Seabury denied any such effort to block the bill, but Terrell remained suspicious of the goals of the presiding officer.31 Twelve days later Terrell faced a move on the House floor to substitute the 1903 law for his pending bill and then simply to amend the statute. Terrell reacted with anger to what he saw as a delaying tactic: “This move emanates from the Rio Grande, where Mexicans are induced on election day to swim across the Rio Grande and are voted before their hair is dry.” The effort to slow down the bill failed, and the House approved the Terrell measure the next day. The Austin lawmaker told reporters: “I think all will agree that it is a great improvement on the present law.”32 The major changes in the 1905 version gave independent parties a place on the ballot and directed that parties polling more than 100,000 votes in a general election hold primaries in July. According to Section 120 of the bill, in county conventions, when no single candidate had won a clear majority of the primary vote, delegates would be allocated among all the candidates. This language brought over some members who would otherwise have opposed the bill with a winner-take-all provision. Candidates would be listed on the ballot by the office they sought rather than being grouped according to party. Poll watchers would come from all parties. Finally, the law also banned newspapers from carrying, except as paid advertising, stories and columns for or against candidates that the paper’s editor had not written.33 Terrell feared that the bill might not emerge from the Senate 154

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before the regular session ended in mid-April. His prediction proved correct, and a special session became necessary. The lawmakers resumed their work on April 17. Extensive negotiations finally produced a conference committee report that contained most of what Terrell sought. The legislature had to deliberate until the early hours of Sunday, May 14, but in the end the measure was approved. All that remained to be done was to have the bill copied and transmitted to Governor Lanham for his signature.34 Any sense of triumph that Terrell enjoyed lasted only until he began reading the copy of the bill that was going to the governor. He recognized that Section 120 had been changed to say that a candidate who won a majority of the votes in a district or county primary would get all the delegates in the convention that followed the primary. Somehow the language had been changed on the bill while it was at the office of the enrolling clerk.35 In a public letter to Governor Lanham on May 18, Terrell contended that Section 120 “did not pass the Legislature in the form in which it was enrolled and presented to you for your signature.” He told reporters that a covert change had been made in the bill during the time between passage and submission of the measure to the governor. Since the new wording helped South Texas politicians with their controlled electorate, Speaker Seabury became an obvious target of inquiry. Governor Lanham allowed the bill to become law without his signature and with the offending language in place. That result did not suit Terrell. He determined to wage a personal campaign to have Lanham call the lawmakers back into a special session to correct the error in Section 120.36 To make the idea of a special session palatable to the voters, Terrell proposed that he and his colleagues serve without pay during the proposed session and accept only a per diem payment from state funds. Obviously, this was easier for an Austin resident to propose than for lawmakers from more distant localities. Newspapers such as the Dallas Morning News argued that the legislators should not take any payment at all to correct their collective error. Terrell wired or wrote all his fellow lawmakers during the month that followed. By mid-June, he had positive responses from twelve senators and thirtyeight representatives. During the summer of 1905 the issue remained in limbo. Terrell and other legislators pressed Lanham in a public letter to call a special session. They had 108 House members and senators on record as willing to serve without pay to correct Section 120.37 155

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Lanham issued a call on February 17, 1906, for a special session and directed members to assemble on March 26. Meanwhile, Terrell went to New York City to speak to the National Civic Federation on the general subject of election laws in Texas and the South. “English speaking people when brought in contact with inferior races have always done whatever was necessary, whether right or wrong, to preserve their ascendancy,” he said in defense of the tactics used to control minority voters. “In the absence of universal intelligence the only safe-guard for a permanent democracy will be found in restricting suffrage to those who in some way show an honest interest in public affairs.” By 1906 Terrell’s views on restricting suffrage to wellqualified white voters had become an accepted orthodoxy throughout much of the nation.38 During his speech Terrell alleged that a “scoundrel” had altered Section 120, and when the legislature gathered for the special session in late March the issue of who had made the changes in the bill grew more heated. In a statement on the floor on March 26, Terrell reiterated that an alteration in the bill was deliberate and not an honest error. He left little doubt that he suspected the speaker or his staff. He called for a probe of what had occurred, and an investigating committee conducted an inquiry into the incident. After a hearing at which Terrell questioned witnesses at length, the panel decided that the alterations in Section 120 had been an honest mistake and not an illegal action. The special session then did nothing more than correct the offending section and adjourn. Terrell did not accept any of the money that lawmakers voted to defray the cost of the legislative session.39 The Terrell Election Laws of 1903 and 1905–1906 established a voting system in Texas that solidified the control of the Democrats and reduced participation of minorities in the party’s primaries. The poll tax drove down the participation of blacks to about 2 percent of the Democratic electorate by 1912 and severely trimmed the overall turnout of whites in primaries and general elections. The Republicans ceased to be a realistic opposition for a half-century. One of their leaders wrote in 1912, “The primary election law was placed upon the statutes of this State with a view of perpetuating the Democratic hierarchy and so effectual has been its operation that, today, a nomination in the Democratic primaries is tantamount to election.”40 Since the South adopted harsh restrictions on African-American voting throughout the region between 1890 and 1910, some varia156

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tion of the Terrell Election Laws would probably have been enacted even if Terrell had not reentered politics in 1902. Alexander W. Terrell’s racial views mirrored those of most white Texans at the beginning of the twentieth century. That is what made him such an effective spokesman for laws that drove blacks out of politics and reinforced Democratic supremacy. As he had done so often in his long career, Terrell embodied mainstream racial attitudes in Texas and converted them into important legislation. In fundamental ways, he never changed the racial views that he expressed in 1860 when he called slavery a positive good. Thus, the Terrell Election Laws and their anti-black and anti-Hispanic underpinnings seem to modern generations a vestige of the state’s racist past. During the spring of 1906, Terrell announced that he would not run for a third consecutive House term. The Democrats of Texas, he said in a statement, now had “reasonable protection for the people in casting their votes.” Other electoral changes, such as provisions to ensure a fair count, were still needed, but his legislative work was done. At seventy-nine, Terrell would let other lawmakers pursue the issue. If he believed, however, that his active political career had ended, he was mistaken. Within a few months, he plunged into the bitter controversy surrounding the character and honesty of the state’s junior United States Senator, Joseph Weldon Bailey, who was finishing his first term in 1906.41 During the summer of 1906, long-standing questions about Senator Bailey’s financial relations with the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil, surfaced again in Texas newspapers. The lawmaker had received a $3,300 loan in 1900 from the company’s president, Henry Clay Pierce, in return for his legal assistance to the firm. Bailey then won election to the United States Senate in 1901. Bailey kept the facts of this transaction from the public until it was revealed during the course of a state lawsuit against WatersPierce in 1906. The senator had won the Democratic nomination in the July 1906 primary and was headed toward reelection when the legislature convened in January 1907. Despite these political advantages for the incumbent, enemies of Bailey, including Alexander W. Terrell, sought to block his election to the Senate seat. Terrell told the press that reelecting Bailey would “be wrong, for it would show that our legislature has slight regard for civic virtue.”42 Terrell had known Bailey since 1888, when they both served as Democratic presidential electors. By 1900 they were political ene157

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mies, and several years later all personal interaction between them ceased. Terrell said of his foe, “He has to a large degree that magnetism and hypnotic gift that often captivates the multitude—for he can hypnotize the weak, bulldoze the timid and deceive the credulous.” Bailey’s friends regarded him as the exponent of traditional Democratic values including white supremacy and an eloquent foe of national Republicans. His detractors were less impressed. The emerging faction of progressives believed that Bailey was corrupt and devious and, more important, a major obstacle to clean government in the state. Terrell had picked a strong antagonist for this political contest. In the process he also received a painful reminder of the staying power of the tale about his “cowardice” at Pleasant Hill more than four decades earlier.43 Terrell and the anti-Bailey forces in Travis County arranged to hold a special primary election on January 5, 1907. Voters would decide whether to instruct the two Travis County members of the Texas House to oppose Bailey’s reelection in the legislature. In this controversy the Austin Statesman and its owners were pro-Bailey and eager to undermine Terrell. To that end, the newspaper ran a letter from a pro-Bailey supporter that mentioned Sul Ross’s 1892 attack on Terrell’s character and Civil War record. The writer of the letter referred to Terrell’s “itch for office which he has always had to a remarkable extent.” In a public letter to the Statesman, Terrell explained the political origins of his feud with Ross but did not address the issue of his war record. “I will not object to any fair criticisms of my life before the present generation of men when it is inspired by proper motives,” he wrote. Two days later, on January 3, 1907, Terrell debated one of Bailey’s supporters about the senator’s record. He denied that he had any ambitions for Bailey’s seat and raised pointed questions about how the senator had become wealthy while holding public office.44 Bailey spoke in Austin on January 4. During the course of his talk he rebutted Terrell’s criticisms of his legislative performance. Then he became personal. “Judge Terrell permits his passion for imagination to run away with him in politics like he permitted his mule to run away with him in ——.” The Statesman reporter noted that “the concluding part of the sentence was lost in the uproar of applause which followed.” That a large audience in Terrell’s hometown knew of this episode indicates its persistence in the public perception of his political life.45 158

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If Bailey had not made his point with sufficient energy, he returned to it the same day during a visit to the Confederate Home. It was a friendly audience. In his election laws, Terrell had opposed special exemptions from the poll tax for Confederate veterans, some of whom had problems either paying the levy or getting the necessary information recorded. Bailey said, “I want history to give an accurate account of the war and I do not want to see anybody disfranchise you,” whereupon a “voice” said: “That’s Alex Terrell.” Bailey quickly added, “I understand it was Judge Terrell whose military record is not like yours. So don’t blame him for not liking your record for the way you fought.”46 Both examples of Bailey’s remarks and the reaction to them underscore the degree to which the story about Terrell and Pleasant Hill had passed into the collective memory of Texas Democrats. Of course, the senator conflated the mule story from 1857 and the war episode from 1864, but the practical effect on Terrell’s reputation was the same. Presumably this nagging legacy of the Civil War explains in part why Terrell could not gain the confidence of the voters in his 1886–1887 Senate race and why he came under such attack when he spoke out for James S. Hogg in 1892. The special primary ended in a narrow 150-vote success for the anti-Bailey forces. A newspaper called it “a personal victory for Judge A. W. Terrell.” Nonetheless, the legislature reelected Bailey in late January, and a special legislative committee that probed the matter cleared the senator of the main charges against him in February. In a fiery speech to supporters assembled in the House chamber, Bailey said, “The men who are opposing me are men who are nothing while those who are with me are the living, breathing, active democracy of this state.” Despite this setback Terrell and other anti-Bailey Democrats prepared to renew the battle when it came time in the spring of 1908 to select the state’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention.47 Both Bailey and his opponents advocated that a presidential primary election be held in the spring of 1908 as the best mechanism for picking a slate of delegates. There was no question that each side supported the presidential candidacy of William Jennings Bryan. What the contest would decide was where Texas Democrats stood on Bailey and “Baileyism.” The senator’s men wanted a binding pledge to support all the Democratic nominees from president to the lowliest constable. Terrell and his allies opposed that restriction. Bai159

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ley himself would lead his delegation if that slate prevailed at the polls. At an anti-Bailey meeting on March 7 in Waco, Terrell chaired the platform committee, was named a candidate for presidential elector at large, and donated $100 to the effort to defeat the senator’s ambitions.48 A month later at a meeting in Georgetown, Terrell was the featured speaker. He arraigned Bailey for corruption in office: “Texas cannot afford to send to Denver as a delegate a man whose crooked trail has been oiled by predatory wealth.” On the other hand, if honest party members were dispatched to the national gathering, “then the old Democratic ship with her white sails shining in the sunlight and her streamers floating to the breeze, bearing as their motto ‘Equal rights to all men,’ though buffeted by the storm of treachery, will sail triumphant into port amid the cheers and blessings of an unbought Democracy.”49 Terrell spoke at another rally in the City Hall auditorium at Fort Worth on April 29, 1908. In his remarks he accused Bailey of moral depravity and having “greased his feet in Pierce’s oil trough.” The next night at the same location, William Poindexter, a longtime Bailey ally, replied to Terrell and deplored his attack on the senator’s character and his ancestry. “God pity that poor old man,” he said of Terrell. “He is 80 years old and covers four inches at a step. He will not take many more of these short steps till he passes beyond the river.”50 Senator Bailey won the primary and controlled the state convention in May. Terrell was on the platform committee as a delegate from Travis County, but the Bailey forces dictated the nature of the proceedings. A minority report to the platform was submitted and rejected. Terrell and his co-authors called Bailey’s record “indefensible in a public officer.” Though he won in the short run, Bailey’s career headed downward by 1912. He did not seek reelection in that year and resigned his seat before his term expired. The attacks that Terrell and others made against him had bolstered Democratic sentiments against the senator and contributed to the growth of reform attitudes among Texas Democrats.51 Throughout these political events, Terrell battled with his own intellectual doubts about his religious skepticism. In notes scribbled to himself during 1907 and 1908, he expressed his regrets “that I have not struggled for the consolations of religion all my life.” He joined the Northern Presbyterian Church with his wife and hoped 160

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God “will be merciful.” In another passage of January 1908 he wrote: “I have been a sinful man—but during my whole life have felt the drawings of the Holy Spirit and have prayed much.”52 A further blow tested the aging Terrell in November 1908. After their dinner on November 25, 1908, Mrs. Terrell went upstairs, screamed once, and suffered a heart attack. Terrell rushed to her side, but she died twenty minutes later. Her will left all of her property, including her plantation in Robertson County, to her five children. Since Terrell had his own ample property, the couple had earlier agreed that he would receive no bequest from his wife’s estate.53 Following his wife’s death, Terrell lived alone at 908 San Antonio Street in Austin until he moved closer to the capitol the year of his death. Andrew George, an African-American servant, saw to his daily needs. Terrell experienced another personal loss when his brother Joe died in 1909. Though he was slowing down, Terrell still followed an active routine. A legal stenographer who met him at this time recalled that he had “a mind as bright as a schoolboy, although he was well along in his 80’s.” Most of his family was now scattered around the state, and his son Howard lived in New Mexico. Terrell wrote in his occasional diary about his sense of isolation, “An old man does not readily attract visitors. The reflection sometimes make me sad.” Yet even in his early eighties, Terrell remained involved in the life and doings of Austin and its major institutions. His role in public and cultural affairs had not yet ended.54 In February 1908 Terrell was elected president of the Texas State Historical Association, a post he held until his death more than four years later. The involvement with this historical society gave Terrell the impetus to publish parts of his memoir. His essay on Austin and its early history came out before his death. His recollections of Sam Houston appeared in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly a month after he died. Between 1908 and 1912 Terrell also published an essay on Mirabeau B. Lamar and another about Mary P. Eddy, the doctor he had met in Turkey. He was trying to get more of his memoirs into print in the months before he died.55 In late January 1909 Governor Thomas M. Campbell appointed Terrell to a two-year term on the Board of Regents of the University of Texas. The chairman of the regents, Thomas S. Henderson of Cameron, named Terrell to chair the Committee on Buildings and Grounds along with George W. Brackenridge of San Antonio and Hampton Gary of Tyler. Terrell also served on the executive and leg161

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islative committees. The university enrolled about two thousand students, had one hundred faculty members, and was beginning to gain a reputation outside of the state. The secretary of the university told Woodrow Wilson in 1909: “We do not think we are guilty of an exceedingly good opinion of ourselves in fancying that the University of Texas is known to the great institutions of the East and West.”56 What the University of Texas needed in 1910 was a new library building to replace the inadequate existing structure. Terrell was an important force in the early construction of what is now Battle Hall on the Austin campus of the University of Texas. Designed by the distinguished architect Cass Gilbert, the building is one of the few distinctive architectural achievements in a sea of monumental mediocrity. During 1909 and 1910 Terrell and Brackenridge found ways to raise the money to fund construction, and the panel selected Gilbert as the library’s architect. By July 1910 work was about to begin on excavating for the site and laying the foundation.57 For the first time in thirty years, Terrell spent the summer in Austin to oversee the operations. “I go daily to watch the mixing of the concrete foundation which I deem so important.” As the foundation went in, laying the cornerstone loomed ahead. Ceremonies were planned and state officials would attend. By this time, the Democratic Party had nominated Oscar B. Colquitt to succeed Campbell as governor. A dedicated anti-prohibitionist and an ally of Joe Bailey, Colquitt had few friends among the regents. Terrell and Chairman Henderson debated whether the cornerstone should display the names of the regents and Governor Campbell, with Colquitt’s name excluded even though he would be in office when the structure was completed. They decided to recognize Campbell and leave Colquitt out. Following the ceremony on November 2, 1910, work on the library went forward to its completion in 1911.58 With the nomination and election of Colquitt, Terrell knew that he had no chance of reappointment to a second term as a regent. The incoming governor wanted the prestigious regent positions for his own supporters. Other than Brackenridge, none of the incumbent members of the board was retained. Soon after the new regents were sworn in, Brackenridge resigned and stopped his personal donations to the university. He indicated to Terrell his disgust with the overt political influence that Colquitt’s friends intended to exert on the university. As a result of these events, Terrell and Brackenridge drew closer together in one of the last friendships of Terrell’s long life.59 162

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A wealthy Republican from San Antonio, Brackenridge was a lifelong bachelor who lived with his sister Eleanor. She was a militant advocate of woman suffrage in Texas. Five years younger than Terrell, Brackenridge invited his friend to spend time on his boat in the Gulf of Mexico for relaxation. Despite their different political heritages, the two men found much in common. Terrell also consulted with Eleanor Brackenridge about the formation of the Texas Equal Suffrage Society that came into being in 1912. As for Brackenridge himself, Terrell eulogized him when the philanthropist’s portrait was presented to the university in January 1911. “The uplifting influence of a life like this will endure,” Terrell told the honored guests.60 By 1911 the issue of prohibition had become a central concern for Texas Democrats. The drys organized an election in July to secure passage of a constitutional amendment that its backers claimed put the state on the road to becoming liquor-free. Terrell had been moving toward an outright endorsement of prohibition for some time. In a 1907 local-option election in Travis County he had come out for more stringent control of alcohol. He issued a public letter that rejected what he had written twenty-six years earlier during his Senate terms, and he alluded to the drinking problems that had afflicted Arthur and Howard Terrell.61 Four years later, on June 28, 1911, Terrell spoke in Austin for prohibition in what would be the last public speech of his life. His flair for tough language was still in evidence. He repudiated his earlier opposition to alcohol control and called the saloon “the hot brazen Moloch of our civilization which stands with extended arms to receive our children as sacrifices in his burning furnace.” In the course of the speech, Terrell assailed Governor Colquitt’s record on the Texas Railroad Commission as one that had favored the liquor interests by having empty beer kegs and liquor containers carried free around the state to their owners. “Such a partiality for corporate wealth,” said Terrell, “no man can excuse. It is enough to make the devil grin on his throne.”62 Colquitt denied Terrell’s charges and hit back hard at his political enemy. His comments reflected anti-Terrell sentiments among a number of Democrats: “Bitter and untrue words like those used in his speech Wednesday night, flowing from a foul and profane tongue and exuding from a vindictive heart, have prevented a great intellect from being useful to him and his State.” The governor then rubbed it in with a telling reference to the events at Pleasant Hill forty-seven 163

