the war. Yet, in Texas, public meetings were held, and there was a firm resolution to continue the hopeless conflict. Many believed that it might be prolonged indefinitely in so vast a country. On May 11, Jefferson Davis was captured in Georgia; and two days later the last battle of the war was fought at Palmetto Ranch, near Palo Alto on the Rio Grande. The Federals were forced to retreat, but the conflict was of no significance. On the 26th, General Kirby Smith surrendered to General Canby, and the war was over.

CHAPTER XXIV

RECONSTRUCTION AND REUNION

HOWEVER great were the losses of Texas in blood and treasure during the Civil War-and they were by no means small-the State was freed from the incubus of slavery, which had checked the immigration of the laboring classes from the west and from abroad, which had discouraged the growth of manufactures, and which had proved a source of social demoralization. No Southerner would care to restore slavery; it is clearly seen that emancipation was an inestimable blessing to the land. But Texas, like other Southern States, was still to pass through a period of storm and stress, the effects of which were more far reaching than those of the war itself.

At the close of the conflict there was in the State less bitterness against the Federal government than in other parts of the South, where the ravages of war had brought greater suffering. Texas, therefore, was prepared to renew in good faith its oath of allegiance and to take its place in the Union as soon as the way was open. The attitude of President Johnson, who had succeeded the lamented Lincoln, seemed to promise the most favorable conditions for reuniting the distracted country, and Texas hastened to take advantage of the terms of amnesty and reconstruction that he offered. His plan was to regard the ordinance of secession and all acts passed in consonance with it as null and void, to consider Texas and other Southern States as still in the Union, but the Confederate governments as illegal, owing to the participation of the citizens in the rebellion. These citizens, however, with certain excepted classes, might become

loyal and be allowed to reform their governments by taking the oath of amnesty and pardon prescribed by himself in his proclamation of May 29, 1865. The terms of this were that they "would faithfully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclamations made during the existence of the present rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves."

In accordance with this plan, the president appointed Andrew J. Hamilton provisional governor of Texas, on June 17, 1865, only a few weeks after the surrender of General Kirby Smith. Governor Hamilton was originally from Alabama; but he had represented Texas in Congress in 1859, and later had opposed secession. He was now authorized to undertake the reorganization of the government of Texas by calling a convention of citizens who had complied with the conditions of pardon and by providing for the election of members of Congress. To aid the good work, the president himself, as he was doing in other States, gave a special pardon in 1865-66 to some six hundred Texans who belonged to the classes excepted in his proclamation, namely, such as had taken a prominent part in the rebellion or who had resigned from the United States army.

On January 8, 1866, there was an election of delegates to the convention for the revision of the Constitution; and the convention met on February 10. It was composed of a large Democratic element and a small extreme Union element. The constitution of 1845 was amended to suit the changed conditions; these amendments to be submitted to a vote of the people. The right of secession was distinctly renounced, as also the institution of slavery. To the freedman were given civil rights: to sue and be sued, to hold property, to be a witness in courts where one of the colored race was a party. The suffrage and the right to hold office, however, were left in the possession of the whites. The white population was at this time about five hundred thousand, and the historian Bancroft, doubtless with exaggeration, estimates the

On

number of negroes at about four hundred thousand. June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger, who was the military leader of the Federal forces in the State, had proclaimed all slaves to be free, but no provision had been made to enable them to vote for delegates to the convention. At this time they do not seem to have troubled themselves very much about the suffrage. They used their freedom to form contracts with their old masters, and while somewhat distracted by the vague notion that they were to obtain "forty acres and a mule," most of them had taken up their antebellum occupations. Moreover, President Johnson, who entertained bitter feelings toward the leading "rebels" of the South, had been brought up in a slave State, and had no desire to endow the ex-slave with the suffrage. However, in the Texan convention there was some discussion of the subject and a weak effort was made to put into the constitution an educational qualification for the suffrage, which should be applicable alike to whites and blacks. The suggestion, not receiving any strong backing, was dropped. If it had been adopted, there would doubtless have been no reconstruction of the congressional type in Texas. It had been a cherished plan of Mr. Lincoln to give the suffrage to the more intelligent freedmen, and Governor Hamilton had hinted at the advisability of it in his message to the convention. But the feeling of the convention was strongly adverse, and the opportunity was allowed to slip by. In fact, it would have been a remarkable concession if the convention, constituted as it was, had decided to confer the suffrage even on the most intelligent of their ex-slaves and thus to put them on a political equality with their former masters. The Southerners clearly perceived that, as Dr. Willoughby asserts in his The Nature of the State, "the attainment of political equality leads inevitably to the demand for social and economic equality."

Not only was the negro denied the right to vote and to hold office, but the presence of many idle and irresponsible among the newly emancipated caused the legislature that met