James Webb Throckmorton (February 1,1825 –April 21,1894) was an American politician who served as the 12th governor of Texas from 1866 to 1867 during the early days of Reconstruction. He was a United States Congressman from Texas from 1875 to 1879 and again from 1883 to 1889.
Following the outbreak of a Mexican–American War,he joined the 1st Texas Volunteers as a private in February 1847. A few months later,he was assigned as an assistant surgeon to the Texas Rangers,until receiving a medical discharge in June of that year. [1] During the Texas secession convention in 1861,he was one of only eight delegates to vote against secession from the United States. [2] Despite this,he served in the Confederate Army,first as a captain of Company K,6th Texas Cavalry Regiment. [3]
He was promoted to brigadier general by 1862. During late 1862 while stationed in North Texas,which was chaotic because of military and state militia abuses,he saved all but five men in Sherman,Texas,from being lynched by militia as suspects in anticonscription activities. [4] Violent acts had spread in North Texas after the Great Hanging at Gainesville earlier in October 1862,when a total of 42 men were killed,most hanged.
Throckmorton defeated Elisha M. Pease in the Texas gubernatorial election of June 25,1866,at the same time that the legislature approved a new constitution. he was elected with George Washington Jones as Lt. Gov. During his term as governor,Throckmorton's lenient attitude toward former Confederates and his attitude toward civil rights conflicted with the Reconstruction politics of the Radical Republicans in Congress. He angered the local military commander,Major General Charles Griffin,who persuaded his superior,Philip H. Sheridan,to remove Throckmorton from office and replace him with Elisha M. Pease,an appointed Republican and Unionist. [2]
As the Radical Republicans' influence began to wane in the mid-1870s,Throckmorton was elected to Congress representing Texas's 3rd Congressional District in 1874 and re-elected in 1876. He was not a candidate in 1878. He again later served the 5th District,elected in 1882 and re-elected in 1884. He was not a candidate in 1886. [5] In 1882 he was elected to the seat vacated by his former Lt. Gov. George Washington Jones,as G.W. Jones did not run for re-election.
Throckmorton died at age 69 from a fall,having become frail due to kidney disease.
James Lusk Alcorn was a governor,and U.S. senator during the Reconstruction era in Mississippi. A Moderate Republican and Whiggish "scalawag",he engaged in a bitter rivalry with Radical Republican Adelbert Ames,who defeated him in the 1873 gubernatorial race. Alcorn was the first elected Republican governor of Mississippi.
Thomas James Churchill was an American soldier and politician who served as the 13th governor of Arkansas from 1881 to 1883. Before that,he was a senior officer of the Confederate States Army who commanded infantry in the Western and Trans-Mississippi theaters of the American Civil War.
Arizona Territory,colloquially referred to as Confederate Arizona,was an organized incorporated territory of the Confederate States of America that existed from August 1,1861,to May 26,1865,when the Confederate States Army Trans-Mississippi Department,commanded by General Edmund Kirby Smith,surrendered at Shreveport,Louisiana. However,after the Battle of Glorieta Pass,the Confederates had to retreat from the territory,and by July 1862,effective Confederate control of the territory had ended. Delegates to the secession convention had voted in March 1861 to secede from the New Mexico Territory and the Union,and seek to join the Confederacy. It consisted of the portion of the New Mexico Territory south of the 34th parallel,including parts of the modern states of New Mexico and Arizona. The capital was Mesilla,along the southern border. The breakaway region overlapped Arizona Territory,established by the Union government in February 1863.
Herschel Vespasian Johnson was an American politician. He was the 41st Governor of Georgia from 1853 to 1857 and the vice presidential nominee of the Douglas wing of the Democratic Party in the 1860 U.S. presidential election. He also served as one of Georgia's Confederate States senators.
Elisha Marshall Pease was a Texas politician. He served as the fifth and 13th governor of Texas.
Texas v. White,74 U.S. 700 (1869),was a case argued before the United States Supreme Court in 1869. The case involved a claim by the Reconstruction government of Texas that United States bonds owned by Texas since 1850 had been illegally sold by the Confederate state legislature during the American Civil War. The state filed suit in the United States Supreme Court,which,under the United States Constitution,has original jurisdiction on certain cases in which a state is a party.