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years earlier. Terrell “once attacked Governor Sul Ross in a like manner and Ross’ denunciation of him is well remembered for its forcefulness.” Despite Terrell’s oratorical efforts, the 1911 prohibition amendment went down to a narrow defeat.63 Under the influence of Eleanor Brackenridge and the experiences of his daughter Lilla with discrimination in state government, Terrell spoke out with greater force for the rights of white women in 1911–1912. He asked the Statesman to investigate ways in which women were barred from advancement in state agencies. When he was elected an honorary member of the Ex-Students Association of the University of Texas in June 1911, he told the audience: “I openly proclaim the fact that I want female suffrage (Applause by the ladies). It is a relic of barbarism that she is remanded to servitude, the result of a conjugal subjection.”64 As Texas Democrats geared up for the 1912 presidential election, progressives in the state rallied behind the candidacy of Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey. After Wilson agreed to speak at the State Fair of Texas in October 1911, one of his managers, Thomas Watt Gregory of Austin, coached him to mention the names of Hogg, Reagan, and Terrell as champions of reform. Wilson did so in recognition of Terrell’s presence as the last survivor of an era in state politics that was vanishing.65 By 1912 Terrell showed signs of his advancing age. He fell on the steps of the State Capitol in January but recovered enough to visit his family in Virginia for the summer. While he was in the East he attended the memorial service for Clara Barton of the Red Cross, who had died on April 12, 1912. Still interested in politics, he endorsed Woodrow Wilson and worked to defeat Governor Colquitt for reelection. As he prepared to leave for his summer trip, Terrell once again returned to the religious mysteries that had occupied him so much during his later years. He typed out a lengthy statement of where his thoughts had taken him and why Christianity no longer appealed to his mind.66 “I find it difficult to believe in the revengeful and terrible nature which Christian teachers ascribe to the Almighty Creator,” he began. After reviewing “the tenets of all forms of religion,” Terrell concluded that the faith of Zoroaster “has much to commend it.” Zarathustra, the founder of the religion, emphasized “that good morals, good thoughts and good actions should be the great objects of moral striving.” Thus, Terrell did not believe “that my conscious 164

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existence will terminate with the death of my body.” Instead, his spirit, his Ego, he hoped would not die and would thus become “a part of all pervading Deity.”67 Terrell spent time in Virginia visiting old haunts and putting flowers on the grave of his mother and grandparents. By early September he was on his way back to Austin. The train took him to Fort Worth, and from there he went west to Mineral Wells to see some friends. On September 9 he and his companions toured the area in a car until about 11:30 a.m., when Terrell complained of the late-summer heat and went upstairs in his hotel to rest. When a maid came to the room at 6:30, she found him sprawled across the bed, dead of the effects of the weather.68 His body was taken to Austin, where plans were made for a funeral in the Senate chamber. At the request of the family, the site of the service was changed to the First Presbyterian Church, where the crowd “filled nearly every pew” on September 12. Terrell’s casket was draped with the Texas and Confederate flags. Members of the local chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union also attended “in a body.” Terrell’s servant, Andrew George, sat alone in the back in tears. After the funeral, the body was laid to rest on a hillside in the Texas State Cemetery near the graves of Guy M. Bryan and not far from the tomb of Stephen F. Austin. A simple headstone marked Terrell’s body until a more detailed marker was erected in the 1930s.69 In his will Terrell allocated the $45,000 of his estate to his daughter Lilla and two of his granddaughters. Howard Terrell received only $1,000. Andrew George inherited a silver watch with an inscription that praised Terrell’s efforts to educate black Texans. The vases and other artifacts from his years in Turkey were given to the University of Texas. The Egyptian mummy, which he had secured during his service in the Middle East, was donated by a family member to Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The Travis County Bar Association, the Texas State Historical Association, and the Texas Equal Suffrage Society all passed memorial resolutions.70 Terrell’s death was front-page news across Texas. Editorial writers spoke of “a character which was cast in no ordinary mold” and called him a man “who filled each station with credit to himself and honor to his constituency.” The Dallas Morning News said, “He rose to no position in public at all commensurate with his intellectual abilities.” The writer attributed that result “to the fact that he was 165

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intellectually unstable.” By that comment, the editor meant that Terrell “regarded opinions, and even convictions, as only mile posts of intellectual progress—things that all men should strive to leave behind.” The News had never been an admirer of Terrell and so its condescending tone was not surprising.71 A more careful appraisal came from the journalist Hugh Nugent Fitzgerald in his magazine Beau Monde. He called Terrell “a giant among pygmies, if you will, and a leader in advanced thought at all times,” but “yet he died a disappointed man.” Although Terrell dreamed of being governor and United States Senator, he “never enthused his fellows or became a popular idol. He would not bend the knee to conquer and so the mob passed him by.”72 One day after he had been out on the Gulf of Mexico with Brackenridge, Terrell wrote: “If I place my fingers in the water of this bay it will leave only such an impression as my life work has on this generation.” He reached that sad conclusion despite having a county named for him and having his portrait placed in the hall of the Texas house. Terrell’s historical reputation proved equally ephemeral. Part of the reason was simple bad luck. In the years following his death, his personal papers were dispersed. His daughter Lilla inherited the bulk of his official records, including his letter books and incoming correspondence, for his years in Turkey and the last fifteen years of his life. Other sections of his papers ended up in a storage warehouse from which they were given to the Texas State Library in 1985. Another collection of documents focusing on the Turkish years was given to St. Edward’s University in Austin and in 1991 was donated to the Texas State Library. Smaller collections of Terrell’s papers remain in the hands of his descendants.73 Very little documentation was left from Terrell’s early life or his professional and political career before 1890. His memoirs remain the only source for much of his life, and that source is incomplete. As a result of these gaps, tracing his formative years presented difficulties for Texas scholars Mary Ellen Wallis and Charles K. Chamberlain, who probed his life for a master’s thesis and a doctoral dissertation, respectively. Neither writer pulled Terrell’s impact on his times into historical context, and their work languished in the University of Texas at Austin library.74 By the 1970s Terrell’s reputation encountered another obstacle that posed an even greater problem for his standing in history. With

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the civil rights movement of the 1960s came greater attention to the racist themes in the American past. Terrell’s fight for changes in the Texas election laws placed him among those white politicians who used the law to disenfranchise African Americans and buttress segregation. One author called Terrell a “virulent racist,” and other scholars have been equally critical of his desire to exclude blacks from the state’s public affairs.75 But Alexander Terrell was also a leader in the anti-corporate spirit that swept Texas in the 1880s and 1890s, a champion of women’s rights, of education, and, late in his life, prohibition, and a key figure in the development of the University of Texas. His service in Turkey made him a controversial personality in the history of American diplomacy during a key decade. When the Texas legislature placed Terrell’s portrait in the chambers of the House of Representatives in April 1903, the plaque on the painting carried the inscription that Terrell was “the author of more good laws for Texas than any man living or dead.” Terrell was able to play such a role because of his uncanny ability to anticipate the larger trends within the Texas Democratic party.76 Yet he never quite broke through to the top rank of the state’s political leaders. Much of that outcome was his own fault. Terrell had a devious side that lured him into tricky dealings and produced bitter enemies in the process. The sense that he could not be trusted is evident in much that his contemporaries wrote about him and can be seen in his handling of the John Wilkes Booth poem, his dalliance with the French in Mexico, and his record as minister to Turkey. Two other elements held Terrell back. His distance from formal Christianity was an intangible barrier but a real one to full political acceptance. Yet Terrell suffered most of all from the lingering effects of that moment at Pleasant Hill in 1864 when he lost touch with his regiment for an entire day. That he was a coward is unlikely. That he was branded as one in the minds of many Texans is certain. He could not refute the slander without enlarging it, but silence and time never allowed him to escape it either. Alexander W. Terrell deserves more recognition than either the state of Texas or the University of Texas has seen fit to bestow upon him. The past in Texas is more complicated than most of its citizens realize. The good and bad in Terrell were mixed together. Racism and reform coexisted in his mind in ways that produced constructive

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change in some areas and deplorable legislation in others. Like Texas itself during his lifetime, Terrell displayed traits of enlightened, forward-looking thought and the most regressive aspects of a flawed society. To understand Alexander Watkins Terrell and his long political life is in a very real sense to grasp the paradoxes of the state to which he devoted himself for sixty years.

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Notes Chapter One 1. Christopher Johnson Terrell to “Dear Captain,” January 7, 1832, James McCartney Family Papers, Houston, Texas, courtesy of James McCartney, hereinafter cited as MFP; History of Howard and Cooper Counties, Missouri (St. Louis: National Historical Company, 1883), pp. 655–659. 2. Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 2–3. 3. Alexander Watkins Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 3, Box 2H17, Alexander Watkins Terrell Papers, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, hereinafter Terrell Papers. Terrell’s memoir will be cited as “Reminiscences.” 4. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 2. Terrell’s memoirs reflect that he was writing many years after the events described; “Address of Judge A. W. Terrell, in the House of Representatives, during Special Session, in Memory of Governor [James S.] Hogg,” Alexander Watkins Terrell Biographical File, Center for American History, for the reference to widows. 5. For Walter Terrell see Frank Barlow, William Rufus (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 423; the reference to King Edward is in some genealogical documents in the Alexander W. Terrell Family Papers, Texas State Library, hereinafter Terrell Family Papers (TSL), Box 1991/152-1. Additional information about the family in England can be found in Edwin H. Terrell, Further Genealogical Notes on the Tyrell-Terrell Family of Virginia and Its English and Norman-French Progenitors, Second Edition with Addenda and Corrigenda (San Antonio: n.p., 1909). 6. Robert C. Glass and Carter Glass Jr., Virginia Democracy (New York: Democratic Historical Association, 1937), vol. 2, pp. 25–26. 7. Glass and Glass, Virginia Democracy, vol. 2, p. 26; Emma Dicken, Terrell Genealogy (San Antonio: Naylor, n.d.), p. 172. Dr. Terrell is not listed in The Catalogue of the Alumni of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania,

Notes to Pages 5–8 1865–1877 (Philadelphia: Society of the Alumni of the Medical Department, n.d.), p. 179, where other graduates named Terrell or Terrill are listed. Mark Frazier Lloyd to Lewis L. Gould, September 3, 1999. For the apprenticeship path to medical training see Martin Kaufman, American Medical Education: The Formative Years, 1765–1910 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1976), pp. 45–46. Dr. Terrell’s qualities are described in his obituary in MFP. 8. Glass and Glass, Virginia Democracy, vol. 2, p. 26. Charles K. Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell, Citizen, Statesman,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1956), p. 4. 9. There is some disagreement about the date of Terrell’s birth, which is discussed in Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” p. 3, n. 4. Terrell’s own memoirs give the date as November 3, 1827. Jane Terrell is mentioned in Dicken, Terrell Genealogy, p. 172. 10. Dicken, Terrell Genealogy, p. 172, for the birth dates of Terrell’s brothers. For the tendency of some young Virginia men to move west in this period see Joan E. Cashin, A Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 33–39. Dr. Terrell’s father died in 1820, which meant that his son had fewer ties to Virginia anyway. 11. R. Douglas Hurt, Agriculture and Slavery in Missouri’s Little Dixie (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992), pp. 5, 51. 12. For the westward journey see Dr. J. Terrell Scott to “Merle,” December 1 and 14, 1971, George C. Morris Family Papers, Houston, Texas, courtesy of George C. Morris, hereinafter cited as Morris Family Papers. 13. William Clark Kennerly, Persimmon Hill: A Narrative of Old St. Louis and the Far West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949); Jerome O. Steffen, William Clark: Jeffersonian Man on the Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977), p. 151; Christopher Terrell to “Dear Captain,” January 7, 1832, MFP. 14. Hurt, Agriculture and Slavery, pp. 219, 221, 224. 15. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 2. 16. Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 5–6; an obituary of Susan Kennerly Terrell Clark Penn appeared in the Lynchburg [Virginia] News, January 30, 1901, McCartney Scrapbook, MFP. 17. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 3 (both quotations). 18. Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” p. 6, briefly discusses Susan Clark’s second marriage. For information on Robert Patterson Clark see History of Howard and Cooper Counties, Missouri, pp. 739, 830, 866–867. The cryptic reference to Clark’s second marriage on p. 867 suggests that the surviving Clark family members were not close to Susan Terrell Clark. 19. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” pp. 6–7. 20. Ibid., p. 4. 21. Sir Edwin Pears, Forty Years in Constantinople: The Recollections of Sir Edwin Pears, 1873–1915 (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1916), pp. 119–120. See also Mary Mills Patrick, Under Five Sultans (New York: Century Company, 1929), p. 184.

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Notes to Pages 8–10 Patrick does not name Terrell in discussing his drinking and smoking habits, but the reference is clear. 22. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 6. The reference to his teacher is in Speech of Senator Terrell, Delivered in the Senate, April 19, 1882, on the Bill to Set Aside Two Millions of Acres of Land to Endow the State University and a Like Amount for Free Public Schools (Austin: n.p., 1882), p. 21, pamphlet in Center for American History. For the history of the Kemper School see www.kemper1844.org. For a biographical essay about Terrell see Elton J. Melton, Melton’s History of Cooper County, Missouri: An Account from Early Times to the Present, Written in Narrative Style for General Use (Columbia, Missouri: Press of the E. W. Stephens Publishing Company, 1937), pp. 343–344. 23. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 9. For Terrell’s interest in the Near East see Susan Heuck Allen, Finding the Walls of Troy: Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schleimann at Hisarlik (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 238–241. 24. Hurt, Agriculture and Slavery, pp. 245–250; Texas State Gazette, hereinafter State Gazette, October 6, 1860. 25. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 9. Thomas Jefferson Lowry, A Sketch of the University of the State of Missouri (Columbia, Missouri: Herald Printing Company, n.d.). 26. Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the University of Missouri for the Year Ending November 23, 1843 (Columbia, Missouri: Switzler and Williams, 1843), courtesy of Carl Lingle of the University of Missouri; Lowry, Sketch of the University of Missouri, pp. 107–108; Jonas Viles, The University of Missouri: A Centennial History (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri, 1939), pp. 37–38; James Olson and Vera Olson, The University of Missouri: An Illustrated History (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1988). 27. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 10. “Scheme of Exercises, Commencement, August 5, 1847,” University of Missouri, courtesy of Carl Lingle; Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the University of Missouri for the Year Ending July 15, 1844 (Columbia, Missouri: Switzler and Williams, 1844), p. 5; Third Annual Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the University of Missouri for the Year Ending July 31, 1845 (Columbia, Missouri: William F. Switzler, 1845). 28. For the role of literary societies at the University of Missouri during the mid-nineteenth century see Olson and Olson, University of Missouri, pp. 8–9. Their place in the political culture of Missouri is discussed in Francis Lea McCurdy, Stump, Bar, and Pulpit: Speechmaking on the Missouri Frontier (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1969), pp. 42–44. The regional interest in literary societies is reviewed in E. Merton Coulter, College Life in the Old South (New York: MacMillan Company, 1928; Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1951), pp. 103–133. 29. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 10. Terrell’s participation in the activities of the Union Literary Society are documented in the Records of the Union Literary Society, Western Historical Manuscripts Collection, University of Missouri, Columbia, hereinafter cited as Union Literary Society Records.

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Notes to Pages 10–14 30. Union Literary Society Records; Address of A. W. Terrell on Private Corporations Delivered Before the Literary Societies of the University of Missouri, June 1, 1885 (Austin: Warner and Company Printers, 1885), Center for American History, hereinafter cited as Address of A. W. Terrell on Private Corporations. Terrell’s relations with the University of Missouri are discussed in Philemon Bliss to Terrell, November 25, 1876, Box 1991/152-1, Terrell Family Papers (TSL), and L. E. Bates to Terrell, May 10, 1905, Box 2H11, Terrell Papers. 31. Terrell’s oratorical abilities are appraised in Norman Goree Kittrell, Governors Who Have Been, and Other Public Men of Texas (Houston: Dealy-Adey-Elgin Company, 1921), p. 208. 32. W. V. N. Ray, Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar of Missouri (St. Louis, Missouri: F. H. Thomas and Company, 1878), pp. 57–64, the quotation appears on page 59. 33. William Francis English, The Pioneer Lawyer and Jurist in Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Studies XXI, 1947), pp. 96–98. 34. Kittrell, Governors Who Have Been, p. 208. History of Buchanan County, Missouri, Containing a History of the County, Its Cities, Towns, Etc. (St. Joseph, Missouri: Union Historical Company, 1884), p. 442, lists Terrell as City Attorney in 1851; he is also listed as a local attorney on page 254. 35. Joseph C. Terrell to John J. Terrell, August 13, 1848, MFP, reports on Alexander Terrell’s campaign speeches for Lewis Cass. According to Terrell’s brother, their maternal grandfather was a member of the Whig Party. Joseph Terrell remembered being presented to Andrew Jackson in 1845. That experience probably contributed to the Democratic leanings of the family. Joseph C. Terrell, Reminiscences of the Early Days of Fort Worth (Fort Worth: Texas Printing Company, 1906), pp. 13–14. 36. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 11; Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 12–14. 37. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 11; St. Joseph Gazette, February 23, 1849. 38. St. Joseph Gazette, November 16, 1849, December 14, 1849; Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 11. 39. St. Joseph Gazette, November 5, 1851; June 30, 1852, 40. Ibid., April 5, 1850. 41. Ibid., August 7, 1850; June 18 and 25, 1851; July 9, 1851. 42. Ibid., December 10, 1851; January 14, 1852. John Vollmer Mering, The Whig Party in Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1967), pp. 181–182. 43. St. Joseph Gazette, March 3 and 17, 1852; April 7, 1852. 44. Joseph Terrell to Sarah J. Clark, August 20, 1859, MFP; United States, Seventh Census of the United States, Schedule 1 (Free Inhabitants), Missouri, Buchanan County, Washington Township, September 27, 1850, p. 33, microfilm at CAH. 45. Joseph C. Terrell to John C. Terrell, August 25, 1851, MFP; Terrell, “Reminiscences,” pp. 11–12. Sheila Rothman, Living in the Shadow of Death:

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Notes to Pages 15–20 Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History (New York: Basic Books, 1994), examines the effects of the disease and the search for a healthful climate on its victims. 46. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 12. 47. Ibid., p. 13. 48. For Bouldin’s career see Austin Statesman, July 14, 1876, and James E. Bouldin to William P. Jones, May 14, 1853, Travis County Deed Record, vol. F, p. 344, and Bouldin’s will, Travis County Probate Record, vol. F, pp. 442–443, 454, both in Travis County District Court Records, Travis County Court House, Austin. 49. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 14.

