Introduction
The following essay is a slight rework of a chapter that was cut from my book on the Stafford/Townsend Feud, No Hope for heaven; No Fear of Hell: The Stafford/Townsend Feud. For those not aware of the process of dealing with a university press (in this case the University of North Texas Press), a book only appears after a long journey that can stretch over a year or longer, usually longer. A peer review by at least two outside readers, is but one step in the process. This sometimes leads to curious results as when one reader claims the manuscript is the best thing since sliced bread and the second reader remonstrates it is complete trash, unworthy of publication. This has happened to me on more than one occasion. But usually, the readers come in with conditional acceptance, in other words, they recommend publication with certain caveats. This is what happened with the feud book and led to three-way negotiations between the editor, the reader, and me. I strongly disagreed with the one reader’s objections to my chapter on the black vote, but in the end, my choice was either to accept or shop my manuscript elsewhere. I reluctantly accepted, but I regret that decision to this day, for it weakened the book.
Most of the fabled Texas feuds grew out of Reconstruction violence so a full chapter devoted to the black vote and its determinative role in the feud seemed quite appropriate to me. The catastrophic defeat of the South meant institutions and attitudes had to be redefined at all levels, a true revolution. Most ex-Confederate begrudgingly accepted the fact that the former slaves were now and henceforth freedpeople, but few adjusted their basic attitudes accordingly. They remained “unreconstructed” inwardly even as they adapted outwardly to the new reality, but the degree to which they adapted varied widely, and this led to serious disagreements by a population habituated to violence as a result of a generational frontier experience and a series of wars.
This was the case in Colorado County. Although the nominal leader of the large and influential Townsend family, Sheriff Light Townsend, was a Confederate veteran himself, he accepted the reality of the Black vote and parlayed that acceptance into a political advantage for himself and his family that gained for them control of law enforcement at all levels in the county for a full generation, which the family then leveraged to economic advantage. On the other hand, Bob Stafford, leader of the Stafford faction and the richest man in the county, refused to accept the new position of the freedpeople, which put him at a serious disadvantage politically. He deeply resented those who did, which added fuel to the fire.
Should anyone doubt this assertion, they need but recall the last words of Bob Stafford before he was shot down in cold blood in 1890 by Deputy Larkin Hope, the nephew of Sheriff Townsend: “You N…… Loving Son of a Bitch.” Larkin Hope, in turn, was assassinated because of his putative lock on the black vote. These episodes illustrate the powerful emotional charge represented by the black franchise in both the earlier and later stages of the Colorado County troubles. This chapter examines the evolution of the black vote in Colorado County and considers how the Townsend machine came to dominate (and eventually lose it).
But the chapter also has relevance to the current state of affairs and the organized efforts unfolding in real time before our eyes to manipulate the vote with an eye toward eventual disenfranchisement. How do you disenfranchise? You pass ever more burdensome restrictions that fall unevenly on that class of voters you see as unfriendly. You intimidate. You gerrymander shamelessly. All of his happened in Texas after the Civil War, and eventually, after over thirty years the relentless campaign culminated in 1902 with the so-called “White Man’s Primary” which essentially disenfranchised black people in all but national elections for nearly sixty years. Let this deleted chapter serve as a warning! History can repeat itself.
The Stafford/Townsend Feud and the Black Vote
The black population of Texas found itself in limbo after the cessation of hostilities in April 1865, and this situation continued until the imposition of Congressional Reconstruction in 1867. This was certainly the situation in Colorado County, Texas. It was not clear at first to either the victorious North or the defeated South what emancipation really signified in concrete terms, and so it was certainly not evident at first blush to the slaves of Texas what it meant when Union General Gordon Granger proclaimed in Galveston June 19th, 1865 (Juneteenth) that the Texas slaves were henceforth free. The North had fought mainly to preserve the Union; not to free the slaves. Consequently, a post victory consensus as to what to do about the former slaves did not come easily for the victors. Were the freedpeople to be shipped back to Africa? Were they to become full citizens overnight, with all the rights and obligations thereto, or were they to occupy some intermediate stage somewhere between slavery and full citizenship, at least provisionally, until the literacy rate and other metrics of citizenship could be advanced?
