Texans have always taken pride in their diversity. From the strong Hispanic influences in the Valley, to the beginning of the western frontier in Fort Worth and the piney woods of east Texas, Texans have always embraced the different cultures and peoples that make Texas unique. However, in many respects Texas is still a Southern state.
The Civil War and Antebellum Texas
Historians examining the antebellum Texas and Civil War eras traditionally turned their attention to how the war, and the end of slavery, affected white Texans. Few authors discussed the war’s impact on the thousands of slaves living in Texas at the time of emancipation. Even though there are few primary documents illustrating the Civil War from the many viewpoints of Texas’ slaves, the New Deal’s Slave Narratives succeeded in capturing former slaves’ general recollections of slavery while also describing their Civil War experiences.
President Lincoln initially said the Civil War was not about black slaves. Instead, he wanted Americans to believe that the war would ultimately restore national unity, but blacks, and slaves in particular, would be relegated to spectator status until it was over. However, Southern secession and war quickly involved slaves throughout the South, including Texas. Texas joined the secessionist movement, over the objections of Sam Houston who considered secession, “unjustifiable, unconstitutional, and revolutionary.” Still, Texas experienced few of the military conflicts that generally ravaged other states throughout the Confederacy.
Despite the bravado of most Texas leaders, not all Texans were eager for battle. When interviewed in the 1930s many of Texas’ former slaves recalled how whites in Texas responded to the call to arms. They described how some took leadership positions in training local volunteers for service in the militias; others collected food and supplies, while some actively participated in combat. Still, there were some that tried to avoid active military service altogether.
The Texas Slave Narratives and the Recollections of the Civil War
For example, former slave Susan Ross said, “Lots of ‘em didn’t want to go, but dey has to.” Ellen Payne of Marshall, Texas, reported that she knew of many young white males who tried to get out of military service, and said, “I ‘member the white southern men folks run off to the bottoms to git ‘way from war,” she stated. Other Texans must have regretted their initial choice of service.
Harrison Beckett, interviewed in Beaumont, Texas, told a second hand story of a slave owner’s son who deserted his Confederate unit in Arkansas. He recalled, “when dat first cannon busts at Li’l Rock, he starts runnin’ and never stops till he gits back home, I don’t see how he could do det, ‘cause Li’l Rock am way far off, but dat what dey say. Den de men comes to git ‘serters and dey gits Li’l Ide and takes him back.”
The very nature of slavery in Texas changed because of the Civil War. The war required more overseers to manage the plantations because too many southern white males joined the fighting leaving mostly women and children to maintain crop production and order. Texas’ slaves recalled these overseers, and the slave owners that stayed behind, as exceedingly brutal. Such treatment made the reactions to first freedoms even more complex. Many slaves certainly wanted to be free to live their lives on their own terms, but they recalled the absolute fear inherent in being slaves one morning and a freed people that evening. As a result, many of Texas’ former slaves initially remained near their former owners, but eventually ventured away from the plantation, their former owners, and slavery.
References:
Beckett, Harrison. Slave Narratives, Box 4H359, The University of Texas, Center for American History.
Calvert, Robert. The History of Texas (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1996)
Campbell, Randolph B. An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989)
Payne, Ellen. Slave Narratives, Box 4H359, The University of Texas, Center for American History.
Ross, Susan. Ibid.
