RECONSTRUCTION—CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1868-69.
In 1868 I was elected to represent El Paso county in the State Constitutional Convention, which was to meet at Austin in May of that year, to frame a constitution under which Texas might be readmitted into the Union. At the start I was opposed for that office by Major Joseph Smith, a popular Democrat, who had been honorably discharged from the United States military service at El Paso, but early in the contest I badgered him into saying that if he found a single “Nigger” in the convention, he would resign.
I then suggested to the Mexican audience that if he had that much race prejudice, he would not do to represent them. Major Smith soon saw certain defeat before him, and withdrew, and I was unanimously elected.
During April of that year, I went in a buggy, with a single companion, Hon. W. P. Bacon, Judge of our district, to San Antonio, en route to Austin, seven hundred and forty miles, in seventeen days, without change of animals (two horses). We “camped out” and did our own cooking, and traveled much at night, because marauding Indians were then abundant on that route. I arrived at Austin a total stranger to every soul in that capital. The convention had ninety delegates, only ten of whom were Democrats. There were nine colored delegates, a large contingent of carpetbaggers, and several new recruits to the Republican party, who claimed from the day of their conversion to be more “loyal” to that party than any of us. But about one-half of the body were able, representative, old-time Texans, who had taken the Union side of the secession question and had become Republicans. These were led by Gov. A. J. (“Jack”) Hamilton, a man of Southern birth, once a slave-owner, who had been from the start the most prominent, boldest and most eloquent of the Union men of Texas, if not of the whole South. He was a member of Congress in 1861, and denounced secession both there and at home, and later was appointed a brigadier general and Provisional Governor of Texas by President Lincoln, and had gained a national reputation as an orator. And now the usual thing happened. “He who surpasses or subdues mankind must look down on the hate of those below.” The small men in the convention combined to down the greatest one.
A resolution was passed the first day of the convention, without opposition, requiring all delegates to take what was then known as the “Ironclad Oath.” This would have excluded several delegates who had, in one way or another, given aid and comfort to the rebellion.
The next day, Mills of El Paso, a Republican, moved to reconsider that resolution and to admit all who had been elected by the people. He urged that we were not officers of the United States, but of Texas, and scarcely that, because we could do nothing which would bind any one. Our work would have to be approved by the people, and then by Congress, etc., etc.
Governor Hamilton came to the rescue and Mills’ motion was passed and all elected delegates were admitted. (The published records of the convention bear out the above statement.) And now the first charge was heard against Governor Hamilton, both in Texas and at Washington, that he had “sold out to the rebels.”
The opponents of Governor Hamilton had the tact to put forward, as their leader, Col. E. J. Davis, a Texas Union man, who had done good service during the war, and against whom nothing can be said except that he was inordinately ambitious, vain, vindictive, and that he was then, and for years after, surrounded and influenced by as lordly a set of unscrupulous adventurers as ever tyrannized over or wronged the people of any Southern State. He and Morgan Hamilton, a brother of Jack Hamilton, were almost the only leaders of respectability in the whole “Davis party.”
The three questions upon which the Davis Republicans and the Hamilton Republicans wrangled so long in that convention were these: