Harrison County Methods: Worth Robert Miller
First
published in Locus: Regional and Local History 7, no.
2 (Spring 1995): 111-28.
In their 1898 platform, Texas Populists charged that the
Democratic Party, regardless of its pledge to conduct honest elections,
held "office by Harrison County Methods" The term had become
infamous two years before when R.L. Jenkins, editor of the Marshall
Star, explained to a Dallas Morning News reporter
why Harrison County continually produced the largest Democratic Party
majorities in the state despite the fact that sixty-eight percent of its
voters were black. African-Americans
normally supported either the Republican or Populist parties in the this
era. The answer was massive
election fraud. For
Populists, and many other Texans, the phrase "Harrison County
Methods" rapidly became synonymous with election fraud.
As Jenkins stated, the local machine's attitude toward state
elections was, "Boys, draw on Harrison County for all you need."[1]
If this attitude toward black suffrage had been confined to
Harrison County, late nineteenth century southern politics would have been
very different. But, election
fraud was widespread during the Gilded Age South.
As Paul Gaston wrote, "New South spokesmen cultivated the Myth
of Negro Rule after the (Civil) war and chorused their condemnation of the
way in which the Negro was thrust into the political life of the
region." Such an
attitude eventually legitimized election fraud in the minds of many
otherwise honest and respectable white southerners.
This was particularly true where African-Americans made up a
majority of the electorate.[2]
Harrison was one of three black-majority counties in far
northeastern Texas during the late nineteenth century.
Republicans, both black and white, ruled the county until 1878.
In that year, conservative white Democrats organized a self-styled
Citizens Party with a view to challenging Republican Party rule. According to editor Jenkins, the Citizens Party carried
Harrison County's local races in 1878 by "stuffing some boxes,
playing tricks on Negroes, and partially by force."
While conservative whites probably did employ such tactics, the
1878 election, in fact, turned upon a disastrous mistake made by
Republican leaders. They
placed one voting box outside of its precinct in order to safeguard it
from tampering. State law required all voting boxes to be placed within the
boundaries of the precinct it represented.
Democrats successfully challenged the votes from this box.
When Republicans refused to count the votes without including those
from the disqualified box, Citizens Party candidates, armed with an
injunction and backed by a mob, forcibly occupied county offices, seized
the county judge's seal, and issued themselves certificates of election.
State authorities, all of whom were Democrats, naturally did
nothing to evict the new office holders from power.[3]
With complaints about the 1878 election in mind, federal
authorities appointed supervisors for most of Harrison County's polling
places in 1880. This time the
GOP carried the federal races, although Democrats won in the state
balloting and the Citizens Party swept the local elections.
Republicans again charged intimidation of their voters, citing
incidents at nineteen of the county's twenty-three polling places.
Federal authorities subsequently filed indictments against
sixty-five men, charging them with fraud in depriving blacks of their
suffrage rights under the Enforcement Act of 1870.
Hundreds of Harrison County's African-American voters testified at
their trial. Forty-five pled
guilty and were fined a dollar each, plus court costs.
This totaled $3,000. The
court, however, dismissed the election contests.
Republicans had carried the federal elections. State and local races were beyond the court's jurisdiction.[4]
After their encounter with federal authorities, Harrison County's
Democrats persuaded their state representative to secure legislation that
would allow Texas counties to use two ballot boxes in each voting
precinct. One box would hold
the ballots for federal elections (presidential electors and U.S.
Congressman) and the other would be used for state and local races.
The obvious purpose of the law was to allow the rigging of state
and local elections without running the risk of federal intervention.
Harrison County's vote was not necessary to the success of
Democratic presidential electors in Texas.
Usually, it was not required to keep the nineteen-county Second
U.S. Congressional district in the Democratic column, either.[5]
Because federal elections held in Harrison County after the two-box
provision went into effect presumably were honest, while the state and
local elections obviously were not, the new system provides a means for
gauging the level of election fraud in Harrison County for this era.
The difference between the number of votes cast in federal
elections and the totals reported in state and local races (almost always
a larger number) is an indication of the number of votes fraudulently
given to Democratic Party candidates by Harrison County officials.
While it is possible that voters cast fewer ballots in federal
races than they did state and local elections, it is highly unlikely.
National races generated great interest in this era.
Ticket-splitting also is unlikely.
Political parties provided their supporters with ballots that
contained the names of only their own candidates in 1890s Texas.