Chapter Two 1. Aloise Walker Hardy, “A History of Travis County, 1832–1865” (master’s thesis: University of Texas at Austin, 1938), p. 183; Alexander W. Terrell, “The City of Austin from 1839 to 1865,” Texas State Historical Association Quarterly, 14(October 1910): 113–128. 2. Hardy, “Travis County,” p. 150, quoting State Gazette, November 25, 1854; Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 36, Box 2H17. 3. Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), pp. 56, 266; Walter L. Buenger, Secession and the Union in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984), pp. 23–25. 4. According to Mary Ellis Wallis, “The Life of Alexander Watkins Terrell,” (master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1937), p. 6, Terrell’s application was in the Minutes of the Spring Term of Court, March 7, 1853, C368, Travis County Court House. The minutes of the court are not now at the courthouse or at the Austin–Travis County Collection with the criminal court records there. State Gazette, June 25, 1853. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 38. 5. State Gazette, August 27, 1853; Terrell, “Reminiscences,” pp. 1–3. “Extract from the Reminiscences of Hon. A. W. Terrell” is a typed excerpt from Terrell’s manuscript memoirs that discusses the Peel case and its effect on Terrell’s life. It is with the handwritten reminiscences and is an accurate copy of what Terrell originally wrote. 6. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” extract, p. 3. 7. State Gazette, September 17, 1853, said of the district court’s term that “as yet, however, no case of much general importance has been tried.” 8. Donald E. Reynolds, “John F. Marshall,” in Ronnie Tyler, Douglass E. Barnett, Roy R. Barkley, Penelope C. Anderson, and Mark Odnitz, eds., The New Handbook of Texas, 6 volumes (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), vol. 4, pp. 519–520; Thomas W. Cutrer, “Williamson Simpson Oldham,” in Tyler et al., New Handbook, vol. 4, pp. 1134–1135. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” pp. 19, 46. 9. John L. Waller, Colossal Hamilton of Texas (El Paso: Texas Western Press,

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Notes to Pages 20–24 1968); Terrell, “Reminiscences,” pp. 46–47; Austin State Times, January 26, 1854. 10. Gregg Cantrell, “Sam Houston and the Know-Nothings: A Reappraisal,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 96 (January 1993): 327–343 (quotation from page 333). For discussions of the impact of the Know-Nothings and the KansasNebraska Act see Buenger, Secession and the Union in Texas, pp. 26–29, and Litha Crews, “The Know-Nothing Party in Texas,” (master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1925). 11. State Gazette, June 23, 1855 (bombshell story and platform). For a critical account see Austin State Times, June 23, 1855. Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 31–32, credits the convention with creating a Democratic organization and party lines in the state. Nancy Beck Young, “Democratic Party,” in Tyler et al., New Handbook, vol. 2, p. 586, notes that “the mid-1850s witnessed rapid growth of the formal mechanisms of party discipline.” 12. Austin State Times, June 23, 1855; State Gazette, June 30, 1855. 13. State Gazette, July 25, August 25, November 24, and December 22, 1855, January 26, 1856. 14. Terrell, Reminiscences,” pp. 71–75. 15. Austin Statesman, January 16, 1905. See also “Texas Collection,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 43 (April 1960): 619–620. Frank Brown, “Annals of Travis County and the City of Austin from the Earliest Times to the Close of 1875,” typescript, Center for American History, Chapter 18—1857, pp. 5–7. Terrell’s account is in his “Reminiscences,” pp. 105–106. The court record is no longer available. 16. State Gazette, February 7, 1857; Ernest William Winkler. Platforms of Political Parties in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1916), p. 74. 17. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 47; State Gazette, March 28, 1857. 18. James P. Neal et al., to Terrell, March 18, 1857, in State Gazette, March 28, 1857; Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 48. For more information on Green, see Curtis W. Milbourn, ed., “‘I Have Been Worse Treated Than Any Officer’: Confederate Colonel Thomas Green’s Assessment of the New Mexico Campaign,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 105(October, 2001): 323–337. 19. Terrell to James P. Neal et al., March 25, 1857, State Gazette, March 28, 1857. 20. “Judicial District Convention,” State Gazette, March 25, 1857. For the Democratic commitment to elected judges see Chris Klemme, “Jacksonian Justice: The Evolution of the Elective Judiciary in Texas, 1836–1850,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 105 (January 2002): 429–450. 21. Lockhart Watchman, quoted in State Gazette, May 30, 1857; Southern Intelligencer, April 15, 1857. 22. State Gazette, April 11, May 23, July 4, 1857. 23. Terrell to Edward Burleson Jr., June 12, 1857, and for an anti-Terrell letter, W. H. Houston to Burleson, July 29, 1857, Box 2B158, Edward Burleson Jr. Papers, Center for American History, hereinafter Burleson Papers.

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Notes to Pages 25–27 24. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 48; State Gazette, June 24, 1857; Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 46–49. 25. For the results in the Second Judicial District see State Gazette, August 22, 1857; Terrell mentioned his margin in Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 47; see also, Buenger, Secession and the Union in Texas, p. 131, and Dale Baum, The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State During the Civil War Era (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998), pp. 9–12 for the 1857 results and Houston’s later victory in the gubernatorial election of 1859. 26. A. W. Terrell, “Recollections of General Sam Houston,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 16 (October, 1912), pp. 118–119, 120 (quotation), 121. I have not been able to find Houston’s speech at Lockhart. His speech at Austin in July 1857 does not refer to Terrell. See Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Barker, eds., The Writings of Sam Houston, 8 volumes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1942), vol. 7, pp. 28–32. 27. State Gazette, August 29, 1857; Terrell, “Recollections,” p. 121. The Democrats had begun to back away from the allegations against Houston even before the election occurred, Texas Sentinel, August 1, 1857. 28. Southern Intelligencer, March 17, 1858, gives the court’s schedule; Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 63; Thomas W. Cutrer, “George Washington Jones,” in Tyler et al., New Handbook, vol. 3, pp. 982–983. 29. A. W. Terrell, “Texas Lawyers and Anecdotes & Incidents,” Box 2H17, Terrell Papers. 30. Southern Intelligencer, December 9, 1857. 31. For the divorce case, see Terrell’s charge to the jury in N. R. Land vs. Mary Land, December 31, 1857, Case 1282, District Court Records, Travis County Court House. For a case involving haulage charges see Terrell’s jury charge in Albert G. Compton vs. Western Stage Co., December 29, 1858, Case 1286, District Court Records. State Gazette, June 12, 1858. 32. Texas vs. J. B. Banks, Case 10001, June 19, 1858, Travis County Criminal Records, Austin-Travis County Collection, Austin Public Library. “Enforcement of Law,” Terrell Papers, which became the basis of “Enforcement of Law,” in Frank Brown, “Annals of Travis County,” pp. 63–66. David C. Humphrey, “Prostitution and Public Policy in Austin, Texas 1870–1915,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 86 (April 1983): 476, says Austin did not have houses of prostitution in 1860. The number of cases that Jones and Terrell handled indicated that gambling was indeed a serious concern in the five years preceding the Civil War. 33. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 110–111. Terrell would defend lynching when it applied to African American defendants after the Civil War. There is a story in the Terrell family about another occasion when the judge faced the prospect of violence. It came after his first wife died in 1860 when he was living in an Austin apartment. He had “prosecuted a bunch of youngsters” and had sentenced one man, Tom Alt, to be hanged. A friend of Alt’s threatened to kill Terrell, and so an editor of an Austin newspaper, probably John Marshall, gave the judge a

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Notes to Pages 28–31 pistol for self-defense. One night the young man tried to enter Terrell’s residence through a skylight, made a noise, and was apprehended. Thereafter, Terrell regularly carried a pistol. Dr. A. W. Morris to “My dear Sue,” March 10, 1936, copy courtesy of George C. Morris III. 34. Terrell, “Cuff,” Terrell Papers, Box 2H17, is the major source for the Cuff episode. The Travis County court records do not contain anything on the incident. The Hays County court records have documents relating to the matter in the case of State of Texas v. Cuff, a slave, but they pertain to the issue of a change of venue. Dr. Thomas Clarkin secured these materials for me. Brown, “Annals of Travis County,” p. 65, is an account based on Terrell’s reminiscences. 35. Terrell, “Cuff,” Terrell Papers. 36. Seguin Mercury quoted in State Gazette, June 12, 1858; Southern Intelligencer, September 1, 1858. 37. Mrs. Terrell was mentioned as a member of the “Ladies Banner,” which raised money to award a banner to Travis County for having had the largest vote for Democratic nominees in 1857. State Gazette, November 14, 1857. The course of her final illness can be followed in State Gazette, June 26, July 28, August 11, 1860. Alice Duggan Gracy and Emma Gene Seale Gentry, comps., Travis County, Texas: The Five Schedules of the 1860 Federal Census (Austin: privately published, 1967), p. 29, lists the size of the Terrell family and the presence of Terrell’s mother. 38. Terrell, “Recollections of Sam Houston,” pp. 133–134. Among the scholars labeling Terrell as a Unionist are Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” p. 60, Ralph Wooster, Lone Star Generals in Gray (Austin: Eakin Press, 2000), p. 167, and James Marten, Texas Divided: Loyalty and Dissent in the Lone Star State (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990), p. 65. 39. State Gazette, October 6, 1860. For the ways in which Terrell’s defense of slavery resembled classic justification of the institution see, among many sources, James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), pp. 130–143, Campbell, Empire for Slavery, pp. 211–214, and Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619–1877 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), pp. 189–197. 40. State Gazette, October 6, 1860, and Petition of George Whitney, 1860–1861, Box 2H17, Terrell Papers. 41. State Gazette, October 6, 1860; for the “Texas Troubles,” see Campbell, Empire for Slavery, pp. 24–228. 42. State Gazette, October 6, 1860. 43. Ibid., September 15, 1860; Campbell, Empire for Slavery, pp. 228–230; Baum, Shattering of Texas Unionism, pp. 42–81, analyzes the vote for secession; Terrell, “The Negro”: Box 2H17, Terrell Papers, p. 16. 44. Terrell, “Recollections of General Sam Houston,” p. 133. 45. State Gazette, February 16, 1861; there is no record of what Terrell said; see State Gazette, February 23, 1861; Speeches Delivered on the 17th January 1862 in the Representative Hall, Austin, Texas, by Hon. Thos. J. Devine and A. W. Terrell (Austin: John Marshall and Company, 1862), p. 22.

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Notes to Pages 31–35 46. Terrell, “Recollections of General Sam Houston,” pp. 134–135, makes clear that Terrell was reporting secondhand what he had been told by those familiar with Houston’s actions. Howard C. Westwood, “President Lincoln’s Overture to Sam Houston,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 88 (October 1984): 140–141, recognizes the derivative nature of Terrell’s memoir but considers it reliable because of Terrell’s presumed closeness to Houston. By early 1861, with Terrell’s secessionist sympathies evident, his alleged proximity to Houston would require independent confirmation. 47. Joseph C. Terrell to Susan Penn, August 21,1861, MFP. State Gazette, April 27, 1861, discusses the desire to suspend court proceedings. 48. Oration Delivered on the fourth day of July, 1861 at the Capitol, Austin, Texas, By Hon. A. W. Terrell, Austin, Texas (Austin: John Marshall and Company, 1861), pp. 7, 8. 49. Ibid., p. 12. 50. Ibid., pp. 12–13. 51. Ibid., pp. 14, 15, 16, 17. 52. State Gazette, August 3, 1861; Terrell to Edward Burleson Jr., August 5, 1861, Box 2B158, Burleson Papers. 53. State Gazette, November 9 and 16, 1861. For the general context of political events in Texas in 1861 see Fredericka Ann Meiners, “The Texas Governorship, 1861–1865: Biography of an Office,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Rice University, 1974), pp. 58–66. Clayton E. Jewett, Texas in the Confederacy: An Experiment in Nation Building (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), is a more interpretive social and economic history of the state in this period. 54. Speeches Delivered on the 17th January 1862, pp. 16, 17, 25. 55. Ibid., pp. 26, 27, 28, 29. State Gazette, February 15, 1862. 56. Francis R. Lubbock to Judah P. Benjamin, February 25, 1862, Judah Benjamin to Lubbock, March 17, 1862, in United States, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. 53 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), hereinafter cited as Official Records with volume number, pp. 790, 797; State Gazette, April 12, 1862. 57. A. W. Terrell to Clement R. Johns, May 29, 1862, Power of Attorney, Deed Records, Travis County, Volume P, pp. 43–44, Austin-Travis County Collection; Henry E. McCulloch, General Orders No. 5, June 12, 1862, Official Records, vol. 9, p. 718. 58. Wooster, Lone Star Generals in Gray, pp. 151–155; Terrell to Burleson, July 27, 1862, Box 2B158, Burleson Papers. Terrell’s presence in McCulloch’s camp is noted in Norman D. Brown, ed., Journey to Pleasant Hill: The Civil War Letters of Captain Elijah P. Petty, Walker’s Texas Division C.S.A. (San Antonio: Institute of Texan Cultures, 1982), pp. 136, 138. 59. Wash Jones to Terrell, February 17, 1886, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 60. Terrell to Burleson, October 15, 1862, Box 2B158, Burleson Papers; John Spencer, Terrell’s Texas Cavalry: Wild Horsemen of the Plains in the Civil War (Austin: Eakin Press, 1982), pp. 94–95.

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Notes to Pages 37–40

Chapter Three 1. This key episode in Alexander W. Terrell’s life is described in several places listed later in this chapter. The most convenient source is “Col. A. W. Terrell: An Article on His Military Conduct During the War,” Austin Statesman, April 3, 1892. 2. Spencer, Terrell’s Texas Cavalry, pp. 2–3, describes the formation of the regiment. Alexander W. Terrell to Edward Burleson Jr., June 28, 1863, Box 2B158, Burleson Papers. Stephen L. Moore, Taming Texas: Captain William T. Sadler’s Lone Star Service (Austin: State House Press, 2000), pp. 266–270, recounts the service of one member of the regiment but has little to add about Terrell as a commander. For the practice of electing officers see Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943, reprint 1997), pp. 20, 241–242. 3. Spencer, Terrell’s Texas Cavalry, p. 110; Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), p. 67; Terrell to Guy M. Bryan, September 16, 1863, Box 2N243, Guy M. Bryan Papers, Center for American History, hereinafter Bryan Papers. For a good sense of the duties of colonels during the Civil War see T. Harry Williams, Hayes of the Twenty-Third: The Civil War Volunteer Officer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965). 4. Robert L. Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South, 1863–1865 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 135–136. See also Joseph H. Parks, General Edmund Kirby Smith, C.S.A. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954). 5. An excellent guide to the strategic, economic, and political importance of the Trans-Mississippi region is T. Michael Parrish, Richard Taylor: Soldier Prince of Dixie (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), pp. 307–316. 6. “Special Orders No. 231,” August 27, 1863, and S. H. Cundiff et al., to Capt. Edmund P. Turner, September 30, 1863, in United States, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official records of the Union and Confederate Armies: Series I-Volume XXVII in Two Parts, Part II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1889), pp. 183–184, 278 (quotation). 7. The literature on the cotton trade in wartime Texas is vast, and all of it cannot be cited here. Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy, pp. 165–207, is a good brief introduction to the topic. See also Ralph A. Wooster, Texas and Texans in the Civil War (Austin: Eakin Press, 1995), pp. 106–108. 8. William Pitt Ballinger Diary, September 29, 1863, October 4, 1863, Box 2Q422, William P. Ballinger Papers, Center for American History, hereinafter Ballinger Papers; Terrell to Guy M. Bryan, September 16, 1863, Box 2N243, Bryan Papers (the shorter of the two letters of that date); Kirby Smith to Henry E. McCulloch, September 13, 1863, Official Records, vol. 26, p. 223. 9. Terrell to Bryan, September 16, 1863, Box 2N243, Bryan Papers. For this episode see Terrell to John Brasher, September 18, 1863, enclosing John C.

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Notes to Pages 40–45 Robertson to Terrell, September 18, 1863, Cundiff et al. to Edmund P. Turner, September 30, 1863, Official Records, vol. 26, pp. 237–239, 278–279. 10. Terrell to Bryan, September 16, 1863, Box 2N243, Bryan Papers (the longer of the two letters of that date). 11. Ballinger, Diary, October 4, 1863, October 15, 1863, Box 2Q422, Ballinger Papers. This episode and Terrell’s friendship with Ballinger are not mentioned in John Anthony Moretta, William Pitt Ballinger: Texas Lawyer, Southern Statesman, 1825–1888 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2000), which says nothing about Terrell. 12. Terrell to J. B. Magruder, March 3, 1864, Official Records, vol. 46, pp. 1017–1019; Terrell to Bryan, December 20, 1863, Box 2N243, Bryan Papers. 13. Terrell to Bryan, January 15, 1864. Box 2N244, Bryan Papers. 14. Terrell to Bryan, January 15, 1864, Box 2N244, Bryan Papers; Spencer, Terrell’s Texas Cavalry, pp. 7–9. 15. For the general history of the Red River campaign see Parrish, Richard Taylor, pp. 317–404; Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy, pp. 283–321. See also Ludwell H. Johnson, Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1958). Another Confederate general whose reputation suffered in the Red River campaign was Hamilton Bee. See Fredericka Ann Meiners, “Hamilton Bee in the Red River Campaign,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 78(July 1974): 21–44. 16. Spencer, Terrell’s Texas Cavalry, pp. 17–22. 17. Robertson described what happened to Terrell and his unit in a letter to Terrell in 1876 that was published sixteen years later. See “Col. A. W. Terrell: An Article on His Military Conduct during the War,” Austin Statesman, April 3, 1892. Terrell probably obtained the letter in 1876 in case he decided to seek higher office than the Texas Senate. The occasion for publishing the letter in 1892 was a letter from former governor Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross attacking Terrell for cowardice. See “Ross on Terrell,” Dallas Morning News, March 31, 1892. The circumstances of the 1892 episode are discussed in Chapter Six. 18. Houston Telegraph, June 8, 1864; Texas State Gazette, July 13, 1864. 19. Dallas Morning News, March 26, 1892, reported the DeBray anecdote. 20. Mary Maverick to Lewis Maverick, April 19, 1864, Box 2F8, Maverick Family Papers, Center for American History. 21. Terrell to Bryan, May 20, 1864, Box 2N244, Bryan Papers. 22. Ibid. 23. Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy, pp. 274–275; Terrell to Bryan, July 26, 1864, Box 2N244, Bryan Papers. 24. Terrell to Bryan, August 9, 1864, Box 2N244, Bryan Papers. 25. A. W. Terrell to Robert M. Franklin, September 27, 1864, and W. C. Schaumburg to Edmund Kirby Smith, November 21, 1864, Official Records, series 1, vol. 41, pp. 810–1071. 26. Spencer, Terrell’s Texas Cavalry, pp. 58–59.

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Notes to Pages 45–50 27. Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy, p. 415; Wooster, Texas and Texans in the Civil War, p. 183; Alexander W. Terrell, From Texas to Mexico and the Court of Maximilian in 1865, Fannie Ratchford, ed. (Dallas: Book Club of Texas, 1933), pp. 3–5. 28. The manuscript was unpublished when Terrell died in 1912. Fannie Ratchford of the University of Texas edited the text and published it in 1933. Her edition accepted Terrell’s account as accurate and did not verify it through checking contemporary sources. Most scholars who have cited Terrell’s book have also assumed that his record of events was largely correct on its face. 29. Marshall Texas Republican, May 5, 1865; Terrell, From Texas to Mexico, p. 3. 30. J. Fred Rippy, “Mexican Projects of the Confederates,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 22 (April, 1919): 309–310; Terrell, From Texas to Mexico, pp. 3–5. 31. Terrell, From Texas to Mexico, p. 6; Spencer, Terrell’s Texas Cavalry, pp. 62–63. For Terrell’s last-minute promotion see Official Records, series 1, vol. 41, p. 1307. 32. Marshall Texas Republican, May 19, 1865. It is not clear why Wash Jones made the suggestion about Terrell becoming a candidate for the governorship. 33. Terrell, From Texas to Mexico, p. 6. 34. Terrell to Joseph C. Terrell, May 31, 1865, MFP. 35. Pendelton Murrah to Maximilian, June 15, 1865, in Terrell, From Texas to Mexico, pp. 7–8. 36. Terrell, From Texas to Mexico, pp. 21–23. 37. On the situation of the French in Mexico during the summer of 1865, the historical literature is extensive. Because of the brevity of Terrell’s stay, I did not go deeply into the writings on this period of Mexican history. Terrell’s role is placed in context in Jack Autrey Dabbs, The French Army in Mexico, 1861–1867: A Study in Military Government (The Hague: Mouton and Company, 1963), and Andrew F. Rolle, The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, reprint 1992), pp. 21–37. 38. Terrell, From Texas to Mexico, pp. 55–56. 39. Achille-Francois Bazaine to Felix Douay, August 23, 1865, Achille-Francois Bazaine Papers, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Center, University of Texas at Austin, hereinafter Bazaine Papers, (G500), pp. 2590–2591. 40. Rippy, “Mexican Projects of the Confederates,” p. 310. 41. Bazaine to Douay, September 17, 1865, Bazaine Papers, p. 2671. See also Jean-Francois Seigland to Ludovic-M. Francois Noue, September 13, 1865, pp. 2655–2656, September 21, 1865 (second quotation), pp. 2685–2686, Bazaine Papers. I am indebted to John Wheat for his translation of the second letter. Terrell, From Texas to Mexico, p. 88 (third quotation); Mexican Times, October 21, 1865 (fourth quotation). 42. Terrell, From Texas to Mexico, p. 80. 43. George Flournoy to Terrell, December 31, 1886, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers, supports Terrell’s memory that he never took an oath of allegiance to Mexico or France. The issue arose during Terrell’s unsuccessful campaign for the United

