Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

At Civil War's end, city was grim, broke

It was an April day in 1865 when Eli Merriman's father took him out of classes at the Hidalgo Seminary. He had news. Robert E. Lee had surrendered and Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. Merriman and his father went to the Confederate hospital on the bluff where Dr. Merriman told his patients the news.
   The end of the war found Corpus Christi almost deserted. There was no local government; the Confederacy melted away. Refugees and Confederate veterans filled the roads. There was no trade or commerce.
   In July, two regiments of black soldiers arrived to begin the occupation.
   John Moore, who moved here from Alabama to dredge a channel across the bay, was an officer in the Confederate forces in South Texas. He came in to surrender and found the Union commander had set up in Moore's own house on Water Street.
   Union sympathizers - John Dix, James Bryden, Henry Berry - were appointed to local government positions. One of the first acts of a newly organized county government was to order that the stakes that marked the reef road be replaced; they had been removed during the war. Road precincts were created to repair roads and streets; all able-bodied men had to work in road gangs. The county began to collect an occupation tax and the R.C. Russell house on Taylor Street was used as the place where Confederates had to take the "ironclad" oath of allegiance to the United States; many simply refused to take the oath. The Russell place was called the "ironclad house" for years.
   After the war, former soldiers came home to find vast herds of unbranded cattle on the open ranges. This marked the beginning of the trail drives on Kansas, where steers worth $5 or less in Texas could be sold for upwards of $20 or $30 in Chicago or St. Louis. In 1866, some 260,000 head of cattle went up the trail. So many were driven north that the market collapsed; the value of the longhorn dropped to the value of its hide, horns and tallow. Packing houses - slaughter houses really - sprang up all along the coast, especially in the Rockport area. They were mainly after the hides, which were cured and shipped to New York. The carcasses of the cattle were dumped to rot.
   By 1867, the city had begun to recuperate when a traveler arrived from Indianola, a man named Snyder, put up at Ziegler's hotel. He was sick, and within two days he was dead of the dreaded yellow fever. Stores were closed, houses shuttered. Whole families were wiped out. The city's three doctors all died, including Dr. Merriman. The epidemic ended in September; some estimates say that as many as 300 in a town of 1,000 died.
   These lawless times saw range skinning and rustling. This led to fencing. Rancher Mifflin Kenedy in 1868 began fencing his ranch, Los Laureles, south of Corpus Christi. He used creosote poles and pine planks imported from Louisiana at a cost, some sources say, of from $500 to $1,000 a mile. Fencing on King Ranch began soon afterwards.
   No welcome for 'traitor'
   The last year of the calamitous 1860s marked the election - fraudulent, many believed - of Edmund Jackson Davis, the "Carpetbagger Governor" from Corpus Christi. He married Anne Britton, daughter of Forbes Britton, and practiced law here and in Laredo and Brownsville. He argued against secession and during the war organized a regiment of cavalry. Davis, an aide and four U.S. Marines were captured at the customs house off the Mexican port of Bagdad by Confederates and brought across the border. The aide was hanged for murder and Davis was going to be hanged; he was freed, however, and allowed to cross back into Mexico (some believe he was freed because he was a Mason).
   After the war, he led a fight that was almost successful to divide Texas into three states. Six years after he escaped hanging, he was elected governor under military rule. After he was elected, the stage carrying him to Austin stopped for Davis to pay his respects at the home of an old friend. A message came back: "Mrs. Sullivan is not at home to a traitor."
   This is the second of two columns.
  
   Murphy Givens can be reached at 886-4315 or by e-mail at givensm@caller.com.
  
  

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