Even when parties formed coalitions, their operatives provided
their voters with ballots that reflected the deal made with the other
party. Harrison County's two-box system, of course, caused parties
to provide separate federal and state ballots to voters.[6] Table 1 presents a comparison between federal and state balloting in Harrison County between 1884 and 1904. The first four columns represent the votes for candidates of the Democratic Party, Republican Party, major third-party (Greenback, Union Labor, or Populist), and minor parties (Prohibition, Lily-White Republican, Bourbon Democratic and/or Gold Democratic), respectively. The fifth column lists the number of votes Harrison County officials apparently added to the Democratic gubernatorial candidate's total (Democratic vote for governor minus the vote for Presidential Electors or Congressman). Column six represents the sum of columns one through four, or the total votes allegedly cast. Column seven is the voter turnout for each election. Presumably, the total vote and electoral turnout estimations for federal elections are a truer gauge of voter participation than the figures for the gubernatorial races.[7]
Table 1
Comparison of Federal and State Balloting in Harrison County, Texas,
1884-1904
xx No candidate (Republicans supported a Knights of Labor candidate in 1886, a Prohibition candidate also endorsed by the Union Labor Party in 1888, a anti-Railroad Commission Democratic candidate in 1892, Populist candidates in 1894 & 1896, and ran no statewide candidates in 1898). * Greenback-Labor Party (1884), Union Labor Party (1886-1888), and Populist Party (1892-1904). ** Prohibition Party (1886-1904), Anti-Railroad Commission Democrat (1892), Reform (Lily-White) Republican Party (1892-1894), and National (Gold) Democratic Party (1896). *** Estimated by R.L. Jenkins in Dallas Morning News, October 10, 1896 .
Harrison County's two-box system first produced widely divergent results in state and national elections in 1884, the first year it was employed. Between 1884 and 1888, the number of ballots apparently added to the Democratic total increased from 1538 to more than 2263 ballots. Then the level of fraud appears to drop slightly for the off-year election of 1890, when no major third party existed. Still, this was enough to ensure conservative white rule in the county. Political conditions conditions in Texas changed dramatically in 1892.
A split in the Democratic Party between advocates and opponents of
the newly formed Texas Railroad Commission appeared to threaten Democratic
Party hegemony in Texas. This
caused the level of fraud in Harrison County to increase once more.
Anti-Commission Democrat George Clark (listed in Table 1 under
Minor Party) formed a coalition with Republicans, who were led by black
politico Norris Wright Cuney. Although,
incumbent Governor James Stephen Hogg had some appeal among Texas blacks
because of his vocal anti-lynching stance, his allies quickly appealed to
white racial loyalties by labeling the anti-commission coalition, "Clark,
Cuney, and the Coons." The
Hogg-Clark race subsequently became one of the most famous and hard-fought
elections in Texas history.[8]
In addition to the Clark-Republican threat, the newly formed
People's, or Populist, party ran a full slate of candidates for federal,
state, and local races in 1892. Southern
Democrats had seen third parties before.
The Greenback and Union Labor parties of previous decades were
forerunners of the Populists. Both
had formed coalitions with the Republican party for state and local
offices in the 1880s. Populists,
however, could claim two sources of recruits, the older third parties and
the politicization of the Southern Farmers Alliance, which claimed better
than 200,000 members and 4,000 local suballiances in Texas by 1891.
This gave Populists a far greater base to draw from than previous
third parties. In addition,
Texan R.M. Humphreys served as General Supervisor of the Colored Farmers'
Alliance. He had served as a
Union Labor Party presidential elector in 1888, and could be expected to
support Populism in the 1890s. At
the founding convention of the People's Party in Texas, chairman H.S.P.
(Stump) Ashby announced, "I am in favor of giving the colored man
full representation . . . If he has a friend it is we, and he can be our
friend . . . he is a citizen as much as we are, and the party that acts on
that fact will gain the colored vote of the South."
The convention subsequently placed two African-Americans on its
executive committee.[9]
Texas Populists were not destined to receive a significant black
vote, nor even the support of all white Alliancemen, in 1892.
Most black Republicans could not pass up the chance of finally
being on the winning side in state politics with the Clark-GOP coalition.
This kept most black Republicans loyal to their old party in 1892.
Local Democratic leader Amory Starr later stated that
"we did not hold the national elections in places where the Negroes
had large majorities." This,
of course, illegitimately reduced the vote for Republican electors, making
the Democratic gain through fraud of 2,941 votes a very minimal estimate.[10]
Likewise, many white Alliancemen declined to jettison their old party while
the Railroad Commission that the Southern Farmers Alliance had endorsed
two years before was in jeopardy. Years
later, Populist leader Harry Tracy claimed that as many as 50,000
Alliancemen remained loyal to the progressive wing of the Democratic party
in 1892 because of the Railroad Commission issue.
Statewide, Hogg, the regular Democratic candidate for governor, won
with only 44 percent of the vote. Clark
received 31 percent and the Populist candidate, Thomas L. Nugent, got 25
percent. R.L. Jenkins testified that Hogg received 3000 more votes
than he deserved from Harrison County in 1892.
Table 1 suggests his estimate was only fifty-nine votes off the
mark. Because it was not
uncommon for men like Jenkins to boast, and even exaggerate, about
tricking blacks and stuffing ballot boxes during this era, the accuracy of
his 1892 estimate tends to lend credence to many of the other statements
in his Dallas Morning News interview.[11]
After the 1892 election, the Populist threat to the Democratic
Party in Texas increased substantially.
