• The 1870 Military Investigation into the Complaints against William Longworth, Radical Republican County Judge of Wilson County, Texas
• Dale Baum (bio)

Republican Ticket for justice of the peace, Precinct No. 3, Wilson County: William Longworth. Courtesy Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

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In the wake of the emancipation of four million slaves at the end of the Civil War, the Republican Party made the first national effort to ensure that the Declaration of Independence's claim that all men are created equal became a political reality in the United States. Between 1865 and 1870, it passed three new constitutional amendments to protect the rights of and advance legal equality for freedmen. The result produced a potentially revolutionary remodeling of society based upon the participation of the newly freed slaves in southern life and a violent counter-revolutionary White backlash that eventually destroyed much, but not all, of what the period of Reconstruction had accomplished. In Texas, a majority of Whites subsequently regarded for generations the period as "one of the darkest pages in their state's history," in which vindictive and corrupt Republican opportunists and scoundrels ruled tyrannically under the arbitrary edicts of occupying forces of the United States Army. Presented here is a case study of William B. Longworth, an unfairly vilified Republican local politician, which illustrates the extent of how effectively current scholarship has retrieved a more accurate history of grass-roots Texas Reconstruction from the litterbins of the discredited myths, legends, and lore of enduring popular memory.¹ Against all the odds, Long-worth [End Page 33] survived assassination by pro-Confederate terrorists and a trumped up military investigation into the ascendency of the multiethnic coalition that he successfully brought together. Upon the demise of Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, his political opponents succeeded in falsifying for far too long the historical accounts of what occurred during Reconstruction in Wilson County.

Born in Ireland and an immigrant to the United States by way of Canada, William Longworth was an anti-secessionist, wartime unionist, and Radical Republican who had lived in the South since 1846, first in New Orleans and subsequently in Bexar, Gonzales, Karnes, and Wilson Counties, Texas. He claimed to have spent most of the years after 1860 at the same postal address in Wilson County, but after 1862, he professed to have been "hunted and chased" by pro-Confederates, occasionally expecting not "to live beyond the day." His sale on commission of more than nine thousand pounds of wool to the Confederate Quartermaster-General's Department and two stints in the district court as a trial juror indicate his presence in Texas and commercial activity despite these threats. At age thirty-three, he fell within the limits for eligibility under the Confederate conscription law, but he most likely claimed ill health "from Pulmonary diseases," which caused breathing difficulties that made his working as a day laborer impossible to support his family. At the end of the war in the fall of 1865, Provisional Governor Andrew J. ("Jack") Hamilton appointed him county judge of Wilson County. In December, the Freedmen's Bureau, a federal agency created to help ex-slaves make the transition from bondage to wage labor, appointed him its agent for Sutherland Springs.²

The Texas legislature on the eve of the Civil War had established Wilson County from land that had been primarily in Bexar County, the seat of which is San Antonio. The new county contained a large proportion of former bexareños, or Tejanos of ethnic Spanish and Mexican heritage, many of whom had ancestors who had arrived in the area in the early eighteenth century. At the end of the war, the county also contained a relatively small, but significant, percentage of African Texans, or recently emancipated slaves, whose Anglo American owners had brought them after the Mexican War into the Cibolo valley (principally in the towns of Lavernia and Sutherland Springs). By 1870, Blacks constituted 18 percent [End Page 34] of the county's total population, but among voters registered by the military they were 24 percent. Because they alone were never numerous enough to dominate local affairs, the...

• 1870 年对得克萨斯州威尔逊县激进共和党县法官威廉·朗沃思 (William Longworth) 投诉的军事调查
• 戴尔·鲍姆（生物）

威尔逊县 3 号选区的治安法官共和党票：威廉·朗沃思 (William Longworth)。由德克萨斯州立图书馆和档案委员会提供。

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我ñ四名百万奴隶在解放之后内战结束后，共和党首次在全国范围内努力确保《独立宣言》中关于人人生而平等的主张成为美国的政治现实。1865 年至 1870 年间，它通过了三项新的宪法修正案，以保护自由人的权利并促进其法律平等。结果产生了潜在的革命性社会重塑，其基础是新获自由的奴隶参与南方生活，并产生了强烈的反革命白人强烈反对，最终摧毁了重建时期所取得的成就，但并非全部。在德克萨斯州，大多数白人随后几代人都认为这段时期是“他们州历史上最黑暗的一页”，其中报复性和腐败的共和党机会主义者和恶棍在美国军队占领军的专横法令下进行暴虐统治。这里展示的是威廉 B.朗沃思的案例研究，他是一位受到不公平诽谤的共和党地方政治家，它说明了当前的学术如何有效地从不可信的神话、传说、和持久的流行记忆的传说。¹排除万难，朗沃斯[End Page 33]在亲邦联恐怖分子的暗杀和对他成功召集的多民族联盟优势地位的捏造军事调查中幸存下来。在重建德克萨斯州的共和主义灭亡后，他的政治对手成功地伪造了威尔逊县重建期间发生的事情的历史记录，时间太长了。

威廉·朗沃斯 (William Longworth) 出生于爱尔兰，通过加拿大移民到美国，是一名反分裂主义者、战时工会主义者和激进的共和党人，自 1846 年以来一直居住在南方，先是在新奥尔良，随后在贝克萨尔、冈萨雷斯、卡恩斯和威尔逊县，得克萨斯州。他声称 1860 年之后的大部分时间都在威尔逊县的同一个邮政地址度过，但 1862 年之后，他声称自己曾被亲邦联的人“追捕”，偶尔希望不会“活过一天”。他向邦联军需总署出售了超过 9000 磅的羊毛，并在地区法院担任了两次审判陪审员，这表明他在德克萨斯州的存在和商业活动，尽管有这些威胁。三十三岁时，根据邦联征兵法，他符合资格，但他很可能声称“肺部疾病”导致健康不佳，这导致呼吸困难，使他作为临时工无法养家糊口。1865 年秋天战争结束时，临时州长安德鲁 J.（“杰克”）汉密尔顿任命他为威尔逊县的县法官。去年 12 月，为帮助前奴隶从奴役过渡到雇佣劳动而成立的联邦机构自由人局任命他为萨瑟兰泉的代理人。1865 年秋天战争结束时，临时州长安德鲁·J.（“杰克”）汉密尔顿任命他为威尔逊县的县法官。去年 12 月，为帮助前奴隶从奴役过渡到雇佣劳动而成立的联邦机构自由人局任命他为萨瑟兰泉的代理人。1865 年秋天战争结束时，临时州长安德鲁 J.（“杰克”）汉密尔顿任命他为威尔逊县的县法官。去年 12 月，为帮助前奴隶从奴役过渡到雇佣劳动而成立的联邦机构自由人局任命他为萨瑟兰泉的代理人。²

在内战前夕，德克萨斯州立法机构从主要位于贝克萨县的土地上建立了威尔逊县，该县的所在地是圣安东尼奥。新县有很大比例的前bexareños，或西班牙和墨西哥种族的 Tejanos，其中许多人的祖先在 18 世纪早期抵达该地区。战争结束时，该县还有一小部分非洲德州人，或最近获得解放的奴隶，在墨西哥战争后，他们的英裔美国人将他们带到 Cibolo 山谷（主要在拉维尼亚镇）和萨瑟兰泉）。到 1870 年，黑人占 18% [End Page 34]占该县总人口的比例，但在军队登记的选民中，这一比例为 24%。因为单靠他们的人数从来不足以主宰地方事务，所以……