The National Republican Party found itself deeply divided over this issue. Lincoln had signaled a more moderate course in his second inaugural speech and Andrew Johnson, a Southerner by birth, continued in this vein after Lincoln’s assassination. But as Southern legislatures, one after another, interpreted “malice toward none and charity for all…” as an invitation to enact draconian Black Codes that all but re-enslaved their black populations, the hand of Radical Republicanism was strengthened to the point that this faction was able to pass a program of congressional reconstruction over President Johnson’s veto. Its program fell short, by a wide mark, of the draconian agenda advocated by some, notably by the Speaker of the House, Thaddeus Stevens, who called for, among other things, confiscation of former slave plantations and redistribution of land among the freedpeople. This proposal became the basis of the widespread hope among the black populations of the South that the government eventually would give each family “forty acres and a mule.” But for die-hard Confederates, the new program was radical enough for it granted freedpeople the immediate right to vote backed up the US military. Moreover, it made readmission to the Union contingent on state conventions ratifying both the 13th and 14th amendments, which abolished slavery and guaranteed black people full citizenship, including the right to vote.
The uncertain situation prior to the imposition of Congressional Reconstruction in 1867 led numerous freedpeople to take a “wait and see” attitude. Many stayed on the plantations under a system of contract labor that few understood and many suffered under, but which, at the very least, guaranteed to them a roof over their heads and food in their mouths. The considerable number who nonetheless left their former masters began collecting in unincorporated settlements scattered throughout the county, many of which like the present Vox Populi, Jewittville, and the Scott/Fields settlement west of Glidden, to name three, survive in moribund form, as if in a time-warp, to this day.
After the war, the freedpeople also began migrating in substantial numbers into the major towns of the county, which over time altered their character. Here the women could find work as domestics while the men could hire out as day laborers. Their growing presence in the towns, a strictly post-Civil War phenomenon, became the proverbial “other side of the tracks,” and commonly referred to as “N-town” by the white population.
At the conclusion of hostilities in April 1865 the black population of Colorado County was for all intents and purposes totally illiterate with no institutions of their own to fall back on. Their former masters had prohibited even churches for their human chattel. Churches, however, spread rapidly after emancipation with the help of the Freedmen’s Bureau among the black population and quickly became the dominant institution, a position they retain to this day. They also became centers of political consciousness as well as religious celebration while black preachers sometimes sought political office in their own right.
Prior to 1867 and the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau, few if any black people in Colorado County insisted on the right to vote. Such militancy, here and elsewhere in the state, would have been tantamount to a death wish, as many examples corroborate. Cast adrift and often exposed to gratuitous violence by resentful ex-Confederates or systematic intimidation by organized terror groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, their chief and all-consuming preoccupation was to adapt to the new reality as best they could and somehow survive.
But with the establishment of an office of Freedmen’s Bureau in Columbus in 1867, which energetically registered the freedpeople, and the garrisoning of Federal Troops in the town to back up their rights, the situation changed. The freedpeople embraced the franchise from this point and continued to vote in substantial numbers throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, which can be corroborated from electoral reports that often included a breakdown by race.
As we have noted, plantation slave culture had rapidly replaced the frontier society in Colorado County in the 1850s with the result that the number of Negro slaves increased dramatically both in real numbers and as a percentage of the total population. When the Civil War ended, the percentage of blacks in the total population in Colorado County approached 45% and this number stayed fairly constant throughout the remainder of the 19th century after which it began to fall off. This percentage was considerably less than counties to the east and southeast where blacks outnumbered whites by large percentages, but much greater than counties to the west, where the presence of blacks dropped off dramatically. Colorado County thus occupied an intermediate position in respect to black/white demographics, but once enfranchised, the blacks suddenly found themselves in the saddle politically in Colorado County because the white vote, although larger in gross numbers, was more fractured in practice than the black vote, and this circumstance held true throughout the balance of the nineteenth century.