With the Railroad Commission secured by Hogg's victory, many
Democratic Alliancemen began to filter into the third party.
More voters joined the Populists with the Panic of 1893.
When Democratic President Grover Cleveland secured repeal of the
Sherman Silver Purchase Act as an anti-depression measure, he offended
large numbers of Democrats in the South and West.
Silver coinage had become a panacea to debtors during this period
of massive deflation. Only the Populist party contained a pro-silver plank in its
1892 national platform. In
addition, Texan John B. Rayner had emerged as one of the most effective
African-American Populist speakers and organizers in the nation.[12]
By March, 1894, defections to the People's party had become so
serious that conservative and progressive Democrats found it necessary to
reunite in order to stave off almost certain defeat at the polls that
November. Harrison County
Democrats likewise decided that the gravity of the situation even
warranted the risk of federal intervention and abolished the two-box
system. They particularly
feared that B.A. Calhoun, the Populist candidate for U.S. Congress, might
defeat the Democratic incumbent, S.B. Cooper.
On election day, however, Cooper out polled Calhoun by 7050 votes
in the Second Congressional district.
In Harrison County, the Democratic vote in the congressional race
increased dramatically over those in previous years under the two-box
system. Democrats were so
intent on winning the federal election that they even reported more votes
for Congressman than they did for governor. R.L. Jenkins estimated that Democrats stole at least 3365
votes from the Populists in his county.
A month after the election, Harrison County Democratic leader Amory
Starr admitted that a fair count would have elected the Populists.[13]
In his 1896 newspaper interview, R.L. Jenkins explained how
Harrison County Democrats got around the state law that required
representation for Republicans and Populists on election boards.
As he put it, "We always gave representation in the boxes to
all parties by having young men turn Republican or Populist for the
occasion." Official poll
lists proved to be no problem either.
An old San Antonio city directory provided many.
Officials jocularly included famous non-residents such as Samuel J.
Tilden and Alexander H. Stephens. Because
the federal government had deprived Jefferson Davis of his suffrage
rights, they also felt obliged to qualify him as a voter in Harrison
County. Loyal Democrats, of course, did not receive all of the plums.
Famous Republicans such as John J. Ingalls, John Sherman, Roscoe
Conkling, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes and even the martyred
James Garfield were, as Jenkins put it, "Democratic voters in my
county."[14]
A Harrison County poll watcher, who Democrats denied a seat on the
election board at the Caney box in 1894, privately kept his own tally
sheet. In the gubernatorial
balloting, he counted 26 votes for the Populist Nugent and 23 for the
Democrat Culberson. The
official returns gave Culberson 140 votes to Nugent's 23.
Poll watchers also counted a total of only 28 votes at Lancaster
and 11 votes at Nesbitt. Election
officials awarded more than 90 percent of the 233 votes allegedly cast in
these precincts to the Democrat Culberson.
At Carver, the only polling place in the county to have a real
Populist on the election board, Nugent defeated Culberson by a margin of
47 to 13 votes. Carver was
also the only Harrison County box to return a significant Populist vote
two years before. Nugent got
90 votes to Hogg's 40 and Clark's 10 in 1892.[15]
Statewide, the Republican Party collapsed in 1894.
The Regular Republican candidate, W.K. Makemson, received less than
thirteen percent of the vote, and a Lily-White Republican challenger, J.B.
Schmitz, got only one percent. Populists,
thus, collected converts from both the Democratic and Republican parties,
giving them 36 percent of the vote. This
left Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charles A. Culberson with only 49
percent.
Hogg's plurality victory in 1892 could be explained by Clark's
splitting the Democratic Party. But, the fact that reunited Democrats could not muster a
majority in 1894 did not bode well for their party's future. If Populists and Republicans formed a coalition in 1896, they
might be able to evict the Democratic Party from power.
By early 1896, Populism looked so much like the wave of the future
in Texas politics that prominent Democrats such as ex-Attorney General
William M. (Buck) Walton and ex-Lieutenant Governor Barnett Gibbs defected
the third party. This clearly
indicated that some prominent and thoroughly respectable white Texas
Democrats had lost faith in their old party, certainly on the economic
issues and probably on electoral corruption as well.
We might speculate that the latter motive explains editor Jenkins's
startling Dallas Morning News interview.
He predicted a fair ballot in Harrison County in 1896.[17]
Unfortunately for Populists, R.L. Jenkins proved to be better at history than
prophesy. For the all-important 1896 Texas election, which many, then and
now, suspect Democrats carried only through fraud, Harrison County
reinstated the two-box system. Texas
Republicans declined to field a state ticket and endorsed the Populist
candidates in return for third party help in the presidential balloting.
