HAMILTON-DAVIS CONTEST OF 1869—ADOPTION OF CONSTITUTION.
The reader may think it strange that I give so much space to so common an occurrence as a State election, but the explanation is simple. It was the first reasonable attempt to carry our State back into the Union. The Democrats had made one effort and had failed, because they had offended the dominant sentiment of the country by “Apprentice Laws,” and other measures which virtually reduced the freedman to a state of slavery, and by electing to the United States Senate a man who had presided over the convention which carried Texas out of the Union. Because of this failure, the Democrats, as a party, took no part in the second effort to reconstruct the State, but divided, those of them who voted at all, between the two Republican candidates.
Thousands of them sullenly refused to vote at all. It was therefore a contest between men and ideas. The questions were all new. True, there have been many State elections since then, but the results have all been foregone conclusions, so that the younger generation of Texans know nothing of the excitement, the strenuousness, the manliness, of a real contest for the political control of a great State.
Davis and his party publicly denounced this constitution as being “framed in the interest of rebels,” and swore to defeat it either before the people or at Washington. Will the reader believe that a month later these same men publicly declared in favor of this same constitution, and for E. J. Davis as their candidate for Governor under it? But that is history.
Hamilton also became a candidate for Governor. Gen. J. J. Reynolds was in command of the Department of Texas, and the elections were held under military supervision. Although both candidates were Republicans, General Reynolds and others secured the support of the national administration and the Republican National Committee for the Davis faction.
This Reynolds, a stranger to the people of Texas, desired to make himself United States Senator from the State, and with that purpose in view, permitted the frauds which defeated Hamilton, and he (Reynolds) declared Davis elected by a majority of only seven hundred votes, several whole counties being denied by Reynolds the right to vote at all. The Davis Legislature did, later on, elect this same J. J. Reynolds to be Senator, but the Senate of the United States refused to admit him, and he was subsequently suspended from the army by sentence of a court-martial!
The State was admitted to the Union, Davis was inaugurated, and the notorious Twelfth Legislature convened. I had the honor to be elected a member of that memorable body, and also had the honor to be counted out by Reynolds.