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Notes to Pages 51–53 States Senate in 1886–1887. Terrell, From Texas to Mexico, p. 88, also asserted that he did not take an oath. 44. The Booth poem became an important element in Terrell’s later life, especially during the early phase of his service as Minister to Turkey. A copy of the entire poem appeared in Austin Statesman, August 14, 1891, and Roswell V. Booth, “Poetic Tribute to John Wilkes Booth,” Confederate Veteran (April 1913), p. 170. Alexander S. Walker to Terrell July 21, 1893, Terrell Family Papers (TSL), Box 1991/152-1, confirms that Terrell was not the author but that he first learned of the poem in 1865 or 1866. Although there is no direct evidence that Terrell and Arrington met during this period, Arrington was one of the organizers of the American and Mexican Emigrant Company, which sought to bring settlers south of the border in 1865. See Mexican Times, December 2, 1865. For Arrington’s authorship of the poem see Ted R. Worley, “The Story of Alfred Arrington,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 14 (winter 1955): 336. I am indebted to T. Michael Parrish for bringing this article to my attention. Terry Alford also provided very helpful materials on Arrington based on his research into the life of John Wilkes Booth. 45. William Mourin to U.S. Commanding Officer, Texas, October 22, 1865, in A. W. Terrell, File 3035, Case Files of Applications from Former Confederates For Presidential Pardons (“Amnesty Papers”), 1865–1867, Roll 55, Group I: Pardon Applications by persons from the South, Texas, Sc-YT, National Archives Microfilm Publications, M1003, hereinafter Terrell Pardon File, p. 386. Professor Dale Baum very generously helped me to locate this source. 46. Terrell to Andrew Johnson, two letters, one of November 8, 1865, Oath of Allegiance, November 7, 1865, Thomas Savage, consul at Havana, to William H. Seward, November 8, 1865. Terrell’s file indicates that he met with Andrew Johnson on November 8, 1865, and a pardon was granted the same day. That seems unlikely if he was in Havana. Another note in the file says that the papers were processed on November 30, 1865, Terrell Pardon File. In addition, Terrell to Thomas J. Devine, December 1, 1865, says, “I reached here from the City of Mexico a few days since. Saw the President & obtained my pardon,” in Mary Owen Meredith, “The Life and Work of Thomas J. Devine” (master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1930), pp. 54–55. 47. Austin Tri-Weekly Gazette (subsidiary of Texas State Gazette), March 15, 1866; Terrell to Burleson, April 9, 1866, Box 2B158, Burleson Papers. 48. On the 1866 constitutional convention see Carl Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), pp. 33–41; Baum, Shattering of Texas Unionism, pp. 131–132, 145. 49. State Gazette, April 7, 1866. 50. Terrell to Burleson, April 9, 1866, Box 2B158, Burleson Papers; Southern Intelligencer, May 3, 1866, May 10, 1866, June 14, 1866. On Terrell’s law practice see Joseph C. Terrell to Susan Penn, August 1, 1866, MFP. 51. Wallis, “Life of Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 70–71. For Terrell’s law

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Notes to Pages 53–57 practice in Houston also see William L. Richter, Overreached on All Sides: The Freedmen’s Bureau Administrators in Texas, 1865–1868 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991), pp. 345–346. 52. Joseph C. Terrell to Susan Penn, February 5, 1868, MFP. 53. The assessment rolls in Robertson County for 1871 show Terrell paying taxes on $5,500 worth of property, Robertson County Courthouse, Franklin, Texas. I am indebted to Joan Goodbody of Texas A&M University for locating this information for me. Terrell’s years in Robertson County are discussed in Richard Denny Parker, Historical Recollections of Robertson County Texas (Salado: The Anson Jones Press, 1955), pp. 201–202. The county’s political history is reviewed in Gregg Cantrell, Kenneth and John B. Rayner and the Limits of Southern Dissent (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), pp. 191–192. Terrell’s connection with a plantation in Robertson County is emphasized in J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the OneParty South, 1880–1910 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 201. 54. E. W. Cave et al. to Oran M. Roberts, September 28, 1869, Box 2F475, Oran M. Roberts Papers, Center for American History, hereinafter Roberts Papers; “Registered Reports of Operations and Conditions, Aug.–Oct. 1868,” in United States, National Archives, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869, Reel 27, Frame 608, National Archives Microfilm Publication M821, 1973. I am grateful to Dale Baum for drawing this reference to my attention. T. J. Powell to James P. Newcomb, March 11, 1872, Box 2F106, James P. Newcomb Papers, Center for American History. 55. G. K. Sanderson to Charles E. Morse, March 30, 1870, United States, National Archives, Correspondence of the Office of Civil Affairs, Reel 29, National Archives Record Group 393, Microfilm Publication M1188, and A. W. Terrell to Charles E. Morse, January 17, 1870, Reel 35, ibid.; Parker, History of Robertson County, pp. 163–164. 56. Mary L. Terrell to Susan Penn, May 22, 1872, MFP.

Chapter Four 1. David C. Humphrey, Austin: An Illustrated History (Northridge: Windsor Publications, 1985), pp. 75–82. 2. Austin Statesman, August 15 and 16, 1896 (first quotation) for biographical information about A. S. Walker; for Cardenas v. Texas see Statesman, February 19, 1873. 3. Mary L. Terrell to Susan Penn, January 18, 1872, May 22, 1872, MFP. 4. Tax Records, Travis County, 1888, Austin-Travis County Collection, Austin Public Library; Austin Statesman, August 10, 1891, referred to Terrell’s land activities. For other examples of his activities in this area see Austin Statesman, August 15, 1875, and Terrell to Ballinger and Jack, March 24, 1877, Letterbook, Box 2H12, Terrell Papers.

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Notes to Pages 57–63 5. Austin Statesman, May 11, 1874. Austin Statesman, April 30, 1878. 6. For general sources on the decline of Republican strength after 1871 see Ronald Norman Gray, “Edmund J. Davis: Radical Republican and Reconstruction Governor of Texas,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Texas Tech University, 1976), pp. 271–291; Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, pp. 178–182. 7. Austin Tri-Weekly Statesman, June 27, 1872, and “Ex Parte Ireland,” Texas Supreme Court, Cases Argued and Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Texas, 1872, vol. 38 (St. Paul, Minnesota: West Publishing Company, 1882), pp. 344–372. Carl Moneyhon, “Public Education and Texas Reconstruction Politics, 1871–1874,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 92 (January 1989): 393–416. 8. George W. Honey v. E. J. Davis et al., in Texas Supreme Court, Cases Argued and Decided, vol. 38, pp. 68–69, shows Terrell’s role. Tri-Weekly Statesman, June 27, 1872, Austin Statesman, October 22, 1873. 9. For Terrell’s work on the Honey criminal case see Austin Daily Journal, February 24, 25, 27, 28, and March 1, 1873. As a Republican paper, the Journal printed portions of the trial record with Terrell’s cross-examinations of E. J. Davis and others. See also The Daily Statesman, February 19 and 23 (quotation), 1873. The political impact of the Honey episode is discussed in Gray, “Edmund J. Davis,” pp. 300–306. 10. The poem appeared in the Tri-Weekly Statesman, September 24, 1872, and there is a copy in the Alexander W. Terrell Papers, Box 2H19. 11. Terrell to Oran M. Roberts, November 13, 1873, Box 2F475, Roberts Papers. Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, pp. 188–189. 12. Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, p. 191. 13. The best study of the case is Lance A. Cooper, “‘A Slobbering Lame Thing’? The Semicolon Case Reconsidered,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 101 (January 1998): 321–339. 14. “Ex Parte Rodriguez,” Texas Supreme Court, Cases Argued and Decided, vol. 39, p. 632. 15. Ibid., p. 644. 16. Ibid., p. 647. 17. Dallas Morning News, March 24, 1892. 18. Terrell to Richard Coke, March 24, 1892, Coke to Terrell, March 30, 1892, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 19. Terrell to Oran M. Roberts, January 5, 1874, Box 2F475, Roberts Papers. 20. Terrell to Roberts, January 5, 1874, J. S. Camp to Roberts, January 21, 1874, Box 2F475, Roberts Papers. 21. Terrell to Roberts, July 22, 1874, Box 2F475, Roberts Papers. 22. General Laws of the State of Texas Passed at the Session of the Fourteenth Legislature, 1874 (Houston, Texas: A. C. Gray State Printer, 1874), Chapter XCVI, p. 120. 23. Richard Coke to Roberts, September 20, 1874, Terrell to Roberts, December 7, 1874, Box 2F475, Roberts Papers. 24. Terrell to Roberts, January 29, 1877, Letterbook, Box 2H12, Terrell

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Notes to Pages 64–68 Papers; J. H. Davenport, The History of the Supreme Court of the State of Texas (Austin: Southern Law Book Publishers, 1917), p. 318. 25. For the Mark Tiner case see Austin Daily Statesman, July 15 and 16, 1875. The Austin building and Terrell’s role in its development are discussed in Daily Statesman, June 11, 1875. 26. Alwyn Barr, Reconstruction to Reform: Texas Politics, 1876–1906 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), pp. 9–10; Seth Shepard McKay, Seven Decades of the Texas Constitution of 1876 (Lubbock: Texas Technological College Press, 1942). For a recent treatment of the convention and its goals see Patrick George Williams, “Redeemer Democrats and the Roots of Modern Texas, 1872–1884,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1996), pp. 119–196, and Patrick George Williams, “Of Rutabagas and Redeemers: Rethinking the Texas Constitution of 1876,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 106 (October 2002): 231–253. 27. Terrell’s work for the Galveston Wharf and Cotton Press Company is discussed in Galveston News, October 22, 23, and 27 (quotation), 1875. Terrell to Roberts, October 28, 1875, Box 2F475, Roberts Papers. For political criticism of Terrell’s employment see Dallas Morning News, March 24, 1892. 28. Terrell to Roberts, September 10, 1875, Box 2F475, Roberts Papers. 29. Terrell to Roberts October 28 and December 1, 1875, Box 2F475, Roberts Papers; Austin Daily Statesman, December 1, 1875. 30. Terrell to Roberts, December 1, 1875, Box 2F475, Roberts Papers. 31. Daily Statesman, November 29, 1875, December 7, 1875. 32. Daily Statesman, January 21 and 22, 1876; Patsy McDonald Spaw, ed., The Texas Senate: Volume II, Civil War to the Eve of Reform (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), p. 220. 33. Lawrence D. Rice, The Negro in Texas, 1874–1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), pp. 255–256; J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880–1910 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 201. Daily Statesman, May 23, 1876, carried Terrell’s rationale for passage of the bill. Patrick G. Williams, “Suffrage Restriction in Post-Reconstruction Texas: Urban Politics and the Specter of the Commune,” Journal of Southern History 68 (February 2002): 36, argues that Terrell also had urban white voters in mind. While that is true, I believe that it was a secondary element in Terrell’s thinking. 34. Daily Statesman, May 23, 1876. 35. Rice, Negro in Texas, pp. 214–215; Frederick Eby, The Development of Education in Texas (New York, New York: Macmillan Company, 1925), pp. 170–171. 36. H. P. N. Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas, 1822–1897 (Austin: Gammel Book Company, 1898), VIII, p. 201. 37. Speech to National Civic Federation, 1906, Box 2H17, Terrell Papers. Eby, Development of Education in Texas, pp. 263–280; L. L. Foster, Forgotten Texas Census: First Annual Report of the Agricultural Bureau of the Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History, 1887–1888 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2001), p. xxiv, indicates that in 1887–1888, $2,776,000 was spent by

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Notes to Pages 69–76 the state on public education. Assuming that Terrell’s average figure of $500,000 is correct, that means white students received four times as much as did black students in that year. 38. John M. Brockman, “Railroads, Radicals, and Democrats: A Study in Texas Politics, 1865–1900,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1977), pp. 180–181, is the best study of Texas railroad policy in the 1870s. 39. Brockman, “Railroads,” p. 181. 40. John E. McComb to Ashbel Smith, August 1, 1876, Ashbel Smith Papers, Box 2G226, Center for American History. 41. Brockman, “Railroads,” pp. 182–183. 42. Daily Statesman, July 19, 1876. 43. Speech of Hon. A. W. Terrell, Senator from 25th Senatorial District, Delivered in the Senate, July 19, 1876 (Austin, 1876), pp. 1, 6, 28, 36. 44. Galveston Daily News, July 23, 1876. 45. Daily Statesman, August 12, 1876.

Chapter Five 1. Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 38–47. 2. Terrell’s Georgetown speech of October 11, 1877, is printed in the Austin Daily Democratic Statesman, October 13, 1877, and the second address in the December 14 issue of that year. 3. Terrell to Oran M. Roberts, July 31, 1878, Box 2F476, Roberts Papers; Austin Daily Statesman, July 28, 1878; Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 41–43. 4. Terrell to Roberts, July 31, 1878, Box 2F476, Roberts Papers; Austin Statesman, September 15, 1878, October 23, 1878. 5. Terrell to Ashbel Smith, November 25, 1878, Box 2G226, Ashbel Smith Papers, Center for American History, hereinafter Smith Papers; Austin Statesman, October 23, 1878. 6. Terrell to Roberts, November 11, 1878, Box 2F476, Roberts Papers. 7. Spaw, Texas Senate: Volume II, pp. 261–264, 288–290. 8. The Texas Capital, March 16, 1879; Galveston Daily News, April 2, 1879; Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 142–143. 9. Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 141–142. 10. Ibid., 137–141. 11. Galveston Daily News, September 10, 1885, published Terrell’s 1879 speech as he was emerging as a significant candidate for the United States Senate. See Austin Statesman, September 22, 1886. The prohibition issue had become a subject of statewide debate by 1885. Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 85–87. 12. Galveston Daily News, September 10, 1885. 13. Terrell Letterbook, February 21, 1877, Box 2H12, Terrell Papers. 14. Howard Terrell entered the “Grammar School” of the University of the South in the spring of 1881 and spent a year there; Annie Armour to Lewis L. Gould, March 30, 2001. In January 1885, Howard was reported leaving for

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Notes to Pages 77–81 Boonville, Missouri, “to enter school.” Austin Daily Statesman, January 2, 1885. 15. Julia Pease to Lucadia Pease, June 18, 1879, Pease Family Papers, AustinTravis County Collection, Austin History Center, Austin Public Library, hereinafter Pease Family Papers. 16. Terrell to Julia Pease, August 14 and 16, 1880, Pease Family Papers. 17. Terrell to Julia Pease, September 20, 1880, November 15, 1880, Pease Family Papers. 18. Terrell to Pease, December 15, 1880, December 27, 1880, Pease Family Papers. 19. Terrell to Pease, November 15, 1880 (quotation), February 13 and 14, 1881, Pease Family Papers. 20. Terrell to Pease, November 15, 1880, Pease Family Papers. 21. Spaw, Texas Senate: Volume II, pp. 279–280. 22. Galveston Daily News, March 9, 1881; Terrell to Ashbel Smith, April 5, 1881, Box 2G227, Ashbel Smith Papers; Spaw, Texas Senate: Volume II, pp. 290–291. 23. Galveston Daily News, February 9, 1881. 24. The best treatment of the origins of the University of Texas is Roger A. Griffin, “To Establish a University of the First Class,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 86 (October 1982): 135–160. J. J. Lane, History of the University of Texas Based on Facts and Records (Austin: Henry Hutchings State Printer, 1891) has some useful documents. Harry Yandell Benedict, comp., A Source Book Relating to the History of the University of Texas, Legislative, Legal, Bibliographical and Statistical (Austin: University of Texas Bulletin, No. 1757, 1917) is very helpful. 25. Griffin, “To Establish a University of the First Class,” pp. 141–143. 26. Terrell to Joseph C. Terrell, February 27, 1884, MFP. Terrell to John A. Lomax, December 31, 1911, Lewis L. Gould Political History Collection, Center for American History, has Terrell’s disclaimer when Thomas Watt Gregory called him the “father” of the university. Gregory also said that Terrell was the “founder” of the university in Gregory to Woodrow Wilson, October 7, 1911, Thomas Watt Gregory Papers, Texas Tech University. 27. Benedict, Source Book, p. 248. 28. “The Alumni Reunion,” Bulletin of The University of Texas, No. 190, The University of Texas Record, July 8, 1911 (Austin: University of Texas, 1911), pp. 93–94. The allusion to Terrell and the woman who became his third wife is in Melton, Melton’s History, p. 344. 29. Griffin, “To Establish a University,” p. 143. 30. Texas Legislature, Senate, Journal of the Senate of the Seventeenth Legislature of the State of Texas, Regular Session (Galveston: A. H. Belo, 1881), pp. 100–101. 31. Terrell to E. M. Pease, April 1, 1881 (two letters of the same date; the quotation is from the second letter), Pease Family Papers. 32. Ruth Ann Overbeck, Alexander Penn Wooldridge (Austin: Von Boeckmann Jones, 1963), pp. 12–14; the quotation is on p. 14. The general thrust of this account is confirmed in Austin Statesman, April 7 and 9, 1881, and July 2, 1881.

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Notes to Pages 82–101 33. Overbeck, Woolridge, p. 15; Austin Statesman, August 25, 1881. 34. Terrell’s speech was printed in Austin Statesman, September 27, 1881. 35. The possibility of Terrell running for Congress was mentioned in Austin Statesman, March 18 and 27, 1882. 36. Spaw, Texas Senate: Volume II, pp. 298–299. 37. Speech of Senator Terrell Delivered in the Senate, April 19, 1882, on the Bill to Set Aside Two Million Acres of Land to Endow the State, University, and a Like Amount for Public Free Schools (Austin, 1882), pp. 6, 22. 38. Terrell discussed the origins of his feud with Ross in Austin Statesman, January 1, 1907. 39. Ibid., May 6, 1882. 40. Ibid., June 2, 1882. On his daughter’s fatal illness, ibid., July 14, 15, 19, and 25 (quotation), 1882; Funeral Notice and In Memoriam, in Constance Terrell Cook file, Austin-Travis County Collection, Austin Public Library. 41. Austin Statesman, July 7, 1882. 42. Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 65–67. 43. Austin Statesman, August 20, 1882. 44. Terrell’s “private character” could refer to many aspects of his life, but the Civil War episode was the most persistent charge against his personal integrity. 45. Austin Statesman, October 29, 1882. 46. Ibid., October 9, 1882; Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 69–70. 47. Spaw, Texas Senate: Volume II, p. 303; Austin Statesman, January 24, 1883, contains his speech supporting Coke for the Senate. 48. Austin Statesman, February 14, 1883; Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 238–240. 49. Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 233–237. 50. Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” p. 238 (railroad commission), 245–248 (penitentiary system); Austin Statesman, March 8, 1883. 51. Austin Statesman, January 16, 1883. 52. Austin Statesman, April 27, 1883 (wedding), June 20, 1884 (gardening), November 26, 1908 (beauty); Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” p. 268. 53. Mary Terrell to Susan Penn, June 11, 1883, MFP. 54. Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 81–82; Spaw, Texas Senate: Volume II, pp. 325–327. 55. Speech of Hon. A. W. Terrell Delivered in the Senate of Texas, January 21, 1884, On Senate Bill No. 2 Entitled “An Act to Regulate the Grazing of Stock in Texas and to Prescribe and Provide Penalties for its Violation (Austin: E. W. Swindells, 1884), p. 4. 56. Ibid., p. 21.

Chapter Six 1. Alexander W. Terrell to Joseph C. Terrell, February 27, 1884, MFP; Austin Statesman, June 7, 1884. 2. Austin Statesman, February 16, 1884, and April 24 and 29, 1884.