As co-victims of Harrison County Methods, the Populist-Republican
coalition seemed logical. Populist
gubernatorial candidate, Jerome C. Kearby, subsequently made the issue of
"a free ballot and a fair count" a major part of his campaign.[18]
R.L. Jenkins predicted that a fair vote in the 1896 gubernatorial
balloting would give Democrat Culberson 1200 votes to the Populist
Kearby's 4000 in Harrison County. Kearby's
vote would include Populists, Republicans, and about 300 to 400
dissatisfied Democrats. When
Harrison County officials counted the ballots, however, Culberson received
4,524 votes to Kearby's 681. Statewide,
Culberson defeated Kearby by 59,836 votes.
A swing of less than 30,000 votes from the Democratic to the
Populist camp would have elected the third party candidate.
The machinations of Harrison County's election officials alone
could account for a difference of at least 2,448 ballots.[19]
Because Jenkins's estimate of fraud in 1892 was so accurate, and
his claims about the 1894 election seem plausible, his prediction that
Kearby should receive 4000 votes in Harrison County in 1896 raises another
possible facet to Harrison County Methods.
Did Democrats just add votes to their own candidates, or did they
also subtract votes from their opponents totals, as well?
Before the hotly contested elections of the Populist era
(1892-1898), the differences in state and national balloting for
non-Democratic candidates probably are the product of local Republicans
declining to vote for fusion tickets not led by Republican candidates.
Especially since voters had to trek to another voting site, and the
state/local election results for Harrison County almost certainly would be
rigged anyway. GOP leaders
made such deals for governor in 1884 and 1888, and for Congress in 1886.
The same may be true for the 1892-1896 period. But, it seems possible that Harrison County's Democratic
election officials subtracted from the non-Democratic column in addition
to adding to their own tallies in the mid-1890s because of their party's
desperate situation. This, of
course, would mean that the estimated level of fraud for 1892, 1894, and
1896 in Table 1 is well below the real level of tampering.
Voter apathy became statewide after the Populist defeat of 1896.
Republican leaders declined to support the Populist state ticket in
1898. In frustration,
Populist gubernatorial candidate Barnett Gibbs called on Democrats to
offer equal bribes for black and white voters. It was a tactic not destined to attract many of either.
Statewide, the third party saw its vote more than cut in half.
R.E. Hanney, the Republican candidate for governor in 1900, was the
last non-Democrat to receive 100,000 votes in Texas until 1924.
Republicans by themselves, however, had no chance of winning
statewide office by this date. The
level of ballot-box stuffing in Harrison County, thus, receded in 1900.[20]
Although Populists fielded candidates for statewide office in 1900,
1902 and 1904, the party posed an electoral threat to Democratic hegemony
only in a few isolated Texas localities after 1896.
Harrison County was not one of them.
The appearance of a poll tax amendment on the ballot in 1902 likely
accounts for the brief revival of election tampering in that year.
Historian J. Morgan Kousser identified a similar pattern in other
counties with large African-American populations. The disintegration of the People's party and adoption of the
poll tax appears to have ended ballot box fraud in Harrison County.
With the poll tax, of course, election fraud in terms of ending the
participation of African-American voters, and probably many poor whites as
well, became institutionalized and statewide in Texas.[21]
If election fraud had been unique to Harrison County in the late
nineteenth century, the phrase "Harrison County Methods" would
never have made its way into the Lone Star state's political lexicon. There is substantial evidence of election fraud elsewhere in
Texas during the 1890s. Political
scientist Roscoe Martin, for instance, estimated that 116 and 120 percent
of the black voters of Jackson and Camp counties, respectively, cast
ballots in 1894. Populist
Congressional candidate James H. (Cyclone) Davis wrote in his memoir that
"dead Negroes, mules and horses" had voted against him the same
year. He also claimed that at one box a dog named Fido Jenkins
voted against him five times.[22]
In south Texas, Populists complained that local Democratic machines
imported illegal voters from Mexico for close elections. When Republicans and Populists united behind Vachel Weldon,
an independent candidate for U.S. Congress in 1894, Democrats, they
charged, illegally naturalized nearly 400 aliens for the election in Starr
County, secured more votes than there were citizens in Hidalgo County, and
voted confessed ineligible aliens in Cameron County.
In Hidalgo County, election officials allowed at least one voter to
cast five ballots, one for himself and four for absent shepherd friends.
At Beeville, Populists charged that the election judge "took
ballots from voters, looked at who they voted for and deposited them in
the ballot box for him." Weldon's informants also charged that the Starr County
Democratic machine held up delivery of teaching certificates until after
election day for political reasons. One
teacher testified that the price of his certificate was thirty-five votes
for the Democratic ticket.[23]
Election fraud in Texas was not confined to those of African or
Mexican heritage during the 1890s. Roscoe
Martin, who interviewed numerous old timers in the 1930s, claimed
"some expert counting in Fort Worth's 'Hell's Half-Acre'
district" accounted for the defeat of Populist congressional
candidate Charles H. Jenkins in 1894.
The Populist state executive committee, in fact, claimed that their
party had been cheated out of as many as seven of Texas's thirteen U.S.
