jewett2002

@Book{ jewett2002,
    author = {Clayton E. Jewett},
    title = {Texas in the Confederacy: An Experiment in Nation Building},
    address = {Columbia},
    publisher = {University of Missouri Press},
    year = 2002,
}

Jewett argues that during the Civil War, and especially after 1863 with the strengthening of the Trans-Mississippi Department by the Confederate government in Richmond, Texas developed a “separate identity” from the broader Confederate nation. This separate identity was born of causes particular to certain Texas counties, such as the state’s interest in frontier defense, and also of a more general desire to protect the economic and commercial security of the state.

This theme of a desire for economic and commercial security runs throughout the book, and Jewett sometimes seems to push it to the point of suggesting that “economic security” was the interest that most unified Confederate Texans, and that the security of slavery was but one aspect of that broader interest. (He stresses the agricultural diversity of the state and shows that in some counties, wheat production seemed to correlate more strongly with secession sentiment than cotton production. And he argues that regression analysis shows that non-slaveholders supported secession for reasons connected to the protection of their own already strong commercial interests, instead of being cajoled by slaveholders or motivated by the hope of joining the slaveholding class.) In my view this argument does not account sufficiently for the economic centrality of slavery to all of the state’s other commercial enterprises. It also may rely too heavily on regression analyses framed by county lines and a handful of variables related to agricultural output; the argument relies on the premise that a statistically significant correlation between a particular economic factor in a county and its support for secession must show that secessionists in the county were motivated by a desire to support that economic factor. See also Dale Baum’s damning criticism in SWHQ of Jewett’s statistical analysis.

Jewett does stress the role that defense of slavery played in speeches by Texas politicians in the lead up to secession, both by Unionists and secessionists (Chapter 1). And his regression analyses do turn up the interesting finding that wealth in slaves, rather than just wealth in the products of slavery (like cotton), correlated strongly with pro-secession sentiment (see p. 66), though Baum’s review raises serious questions about how much weight one can place on these conclusions.

Though Jewett urges historians in the introduction to move away from outdated questions like “why the South lost” and focus more on state legislatures and the attempts to build a Confederate nation at the state level, the book does revolve largely around the question of Texas’s separate “identity” from the Confederate nation (part of the “Confederate nationalism” debate) and the implications of that separate identity on Confederate failure and the strength of the central government in Richmond.

Chapter 5

As part of his larger consideration of the way state officials prioritized the economic interests of Texas over those of the Confederacy, Jewett turns in this chapter to Texas institutions like the Huntsville State Penitentiary, cloth production, Salt Works and iron in the state. But he uses debates over these issues primarily to establish the over-generalization that “Texas’s political allegiance lay firmly with the state for the support of the common citizen,” and only distantly with the Confederacy (p. 143).

He stresses competition between the state and Kirby Smith’s department over control of resources. As an example, Jewett highlights tension between Maj. W. H. Haynes and the Quartermaster Bureau, on the one hand, and the state, on the other, over the disposition of cloth from the penitentiary. Though Holmes requested full control over production at the prison, the state legislature denied his request. (Though the state did give him control over distribution, which somewhat limits the force of this point.) More importantly, Jewett argues that politicians prioritized the distribution of cloth to indigent citizens over distribution to the military. (Is this a case of taking the rhetoric of politicians about providing for the “general welfare” at face value? One could argue politicians like Pendleton Murrah used appeals to the provision of cloth to poor families to strengthen the state’s control over the institution. See downs2011 and “patronalism.”) He notes, however, that there was internal disagreement in the state legislature over whether county courts or the state should control distribution, with advocates of state control like Pryor Lea arguing that this would better meet the financial needs of the state by funneling proceeds of sales directly into the State Treasury.

Jewett’s main point throughout the chapter is summarized on p. 164: “By raising troops to protect state institutions, providing for the needs of the common citizen above those of the Confederacy, and by working to ensure the successful operations of the state penitentiary, Texas politicians cast their loyalty to the citizens of Texas over the Confederacy and helped secure a separate identity based upon the pursuit of economic security.” He repeats this point for the other institutions surveyed, like the Austin foundry, and also sees additional evidence for the point in the Texas Incorporation Acts. But the main point for him is about Texas separate “identity,” which seems to me to miss a larger point about state support of manufacturing that was in fact common in other Southern states.

Chapter 6

Discusses Kirby Smith’s Cotton Bureau and the conflict with Pendleton Murrah as another example of Texas politicians prioritizing the state’s economic security over Confederate military needs. Both this and the previous chapter sometimes read as paeans to sagacious Texas legislators who acted while Confederate legislators bumbled (see p. 192 especially). Their efforts were “not a radical states’ right line,” argues Jewett, “but rather a moderate course aimed at securing the overall economic good for the citizens and the state” (p. 194), grounded in what Jewett repeatedly calls a “liberal economic worldview” (201).

Chapter 7

Extends the arguments of Chapter 5 and 6 to other state-supported enterprises: railroads, schools, asylums. Jewett notes that the Ninth Legislature passed several incorporation laws for railroad companies which offered them relief from immediate repayment of debts to the state (p. 211). Jewett notes on p. 232 that the “legislature increased appropriations for each of the state asylums” during the war, though his main conclusion from this is to once again show that Texas legislators cared for the social and economic welfare of the state.