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Notes to Pages 102–108 3. “Address of Judge A. W. Terrell,” Addresses at the Commencement Exercises of the University of Texas, Delivered June 14, 1884 (Austin: Warner and Company Printers, 1884), p. 14. 4. Ibid., p. 18; “Remarks of Governor Ireland,” ibid., p. 15; Austin Statesman, June 14, 1884. 5. Austin Statesman, November 8, 1884. 6. Ibid., March 5, 1885. 7. Galveston Daily News, June 6, 1885, and Austin Statesman, June 22, 1885, refer to Terrell’s plans for the future. 8. Address of A. W. Terrell on Private Corporations. 9. Address of A. W. Terrell on Private Corporations, p. 16. 10. Ibid., pp. 30 (quotation), 31–32. 11. Ibid., p. 31. 12. Austin Statesman, June 4, 1885; Galveston Daily News, June 3, 1885 (quotation), June 6, 1885; “Corporations: Mr. R. G. Street on Judge Terrell’s Recent Address Before the Literary Societies of the University of Missouri,” Dallas Morning News, June 7, 1885; Lampasas Eagle, quoted in Austin Statesman, July 14, 1885. 13. The Henderson Times, quoted in Dallas Morning News, February 16, 1886; Dallas Morning News, January 30, 1886. Lockhart Register, quoted in Houston Daily Post, April 13, 1886. 14. “The First Gun: The Travis Statesman Begins His Campaign,” Houston Daily Post, April 9, 1886. 15. Alwyn Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 93–94. Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 52–54. Alexander Terrell does not figure in Goodwyn’s analysis despite the support of some members of the Farmers Alliance for Terrell’s senatorial hopes. 16. Houston Daily Post, April 9, 1886. 17. Austin Statesman, June 3, 1886 (second quotation), and June 17, 1886 (first quotation); The Austin Citizen, quoted in Austin Statesman, June 3, 1886 (Mexico); Dallas Morning News, July 17, 1886; Houston Daily Post, May 1, 1886 (war record). 18. Austin Statesman, June 3 and 19, 1886; Houston Daily Post, June 8, 1886 (quotation). 19. Houston Daily Post, July 2, 1886 (first quotation); Austin Statesman, July 4 and 7, 1886 (second and third quotations). 20. Dallas Morning News, July 12, 1886; the San Antonio Light, quoted in Dallas Morning News, July 27, 1886. 21. “Enforcement of Law,” Box 2H18, Terrell Papers. 22. Austin Statesman, July 7 and 9, 1886; Dallas Morning News, July 17, 1886; George Washington Jones to Terrell, February 17, 1886, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers—this correspondence was probably obtained in case Hancock raised the issue of Terrell’s behavior in the Civil War toward Unionists. See the treatment of this episode in Chapter Two.

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Notes to Pages 108–113 23. Galveston Daily News, 16 August 16, 1886; Austin Statesman, August 13, 1886; Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 97–98. 24. Galveston Daily News, August 12, 1886; Austin Statesman, August 12, 1886 (first and second quotations); Houston Daily Post, quoted in Austin Statesman, August 17, 1886 (third quotation). 25. Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, p. 88. 26. Ben Procter, Not Without Honor: The Life of John H. Reagan (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962), pp. 263–265; Louise Horton, Samuel Bell Maxey: A Biography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974), pp. 176, 180–181. For a pessimistic assessment of Terrell’s chances before the election see B. M. Baker to J. W. Truit, October 22, 1886, Box 2H81, J. W. Truit Papers, CAH. 27. Oran M. Roberts to Terrell, November 20, 1886, and Terrell to Roberts, November 24 and 25 (not sent), 1886, Terrell Family Papers (TSL), Box 1991/152-1. 28. George Flournoy to Terrell, December 31, 1886, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers; Austin Statesman, January 21, 1887. 29. Dallas Morning News, January 11, 1887 (first quotation); January 18, 1887 (second quotation). 30. Dallas Morning News, January 26 and 27, 1887. Journal of the Senate of Texas Being the Regular Session, Twentieth Legislature (Austin: Triplett & Hutchings, 1887) pp. 112–114, gives the balloting. 31. Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 102–103; Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 327–328. Journal of the Senate of Texas, pp. 147–152. 32. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 10, Box 2H17, Terrell Papers; Terrell to Daniel S. Lamont, March 10, 1887, Grover Cleveland Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, hereinafter Cleveland Papers. Lamont was President Cleveland’s personal secretary. 33. Terrell to Guy M. Bryan, November 25, 1888, Box 2N244, Bryan Papers. 34. Dallas Morning News, September 18, 1886, noted that Terrell’s speaking campaign had affected his voice. Terrell discussed his poor health in Terrell to Guy M. Bryan, November 25, 1888, and February 9, 1889, Box 2N244, Bryan Papers. 35. Terrell to Lamont, March 10, 1887, Cleveland Papers. For the campaign on Terrell’s behalf see Joseph D. Sayers to Terrell, February 14, 1887, William F. Vilas to Terrell, March 1, 1887, William Preston Johnston to Terrell, March 1, 1887, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 36. C. C. Laws to Bayard, March 17, 1887, Thomas F. Bayard to Terrell, March 24, 1887, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 37. Austin Statesman, April 22 and May 1 (quotation), 1887. 38. For an overview of the 1887 prohibition effort see James D. Ivy, No Saloon in the Valley: The Southern Strategy of Texas Prohibitionists in the 1880s (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2003), pp. 45–69; Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 88–91. 39. Dallas Morning News, May 2,1887; Galveston Daily News, August 4, 1887, in

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Notes to Pages 113–118 Judge A. W. Terrell on Prohibition, broadside in R. Niles Graham–Pease Collection, Austin–Travis County Collection, Austin Public Library. 40. William P. Ballinger to Terrell, June 5, 1887, June 16, 1887, A. H. Willie to Terrell, October 2, 1887, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 41. Austin Statesman, May 17, 1888 (first quotation), and May 23, 1888 (criticism of speech). 42. “Beautiful Lines,” clipping in MFP; “Burial of Booth,” Austin Statesman, April 14, 1891. 43. Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 115–116. 44. Reagan to Terrell, April 8, 1888, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. Galveston Daily News, August 15, 1888. 45. Terrell to Bryan, November 25, 1888, Box 2N244, Bryan Papers. 46. On the Supreme Court reporter legislation see Austin Statesman, February 22 and 28, 1889, and March 1, 1889, and H. P. N. Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas, 1822–1897, Volume IX (Austin: Gammel Book Company, 1898), pp. 7–9. The case against Terrell was made more explicitly in “Another Word With You, Judge Terrell,” Austin Daily Statesman, August 10, 1891. 47. Austin Daily Statesman, February 9, 1889 (mule reference), Terrell to J. L. Moody, February 22, 1889, in Austin Daily Statesman, February 24, 1889. Roberts replied to Terrell in Austin Daily Statesman, March 3, 1889. 48. Terrell to Bryan, 7 May 1889, Box 2N244, Bryan Papers. 49. Austin Daily Statesman, February 27, 1889. 50. The standard biography of James S. Hogg is Robert C. Cotner, James Stephen Hogg: A Biography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1959). The book is now very dated in its interpretation, and a new study of Hogg is needed. 51. Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 106–110, offers a good account of this process. Goodwyn, Democratic Promise, and Donna A. Barnes, Farmers in Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of the Southern Farmers Alliance and People’s Party in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984), trace the emergence of agrarian protest in the state. 52. Cotner, James Stephen Hogg, p. 231, mentions their friendship, as does Terrell in his eulogy of Hogg in 1906, Box 2H18, Terrell Papers. 53. Austin Statesman, July 26 (quotation) and 27, 1890, and November 5, 1890. 54. Austin Statesman, February 3 (alien land bill) and 21 (poll tax quotation), 1891; Galveston Daily News, August 9, 1891. 55. Cotner, James Stephen Hogg, p. 234; Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 120–121. 56. Dallas Morning News, February 26, 1891. 57. Dallas Morning News, March 1, 1891, gives the text of the substitute; Dallas Morning News, March 3, 1891; Galveston Daily News, March 20, 1892 (quotation). Galveston Daily News, March 24, 1892, carried a story about Harry Tracy, editor of the Southern Mercury, the main Populist newspaper. He alleged that Ter-

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Notes to Pages 118–125 rell had once favored an elective railroad commission and then reversed himself under pressure from Hogg’s supporters. 58. Austin Evening News, August 8, 10, and 21, 1891, and September 1 and 3, 1891, followed the changes in the Austin Statesman’s editorial policy toward Terrell. Austin Statesman, April 9, 1892, explains what took place on its editorial page. 59. Austin Statesman, August 5 (first quotation), 7 (second quotation), and 10, 1891. 60. Galveston Daily News, August 9, 1891. 61. Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 128–130; Cotner, James Stephen Hogg, pp. 250–269. 62. Dallas Morning News, March 17, 1892; Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 130–131. 63. Galveston Daily News, March 20, 1892. Richard Harrison to James S. Hogg, March 14, 1892, Box 2J223, James S. Hogg Papers, Center for American History. 64. Galveston Daily News, March 20, 1892; Austin Statesman, March 20, 1892; Dallas Morning News, March 25, 1892. 65. Galveston Daily News, March 20, 1892. 66. San Antonio Daily Express, March 21, 1892; Dallas Morning News, March 21, 1892. 67. Ibid., March 24, 1892. 68. Ibid., March 24, 1892, March 25, 1892. 69. Ibid., March 31, 1892 (Ross); Austin Statesman, April 3, 1892. Ross boasted of his success in “artistically skinning” Terrell. Ross to H. M. Holmes, April 20, 1892, Lawrence Sullivan Ross Papers, Texas A&M University Archives. I am indebted to Joan Goodbody for this reference. 70. Dallas Morning News, September 4 and 20 (final quotation), 1892. Terrell to Bryan, August 12, 1892 (first quotation), and September 28, 1892 (second quotation), Box 2N244, Bryan Papers.

Chapter Seven 1. Joseph D. Sayers to Terrell, February 16, 1893, Richard Coke to Terrell, February 21, 1893, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 2. Coke to Terrell, February 21, 1893, March 1, 1893, Joseph D. Sayers to Terrell, April 11, 1893 (quotation), Terrell Papers. Grover Cleveland to the Senate, April 13, 1893, Record Group 46, Records of the United States Senate, SEN 53B-A1, 53rd Congress (Special Session), Nominating Messages, National Archives. I am indebted to Michael Gillette for furnishing me with a copy of this document. 3. Charles W. Calhoun, Gilded Age Cato: The Life of Walter Q. Gresham (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988), pp. 120–126, is an excellent study of Gresham’s career and his role as secretary of state.

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Notes to Pages 126–130 4. Austin Statesman, July 6, 1893, quoting a story from the Tammany Times; Dallas Morning News, June 14, 1893, quoting a story from the San Antonio Express; Houston Post, April 22, 1893 (quotations). 5. Austin Statesman, March 13,1893; Harper’s Weekly, April 29, 1893, p. 394; Dallas Morning News, April 15, 1893. Additional comment appeared in the San Antonio Express, April 14, 1893, and the Houston Daily Post, April 14, 1893. 6. Terrell to Adele Steiner Burleson, May 27, 1893, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 7. Illinois Staats Zeitung, June 26, 1893, quoted in Washington Post, July 4, 1893 (first quotation) and June 27, 1893 (second quotation). For the public controversy see Washington Post quoted in Galveston Daily News, July 10, 1893; “The Wilkes Poem,” Galveston Daily News, July 16, 1893; “Judge Terrell and That Poem,” Austin Statesman, July 27, 1893, and Terrell’s oration about President Garfield in the same issue. For the story’s ripple effect see “The Assassin’s Eulogist,” New York Tribune, February 15, 1894. 8. Walter Q. Gresham to Terrell, September 7, 1893, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. I have not been able to locate Terrell’s letter to Gresham in the secretary’s papers at the Library of Congress or the Indiana Historical Society. I am indebted to Charles W. Calhoun for help with this problem. Terry Alford also provided timely and valuable advice. 9. Alvey Adee to Terrell, January 22, 1895, Box 2H8, Terrell Papers. 10. “The Turkish question” in the 1890s is the subject of a vast, controversial literature, especially because of the treatment of Armenians at the hands of the Turks. Jeremy Salt, Imperialism, Evangelism, and the Ottoman Armenians, 1878–1896 (London: Frank Cass, 1993), is a pro-Turkish interpretation. Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London: I. B. Tauris and Company, 1998) uses primary Turkish sources to develop the worldview of the leaders of the Ottoman Empire toward the outside pressures that they confronted. Most of the biographies of Abdulhamid are hostile toward a ruler who seems to have deserved much of the criticism he received. Joan Haslip, The Sultan: The Life of Abdul Hamid (London: Cassell, 1958), pp. 214–215, mentions Terrell in critical terms. 11. Andrew Mango, Ataturk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey (Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1999), p. v. 12. Terrell to Gresham, February 15, 1895, Box 2H8, Terrell Papers, discusses the problem of rank and how it affected Terrell’s discharge of his official duties. 13. Terrell to Joseph D. Sayers, August 24, 1893, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers; Anna Bowman Dodd, In the Palaces of the Sultan (London: William Heinemann, 1904), pp. 109–110. On Riddle, who was only twenty-five, see Washington Post, April 16, 1893. 14. Calhoun, Gilded Age Cato, pp. 181–182; Cyrus Hamlin to Terrell, September 21, 1893, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 15. Deringil, Well-Protected Domains, p. 114. 16. The treatment of the Armenians in Turkey is a very controversial historical problem because of the massacres that the Turks perpetrated during the 1890s and

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Notes to Pages 131–134 with even more ferocity during World War I. Salt, Imperialism, Evangelism, and the Ottoman Armenians, pp. 54–67, argues that the Armenians brought many of their problems on themselves by their revolutionary behavior. Vakahn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, 3rd rev. ed. (Providence, Rhode Island: Berghahn Books, 1997), pp. 43–56, makes the case for the Armenian position. Terrell to Henry O. Dwight, December 27, 1895, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1895 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1896), p. 1431. These will be cited as Foreign Relations with the year. Several volumes of Terrell’s copies of the Foreign Relations series for 1893–1897 were in the Perry-Castaneda Library at the University of Texas at Austin but have now been moved to the Center for American History. I also consulted Despatches from U.S. Minister to Turkey, 1818–1906, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, Microfilm M46 for 1893 to 1897. The main body of the Terrell Papers about his service in Turkey, including his letterbooks, are at the Center for American History, but there are some key items in the two smaller collections at the Texas State Library. 17. Terrell to Sayers, August 24, 1893, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers; Alexander W. Terrell, “A Heroine of the Desert,” Interior (August 18, 1910), copy in Box 2H19, Terrell Papers, summarizes his efforts on behalf of Dr. Eddy. Terrell’s diplomatic work can be most conveniently examined in Foreign Relations. For the case of Anna Melton see Foreign Relations, 1893, pp. 642–648, 652–666, 695–699. 18. “Memorandum of my conversation with the Sultan of Turkey at Yildiz Palace, Dec. 23, 1893,” Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 19. Pears, Forty Years in Constantinople, pp. 119–120; Sir Edwin Pears, Life of Abdul Hamid (London, England: Constable and Company, 1917), p. 340. For an evaluation of Terrell by an American missionary figure see George Washburn, Fifty Years in Constantinople and Recollections of Robert College (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), pp. 226–227. Another critical perspective is Patrick, Under Five Sultans, pp. 184 (quotation), 185–186. 20. “Memorandum,” December 23, 1893, Terrell to Anna Terrell, December 25, 1893, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers; Harold Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, Bart. First Lord Carnock: A Study in the Old Diplomacy (London: Constable and Company, 1930), p. 98. Mrs. Terrell discussed the occasion in an interview with the Houston Post, March 17, 1894. 21. Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, p. 98. 22. Terrell to Anna Terrell, December 25, 1893, January 5 and 18, 1894, February 2, 1894, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 23. Gresham to Terrell, February 9, 1894, Foreign Relations, 1894, p. 754. 24. Terrell to Anna Terrell, January 18 and 28, 1894, Box 2H7, Terrell to Anna Terrell, March 9, 1895, Box 2H8, Terrell Papers. 25. Terrell to Anna Terrell, February 13, 1894 (first quotation), March 17, 1894 (second quotation), Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 26. Terrell to Anna Terrell, April 23, 1894, 2H7, Terrell Papers. 27. Ibid.

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Notes to Pages 134–138 28. Dr. A. W. Terrell to Terrell, July 24, 1894, Alexander Watkins Terrell Papers, Box 1985/22, Texas State Library. Terrell to Anna Terrell, July 20, 1894, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers contain his complaint about having had to take calomel without knowing what its adverse effects might be. 29. Terrell to C. U. Connellee, May 3, 1894, in Austin Statesman, May 3, 1894. The Fort Worth Gazette said of Terrell’s letters, “He came, he saw, he wrote, but the country called not,” quoted in Austin Statesman, June 29, 1894. For Terrell’s activities while he was back in Austin see Austin Statesman, May 2 and 6, 1894, and June 13, 1894. 30. Terrell to Walter Q. Gresham, June 24, 1894, Walter Q. Gresham Papers, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis. I am indebted to Charles W. Calhoun for a copy of this letter. For the response of the administration to his letter defending the president see Terrell to Anna Terrell, July 20,1894, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 31. T. D. Wooten to Terrell, November 4, 1895, Terrell Family Papers (TSL), Box 1991/152-1, Lewis Hancock to Terrell, December 28, 1894, Box 2H7, Terrell Papers. 32. Allen, Finding the Walls of Troy, pp. 238–241 (quotation is on p. 238; italics in the original). 33. Benedict, Source Book, pp. 392 (quotation), 395. 34. Terrell to Lewis Hancock, January 14, 1895, Box 2H8, Terrell Papers. 35. Allen, Finding the Walls of Troy, pp. 240–241; Samuel Langley to Terrell, January 3, 1895, Box 2H8, Terrell Papers; “Gift of A. W. Terrell,” Alexander W. Terrell Biographical File, CAH; Martin Harriman, Kenneth Mayer, Susan Murphy, and Richard Pianka, “A New Inscription from Ilium,” Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 113 (1996): 255–256; Charlotte Carl-Mitchell and Karen Gould, comps., “A List of HRHRC Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts,” Library Chronicle of The University of Texas at Austin, New Series Number 35 (1986): 107–113; Charlotte Carl-Mitchell, “Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the HRHRC,” Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin, New Series Number 35 (1986): 99. Terrell also sent an Egyptian mummy back to Texas for donation to the University of Texas. He gave it to the husband of one of his stepdaughters, and the artifact was ultimately given to Southern Methodist University, where it is currently housed in the Bridwell Library and is visible at www2.smu.edu/bridwell. See also Frank X. Tolbert, “Tolbert’s Texas,” Dallas Morning News, August 24, 1955. 36. See Terrell’s will, Codicil 19, Box 2H19, Terrell Papers. 37. Terrell to Adele Steiner Burleson, December 30, 1895, Box 2H9, Terrell Papers. 38. Terrell to Gresham, November 28, 1894, Foreign Relations, 1894, pp. 718–719; Terrell to Anna Terrell, February 20 and 27, 1895, Box 2H9, Terrell Papers. 39. Gresham to Terrell, November 25, 1894, Terrell to Gresham, November 28 and 30, 1894, Foreign Relations, 1894, pp. 718–719. 40. Terrell to Gresham, November 30, 1894, December 23, 1894, Gresham to

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Notes to Pages 138–142 Terrell, December 5, 1894, Mavroyeni Bey (Turkish minister in Washington) to Gresham, December 22, 1894, Foreign Relations, 1894, pp. 719–722, the quotation appears on page 722. 41. New York Tribune, December 20, 1894 (both quotations), Gresham note on Terrell to Gresham, December 10, 1894, Despatches from the American Minister to Turkey, RG 59, M46 (both quotations). Charles W. Calhoun shared this reference with me. 42. Gresham to Terrell, January 30, February 14, March 2, 1895, InstructionsÑ-Turkey, Record Group 59, National Archives, Department of State; Henry L. Bryan to Thomas F. Bayard, April 5, 1895, Thomas F. Bayard Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Charles W. Calhoun brought these references to my attention; New York Tribune, April 20, 1895. 43. Terrell to Anna Terrell, February 20, 1895, March 9, 1895, April 12, 1895, Alvey Adee to Terrell, July 27, 1895, Box 2H8, Terrell Papers. 44. Terrell to Lilla Terrell, April 12, 1895, Terrell Family Papers (TSL), Box 1991/152-1. 45. Terrell to Anna Terrell, May 6, 1895, June 13, 1895, Box 2H9, Terrell Papers. 46. Terrell to Richard Olney, October 2 and 3, 1895, Foreign Relations, 1895, pp. 1318–1319. 47. Terrell to Olney, October 24, 1895, Foreign Relations, 1895, p. 1327. 48. New York Tribune, October 26 and November 14, 1895; “Our Minister to Turkey,” New York Tribune, December 3, 1895. “The Situation in Turkey and the Duty of the United States,” Literary Digest 12 (November 30, 1895): 172–173. 49. “What Can the United States Do for the Armenians?” Literary Digest 12 (December 7, 1895): 153; Olney to Grover Cleveland, December 19, 1895, Foreign Relations, 1895, pp. 1257, 1258, 1262. 50. New York Tribune, January 5 and 25, 1896; Clara Barton to Terrell, October 5, 1900, Box 2H11, Terrell Papers. Barton defended Terrell in early January 1897; see Festus P. Summers, ed., The Cabinet Diary of William L. Wilson, 1896–1897 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957), pp. 199–200. 51. Joseph Sayers to Thad Thomson, February 29, 1896, Box 2H9, Terrell Papers; Washington Post, February 29, 1896; Austin Statesman, May 13, 1896. 52. John S. Kennedy to Grover Cleveland, May 5, 1896, William E. Dodge to Henry Thurber, May 14,1896, William E. Dodge to Cleveland, May 15, 1896 (first quotation), Charles A. Jamison to Cleveland, May 18, 1896, Cleveland Papers; Washington Post, May 20, 1896 (second quotation). 53. Terrell to Cleveland, May 20, 1896, E. Hopkinson Smith to Terrell, May 20, 1896, T. DeWitt Talmage to Cleveland, May 23, 1896, Cleveland Papers; New York Times, May 22, 1896; Austin Statesman, May 22, 1896. 54. Terrell to Olney, July 16, 1896, Foreign Relations, 1896, p. 857. 55. Terrell to Cleveland, November 30, 1896, Cleveland Papers; New York Times, October 9, 1896, October 13, 1896 (quotation); “Minister Terrell Defended,” New York Times, October 10, 1896.