Congressional seats that year. It does seem implausible that Texas Democrats, who received
only forty-nine and fifty-six percent of the votes in 1894 and 1896,
respectively, never lost a U.S. Congressional seat to the People's party.
The dominant party also enjoyed a similar advantage in the state
legislature. Despite election
manipulation, the People's party averaged thirty-three percent of the vote
between 1892 and 1898, and forty percent in 1894 and 1896.
Yet, they accounted for only six percent of those elected to the
state legislature between 1892 and 1898.[24]
Electoral manipulation also took other forms in Texas during the
1890s. Democratic election
judges sometimes refused to certify returns from strongly Populist
precincts. The third party lost Cass County in 1894 when four such
precincts were thrown out. Informal
returns from Democratic precincts in Kaufman and Ellis counties, however,
helped incumbent Democrat Jo Abbott return to the U.S. Congress the same
year. In 1896, Bexar County
Populist Chairman Taylor McRae obtained affidavits from six county clerks
showing that Thomas L. Nugent, his party's 1894 gubernatorial candidate,
should have received 9943 more votes than the official state records
showed.[25]
Although nominally a Democratic party newspaper, the Dallas
Morning News was generally fair to the People's Party, and after 1892
gave the third party relatively favorable coverage.
In the wake of the 1894 election, the News sarcastically
noted that "Harrison County Negroes have become firmly wedded to
Democracy (Democratic Party), and [this] possibly points out the only way
by which the Democrats can repair the losses caused by desertions to the
Populists." The Populist
Southern Mercury replied, "so, it is all a mistake
about the colored voters being Republicans."
Two weeks later, Mercury editor Milton Park asked if
anyone seriously believed that African-Americans had deliberately voted
for the party of racism.[26]
Democrats occasionally supplemented their ballot manipulations with
intimidation and even violence during particularly tight campaigns.
In Waller County, for instance, a prominent Democrat shot the local
Populist chairman to death in August, 1896.
Politics was said to be the cause.
In nearby Robertson County, Democratic ex-judge O.D. Cannon, who
had emptied his pistol into a black lawyer for making an allegedly
insolent remark a few years before, led armed men who prevented blacks
from voting in Franklin on election day, 1896.[27]
On some occasions, Texas Democrats also attempted to employ their
superior financial resources directly.
A few days before the 1896 general election, for instance, J.W.
Blake, chairman of the Democratic state executive committee,
unsuccessfully attempted to bribe the Populist candidate for lieutenant
governor, H.S.P. (Stump) Ashby, into withdrawing from the third party
ticket. Luckily for
Democrats, most Texas newspapers refused to carry the story.
Democrat Joe Lee Jameson later reported to Culberson's informal
campaign manager, Edward M. House, that Populists donated the $500
received from Blake to an orphan's home. House, who publicly maintained that he had never bought a
vote, certainly knew of Democratic vote-buying.
Jameson, for instance, complained in October, 1896, that "the
Waco Negro Melton cost us nearly $40."
Melton was a "'fluence man," or vote broker.[28]
The practice of making state and local elections in Harrison County
meaningless to voters appears to have reduced electoral participation in
federal balloting by 25 to 30 percent compared to the rest of the state. Statewide, voter turnout averaged 71 percent between 1884 and
1896, and peaked at 86 percent in the latter year. In Harrison County's federal balloting, however, it averaged
only 44 percent. It exceeded
50 percent only in 1896, except for the obviously fraudulent 1894 race.
A comparison of columns 5 and 6 in Table 1 indicates the margin of
fraud roughly equaled, and sometimes exceeded the total number of votes
cast in federal elections. Although
it is possible to estimate the Democratic gain through election fraud in
Harrison County, fair elections surely would have brought forth
substantially greater voter participation.
We will never know how many votes Populist and Republican candidates
lost because large numbers of discouraged voters simply did not bother to
go to the polls.[29]
Where Populism remained strong after 1896, local Democrats
frequently despaired of ever legitimately beating the third party.
In these counties, violence frequently ended the third party
movement. In April, 1900, for
instance, Democrat Kurg Border abruptly ended Populist rule in San
Augustine County by openly murdering Populist Sheriff George W. Wall. When Populist county commissioners named another sheriff,
Border and his friends laid siege to the county courthouse. At this point, Wall's uncle threatened retaliation.
Democrats, of course, then called in the state militia to secure
their control. In 1902, those
San Augustine County voters who dared appear at the polls elected Wall's
assassin to the martyred sheriff's old post.
Similar circumstances also surrounded the end of Populism in Grimes
County, where Democrats openly murdered local black leaders and laid siege
to the white Populist sheriff's office.
Eventually, the state militia escorted the wounded sheriff from the
county.[30]
In Nacogdoches County, which bordered San Augustine to the west,
Populist sheriff A.J. Spradley went to extraordinary lengths to prevent
the lynching of a black man accused of rape and murder in 1902.
Soon afterward, the local Democratic editor wrote, "it is a
fact that the meanest Negroes that are still 'unelevated' are those that
persist in voting any ticket on earth except the Democratic ticket."
