On July 8, 1860, most of the business section of Dallas was burned to the ground, and fires were kindled in seven other Texas towns; more followed in the next several days. Rumor reported the fires to be part of an abolition plot to free the slaves and massacre the whites. Slaves were tortured and “confessed” to complicity in a Northern plot. An abolitionist’s letter was found, outlining a master plan for freeing slaves in Texas. Some incendiaries were caught and arrested. Early in August, another great fire decimated the town of Henderson, destroying 43 buildings at a loss of $220,000.
Hysteria then swept across Texas. Following a well-established tradition, vigilante committees were organized to expose conspirators and to suppress every trace of dissent. Fort Worth, for example, passed resolutions calling for the preparation of two lists of “black Republicans, abolitionists or higher-law men of every class; List No. 1, all suspected persons; No. 2, black list, to be exterminated by immediate hanging.” “Trials” and executions followed. Estimates of the number of men killed run from 75 to 100. Most of them were blacks, though some were Northern whites. The vigilante terror continued throughout the summer.
So harsh a response must be understood in the light of the long-standing Southern fear of servile revolt. The Harper’s Ferry raid had occurred the year before, and the election campaign of 1860 heightened anxiety for Southern institutions. Texas had had a similar panic during the election of 1856. The revolt, real or imagined, was magnified for political ends by the secessionists and the Breckinridge party, who used it to discredit the moderates Bell and Douglas, to reinforce anti-Republican sentiment, and to silence Unionist critics.
The following account, a letter to the editor of a Northern paper written by a Southern white, is taken from an anti-abolition pamphlet by John Townsend: The Doom of Slavery in the Union; its Safety out of it (1860). For additional information see William W. White: “The Texas Slave Insurrection of 1860,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, LII (January 1949), 259–85; and Ollinger Crenshaw: “The Psychological Background of the Election of 1860 in the South,” North Carolina Historical Review, XIX (July 1942), 260–79.
Marshall, Texas, Aug. 12, 1860
Editors of the Evening Day Book:
The wildest excitement prevails throughout the north-western, north-eastern, and the central portions of Texas, in consequence of Abolition incendiarism. I have no doubt but you have seen, ere this reaches you, the burning of Dallas, Denton, Black Jack Grove, and quite a large number of stores and mills. Loss estimated at between $1,500,000 and $2,000,000. Since then the Abolitionists have been detected in attempts to fire a number of other towns South of the above, and in an extensive plan of insurrection among the negros, headed by these demons of hell. On some plantations the negros have been examined, and arms and ammunition in considearble amount have been found in their possession; they all admit they were given to them by these Lincolnites. Every day we hear of the burning of some town, mill, store, or farmhouse. Henderson was burnt to ashes on the 6th instant, being the general election day for State and county officers. We hear of two or three other towns burnt on the same day. Women and children have been so frightened by these burnings and threatened rebellion of the negros, that in several instances they have left their homes in their fright, and when found were almost confirmed maniacs! Military companies are organized all over the state, and one-half of our citizens do constant patrol duty. But unfortunately up to this time Judge Lynch has had the honor to preside only in ten cases of whites (northern Lincolnites) and about sixty-five of negros, all of whom were hung or burnt, as to the degree of their implication in the rebellion and burning. The plan was to burn all of the towns, thereby destroy the arms and ammunition, also country stores, mills, farms, and corn cribs, &c. Then on election day they were to be headed by John Browns, and march south for Houston and Galveston city, where they would all unite, and after pillaging and burning those two cities, the negros were promised by these devils incarnate, that they would have in readiness a number of vessels, and would take them forthwith to Mexico, where they would be free. The credulity of the negro is so great, that he can be induced to believe almost anything, no matter how impossible it may be, particularly when he is informed by a shrewd white man that the thing can be done, and that he will lead them on and accomplish the object. But the end is not yet. I believe that the northern churches are at the bottom of this whole affair—in fact the fanatics have already acknowledged it. They say that this Texas raid is in revenge for the expulsion of some of their brethren of the Methodist church from Texas, about twelve or eighteen months ago, for preaching and teaching Abolition incendiarism to the negros in northern Texas. Unless the churches send out new recruits of John Browns, I fear the boys will have nothing to do this winter (as they have hung all that can be found), the school boys have become so excited by the sport in hanging Abolitionists, that the schools are completely deserted, they having formed companies, and will go seventy-five or one hundred miles on horseback to participate in a single execution of the sentence of Judge Lynch’s Court. It has now become a settled conviction in the South that this Union cannot subsist one day after Abe Lincoln has been declared President, if God, in his infinite wisdom, should permit him to live that long, for they (the people of the South) have made up their minds that they had rather die, sword in hand, in defence of their homes, their wives, their children and slaves, in defence of the Constitution, the laws, and their sacred honor, than tamely submit to an organized system of robbery, a degraded and loathsome scheme of amalgamation, a breaking up of the compromises of the Constitution, and a total exclusion of the South from the common territories of the country won by their blood and treasure.
W.R.D.W.