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Notes to Pages 143–149 56. Terrell to Cleveland, February 1, 1897 (two letters), Cleveland Papers; Terrell to Anna Terrell, 20 January 20, 1896 [1897], Box 2H10, Terrell Papers; Austin Statesman, August 11, 1897. 57. Alexander W. Terrell, “An Interview with Sultan Abdul Hamid,” Century Magazine 53 (November, 1897): 133–138. 58. See for example A. W. Terrell, “The Birthplace of Jesus,” Austin Statesman, 1895, clipping in A. W. Terrell File, Austin-Travis County Collection, Austin Public Library. Among the distinguished Americans who passed through Constantinople between 1893 and 1897 were Lew Wallace, Thomas F. Bayard, Russell Alger, and Potter Palmer.

Chapter Eight 1. Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 209–216. 2. Howard Terrell to Alexander Watkins Terrell, Terrell Family Papers (TSL), January 15, 1897, Box 1991/152-1; William Courtney to Terrell, January 31, 1898, Alexander W. Terrell Papers, Box 1985/22-1, Texas State Library (TSL), 1985, discusses a bad check episode. Terrell to Dora Terrell, February 3, 1902, Morris Family Papers, outlines Howard Terrell’s infidelities. George C. Morris to Lewis L. Gould, September 17, 2001. 3. Lynchburg, Virginia, News, January 30, 1901, McCartney Scrapbook, MFP. Austin Statesman, January 28, 1901. 4. Alexander W. Terrell, Land: Its Individual Ownership and Culture, the Surest Safeguard of Free Government (Austin: University of Texas, 1898), pp. 8, 15. 5. “Are There Any Monopolies? Judge Terrell Says That There are Comparatively Few of Them,” Austin Statesman, September 3, 1899. 6. Austin Statesman, September 6 and 11, 1899, carried the press comments from around the state. 7. Terrell to Anna Pennybacker, January 16, 1904, Box 2L506, Anna J. Pennybacker Papers, Center for American History, hereinafter Pennybacker Papers. I am indebted to Professor Patricia Kruppa for calling this letter to my attention. 8. Terrell, “Reminiscences,” p. 1 (Civil War), 93, (Henderson), Box 2H17. 9. Ibid., pp. 1–2. 10. Ibid., p. 7. 11. A copy of “The Soul” is in J. C. Terrell, Reminiscences of Early Days of Fort Worth, pp. 97–101, and Wallis, “Life of Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 97–101. She says it was written when Constance Terrell Cook died in 1882. Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” p. 520, places the writing in 1900 after the Galveston hurricane. For private reactions to the poem see James W. Bixby to Terrell, January 19, 1905, Henry Cohen to Terrell, February 3, 1905, Box 1985/22-1, Terrell Papers (TSL). 12. Terrell notes, Box 2H19, Terrell Papers. 13. Austin Statesman, April 21, 1901, May 4, 1901, April 7, 1905. 14. A. W. Terrell, “Independence Day Oration,” March 2, 1905, Alexander W.

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Notes to Pages 149–154 Terrell Biographical File, CAH; Texas Legislature, House Journal of the Regular Session of the Twenty-eighth Legislature (Austin: State Printers, 1903), pp. 112– 114 (R. Q. Mills); Austin Statesman, March 23, 1905 (Reagan), March 26, 1906 (Hogg). 15. Austin Statesman, March 23, 1902, April 20, 1902 (quotation). 16. Austin Statesman, August 22, 1902. On the campaign to restrict blacks from voting, see Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 204–206; Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics, pp. 204–209; Michael Perman, Struggle For Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 271–281. 17. Alexander W. Terrell, “The Negro,” Terrell Papers, Box 2H17. 18. On South Texas voting practices during these years see Evan Anders, Boss Rule in South Texas: The Progressive Era (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982). 19. Austin Statesman, June 27 and 28, 1902, August 31, 1902, November 1, 1902. 20. Ibid., August 24, 1902. 21. Ibid., July 16 and 17, 1902. George Clifton Edwards to Terrell, July 23, 1902, Box 2H12, Terrell Papers. 22. Austin Statesman, November 1, 1902, November 6, 1902. 23. Dallas Times Herald, quoted in Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” p. 463. 24. Austin Statesman, February 16, 1903, March 19 and 28 (quotation), 1903. 25. The legislative history of the Terrell Law is covered in Ruby Lee Martin, “The Administration of Governor S. W. T. Lanham, 1903–1907,” (master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1937), pp. 62–72. The impact on Texas politics of the new statute is analyzed in Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, pp. 206–207; Lewis L. Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), pp. 6–7; and Perman, Struggle for Mastery, pp. 278–279. 26. Austin Statesman, February 6, 1904. 27. Ibid., April 23 and 26, 1904, May 2 and 3, 1904. Terrell, “The Negro,” Box 2H17, Terrell Papers. 28. Austin Statesman, June 26, 1904. 29. Thomas B. Love to Terrell, December 19, 1904, Box 2H12, Terrell Papers. The Thomas B. Love Papers at the Dallas Historical Society have very little on the interaction between Love and Terrell. I am indebted to Andrea Boardman for this information. 30. Austin Statesman, March 18, 1905 (“hell holes” quotation); Terrell to Anna Pennybacker, March 31, 1905, Box 2L506, Pennybacker Papers. 31. The Francis W. Seabury Papers, Center for American History, do not have any information about the election law struggle in the 1905 legislature. Dallas Morning News, March 29 (first quotation) and 31 (second quotation), 1905. 32. Dallas Morning News, March 31, 1905. Perman, Struggle for Mastery, pp. 279–280.

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Notes to Pages 154–161 33. Dallas Morning News, June 20, 1905. Perman, Struggle for Mastery, pp. 279–280. 34. Dallas Morning News, May 19, 1905; Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 484–485. 35. Dallas Morning News, May 19, 1905. 36. Terrell to Lanham, May 18, 1905, in Dallas Morning News, May 19, 1905. 37. The letters that replied to Terrell’s requests are in House Journal of the Second Called Session of the Twenty-ninth Legislature of Texas, 1906 (Austin: State Printing Company, 1906), pp. 69–88. Dallas Morning News, June 18, 1905. 38. The text of the speech to the National Civic Federation is in Box 2H18, Terrell Papers. 39. The report of the House committee is in House Journal of the Second Called Session, 1906, pp. 119–123; Dallas Morning News, April 9, 1906, April 18, 1906. 40. J. H. Hawley to Charles D. Hilles, January 11, 1912, Charles D. Hilles Papers, Yale University Library. 41. Dallas Morning News, April 7, 1906. 42. For background on the Bailey controversy see William A. Cocke, The Bailey Controversy in Texas With Lessons from the Political Life Story of a Fallen Idol, 2 volumes (San Antonio: Cocke Company, 1908), a compilation of documents and speeches by a Bailey opponent; Bob Charles Holcomb, “Senator Joe Bailey: Two Decades of Controversy,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Texas Tech University, 1968), pp. 192, 199, 217–222, 233, 252, 259–261; Gould, Progressives, pp. 18–20. 43. Austin Statesman, January 5, 1907, carried Bailey’s account of his strained personal relations with Terrell. Terrell commented on Bailey in a speech at Georgetown, April 11,1908, reprinted in Cocke, Bailey Controversy, vol. 2, pp. 988–990, 988 (quotation). 44. Terrell’s statement against Bailey appeared in Austin Statesman, December 9, 1906. The attack on him using the Ross article was published in the Austin Statesman, December 29, 1906. For Terrell’s reply see Austin Statesman, January 1, 1907, and for the debate, January 4, 1907. 45. Austin Statesman, January 5, 1907. 46. Ibid. 47. “Defeats Bailey in Travis,” clipping in Terrell biographical file, CAH; Austin Statesman, February 28, 1907 (Bailey quotation). 48. Austin Statesman, March 6 and 8, 1908. 49. Dallas Morning News, April 12, 1908. 50. Ibid., May 1, 1908. 51. Ibid., May 29, 1908; Gould, Progressives, pp. 21–23. 52. Terrell Notes, one dated January 8, 1908, Box 2H19, Terrell Papers. 53. Austin Statesman, November 26, 1909; Travis County Probate Records, No. 3241, Austin-Travis County Collection, Austin Public Library; “Will of Mrs. Terrell Filed for Probate,” clipping in A. W. Terrell File, Austin–Travis County Collection, Austin Public Library.

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Notes to Pages 161–163 54. Seb S. Wilcox to Walter Prescott Webb, July 14, 1934, Terrell Biographical File, CAH; Terrell Diary, July 1, 1910, Box 2H19, Terrell Papers. 55. Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 559–560. The records of the Texas State Historical Association do not contain much information about Terrell’s activities as president. Terrell to Charles W. Ramsdell, October 9, 1911, Box 2L428, Texas State Historical Association Papers, CAH, promises to seek money from the legislature to support printing of the association’s quarterly journal. Terrell Diary, July 2, 1910, Box 2H19, Terrell Papers, discusses one meeting to find a successor to the association’s secretary, George P. Garrison, who was fatally ill. Terrell sent a letter about his memoirs to Theodore Roosevelt. Terrell to Roosevelt, March 17, 1911, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress. See also Alexander W. Terrell, “Mirabeau B. Lamar [1798–1857],” in E. A. Alderman et al., eds., Library of Southern Literature (New Orleans: Martin Hoyt Company, 1909), pp. 2987–2990. 56. Benedict, Source Book, p. 835, gives the dates of Terrell’s term. Thomas S. Henderson to E. J. Mathews, February 12, 1910, Box 2D330, Thomas S. Henderson Papers, Center for American History, hereinafter Henderson Papers, states Terrell’s committee assignments. John E. Rosser to Woodrow Wilson, October 26, 1909, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress. 57. E. J. Mathews to Henderson, July 7, 1910, Henderson to Terrell, August 2, 1910, Terrell to Henderson, August 31, 1910, Box 2D334, Henderson Papers; Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 545–547; Christopher Long, “Cass Gilbert,” in Ron Tyler et al., New Handbook, vol. 3, pp. 156–157. Sharon Irish, Cass Gilbert, Architect: Modern Traditionalist (New York: Monacelli Press, 1999), pp. 103, 106. 58. Terrell to Henderson, September 1, 1910, Box 2D334, Henderson Papers; Terrell to Sidney Mezes, October 10, 1910. Records of the Office of the President, University of Texas, Box VF 21B.a, CAH. Mezes was the president of the university. On the cornerstone issue see Terrell to Henderson, October 13, 1910, November 30, 1910, Henderson to Terrell, October 17, 1910, Box 2D334, Henderson Papers. 59. George W. Brackenridge to Terrell, October 28, 1910, November 28, 1910, November 29, 1910, Box 2H12, Terrell Papers; Terrell to Henderson, November 30, 1910, S. E. Mezes to Henderson, December 1, 1910, Box 2D334, Henderson Papers; Terrell to Mezes, December 15, 1910, Records of the Office of the President, University of Texas, Box VF 21B.a. 60. On Brackenridge see Marilyn McAdams Sibley, George W. Brackenridge, Maverick Philanthropist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973); “Address of Judge A. W. Terrell, of Austin, presenting the portrait of Colonel Brackenridge,” University of Texas Record 10 (April 22, 1911). There is also a copy of the speech in Box 2H12, Terrell Papers. 61. Austin Statesman, May 24, 1907, June 1, 1907. 62. Ibid., June 29, 1911.

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Notes to Pages 164–167 63. Ibid., June 30, 1911, July 2, 1911 (Colquitt quotations). The preparation of Colquitt’s response can be followed in Atkins Jefferson McLemore to Colquitt, June 29, 1911, and Allison Mayfield et al., to Colquitt, June 30, 1911, Box 2E137, Oscar Branch Colquitt Papers, CAH. 64. “Judge Terrell’s Speech,” University of Texas Record, 11 (July 8, 1911): 94. 65. Thomas Watt Gregory to Woodrow Wilson, October 7, 1911, Thomas Watt Gregory Papers, Texas Tech University; for Wilson’s speech see Dallas Morning News, October 29, 1911. 66. Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” pp. 573–574. William E. Barton, The Life of Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), vol. 2, p. 325. 67. Typed document, June 15, 1912, Box 2H19, Terrell Papers. Jenny Rose, The Image of Zoroaster: The Persian Mage through European Eyes (New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 2000), pp. 173–189, discusses the impact of Zarathustra on Friedrich Nietzsche but does not shed much light on potential popular sources that may have influenced Terrell. 68. Austin Statesman, September 10, 1912; San Antonio Express, September 10, 1912; Dallas Morning News, September 10, 1912, carry the wire service stories on Terrell’s passing. 69. Austin Statesman, September 11, 12, and 13, 1912, cover the events preceding Terrell’s funeral and the service itself. For Terrell’s grave in the Texas State Cemetery, see www.cemetery.state.tx.us, which provides a picture of the state and headstone. Terrell’s birthdate on the headstone is given incorrectly. 70. Terrell’s will dated December 1908 is in Box 2H19, Terrell Papers. On the movement of the mummy to Southern Methodist University see Frank X. Tolbert, “Tolbert’s Texas,” Dallas Morning News, August 24, 1955. 71. San Antonio Express, September 11, 1912 (first quotation); McKinney Courier-Gazette quoted in Austin Statesman, September 14, 1912 (second quotation); Dallas Morning News, September 11, 1912 (third and fourth quotations). 72. “A Tribute to Judge Terrell,” Beau Monde 17 (September 21, 1912). 73. Terrell Notes, Box 2H19, Terrell Papers. A portrait of Terrell done before his death hangs outside room 210 in the Main Building of the University of Texas at Austin. For the presentation of the portrait in 1934 see “Alexander W. Terrell— Scholar, Soldier, Statesman, and Empire Builder,” Austin American, April 23, 1934. In the 1980s the Terrell family established the Alexander W. Terrell Endowed Lectureship in the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin. 74. Chamberlain, “Alexander Watkins Terrell,” and Wallis, “Life of Alexander Watkins Terrell,” are both accessible in the Perry-Castaneda Library, University of Texas at Austin. 75. Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics, p. 247; Perman, Struggle For Mastery, pp. 272–274, surveys Terrell’s influence without pejorative labels, but his suspicions of Terrell’s intentions are clear. Williams, “Suffrage Restriction,” 36, calls Terrell “Texas’s most persistent advocate of suffrage restriction.” 76. Melton, Melton’s History, p. 343.

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Bibliography Manuscripts All manuscripts are at the Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, unless otherwise indicated. William Pitt Ballinger Papers Thomas F. Bayard Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress Achille-François Bazaine Papers, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Center, University of Texas at Austin These are important for coverage of Terrell’s months in Mexico in 1865. Frank Brown, “Annals of Travis County and the City of Austin from the Earliest Times to the Close of 1875,” typescript Guy M. Bryan Papers Terrell and Bryan were close friends, and this collection contains many important letters. Edward Burleson Jr. Papers Grover Cleveland Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress Oscar B. Colquitt Papers Andrew George Papers Thomas Watt Gregory Papers, Texas Tech University Walter Q. Gresham Papers, Indiana Historical Society Walter Q. Gresham Papers, Library of Congress Hays County District Court Records, San Marcos, Texas Thomas Stallworth Henderson Papers

alexander watkins terrell

These are significant for Terrell’s service as a University of Texas regent. Charles D. Hilles Papers, Yale University James S. Hogg Papers Edward M. House Papers, Yale University Thomas B. Love Papers, Dallas Historical Society Maverick Family Papers James McCartney Family Papers, Houston, Texas This is an important family collection. Copies of the documents from this source will be deposited in the Center for American History. William McKinley Papers, Library of Congress George C. Morris Family Papers, Houston, Texas James P. Newcomb Papers E. M. Pease Papers, Texas State Archives Pease Family Papers, Austin–Travis County Collection, Austin Public Library Anna Pennybacker Papers Oran M. Roberts Papers These include some key letters about Terrell’s racial views. James H. Robertson Papers Robertson County Tax Records Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress Lawrence Sullivan Ross Papers, Texas A&M University Archives Ashbel Smith Papers Alexander Watkins Terrell Biographical File A. W. Terrell Papers These comprise the most significant collection of Terrell’s papers; they are most useful and complete for the period after 1890 and rich for the period when Terrell was minister to Turkey. Alexander W. Terrell Papers, 1985, Texas State Library Alexander W. Terrell Family Papers, 1991, Texas State Library Both of these relatively small collections complement the larger body of Terrell materials at the University of Texas at Austin. Texas State Historical Association Papers Travis County Criminal Court Records, Austin–Travis County Collection, Austin Public Library Travis County District Court Records, Travis County Court House, Austin J. W. Truit Papers 202

Bibliography

Union Literary Society Records, Western Historical Manuscripts Collection, University of Missouri, Columbia University of Texas, Records of the Office of the President, Austin Woodrow Wilson Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress

Writings of Alexander Watkins Terrell All pamphlets are in the Center for American History. Oration Delivered on the fourth day of July, 1861, at the Capitol, Austin, Texas, By Hon. A. W. Terrell, Austin, Texas. Austin: John Marshall and Company, 1861. Speeches Delivered on the 17th January 1862 in the Representative Hall, Austin, Texas, by Hon. Thos. J. Devine and A. W. Terrell. Austin: John Marshall and Company, 1862. Speech of Hon. A. W. Terrell, Senator from 25th Senatorial District, Delivered in the Senate July 19, 1876. Austin, 1876. Speech of Senator Terrell, Delivered in the Senate, April 19, 1882, on the Bill to Set Aside Two Millions of Acres of Land to Endow the State University and a Like Amount for Free Public Schools. Austin: n.p., 1882. Pamphlet in Center for American History. Speech of Hon. A. W. Terrell Delivered in the Senate of Texas, January 21, 1884, On Senate Bill No. 2 Entitled “An Act to Regulate the Grazing of Stock in Texas and to Prescribe and Provide Penalties for its Violation. Austin: E. W. Swindells, 1884. “Address of Judge A. W. Terrell.” Addresses at the Commencement Exercises of the University of Texas, Delivered June 14, 1884. Austin: Warner and Company Printers, 1884. Address of A. W. Terrell on Private Corporations Delivered Before the Literary Societies of the University of Missouri, June 1, 1885. Austin: Warner and Company Printers, 1885. Center for American History. This is the most elaborate statement of Terrell’s views on corporate power. Land: Its Individual Ownership and Culture, the Surest Safeguard of Free Government. Austin: University of Texas, 1898. “An Interview with Sultan Abdul Hamid.” Century Magazine 53 (November 1897): 133–138. “Mirabeau B. Lamar [1798–1857].” In E. A. Alderman et al., eds., 203

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Library of Southern Literature. New Orleans: Martin Hoyt Company, 1909. “The City of Austin from 1839 to 1865.” Texas State Historical Association Quarterly 14 (October 1910): 113–128. “Address of Judge A. W. Terrell, of Austin, presenting the portrait of Colonel Brackenridge.” University of Texas Record 10 (April 22, 1911): 324–330. “Judge Terrell’s Speech.” University of Texas Record 11 (July 8, 1911): 91–95. “Recollections of General Sam Houston.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 16 (October 1912): 113–137. Although this is an influential article, it is one that should be approached cautiously. From Texas to Mexico and the Court of Maximilian in 1865. Fannie Ratchford, ed. Dallas: Book Club of Texas, 1933.

