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.