To their credit, the people of Nacogdoches reelected Spradley the
following week. As late as
1908, U.S. Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey advised Comanche County Democrats
to use force in rejecting the efforts of Populists to enter the dominant
party's primaries.[31]
Election manipulation cost Republicans, Populists, and other third
parties substantial votes throughout the late nineteenth century in Texas
and the rest of the South. Although
voter fraud was more open in Harrison County, it was not an isolated case
and the level of manipulation may have even been greater elsewhere. Democrats apparently cheated Populists out of statewide
victories in Alabama in 1892 and 1894, Georgia in 1894, and Louisiana and
Texas in 1896. Populist-Republican
coalitions in North Carolina, however, were victorious in 1894 and 1896.
But, a Democratic reign of terror returned tarheel Democrats to
power in 1898. Fraud also
played a prominent role in innumerable Democratic victories in
Congressional and local races, as well.[32]
Because Harrison County Methods were so widespread throughout the
South in the 1890s, southern Populists failed to develop a corps of easily
recognizable leaders comparable to their western counterparts.
Almost any Populist could identify Senators William A. Peffer of
Kansas and William V. Allen of Nebraska.
Likewise, Governors Lorenzo D. Lewelling of Kansas and Davis H.
Waite of Colorado were household names, as was Congressman Sockless Jerry
Simpson of Kansas. Among
southern Populists, however, only Thomas E. Watson of Georgia could claim
a similar stature. He had
been elected to Congress as an Alliance Democrat in 1890, and then
defected to the People's party in 1891.
Democrats defeated Watson for reelection in 1892 and 1894 by
methods so outrageous that even prominent Democrats publicly denounced
them.[33]
When the moment of crisis came for the People's party in 1896,
southern election fraud played a significant role in determining the third
party's fate. Democrats
convinced the Populist National Executive Committee, led by midwesterners
Herman E. Taubeneck and James B. Weaver, to hold their 1896 national
convention after that of the Democrats.
This ostensibly would allow pro-silver Democrats bolt their old
party when it endorsed an anti-silver stance and unite with Populists.
Southerners protested, but to no avail.
By not developing prominent spokesmen, they had become the poor
sister of the third party coalition.
When Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan for president on a
pro-silver platform, the strategy, of course, backfired.
Western Populists then led their party into giving Bryan the
Populist nomination, as well.[34]
Southern Populists, led by the Texas delegation, futilely opposed
Bryan's nomination at the Populist Party's turbulent 1896 national
convention. They won most of
the votes on the credentials and platform issues.
But, as historian Lawrence Goodwyn has noted, "on issues where
fusionist (pro-Bryan) 'big names' were placed in nomination against
unknown mid-roaders (anti-Bryan), fusionists prevailed."
Thus, Nebraska's William V. Allen defeated an unknown mid-roader
for the crucial post of permanent chairman of the convention, and
subsequently made rulings that favored western interests.
In the end, mid-roaders could not find a name candidate to run
against Bryan, who Weaver nominated for president on the Populist ticket.
The mid-roaders eventual candidate, Seymour F. Norton of Illinois,
subsequently lost badly to Bryan in the final balloting.[35]
Nominating a prominent member of what southern Populists considered
the enemy party precipitated a wave of despair that rapidly tore the third
party apart. The coalition
between southern and western farmers had formed the backbone of the
Populist party. Only by
reaching beyond sectionalism could the reform movement ever expect to be a
major player in national politics. By
the end of the Populist's 1896 national convention, however, southern and
western Populists had made such prominent charges of treason against each
other that the trust necessary for the third party to continue as a
national political entity no longer existed.[36]
The scholarly literature on the People's party over the past two
decades has focused particularly upon the Populist movement as a
democratic and egalitarian alternative to the monopoly capitalism of
twentieth-century America. Lawrence
Goodwyn, for instance, contended that they offered "the last
substantial effort at structural alteration of hierarchical economic forms
in modern America." Gene Clanton has labeled Populism "the last significant
expression of an old radical tradition that derived from Enlightenment
sources that had been filtered through a political tradition that bore the
distinct imprint of Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, and Lincolnian
democracy." Robert
McMath portrayed American Populism as "a movement that advanced a
serious critique of monopolism and offered alternative visions of
democratic America." The "democratic promise," as Goodwyn put it, or
"humane preference," as Clanton has termed it, of Populism did
not receive a fair hearing before the American electorate in the 1890s.
This was, in part, because of Harrison County Methods.
Had southern Populists been able to develop prominent leaders of
the stature of William V. Allen and James B. Weaver, they may have
exercised a greater influence upon national party affairs, and forced
western Populists into a course that reflected the needs of both wings of
their party in 1896. Instead,
the nomination of Bryan, which southern Populists opposed, played a major
role in the destruction of the People's party.