Newspapers Austin Daily Journal Austin Evening News Austin State Times Austin Statesman This is the best newspaper source for Terrell’s life. The newspaper’s title changed at various times in ways that make exact citation difficult. It could be the Democratic Statesman, the Daily Statesman, or the Tri-Weekly Statesman within a few years. However, researchers will find that the files of the Austin Statesman on microfilm at the Austin Public Library and the Center for American History contain as complete a chronological run of the various incarnations of this newspaper as are extant in Texas. Austin Daily Tribune Dallas Morning News Galveston Daily News Houston Chronicle Houston Post Houston Telegraph Marshall Texas Republican Mexican Times New York Times New York Tribune 204

Bibliography

San Antonio Express Southern Intelligencer St. Joseph Gazette Texas Capital Texas State Gazette Like the Austin Statesman, this newspaper came out under various titles during the 1850s and after. All the issues can be found within the Texas State Gazette file. Washington Post

Public Documents H. P. N. Gammel. The Laws of Texas, 1822–1897, Volume IX. Austin: Gammel Book Company, 1898. Texas Legislature. General Laws of the State of Texas Passed at the Session of the Fourteenth Legislature, 1874. Houston: A. C. Gray State Printer, 1874. Texas Legislature, Senate. Journal of the Senate of the Seventeenth Legislature of the State of Texas, Regular Session. Galveston: A. H. Belo, 1881. Texas Legislature, Senate. Journal of the Senate of Texas Being the Regular Session, Twentieth Legislature. Austin: Triplett and Hutchings, 1887. Texas Supreme Court. A. W. Terrell and A. S. Walker, eds. Cases Argued and Decided in the Supreme Court of Texas, 1872. St. Paul, Minnesota: West Publishing Company, 1882. United States, Seventh Census of the United States. Schedule 1 (Free Inhabitants). Missouri, 1850. Microfilm at Center for American History. United States, National Archives. Case Files of Applications from Former Confederates for Presidential Pardons (“Amnesty Papers”). National Archives Microfilm Publications, M1003. United States, National Archives. Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Texas, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands. National Archives Microfilm Publication M821. United States, National Archives. Correspondence of the Office of Civil Affairs. National Archives Record Group 393, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1188. United States, Department of State. Papers Relating to the Foreign 205

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Relations of the United States, 1893-1897. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894–1898. These papers are an indispensable source for Terrell’s diplomatic career in Turkey. United States. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I—Volume IX. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883. United States. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I—Volume XXVII—in Two Parts. Part II. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1889. United States. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I—Volume XLI—In Four Parts. Part III. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1893. United States. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I—Volume XLVII—In Two Parts, Part II. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1896. United States. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Vol. III. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1898. United States. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Additions and Corrections to Series I—Volume XLI. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1902.

Books Allen, Susan Heuck. Finding the Walls of Troy: Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schleimann at Hisarlik. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Anders, Evan. Boss Rule in South Texas: The Progressive Era. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982. Ayers, Edward L. The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Barlow, Frank. William Rufus. London: Methuen, 1983. Barnes, Donna A. Farmers in Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of the Southern Farmers Alliance and People’s Party in Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984. 206

Bibliography

Barr, Alwyn. Reconstruction to Reform: Texas Politics, 1876–1906. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971. This is the best source for the political context of Terrell’s post–Civil War career. Barton, William E. The Life of Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross. 2 volumes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922. Baum, Dale. The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State During the Civil War Era. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998. Benedict, Harry Yandell, comp. A Source Book Relating to the History of the University of Texas: Legislative, Legal, Bibliographical, and Statistical. Austin: University of Texas Bulletin No. 1757, 1917. Benner, Judith Ann. Sul Ross: Soldier, Statesman, Educator. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1983. Bliss, Edwin Munsell. Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities. New York: Edgewood Publishing, 1896. Brown, John Henry. Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas. Austin: L. E. Daniell, ca. 1890. Brown, Norman D., ed. Journey to Pleasant Hill: The Civil War Letters of Captain Elijah P. Petty, Walker’s Texas Division C.S.A. San Antonio: Institute of Texan Cultures, 1982. Buenger, Walter. Secession and the Union in Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984. Calhoun, Charles W. Gilded Age Cato: The Life of Walter Q. Gresham. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988. Campbell, Randolph B. An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Cantrell, Greg. Kenneth and John B. Rayner and the Limits of Southern Dissent. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Casdorph, Paul D. Prince John Magruder: His Life and Campaigns. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1996. Cashin, Joan E. A Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Catalogue of the Alumni of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, 1865–1877. Philadelphia: Society of the Alumni of the Medical Department, n.d. Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the University of Missouri for the Year Ending November 23, 1843. Columbia, Missouri: Switzler and Williams, 1843. 207

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Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the University of Missouri for the Year Ending July 15, 1844. Columbia, Missouri: Switzler and Williams, 1844. Cocke, William A. The Bailey Controversy in Texas With Lessons from the Political Life-Story of a Fallen Idol. 2 volumes. San Antonio: Cocke Company, 1908. Cotner, Robert C. James Stephen Hogg: A Biography. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1959. Coulter, E. Merton. College Life in the Old South. New York: Macmillan Company, 1928; Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1951. Cutrer, Thomas W., ed. Longstreet’s Aide: The Civil War Letters of Major Thomas J. Goree. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. Dabbs, Jack Autrey. The French Army in Mexico, 1861–1867: A Study in Military Government. The Hague: Mouton and Company, 1963. Dadrian, Vakahn N. The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. 3rd rev. ed. Providence, Rhode Island: Berghahn Books, 1997. Daniell, L. E. Personnel of the Texas State Government, with Sketches of Representative Men of Texas. San Antonio: Maverick Printing House, 1892. Davenport, J. H. The History of the Supreme Court of the State of Texas. Austin: Southern Law Book Publishers, 1917. Deringil, Selim. The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909. London: I. B. Tauris and Company, 1998. Dicken, Emma. Terrell Genealogy. San Antonio: Naylor, n.d. Dodd, Anna Bowman. In the Palaces of the Sultan. London: William Heinemann, 1904. Eby, Frederick. The Development of Education in Texas. New York: Macmillan Company, 1925. English, William Francis. The Pioneer Lawyer and Jurist in Missouri. Columbia: University of Missouri Studies XXI, 1947. Epler, Percy H. The Life of Clara Barton. New York: Macmillan Company, 1915. Fremantle, Arthur James Lyon. Three Months in the Southern States. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

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Friend, Llerena B. Sam Houston: The Great Designer. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1954. Gallagher, Gary W. The Confederate War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Gammel, H. P. N., comp. The Laws of Texas, 1822–1897, Volume IX. Austin: Gammel Book Company, 1898. Glass, Robert C., and Carter Glass Jr. Virginia Democracy. 2 volumes. New York: Democratic Historical Association, 1937. Goodwyn, Lawrence. Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Gould, Lewis L. Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era. Austin: State Historical Association, 1992. Gracy, Alice Duggan, and Emma Gene Seale Gentry, comps. Travis County, Texas: The Five Schedules of the 1860 Federal Census. Austin: privately published, 1967. Haley, James L. Sam Houston. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. Hanchett, William. The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983. Haslip, Joan. The Sultan: The Life of Abdul Hamid. London: Casell, 1958. Hill, Patricia Evridge. Dallas: The Making of a Modern City. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. History of Buchanan County Missouri Containing a History of the County, Its Cities, Towns, Etc. St. Joseph, Missouri: Union Historical Company, 1881. History of Howard and Cooper Counties, Missouri, Written and Compiled from the most authentic official and private sources including a history of its Townships and Villages. St. Louis: National Historical Company, 1883. Horton, Louise. Samuel Bell Maxey: A Biography. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974. Humphrey, David. Austin: An Illustrated History. Northridge, California: Windsor Publications, 1985. Hurt, R. Douglas. Agriculture and Slavery in Missouri’s Little Dixie. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992. Irish, Sharon. Cass Gilbert, Architect: Modern Traditionalist. New York: Monacelli Press, 1999. Ivy, James D. No Saloon in the Valley: The Southern Strategy of Texas

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Prohibitionists in the 1880s. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2003. Jewett, Clayton E. Texas in the Confederacy: An Experiment in Nation Building. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002. Johnson, Ludwell H. Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1958. Kaufman, Martin. American Medical Education: The Formative Years, 1765–1910. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1976. Kennerly, William Clark, as told to Elizabeth Russell. Persimmon Hill: A Narrative of Old St. Louis and the Far West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949. Kerby, Robert L. Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South, 1863–1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972. Kittrell, Norman Goree. Governors Who Have Been, and Other Public Men of Texas. Houston: Dealey-Adey-Elgin Company, 1921. Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery, 1619–1877. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993. Kousser, J. Morgan. The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880–1910. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1974. This is a very critical account of Terrell’s efforts to restrict AfricanAmerican voting. Lane, J. J. History of the University of Texas Based on Facts and Records. Austin: Henry Hutchings State Printer, 1891. Langer, William L. The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890–1902. 2 volumes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1935. Linderman, Gerald F. Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1987. Lowry, Thomas Jefferson. A Sketch of the University of the State of Missouri. Columbia, Missouri: Herald Publishing House, n.d. Lubbock, Francis R. Six Decades in Texas; or, Memoirs of Francis Richard Lubbock, Governor of Texas in War Time, 1861–1863. Edited by C. W. Raines. Austin: Ben C. Jones and Company, 1900. Lynch, James D. The Bench and Bar of Texas. St. Louis, Missouri: Nixon-Jones Printing Company, 1885. Mango, Andrew. Ataturk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 2002. Marten, James. Texas Divided: Loyalty and Dissent in the Lone Star State. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990. McCurdy, Francis Lea. Stump, Bar, and Pulpit: Speechmaking on the

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Missouri Frontier. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1969. McKay, Seth Shepard. Seven Decades of the Texas Constitution of 1876. Lubbock: Texas Technological College Press, 1942. Melton, Elston J. Melton’s History of Cooper County, Missouri: An Account from Early Times to the Present, Written in Narrative Style for General Use. Columbia: Press of the E. W. Stephens Publishing Company, 1937. Mering, John Vollmer. The Whig Party in Missouri. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1967. Moore, Stephen L. Taming Texas: Captain William T. Sadler’s Lone Star Service. Austin: State House Press, 2000. Moretta, John Anthony. William Pitt Ballinger: Texas Lawyer, Southern Statesman, 1825–1888. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2000. Moneyhon, Carl. Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980. Important for the history of Reconstruction in the state. Nicolson, Harold. Sir Arthur Nicolson, Bart. First Lord Carnock: A Study in the Old Diplomacy. London: Constable and Company, 1930. Oakes, James. The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982. Olson, James, and Vera Olson. The University of Missouri: An Illustrated History. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1988. Parker, Richard Denny. Historical Recollections of Robertson County Texas. Salado: Anson Jones Press, 1955. Parks, Joseph H. General Edmund Kirby Smith, C.S.A. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954. Parrish, Michael. Richard Taylor: Soldier Prince of Dixie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Patrick, Mary Mills. Under Five Sultans. New York: Century Company, 1929. Pears, Sir Edwin. Forty Years in Constantinople: The Recollections of Sir Edwin Pears, 1873–1915. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1916. ———. Life of Abdul Hamid. London: Constable and Company, 1917. Pedigo, Virginia G., and Lewis G. Pedigo. History of Patrick and Henry Counties Virginia. 1923. Reprint, Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1977.

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Perman, Michael. Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. This is another critical appraisal of Terrell’s racial views. Procter, Ben. Not without Honor: The Life of John H. Reagan. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962. Ray, W. V. N. Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar of Missouri. St. Louis: F. H. Thomas and Company, 1878. Rice, Lawrence D. The Negro in Texas: 1874–1900. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971. Richter, William L. Overreached on All Sides: The Freedmen’s Bureau Administrators in Texas, 1865–1868. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991. Rolle, Andrew F. The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, reprint 1992. Rose, Jenny. The Image of Zoroaster: The Persian Mage through European Eyes. New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 2000. Rosenberg, Charles E. The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. Rothman, Sheila. Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Salt, Jeremy. Imperialism, Evangelism, and the Ottoman Armenians, 1878–1896. London: Frank Cass, 1993. Quotes extensively from Terrell’s diplomatic dispatches. Sibley, Marilyn McAdams. George W. Brackenridge, Maverick Philanthropist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973. Simsir, Bilal N., ed. British Documents on Ottoman Armenians: Volume III (1891–1895). Ankara, Turkey: Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1989. Spratt, John Spricklin. The Road to Spindletop: Economic Change in Texas, 1875–1901. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1955. Spaw, Patsy McDonald, ed. The Texas Senate: Volume II, Civil War to the Eve of Reform. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999. A good source for Terrell’s career in the Senate. Spencer, John W. Terrell’s Texas Cavalry: Wild Horsemen of the Plains in the Civil War. Austin: Eakin Press, 1982. This provides thorough coverage of Terrell’s military career but is not very analytic. 212

Bibliography

Steffen, Jerome O. William Clark: Jeffersonian Man on the Frontier. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977. Summers, Festus P., ed. The Cabinet Diary of William L. Wilson, 1896–1897. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957. Terrell, Edwin H. Further Genealogical Notes on the Tyrell Terrell Family of Virginia and Its English and Norman-French Progenitors, Second Edition with Addenda and Corrigenda. San Antonio: n.p., 1909. Terrell, Joseph C. Reminiscences of the Early Days of Fort Worth. Fort Worth: Texas Printing Company, 1906. An interesting memoir by Terrell’s brother. Third Annual Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the University of Missouri for the Year Ending July 31, 1845. Columbia, Missouri: William F. Switzler, 1845. Tyler, Ronnie C., Douglas E. Barnett, Roy R. Barkley, Penelope Anderson, and Mark Odnitz, eds. The New Handbook of Texas. 6 volumes. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996. Viles, Jonas. The University of Missouri: A Centennial History. Columbia: University of Missouri, 1939. Waller, John L. Colossal Hamilton of Texas. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1968. Walton, William Martin. Major Buck Walton: An Epitome of My Life, Civil War Reminiscences. Austin: Waterloo Press. Washburn, George. Fifty Years in Constantinople and Recollections of Robert College. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911. Welch, Richard E. Jr. The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988. Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy. 1943. Reprint, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. Williams, Amelia W., and Eugene C. Barker, eds. The Writings of Sam Houston. 8 volumes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1942. Williams, T. Harry. Hayes of the Twenty-Third: The Civil War Volunteer Officer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965. Winkler, Ernest William. Platforms of Political Parties in Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1916. Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South, 1877–1913. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951. Wooster, Ralph A. Texas and Texans in the Civil War. Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1995. 213

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———. Lone Star Generals in Gray. Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 2000. ———, ed. Lone Star Blue and Gray: Essays on Texas in the Civil War. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1995.

Theses and Dissertations Baggett, James Alex. “The Rise and Fall of the Texas Radicals, 1866–1883.” Ph.D. dissertation, North Texas State University, 1972. Bowen, Nancy Head. “A Political Labyrinth: Texas in the Civil War Questions in Continuity.” Ph.D. dissertation, Rice University, 1974. Brockman, John M. “Railroads, Radicals, and Democrats: A Study in Texas Politics, 1865–1900.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1977. Chamberlain, Charles K. “Alexander Watkins Terrell, Citizen, Statesman.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 1956. This is the only other full-scale study of Terrell; it is uncritical about Terrell’s racial attitudes. Crews, Litha. “The Know-Nothing Party in Texas.” Master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1925. Gray, Ronald Norman. “Edmund J. Davis: Radical Republican and Reconstruction Governor of Texas.” Ph.D. dissertation, Texas Tech University, 1976. Hardy, Alois Walker. “A History of Travis County, 1821–1865.” Master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1938. Holcomb, Bob Charles. “Senator Joe Bailey: Two Decades of Controversy.” Ph.D. dissertation, Texas Tech University, 1968. Ledbetter, Billy Don. “Slavery, Fear, and Disunion in the Lone Star State: Texans’ Attitudes Toward Secession and The Union, 1846–1861.” Master’s thesis, North Texas State University, 1980. Martin, Ruby Lee. “The Administration of Governor S. W. T. Lanham, 1903–1907.” Master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1937. Meiners, Fredericka Ann. “The Texas Governorship, 1861–1865: Biography of an Office.” Ph.D. dissertation, Rice University, 1975. Wallis, Mary Ellis. “The Life of Alexander Watkins Terrell.” Master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1937. 214

Bibliography

This is the first attempt at a Terrell biography; it cites some source material that has been lost since she wrote her study. Williams, Patrick George. “Redeemer Democrats and the Roots of Modern Texas, 1872–1884.” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1996.

Articles Booth, Roswell V. “Poetic Tribute to John Wilkes Booth.” Confederate Veteran (April 1913): 170. Cantrell, Gregg. “Sam Houston and the Know-Nothings: A Reappraisal.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 96 (January 1993): 327–343. Cantrell, Gregg, and D. Scott Barton. “Texas Populists and the Failure of Biracial Politics.” Journal of Southern History 55 (November 1989): 659–692. Carl-Mitchell, Charlotte. “Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the HRHRC.” Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin, New Series Number 35 (1986): 89–106. Carl-Mitchell, Charlotte, and Karen Gould, comps. “A List of HRHRC Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.” Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin, New Series Number 35 (1986): 107–113. Cooper, Lance A., “‘A Slobbering Lame Thing’? The Semicolon Case Reconsidered.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 101 (January 1998): 321–339. This is important for Terrell’s role in this decisive case. Gould, Lewis L. “The University Becomes Politicized: The War With Jim Ferguson, 1917–1918.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 86 (October 1982): 255–276. Griffin, Roger A. “To Establish a University of the First Class.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 86 (October 1982): 134–160. This is excellent for Terrell’s role in the founding of the University of Texas. Harriman, Martin, Kenneth Mayer, Susan Murphy, and Richard Pianka. “A New Inscription from Ilium.” Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 113 (1996): 255–256. Humphrey, David C. “Prostitution and Public Policy in Austin, Texas, 1870–1915.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 86 (April 1983): 473–516. 215

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———. “A ‘Very Muddy and Conflicting’ View: The Civil War as Seen from Austin, Texas.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 94 (January 1991): 369–414. Klemme, Chris. “Jacksonian Justice: The Evolution of the Elective Judiciary in Texas, 1836–1850.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 105 (January 2002): 429–450. Meiners, Fredericka Ann. “Hamilton Bee in the Red River Campaign.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 78 (July 1974): 21–44. Milbourn, Curtis W., ed. “‘I Have Been Worse Treated Than Any Officer’: Confederate Colonel Thomas Green’s Assessment of the New Mexico Campaign.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 105 (October 2001): 323–337. Miller, Worth Robert. “Building a Progressive Coalition in Texas: The Populist-Reform Democrat Rapprochement, 1900–1907.” Journal of Southern History 52 (May 1986): 163–182. Moneyhon, Carl. “Public Education and Texas Reconstruction Politics, 1871–1874.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 92 (January 1989): 393–416. Rippy, J. Fred. “Mexican Projects of the Confederates,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 22 (April 1919): 291–317. Sevcik, Edward. “Selling the Austin Dam: A Disastrous Experiment in Encouraging Growth.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 96 (October 1992): 215–240. “Texas Collection.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 43 (April 1960): 619–620. Westwood, Howard C. “President Lincoln’s Overture to Sam Houston.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 88 (October 1984): 140–141. “What Can the United States Do for the Armenians?” Literary Digest 12 (December 7, 1895): 153. Williams, Patrick G. “Of Rutabagas and Redeemers: Rethinking the Texas Constitution of 1876.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 106 (October 2002): 230–253. ———. “Suffrage Restriction in Post-Reconstruction Texas: Urban Politics and the Specter of the Commune.” Journal of Southern History 68 (February 2002): 31–64. Worley, Ted R. “The Story of Alfred Arrington.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 14 (Winter 1955): 313–339.

