RECONSTRUCTION.For nine years following the Civil War, Texas was in turmoil, as its people attempted to solve political, social, and economic problems produced by the war. Emancipation changed the labor system, and the end of slavery forced a redefinition of the relationship between Blacks and Whites. The change in labor and the costs of the war threatened to undermine the economic power of those who had dominated antebellum economic life, which was focused on the plantation. The weakening of the antebellum elite threatened not only their economic and social position but also their political power. In 1865 Texans confronted a situation in which new directions could be taken in economic development, political alignments, and social order. The period of Reconstruction presented the old order with a critical challenge.
One of the major forces that threatened change in the state was the United States Army. Federal troops began entering the state in late May 1865. Their commanders believed that their duty, at least in part, was to ensure loyal government and to protect the rights of the Blacks who were free as a result of the war. Gen. George A. Custer, stationed at Austin, expressed the military view when he recommended that the army retain control of the state until the government was "satisfied that a loyal sentiment prevails in at least a majority of the inhabitants." The military insistence upon loyalty threatened an indefinite loss of power among antebellum and wartime political leaders. Military views regarding the freedmen posed, at least in the minds of white Texans, a permanent disruption of their labor system and, subsequently, their entire economy. Their fears proved groundless, at least for the most part, for a variety of factors prevented the army from effecting all the change of which it seemed capable. Rapid demobilization reduced within a year the number of troops in the state from 51,000 to 3,000, and many of those who remained were on the frontier. The small size of the occupying army thus guaranteed its ineffectiveness. Still, various military commanders attempted to intervene in local politics. Turnover among them, however, prevented the development of a sustained policy in Texas. From May 1865 to March 1870 the command of forces in the state changed eight times. Of the commanders, Charles Griffin was the most active politically, but his career ended with his death in September 1867. His successor, Joseph J. Reynolds, was also politically active, though changes in command over him and his own indecisiveness and incompetence frustrated his forays into local politics. Wavering but domineering army policies ultimately provoked the local White population into an obstinate defense of prewar political power and control over the Black population.
The formation of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen's Bureau) presented a further threat to prewar society. This agency began its operations in the state in September 1865 under the command of Maj. Gen. Edgar M. Gregory. The bureau was charged with overseeing all matters concerning refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands, but its principal role was helping the new freedmen make the transition from slavery to freedom. Gregory, an abolitionist, interpreted his chief goal in the state as establishing a free labor system for the former slaves. Despite white fears, the course of Gregory and his principal successors, Joseph B. Kiddoo, Charles Griffin, and Joseph J. Reynolds, proved very conservative. Within a year Gregory's labor policies forced Blacks back to work on the state's farms and plantations, often where they had lived as slaves. He pressured them not only to stay where they were but to sign contracts to work for wages or on shares. With no ability to acquire land on their own, most complied. While planters complained publicly that free Black labor was not as good as slave, in private most found the new situation of tenantry acceptable. The indebtedness of tenants to landlords contained its own mechanisms for controlling the freedom of the labor force and pushed laborers into a form of debt peonage. Though the workers possessed freedom to search for the best conditions among local landowners, they had few choices other than to labor on some other person's land. Other aspects of the bureau's work were not as acceptable to whites.