There were several reasons for the divided white vote. To begin with, the sizeable German population, primarily located in the northern part of the county, had opposed secession by a wide margin and had resisted conscription into the Southern army to such a degree that martial law was actually imposed on Colorado County (and the adjoining counties of Austin and Fayette) by the military authorities on two occasions during the war. The Republican Party thus found a ready-made constituency among the German immigrants after the war to augment the black community.
This provided the largest split in the white vote, but significant factionalism within both the Republican and Democratic parties further muddied the waters. On the Republican side, the Radical Republicans vied with moderate Republicans for control of the party throughout the post-war period. The Radicals, organized in so-called Union Clubs, and often presided over by charismatic black leaders in league with opportunistic Northerners, pejoratively referred to as “Carpetbaggers,” supported the extreme reconstruction policies of Thaddeus Stevens and aspired to dominate the state at all levels politically by a combination of an unified black vote and restricted enfranchisement of ex-Confederates.
The moderates, on the other hand, held the Democratic Party responsible for the catastrophe of the war. It should be remembered that almost one third of the voters of Texas had voted against secession in 1861 while the referendum in Colorado County narrowly passed with 51% of the vote. Those who has opposed secession were now less concerned about the situation of the freedpeople and more interested in seeing that ex-Confederates were not returned to positions of power and influence. Both wings of the party also advocated progressive policies, and, in this regard, were especially keen on the state government actively underwriting the expansion of the railroads, which they saw as the key to renewed prosperity, and also in promoting public education, which they understood as necessary for an informed electorate and as a prerequisite for commercial prosperity.
Ironically, the moderate Republicans often viewed the Radicals within their own party as their chief political liability, because they sensed that any program that pushed full equality among the races was anathema to the majority of white Texans, whether Republican or Democrat.
The division within the Republican Party, therefore, basically followed color lines in Colorado County. This had the effect that the German community was much less solidly in the Republican camp than might have been expected. The Germans were uncomfortable with increased taxes, which Republicans had called for to support their initiatives, and they were downright hostile to any scheme for public education that included mixed schoolrooms.[i] Many Germans led by charismatic community leaders, like Johann Leyendecker, eventually bolted the Republican Party and took many along with them. It was a complicated situation.
On the Democratic side, there were those who were willing to accommodate (begrudgingly) the reality of the black vote set against those who were unwilling to make any concessions whatsoever to black participation and thus imposing on themselves a distinct political handicap at the county level. This led to simmering resentments and a strident and persistent determination to thwart and undermine the black franchise by whatever means available. In Ft Bend County to the east, a similar split evolved into the infamous Woodpecker-Jayhawk feud that wracked the county in violence in the 1880s and 1890s. It also coincided roughly with the Townsend/Stafford division in Colorado County. The two disputes thus had this aspect in common though they differed fundamentally in other ways.
Among Democratic voters of Colorado County, the uncompromising element remained the largest and most vociferous. In respect to this stridency Bill Stein wrote:
These citizens, who called themselves conservatives, were consumed by political opinions they embraced with a passion that bordered on madness. Though the conservatives, who were predominantly white, were in the political minority, they controlled most of the county’s wealth and its only media outlets. They usually supported candidates endorsed by the Democratic Party, and their contempt for black voters and other voters who supported Republicans, or as they called them, Radical candidates, can hardly be overstated. In 1871, Fred Barnard, the editor of the Colorado Citizen, in a series of highly inflammatory statements, summarized his view of the Republican agenda: “Heavy taxation to keep the roads in order to benefit the niggers…Tax the white man to build schoolhouses and educate nigger children…squandering the people’s money to enrich scalawags, carpet-baggers and niggers.” (Bill Stein, Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, Volume 10, Number 1, (January 2000), 14.)
The factionalism within both parties sometimes led to interesting political alliances and confusing combinations at the county level. Occasionally the Republican convention would throw its support behind Democratic candidates and vice versa. Black voters naturally preferred the Republican candidates, especially on the state and national slates, but at the county level they often exhibited a more discriminating flexibility, preferring to vote for the man rather than the party. Thus, all but the extreme Democratic faction felt obliged to court the black vote to one degree or another. The most common practice was to throw free barbeques, at which time the candidates would introduce themselves and make their appeal. There was undeniably much out and out bribery as well, a practice universally known as the “boodle.” But despite the widespread prevalence of such chicanery, there is little evidence that the blacks as a whole could ever be persuaded to vote against their fundamental self-interests. They recognized who was for them and who was against them and voted accordingly.
