The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 97, July 1993 - April, 1994 Page: 39
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Chicanery and Intimidation
lines, Hamilton's majority over Davis in the two counties would have
been 48o votes.3
The pivotal question is not whether Hamilton would have carried Mil-
am and Navarro counties, but whether he would have picked up enough
additional votes to offset his statewide margin of defeat. Because Hamil-
ton lost the 1869 governor's race by 783 votes, the hypothetical out-
come formulated here would not have overturned Davis's victory. In
other words, had a new and fair election been held in the two counties,
the probability of it changing the statewide result would have been, bar-
ring massive intimidation of black voters, extremely remote. Neverthe-
less, Hamilton claimed that the uncounted votes from the two counties
"would almost certainly" have won him the governorship. After military
authorities declined to order a new election in Milam and Navarro
counties, Hamilton's supporters charged that he was fraudulently
"counted out"-a .charge that has been uncritically repeated by Texas
historians for generations.4
Discussion of the refusal of military officials to order a new election in
Milam and Navarro counties is often linked to the most powerful and
enduring myth about the 1869 election, namely, that Gen. Joseph J.
Reynolds, the commander of the Fifth Military District, "never made
public" the manuscript returns and that they either "have never been
found" or mysteriously, and thus suspiciously, have disappeared.5 The
manuscript returns are in the National Archives where they are grouped
by county, but not in any apparent order. Random inspections of voting
totals written on thousands of separate slips of certified returns for state
and local offices reveal no discrepancies with the county voting totals
that were officially reported by military authorities in February 1870.6
5 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Ninth Census of the United States, 1870o. Vol. I: The Statistics of the
Population of the United States ... (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872), Table 2,
pp. 64-65; and HFMD, General Orders, No. 73 (Austin, Texas: Apr. 16, 1870), 'Tabular State-
ment of Voters (white and colored) Registered in Texas at Registration in 1867, and at Revision
of the Lists in 1867-'68-'69; showing also the number (white and colored) Stricken Off the
Lists," 2-5. Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, 124, assumes that blacks were in the
majority in both Milam and Navarro counties.
* AndrewJ. Hamilton to Joseph J. Reynolds,'Dec. 21, 1869 (1st quotation), Microfilm Reel
#31, COCADT, RG 393 (NA); Charles William Ramsdell, Reconstructon in Texas (1910, reprint;
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), 284, 285 n. 1 (2nd quotation), 286-287. Anti-Davis
men illogically prophesied that new elections would have produced in Milam and Navarro coun-
ties a one thousand vote majority for Hamilton. See the Weekly Austin Republican, Jan. 6, 1870.
5 Rupert N. Richardson, Adrian Anderson, and Ernest Wallace, Texas: The Lone Star State (6th
ed.; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993), 234 (quotations). See also Ernest Wallace, The
Howling of the Coyotes: Reconstruction Efforts to Divide Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University
Press, 1979), 134; William L. Richter, The Army in Texas Dunng Reconstructon, 1865-1870 (Col-
lege Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1987), 254 n. 51; and Gray, "EdmundJ. Davis," 180.
6 "Returns of Elections, 1869 [unarranged]," E485o, Fifth Military District 1867-1870, Records
of the U.S. Army Continental Commands, 1821-1920, RG 393 (NA); and HFMD, General Orders,
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 97, July 1993 - April, 1994, periodical, 1994; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117154/m1/67/: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.