Although historians have debated just how much electoral fraud
Democrats practiced against Republicans and Populists in the late
nineteenth century South, Harrison County, Texas is one locality where
voter fraud obviously existed, and the level of electoral tampering
clearly was substantial enough to destroy any challenge to Democratic
hegemony no matter how popular it was with the local electorate.
More than likely, Harrison County methods played a similar role in
a number of locations across the South in ensuring the obscurity of those
southern Populist leaders who might have avert the disastrous course the
People's Party took in 1896.[37]
Notes 1. Ernest William Winkler, Platforms of Political Parties in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Bulletin no. 53, 1916), 398 (quotation); Dallas Morning News, October 10, 1896. Blacks made up sixty-eight percent of Harrison County's population in 1880, 1890, and 1900. U.S. Census Office, Twelfth Census of the United States...1900, I(1) Population (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1901), 558.
2. Paul Gaston, The New South Creed: A Study in Southern Mythmaking
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970), 131.
3. Dallas Morning News, October 10, 1896; Randolph B.
Campbell, A Southern Community in Crisis: Harrison County, Texas,
1850-1880 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1983),
347-48; Alwyn Barr, Reconstruction to Reform: Texas Politics,
1876-1906 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), 195.
4. The charges were dismissed on the other
twenty defendants. Campbell, A
Southern Community in Crisis, 361-63; Lawrence D. Rice, The
Negro in Texas, 1874-1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1971), 116-17; Dallas Morning News, October 10, 1896.
5. Dallas Morning News, October 10, 1896.
State legislatures chose U.S. Senators before 1913.
6. Texas voters used official ballots,
which contained the names of all candidates for each office, only in
cities with a population of more than 10,000 from 1891 to 1903. Galveston Daily News, September 26, 1896
contains the election law in effect in 1896 in Texas.
7. Biennial Report of the Secretary for the State of Texas,
(1884): 147; (1886): 146; (1888), 150, 154, 160, 167, 197; (1890): 90;
(1892): 60, 66, 72, 78, 84, 94; (1894): 50, 245; (1896): 66, 86, 92, 98,
107; (1898): 61, 64; (1900): 85, 90; (1902): 19, 24; (1904): 206, 212;
U.S. Census Office, Report on Population of the United States...the
Eleventh Census: 1890. Vol. I (Washington, 1895), 784; The Twelfth
Census of the United States... 1900. Vol. II: Population
(Washington, 1902), 204.
8. Robert C. Cotner, James Stephen
Hogg: A Biography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1959), 306.
9. Roscoe C. Martin, The People's Party in Texas (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1933), 142; Lawrence Goodwyn, The
Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 119; Winkler, Platforms
of Political Parties in Texas, 262; Dallas Morning News,
August 18, 1891.
10. Gregg Cantrell and D. Scott Barton estimate Populists did not carry
any black voters in 1892 in "Texas Populists and the Failure of
Biracial Politics," Journal of Southern History 55, no. 4
(November, 1989): 663. Starr
may have used this to explain Harrison County's low vote for president in
1892. He made the statement
in the context of trying to get more representation for his county at the
1894 Democratic state convention, which was apportioned by the 1892
presidential vote. Southern
Mercury (Dallas, Texas), November 29, 1894.
R.L. Jenkins, however, also suggested that tampering had occurred
in some national races. See Dallas Morning News, October 10,
1896.
11. Dallas Morning News, March 31, 1915; Biennial
Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Texas, 1892
(Austin: State Printing Office, 1893), 95.
12. Gregg Cantrell, Kenneth and John B.
Rayner and the Limits of Southern Dissent (Urbana and Chicago:
University of Illinois Press), 221-22.
13. Winkler, Platforms of Political Parties,
330-31; Dallas Morning News, October 10, 1896; Report
of the Secretary of State (1894), 245; Southern Mercury,
November 29, 1894.
14. Dallas Morning News,
October 10, 1896 (quotations); Southern Mercury, December
13, 1894.
15. Southern Mercury, November 29,
1894; Marshall Messenger, November 11, 1892.
16. Mike Kingston, Sam Attlesey, and Mary G.
Crawford, The Texas Almanac's Political History of Texas
(Austin; Eakin Press, 1992), 67.
17. W.M. Walton to John H. Reagan, February 25,
1896, John H. Reagan Papers, Barker Texas History Collection, University
of Texas at Austin; McKinney Democrat, April 2, 1896.
18. John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt: A
History of the Farmers' Alliance and People's Party (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1931), 377; Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic
Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1976), 533; Worth Robert Miller, "Building a
Progressive Coalition in Texas: The Populist-Reform Democrat
Rapprochement, 1900-1907" Journal of Southern History
52, no. 2 (May, 1986), 165; Dallas Morning News, September
12, 1896 (quotation).
19. Biennial Report of the Secretary of
State of the State of Texas, 1896 (Austin: State Printing Office,
1897), 66; Dallas Morning News, October 10, 1896.
20. Dallas Morning News, August 21,
1898. Kingston, Attlesey, and
Crawford, The Texas Almanac's Political History of Texas
(Austin; Eakin Press, 1992), 275, 279, 283, 287.