Edmund Jackson Davis was an American lawyer,soldier,and politician. Davis was a Southern Unionist and a general in the Union Army in the American Civil War. He also served as the 14th Governor of Texas from 1870 to 1874,during the Reconstruction era. Reviled by many Texans during and after the Civil War as a traitor for his open support for the North and his attempts to break up Texas into several Northern-controlled states,Davis is known for leasing prisoners to private corporations to alleviate state budget shortfalls.
The 37th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government,consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington,D.C.,from March 4,1861,to March 4,1863,during the first two years of Abraham Lincoln's presidency. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1850 United States census.
Paul Octave Hébert was a soldier and politician who served as 14th Governor of Louisiana from 1853 to 1856. A veteran of the Mexican-American War,he later served as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army.
Charles Griffin was a career officer in the United States Army and a Union general in the American Civil War. He rose to command a corps in the Army of the Potomac and fought in many of the key campaigns in the Eastern Theater.
George Washington Jones was an American politician who served as lieutenant governor of Texas and was a Greenback member of the United States House of Representatives.
Texas declared its secession from the Union on February 1,1861,and joined the Confederate States on March 2,1861,after it had replaced its governor,Sam Houston,who had refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. As with those of other states,the Declaration of Secession was not recognized by the US government at Washington,DC. Some Texan military units fought in the Civil War east of the Mississippi River,but Texas was more useful for supplying soldiers and horses for the Confederate Army. Texas' supply role lasted until mid-1863,when Union gunboats started to control the Mississippi River,which prevented large transfers of men,horses,or cattle. Some cotton was sold in Mexico,but most of the crop became useless because of the Union's naval blockade of Galveston,Houston,and other ports.
David Catchings Dickson was an American politician and physician in early Texas who served as the ninth Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and as the fourth Lieutenant Governor of Texas. He was also a State Senator and unsuccessfully ran for governor of Texas.
During the American Civil War,Arkansas was a Confederate state,though it had initially voted to remain in the Union. Following the capture of Fort Sumter in April 1861,Abraham Lincoln called for troops from every Union state to put down the rebellion,and Arkansas along with several other southern states seceded. For the rest of the civil war,Arkansas played a major role in controlling the Mississippi River,a major waterway.
Louisiana was a dominant population center in the southwest of the Confederate States of America,controlling the wealthy trade center of New Orleans,and contributing the French Creole and Cajun populations to the demographic composition of a predominantly Anglo-American country. In the antebellum period,Louisiana was a slave state,where enslaved African Americans had comprised the majority of the population during the eighteenth-century French and Spanish dominations. By the time the United States acquired the territory (1803) and Louisiana became a state (1812),the institution of slavery was entrenched. By 1860,47% of the state's population were enslaved,though the state also had one of the largest free black populations in the United States. Much of the white population,particularly in the cities,supported slavery,while pockets of support for the U.S. and its government existed in the more rural areas.
Joseph Barton Elam,Sr.,was a two-term Democratic U.S. representative for Louisiana's 4th congressional district,whose service corresponded with the administration of U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes.
John Lamb was a Virginia farmer,Confederate officer,businessman and politician who served 16 years in the United States House of Representatives.
William Martin Walton was a lawyer in Austin,Texas. During the Civil War,Walton served as a major in the Confederate Army. After the war,he was elected attorney general of the state and also headed the state Democratic Party. At the time of his death,Walton was one of the most respected lawyers in Texas.
The Great Hanging at Gainesville was the execution by hanging of 41 suspected Unionists in Gainesville,Texas,in October 1862 during the American Civil War. Confederate troops shot two additional suspects trying to escape. Confederate troops captured and arrested some 150–200 men in and near Cooke County at a time when numerous North Texas citizens opposed the new law on conscription. Many suspects were tried by a "Citizens' Court" organized by a Confederate military officer. It made up its own rules for conviction and had no status under state law. Although only 11% of county households enslaved people,seven of the 12 men on the jury were enslavers.