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Index Abdulhamid II, Sultan, 128, 131–132, 139–140, 143, 144 Adee, Alvey, 138 African Americans, 30, 51, 55, 57, 66, 67, 68, 73, 74, 85, 149–150, 152–153, 156, 157; Terrell on, 85, 88, 149, 150 Alcohol. See Prohibition Alien land law, 117, 119 American Bible Society, 129 American Board of Missions, 129 American party, 20. See KnowNothing party American Red Cross, 141 Anderson, Thomas J. H., 86 Arkansas, 39, 41 Armenians, 128, 133, 137–138, 139, 140, 141, 144; genocide against, 137 Arrington, Alfred W., 50–51, 127 Arthur, Chester Alan, 125 Austin, Stephen F., 115, 116, 161, 165 Austin, Texas, 15, 17–18, 56, 58, 81–82 Austin American-Statesman, 58, 64, 66, 71, 83, 102, 104, 106, 118–119, 125 Austria-Hungary, 111 Bagby, Arthur, 44 Bailey, Joseph Weldon, 145, 157, 158–160, 162 Ballinger, William P., 40

Banks, John B., 27 Banks, Nathaniel, 41, 42 Barton, Clara, 141, 164 Bastrop, Texas, 24 Bastrop County, Texas, 21, 24, 27, 28 Battle Hall, 162 Bazaine, Francois-Achille, 49, 50, 52 Bayard, Thomas F., 111–112, 139 Beau Monde, 166 Bee, Hamilton, 51 Beecher, Henry Ward, 76 Belcher, George W., 106 Bell, John, 31 Bentley, A. D., 73 Benton, Thomas Hart, 13 Bexar County, Texas 83 Bible House, 130 bin Laden, Osama, 128 Blaine, James G., 102 Blairs Landing, 44 Board of Missions, Methodist Episcopal Church, 129 “Bombshell convention” (1855), 21 Boone, Daniel, 3 Boone County, Missouri, 3–4, 9 Boonville, Missouri, 3–4, 5, 6, 7, 11 Booth, John Wilkes, 50, 113–114, 126–127, 167 Bouldin, James E., 13, 15, 18 Brackenridge, Eleanor, 163, 164 Brackenridge, George W., 162–163

alexander watkins terrell Brackenridge, J. T., 106 Breckinridge, John, 30, 31 Brown, John, 30 Brown, Thomas J., 118 Bryan, Guy M., 40, 41, 44, 114, 115, 122, 165 Bryan, William Jennings, 159 Buchanan, James, 22, 26 Buchanan County, Missouri, 12–13 Burleson, Edward, Jr., 33, 52 Burnet County, Texas, 150 Caldwell County, Texas, 26 Calhoun Literary Society, 57 Calvert, Frank, 77, 136 Campbell, Thomas M., 151 Campbell County, Virginia, 4 Capitol Syndicate, 85 Cardenas v. Texas, 56 Cass, Lewis, 11 Century Magazine, 143 Chamberlain, Charles K., 166 Child labor, 151 Chilton, Horace, 120 Cholera, 3–4 Civil War, 27, 29–30, 39–40, 82, 84, 106, 147, 159; Terrell in, 34–46 Clark, Edward, 33, 51 Clark, George, 120–122, 123 Clark, Harriet Kennerly, 6 Clark, Jennie, 7 Clark, Robert Patterson, 7 Clark, William, 6 Clay County, Missouri, 3, 6 Cleveland, Grover, 102, 114, 124, 134, 135, 141, 142, 143 Coke, Richard, 59, 61, 85, 111 Colquitt, Oscar Branch, 162, 163, 164 Committee on Privileges and Elections, 151 Compromise of 1850, 13 Confederate States of America, 29, 32, 33 Conservative Unionists, 52 Constantinople Woman’s College, 131 Constitutional Convention, 1875, 65,

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107 Constitutional Unionists, 52, 53 Constitution of 1869, 64, 67 Constitution of 1876, 64, 65 Convict leasing, 86 Cook, Abner, 83 Cook, Abner, Jr., 57 Cook, Constance Terrell, 76, 83–84 Cooper, O. H., 79 Cooper County, Missouri, 3, 6 Cotton Bureau, 39–40 Cotton trade, 39–40, 41 County Judges and Commissioners Association, 152 Coxey, Jacob, 134 Coxey’s Army, 134 Crosby, J. C., 53 Cuba, 142 Cuff, a slave, 27–28, 107 Dallas Morning News, 109, 117, 121, 122, 126, 154, 155, 165–166 Dallas Times Herald, 151 Davis, Edmund J., 54, 57, 58, 59, 67, 85 DeBray, Xavier, 43 Democratic Executive Commitee, 25, 54 Democratic National Convention: 1884, 102; 1908, 159 Democratic party, 17–18, 20–21, 22, 23, 25, 57, 64, 147, 150; in Missouri, 11–12, 13, 14 Devine, Thomas J., 33, 40 Diaz, Porfirio, 113 Divorce, 86 Duval, Thomas H., 22 Dwight, Henry O., 141–142 Eddy, Mary P., 130, 161 Education, in Texas, 67–68, 71, 73–74, 75. See also University of Texas Election: of 1848, 11; of 1855, 21; of 1857, 22–25; of 1872, 58–59; of 1873, 59–60; of 1878, 73–74; of 1886, 108; of 1888, 114; of 1904,

Index 153; of 1908, 158–160 Election laws, 149, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156–157 Ex parte Rodriguez, 60–61, 63 Farmers Alliance, 106, 108, 116, 117–118, 119 Faubion, J. H., 150, 151 Fayette County, Texas, 21 Fencing, of open range, 87–88 First Texas Cavalry, 45 Fitzgerald, Hugh Nugent, 166 Flournoy, George, 46, 48, 64, 109 Fourteenth Amendment, 64 France, 39, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52, 124, 129, 138 Freedmen’s Bureau, 53, 54 Free silver, 135 Fremantle, Arthur, 38 Galveston, 39, 40, 81, 82, 107 Galveston Daily News, 104, 105, 112, 119 Galveston Wharf and Cotton Press Company, 64, 106, 107 Garfield, James A., 78, 82, 127 Garguilo, A. A., 95, 129 Garwood, Hiram, 107 Gary, Hampton, 161 George, Andrew, 161, 165 George, Henry, 146 Georgetown, Texas, 109 Germany, 124, 129 Gilbert, Cass, 162 Gold standard, 135 Gould, Jay, 107, 108 Grady, John T., 58–59 Grange, The, 116. See Patrons of Husbandry Grant, Ulysses S., 38, 60, 62 Great Britain, 124, 129, 133, 138, 141 Great Southwestern Strike, 105 Green, John A., 23–25 Green, Tom, 23 Greenback party, 72, 73, 74, 75, 114 Gregory, Thomas Watt, 164

Gresham, Walter Q., 124–125, 133, 138–139, 140 Guitar, Odon, 10 Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, 19–20, 22, 27–28, 60 Hancock, John, 35, 74, 102, 107, 108 Hancock, Winfield Scott, 78 Hardeman, W. P., 48 Harper’s Weekly, 126 Harrison, Benjamin, 114 Harte, Bret, 122 Hay, John, 148 Hayden, Peyton R., 11 Haymarket riot, 105 Hays County, Texas, 25, 27 Henderson, James Pinckney, 147 Henderson, Thomas S., 161 Hisarlik, Turkey, 135–136 Hogg, James Stephen, 61, 116–117, 123, 136, 148–149, 159, 164 Honey, George W., 58 House, Edward Mandell, 145, 150 Houston, Sam, 20, 21, 22, 25, 28, 29, 30, 115, 147, 161 Houston, Texas, 58, 66, 81, 82 Houston and Texas Central Railroad, 56 Houston Post, 106, 108, 146 Houston Telegraph, 42 Hubbard, Richard B., 73 Huntington, Collis P., 69 Hutcheson, Joseph C., 79 Independent, The, 76, 132 Ireland, John “Oxcart,” 84, 87, 102, 103, 107, 108, 109, 110 Jackson, Andrew, 13 Johns, Clement R., 34 Johnson, Andrew, 46, 50, 51 Johnson, Frank W., 101 Johnson, Lyndon, 153 Johnson, Sam Ealy, 153 Jones, George Washington “Wash,” 26, 27, 35, 74, 84

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alexander watkins terrell Jones, John B., 86 Juarez, Benito, 46, 48, 50 Judicial elections, 23–25 Jury law, 66–67, 71, 73, 88 Kansas-Nebraska Act, 20, 21, 23 Kemper Academy, 8 Kennerly, Joseph, 5 Kennerly, Sarah, 5 Knights of Labor, 104, 105 Know-Nothing party, 17, 20–21, 23–25 Lamar, L. Q. C., 113 Lamar, Mirabeau, 22, 161 Lampasas County, Texas, 150 Lampasas Eagle, 104 Lane, Joseph, 30 Lanham, S. W. T., 151, 155 Laredo Times, 146–147 Lee, Abb, 19 Lee, Robert E., 45 Leonard, Abiel, 11 Likens, James B., 43 Lincoln, Abraham, 31, 50, 51, 127 “Little Dixie,” 9 Locke, John, 146 Lockhart Register, 105 Love, Thomas B., 153 Lubbock, Francis R., 33 Lynchburg, Virginia, 5 Lynching, 27 Magruder, John B., 41 Maney, Henry, 58 Manor, Texas, 152 Mansfield, Louisiana, battle of, 41, 42 Mansura, Louisiana, 44 Marshall, John F., 19, 20 Martin, Barclay, 84, 85 Maverick, Lewis, 43 Maverick, Mary, 43 Maxey, Samuel Bell, 82, 88, 101, 102, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110 Maximilian, Emperor, 39, 45, 46, 48, 109

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McCulloch, Henry E., 34–35 McKee, Andrew, 44 McKinley, William, 142, 148 Melton, Anna, 130 Methodist Church, 7 Mexican Americans, 149, 154 Mexican War, 147 Mexico, 39, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 113, 126 Middleton, Tom, 27 Mills, Roger Q., 120, 140, 148 Missouri Compromise, 5 Mitchell, Elizabeth, 53–54, 57, 112 Moncure, John J., 42 Monett’s Ferry, 44 Morgan, Hiram S., 42 Morgan’s Creek, 45 Murrah, Pendleton, 40, 48 Napoleon III, 48 National Civic Federation, 156 New York Times, 142 New York Tribune, 140–141 Nicolson, Sir Arthur, 132 Night in Houston, A (poem), 58–59 Northern Presbyterian Church, 160 Nugent, Thomas L., 122 Oldham, Williamson S., 18, 19, 23 Olney, Richard, 140, 141, 142 Ottoman Empire. See Turkey Panic of 1819, 5 Panic of 1873, 72 Panic of 1893, 134, 136 Paris Commune, 106 Patrick County, Virginia, 5 Patrons of Husbandry, 65, 116. See Grange, The Pease, Elisha M., 20–21, 76, 81 Pease, Julia, 76–78, 81 Peel, a friend, 15, 18–19 Penn, Susan Terrell Clark (mother), 6–7, 29, 146 Pennsylvania Railroad, 68 People’s Party, 119, 122, 135, 149, 151

Index Pierce, Franklin, 18 Pierce, Henry Clay, 157 Pleasant Hill, battle of, 37, 41, 71, 113, 114, 147, 158, 163–164, 167 Poindexter, William, 160 Poll tax, 74, 78, 85, 88, 117, 149, 150, 159 Price, Sterling, 48 Prohibition, 75–76, 78, 112–113, 153–154, 163–164, 167 Prohibition party, 112 Railroads, 13, 68–70, 72, 113–114 Raper, Mark, 22 Reagan, John H., 109, 110, 111, 114, 148, 164 Rector, Bouldin, 135 Rector, Lilla Terrell, 76, 139, 165, 166 Reconstruction, 50, 52–54, 57, 72, 147 Red River campaign, 43–44 Republican party, 20, 72, 75, 78, 151; and Turkey, 140, 141, 142 Riddle, James W., 129 Robert College, 130 Roberts, Oran Milo, 63, 64, 65, 73, 74, 75, 102, 103, 109, 115, 147 Robertson, John C., 42, 122 Robertson County, Texas, 53–55 Rodriguez, Joseph, 60 Rogers, King, 150 Roosevelt, Theodore, 148 Ross, Laurence Sullivan “Sul,” 108, 113, 114, 120–121, 122, 158 Rountree, Lee J., 150 Royal Arch Masons, 5 Rufus, King William, 4 Runnels, Hardin S., 22, 25 Rusk, Thomas J., 22 Russia, 129, 138, 140 San Antonio, Texas, 83 San Antonio Daily Express, 121 Sandberg, Lulu, 152 Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de, 113, 126

Sayers, Joseph Draper, 111, 129, 134, 140 Schleimann, Heinrich, 77, 136 Scott, Thomas A., 68–69, 70 Seabury, Francis W., 154, 155, 156 Secession, 29, 31, 32–33 Segregation, 117, 149, 152–153 Seguin, Texas, 57–58 Seguin Mercury, 28 Semicolon Case, 60–61, 63 Shelby, Jo, 46, 48, 49 Simmons, Henry, 152, 153 Slavery, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12–13, 17, 18, 29–30, 32–33 Smith, Ashbel, 19, 58, 59 Smith, Edmund Kirby, 38, 39, 41, 44, 47 Smithsonian Institution, 136 Soul, The (poem), 148 Southern Intelligencer, 28 Southern Methodist University, 165 Southern Pacific Railroad, 69 Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 161 Southwestern University, 109 Spain, 142 St. Edward’s University, 166 St. Joseph, Missouri, 12 Stewart, Joseph, 84 Taylor, Richard, 41 Terrell, Alexander W. (nephew), 134 Terrell, Alexander Watkins: and African Americans, 87, 88, 149, 150, 152–156, 167; in Civil War, 34–46; on corporations, 103–104; as district judge, 22–34; early life of, 3–16; and election laws, 149, 152–157; in Mexico, 47–51; minister to Turkey, 124–144; and mule, 25, 108, 122; and poem about John Wilkes Booth, 113–114, 126–127, 167; and railroads, 111, 114–115, 116; religious views of, 7, 160–161, 164–165; in Texas House, 114–115, 149–150, 152–157; in Texas Senate, 66–81, 83–88; and Texas Supreme

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alexander watkins terrell Court, 62–64, 73, 115; and University of Texas, 81–82, 101–102, 134, 136 Terrell, Ann Elizabeth Bouldin (first wife), 11–12, 28–29 Terrell, Anna H. Jones (third wife), 86, 87, 161 Terrell, Arthur, 26, 57, 84, 125, 163 Terrell, Bessie, 56, 70 Terrell, Christopher Johnson, 3–6 Terrell, Dora, 145 Terrell, Edward, 4 Terrell, Howard, 26, 56, 76, 84, 125, 145, 161, 163, 165 Terrell, John J., 5, 146 Terrell, Joseph C., 13, 14, 47–48, 53, 141, 161 Terrell, June, 4 Terrell, Sallie Mitchell (second wife), 53–55 Terrell, William, 4 Terrell and Walker, 62–63 Terrell County, Texas, 154 Terrell Election Law (1903), 151–152, 155 Terrell Election Law (1905), 154–155 Terrell’s Texas Cavalry, 37–47 Texas A&M University, 79, 80, 121 Texas and Pacific Railroad, 69, 70, 105 Texas Capitol Board, 74–75 Texas Equal Suffrage Society, 163, 165 Texas House of Representatives, 117–118, 149, 153 Texas Legislature, 74, 151; Fifteenth, 66–71; Sixteenth, 74–76; Seventeenth, 78–79; Twenty-eighth, 151–152; Twenty-ninth, 153 Texas Military Institute, 57 Texas Press Association, 81 Texas Railroad Commission, 83, 86, 110, 114, 117–118, 163–164 Texas Senate, 65–66, 83–88 Texas State Capitol, 74–75, 82–83 Texas State Cemetery, 165 Texas State Gazette, 18, 19, 21, 24, 25–26, 27, 28, 34

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Texas State Historical Association, 161, 165 Texas State Library, 166 Texas State Teachers Association, 79 Texas Supreme Court, 11, 62, 63–64, 65, 115 “Texas Troubles,” 30 Thirteenth Amendment, 47, 52 Thirty-fifth Texas Cavalry, 45 Thirty-fourth Texas Cavalry. See Terrell’s Texas Cavalry Throckmorton, J. W., 52 Tilton, Theodore, 76 Tiner, Mark, 64 Tips, Walter, 81 Tirel, Walter, 4 Todd, Robert, 10 Trans-Mississippi District, 38, 45, 47 Travis County, Texas, 17, 18, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 64, 84, 149, 150, 158 Travis County Bar Association, 165 Treaty of Berlin (1878), 139 Trigg, Bingham, 85 Trusts, 146 Tuberculosis, 14–15 Turkey, 75, 123; Terrell in, 124–144 Turkish-American Treaty of 1830, 130 Union Literary Society, 9, 10 Unionists, 29, 31, 147 University of Missouri, 9–10, 80, 103 University of Pennsylvania, 4–5 University of Texas, 8, 18, 83, 101–102, 134, 146; Board of Regents, 81, 136, 144, 161–162; buildings at, 162; coeducation at, 79–80; Ex-Students Association, 164; founding of, 78, 79–81; land grant for, 86; medical school, 81–82; Terrell and, 10, 79–81, 86, 135, 136, 137, 144, 161–162, 167 U.S. Department of State, 137, 138, 139, 141; Foreign Relations series of, 139, 147 U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission, 109, 111

Index U.S. Senate, 78, 109–110 U.S. Supreme Court, 113 Venezuela, 141 Vicksburg, 38 Virginia, 4, 5, 9, 12, 39 Walker, Alexander S., 55, 57–58, 63, 113, 114, 115, 125, 127 Wallis, Mary Ellen, 166 Walton, William, 101 Washington Post, 127, 141 Waters-Pierce Oil Company, 157 West, Charles S., 28 West and Company, 63 Whig party, 12–13, 17, 20

Whitney, George, 29, 30 Williams, Ben, 74 Williamson County, Texas, 84, 85, 150 Willie, A. H., 113 Wilson, Woodrow, 162, 164 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 112, 165 Women’s rights, 8, 78–79, 163 Women’s suffrage, 8, 163 Wooldridge, A. P., 81, 82 World War I, 137 Wynne, R. W., 80 Zarathustra, 164–165 Zoroaster, 164–165

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