21. Kousser, The Shaping of Southern
Politics: Suffrage Restrictions and the establishment of the One-Party
South, 1880-1910 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 204,
206-08.
22. Winkler, Platforms of Political Parties,
398 (quotation); Martin, The People's Party in Texas, 93;
James Harvey Cyclone Davis, Memoir
(Sherman, Texas: Courier Press, 1935), 70; Hopkins County Echo (Sulphur Springs, Texas), [n.d.],
1928, newspaper clipping, James Harvey Davis Collection, in possession of
Frat Davis, Sulphur Springs,
Texas, as quoted in Chapin Ross, "A Historical and Critical Study of
the Public Address of James Harvey 'Cyclone' Davis [1853-1941] of
Texas." (Ph.D. dissertation, Speech, University of Southern
California, 1969), 115.
23. Martin, The People's Party in Texas,
102; Southern Mercury, October 22, 1896; R.B. Rentfro to Hon. V. Weldon,
November 14 & 27, 1984; C.H.
Maris to Hon. V. Weldon, November 13, 1894; A.J. Carothers to Hon. V.
Weldon, November 8, 1894 (quotation), Vachel Weldon Papers, Barker Texas
History Center, University of Texas at Austin.
24. Dallas Morning News, November
22, 1894; Martin, The People's Party in Texas, 210-11;
Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide, 1974-1975
(Dallas: Dallas Morning News, 1974), 531.
25. Dallas Morning News, November
15, 1894; U.S. House of Representatives, Report No. 1596 54th
Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1896), 6; San Antonio
Daily Express, May 8, 1896. Clerical
errors probably account for some of the discrepancies, but not all.
26. Dallas Morning News, November
18, 1894 (first quotation);
Southern
Mercury,
November 29 (second quotation) and
December 13, 1894.
27. McKinney Democrat, August 20,
1896; Barr, Reconstruction to Reform, 199-200.
28. Southern Mercury, October 29,
1896; Joe Lee Jameson to E.M. House, undated telegram (1898), Edward M.
House Papers, Yale University; Joe Lee Jameson to E.M. House, October 31,
1896 as quoted in Rupert Norval Richardson, Colonel Edward M. House:
The Texas Years: 1858-1912 (Abilene: Hardin-Simmons University
Press, 1964), 116. Microfilm
copies of House's correspondence relevant to Texas, including this
telegram, can be found at the Barker Texas History Center, University of
Texas at Austin.
29. Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics, 199.
Kousser's figure of 14.3 percent non-voting in 1896 is probably a
bit low. He used the official
returns which obviously were inflated by fraud.
30. C.L. Sonnichsen, I'll Die Before I'll
Run: The Story of the Great Feuds of Texas (New York: Adair Co.,
1962), 290-98; Henry C. Fuller, A Texas Sheriff
(Nacogdoches: The Author, 1931), chapter 2; Record of Election
Returns, County Clerk's Office, San Augustine, Texas.
A District court removed Border from the sheriff's office in 1904. Border's successor killed him in a shootout a few days later.
See Joe F. Combs, Gunsmoke in the Redlands (San
Antonio: Naylor, 1968), 87-88; Lawrence C. Goodwyn, "Populist Dreams
and Negro Rights: East Texas as a Case Study." American
Historical Review. 76 no. 5 (December, 1971): 1435-1456.
31. Dallas Morning News, October
20, 1902; Fuller, A Texas Sheriff, Chapter 1; Nacogdoches
Sentinel, November 3, 1902 (quotation); Record of Election
Returns, County Clerk's Office, Nacogdoches County; Comanche
Pioneer-Exponent, April 17, 1908.
32. Hicks, The Populist Revolt,
371, 377; Woodward, Origins of the New South:1877-1913
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), 277-78, 350;
William Ivy Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest: Louisiana
Politics, 1877-1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1969), 264-65; Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise, 533.
33. C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian
Rebel (New York: Macmillan, 1938), 238-39, 270-71.
Watson did not run for Congress in 1896.
He was the Populist candidate for vice president that year.
34. Goodwyn,
The Populist Moment, 247-49.
35. Ibid., 258.
To counter their lack of recognizable leaders, many southerners,
and particularly the Texas delegation, went to the 1896 Populist national
convention supporting midwesterner Eugene V. Debs, who subsequently would
not allow his name to be placed in nomination.
36. Raleigh News and Observer
(North Carolina), July 29, 1896. 37. Goodwyn, The Populist Moment, 264; Gene Clanton, Populism: The Humane Preference (Boston: Twayne Pub., 1991), xvi; Robert C. McMath, Jr., American Populism: A Social History, 1877-1898 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 210. For a discussion of how historians have treated Populism, including the recent trend away from blaming Populism's demise on the return of good times, see Worth Robert Miller, "A Centennial Historiography of American Populism," Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 16, no. 1 (Spring, 1993): 54-69. |
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