In this complicated scenario, the question remains how the Townsends were able to gain and keep the loyalty of the blacks in Colorado County. An example of this loyalty and how it transferred even to his successors can be taken from the 1896 sheriff’s election. The black community saw Sam Reese as the heir to Light Townsend. They expressed their loyalty demonstratively by riding their horses, some two hundred strong, down Milam Street with a large banner proclaiming their support.
The answer to the Townsend support has to be inferred from many different sources, but it is clear that gratuitous acts of violence against blacks on the part of whites dropped precipitously once Light Townsend became sheriff. Lynching continued to plague the county, but no mob ever succeeded in taking a prisoner away from Light Townsend. The black population recognized this fact and rewarded him accordingly. Also, as we have seen, Townsend astutely ran as an Independent though he declared himself to be a Democrat at heart.
There is also some indication that Light Townsend was more lenient in enforcing the Jim Crow segregation laws, first introduced in 1885, and growing ever more restrictive with each passing year. Ike Towell was the city marshal of Columbus in 1885 when the new laws were passed, and he set out at once to energetically enforce them beginning with the separation of blacks and whites at the city train station and in passenger cars. [see Goeppinger interview# ] Apparently the resentment was so great among the black population that Larkin Hope, as a protégé and nephew of Light Townsend, could easily defeat Towell for the position of City Marshall in 1888 with the help of the black vote.
Still, these facts (and speculations) do not explain the initial support of Light Townsend by the black electorate. John Goeppinger maintained that several community leaders, including the former Sheriff Ike Toliver, who had served a term as the Republican sheriff, had supported Townsend initially in an effort to control the black vote. This implies that the Townsend name already carried a degree of respect in the black community that predated Light’s tenure as sheriff and harked back to his father, Asa Townsend.
Asa’s relation to his slaves may well be the key to understanding the early Townsend influence. By the 1860 census, Asa Townsend had owned sixteen slaves, up from five when he originally made the move to Texas in 1838. In other words, Asa was a modest slaveholder who may well have had a more intimate relationship and shown a more patriarchal concern for his chattel than the larger slaveholders. Those who grew up in the South can appreciate the complexity of the bonds that sometimes evolved between blacks and whites, despite the social gulf that existed. This supposition is supported by the fact that most of Asa’s slaves took Townsend for their last names after emancipation, which can only be interpreted as a sign of respect and loyalty. Indeed, by the 1880 census the number of black Townsends in the county exceeds the white Townsends for the first time. Certainly, both Light and Marcus Townsend benefitted from this initial good will, but they also consciously cultivated it once in power to build a formidable political machine.
Marcus Townsend, in contrast to Light, always ran as a Democrat. He prided himself in fact that he was the first Democrat from his district to win election to the State Legislature after the Civil War. An analysis of the district he represented, which included four counties, showed why this was possible. Only Colorado County contained a sizable black population. Still, Townsend consistently won by such sizeable majorities, including Colorado County, that he must have also attracted a sizeable black vote.
Despite the strength of their vote the only black men to serve in county government were appointed by Governor E.J. Davis after he had been appointed by the Fifth Military District in 1867. This included the mayor, two black city councilmen, a justice of the peace, and a county hide inspector. Once permitted to vote, the black population occasionally successfully fielded candidates of their own for state office, though this remained unusual. The reasons for this lay in the fact that, unlike at the present, each party then decided on a slate of candidates at party conventions rather than through a primary vote. To attend and participate in such conventions presented practical difficulties for black people, and so they were often underrepresented at this stage. Lodging and meals were often unavailable while travel was problematic and potentially dangerous for black men who ventured out from the communities where they were known.
