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The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas 1862 There are monuments to the Confederacy in virtually every Texas county Monuments to Union sympathizers are few and far between. Cooke County, in North Texas has a small Union monument, not much bigger than a tombstone, just west of the intersection of California Street and IH 35 in Gainesville, Texas. It commemorates 200 people hanged in a single weekend in this town.
The settlers of counties like Cooke, Hunt, Hopkins, Lamar, Fannin and Delta were exceptionally mixed in their origins. About half (of these) immigrants came from the deep South - places like Georgia, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana - and were trying to establish an Old South planter lifestyle. The other half came from the Upper South - places like Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky and Arkansas. They were farmers and stockmen raising cattle in the rough bush country. Very few free African-Americans lived in the area, and less than 10% of the settlers were wealthy enough to own slaves (and did so.) (1)
The diveristy of these North Texas counties and many others like them, created pockets of resistance to the idea of breaking from the Union. When the statewide vote on the Ordinance of Secession was held in February 1861, it was actually defeated in all the counties above Dallas County and Tarrant (Ft. Worth's county). (1)
Outspoken Unionists, like E. Junius Foster, the editor of the Sherman Patriot newspaper, called for North Texas to secede from the state, and stay with America(1), as several counties in Tennessee had. (2)
Rumors of Union alliances with Kansas Jayhawkers and Indians along the Red River, together with a petition of E. Junius Foster to separate North Texas as a new Free state, brought emotions to a fever pitch in North Texas. The Conscription Act of 1862 only added to the fray. (3)
The Confederacy had promised the citizens living in Texas they would be of the greatest help by defending the state from within its boarders, and no one would be drafted to fight the United States outside of Texas.
When the Confederacy broke its promise, officials feared that Cooke County would be the focal point of protests. (2)
Landholders with large numbers of slaves were exempt from the draft. This did not set well with a group of thirty men who responded with a signed Petition of Protest and sent it to the Confederate Congress in Richmond, Va. Brigadier General Wm. R. Hudson, commander of the militia district surrounding Gainesville, exiled E. Junius Foster as leader of the petition, but others who remained used the same petition ot enlist a nucleus for a Union League in Cooke and other nearby counties. (3)
These members were not strictly unified, and their purposes differed with each clique. Most joined to resist the draft by providing common defense against roving Indians and renegades.(3)
Rumers began to circulate, however, of a membership of over 1,700 and of plans for an assault on the militia arsenals when the group had recruited enough men. Fearing that the stories of Unionist plots in Gainesville and other towns might prove to be true, Hudson activated the state troopers in North Texas in late September 1862, and ordered the arrest of all able-bodies men who did not report for duty. (3)
The troopers, led by Col James G. Bourland, arrested more than 150 men on the morning of October 1st, taking them to Gainesville which ws the county seat. He and Col. William C. Young of the 11th Texas Cavalry, home on sick leave, supervised the collection of a "Citizen's Court" of twelve jurors. Seven of the jurors chosen were secessionists and slaveholders. Bourland and Young were secessionists as well and together owned about a quarter of all slaves in Cooke County.(3)
The jury decided to convict on a majority vote (which was a cinch for a guilty verdict). (Seven were found guilty and the rest could be released at a later date). But an angry mob took matters into their own hands and lynched fourteen prisoners before the jury recessed. Violence in Gainesville (erupted further) when unknown assassins killed Col. Young and another man named James Dickson. (4)
The decision to release the prisoners (found innocent) was reversed and many were tried again in this Citizen's Court. Nineteen more men were convicted and hanged. Their execution was supervised by Capt. James Young, the son of Col. William C. Young. (4)
(In the city of Sherman), Brigadier General James W. Throckmorton prevented the execution of all but five men (convicted of being Unionists.) (4)
Texas newspapers generally applauded the hangings, disparaged the Unionists (and percieved Unionists) as terrorists and common thieves and insisted (all were) receiving material support from Kansas abolitionists adn the Lincoln adminstration. (4)
State Governor Francis Richard Lubbock, an ardent Confederate, condoned the affair in Gainesville (and similar activities in surrounding counties so much so that the state legislature paid the expenses of the troops in Gainesville). (4)
Articles from (various) Texas press were reprinted throughout the Confederacy. The norhern press heralded the story as another example of Rebel barbarism. President Jefferson Davis (was) embarrassed and abandoned his demand for an inquiry into a similar incident in Palmyra, Missouri. He dismissed General Paul Octave Herbert as military commander of Texas for his improper use of martial law in several instances, including the hangings. (4)
This particular boiling pot of unrest did not end with the hangings in North Texas. Albert Pike, Confederate Brigadier General in charge of Indian Territory, was implicated in testimony and was arrested. Although later released, Pike continued to be regarded with suspicion and served the rest of the war in civilian offices. (4)
Capt. Jim Young killed E. Junius Foster for applauding the death of his father. Young also tracked down Dan Welch, then man he believed was his father's assassin, captured and took him back to Cooke County then had him lynched by some of the family slaves. (4)
A North Texas company of Confederates in Arkansas learned of the executions and almost mutinied, but tempers were defused by Brigadier General Joseph O. Shelby, their commander. Several men later deserted to return home, but again Shelby was able to calm tempers and avoid a mass assault on Gainesville. (4)
(There was a) half-hearted prosecution, after the war, of those responsible for the hangings which resulted in the conviction of only one man in the town of Denton, which in turn increased resentment of the remaining Unionists in North Texas. The failure of the Union League to march on the town of Decatur indicated the futility of further attempts at retaliation. (4).
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There are some questions raised by these sources regarding details of the "half-hearted prosecution of those responsible", etc. The book that these sources reference, "Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville" by Richard B. McCaslin, hopefully will shed some light.
--BBF
Resources:
1) Under the Rebel Flag
2) Wikipedia - Gainesville, Texas
3) Texashistorymessageboard.com
4) The Handbook Of Texas Online
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Originally Posted by diddyriddick 
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