Despite these hurdles, two black leaders from Colorado County, B.F. Williams and R.L. Smith, rose to positions of leadership in the Republican Party at the state level and both served terms in the State House of Representatives. Williams, a Methodist preacher from Columbus, was elected to be a member of the State Convention convened in 1868 to ratify the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments, which paved the way for Texas to reenter the Union and to seat representatives in the U.S. Congress. He also served as a representative in the 12th congress representing Colorado and Lavaca counties. He ran for reelection for the 13th and 14th legislative sessions, and each time was narrowly defeated on the strength of the large white vote in Lavaca County, but he carried Colorado County handily in both elections. Williams was favorable regarded by his colleagues who placed his name in consideration for Speaker of the House in the 12thLegislative Session. Out of eight candidates, he received the third highest vote.
R.L. Smith rose to prominence as one of the leading black leaders in the State of Texas in the last decade of the nineteenth century. He was a most remarkable man. He represented Colorado County in the House of Representatives in the 18th and 19th congresses and he served as Secretary of the Republican Party in Texas for a number of terms. He also travelled to the National Republican Convention in Chicago in ____ as a delegate to the presidential convention. Smith hailed from Oakland in the western edge of the county. He was largely self-educated and had been a preacher. Despite the fact that he had lost an arm in a wagon accident, he seemed undeterred. Smith felt strongly that the black people of the South needed to rely on themselves to improve their situation. He felt that, above all, they needed to avoid going into debt and in line with his ideas he founded a Farmer’s Improvement Society that opened chapters throughout Texas and published a newsletter, The Helping Hand. The Society, one of the most important organizations of its kind in the South, offered practical advice for black farmers and even sponsored fairs at various venues for twelve years in South-Central Texas to showcase crops and products. The convention held in Columbus in 1903 drew hundreds of visitors and exhibitors and even garnered a favorable article in the local paper. Smith worked tirelessly to improve the lot of his people and gained the respect of white and black alike. As a measure of the national respect he had earned, in 1904 George Washington Carver invited Smith to tour the South with him to promote and encourage modern farming practices among black and white farmers alike. But after electoral defeat in 1901, R.L. Smith was destined to be the last person of color to hold a state office for the next seventy years.
By this point, the Republican Party of Texas was so split by internal dissension that it had ceased for all intents and purposes to be a political force within the state. The Democratic lock on government at all levels solidified and not only were blacks excluded from running on the ticket, they were also excluded from voting in Democratic primaries. Ft. Bend County was the first county in the state to introduce a White Man’s Democratic primary in 1900, which, as the name suggests, meant that black people were excluded from voting in the Democratic primary. But since the Republican Party was now essentially defunct, this meant in practice that black people in Texas were henceforth disenfranchised except for national elections. Other counties quickly followed suit. Ike Towell, early ally and business associate of the R.E. Stafford, leader of the anti-Townsend faction after Stafford’s assassination, the man who almost disemboweled Larkin Hope in a street altercation in 1888, and the man who enforced the first Jim Crow laws in the county in 1885 as city marshal, finally succeeded along with his friends in putting an end to black influence in county politics and in undercutting those who had sought their support.
The Townsend hold on politics at the local level that had existed for a generation came to an end with the adoption of the White Man’s Primary in Colorado County in 1902. Not surprisingly, Sheriff Burford was defeated in the first election thereafter and Marcus Townsend, no longer able to count on the local sheriff’s office to provide his private bodyguards, soon relocated to San Antonio from Columbus where he felt safer from his enemies who had sworn to get their revenge.
In summation, the Stafford/Townsend feud that wracked Colorado County with lawlessness and violence for decades was part of a larger story, the story of Reconstruction and its aftermath in Texas and, indeed, in the South at large. Die-hard ex-Confederates refused to accept the new reality and swore to deconstruct the Reconstruction laws and initiatives on the part of both the federal and state governments that sought to grant equal rights to the freedpeople. It took them nearly thirty years but with the introduction of the White Man’s Primary in Colorado County in 1902, they saw the job essentially as completed. 1902 marked the beginning of new era of segregation and suppression that only ended with the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s.
[i] Degener and Victoria Germans
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