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Classic tales of the Old West...that never forget the power of love.
A Texas Christmas Carol
Texas and Texans have a reputation for "big": big hair, big vehicles, big cattle, Big Oil. We take a lot of pride in "big" in these parts. In fact, most Texans are constitutionally averse to doing anything small -- including, at least in my case, spontaneous outbreaks of silliness.
The holidays are particularly dangerous for me. They're happy, high-spirited times to begin with, and happy high spirits breed silliness. Trust me, I don't need the extra encouragement. Past holidays have produced everything from a political-parody of Clement Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" to mounting an effort to unionize Santa's elves.
This year I almost managed to rein in my baser impulses, but with encouragement and assistance from a dear friend and fellow Texan, I overcame the fleeting urge to behave like a sensible adult. Bless you, KB (a retired librarian who really ought to know better ;-) ), for steering me from the path of respectability. Still, the silliness is only minor this year.
And it starts today with "A Texas Christmas Carol" -- a holiday song in twelve daily parts.
(Please forgive me if my tune bucket is a mite leaky.) Here we go.
On the first day of Christmas a Texan gave to me...
The holidays are particularly dangerous for me. They're happy, high-spirited times to begin with, and happy high spirits breed silliness. Trust me, I don't need the extra encouragement. Past holidays have produced everything from a political-parody of Clement Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" to mounting an effort to unionize Santa's elves.
This year I almost managed to rein in my baser impulses, but with encouragement and assistance from a dear friend and fellow Texan, I overcame the fleeting urge to behave like a sensible adult. Bless you, KB (a retired librarian who really ought to know better ;-) ), for steering me from the path of respectability. Still, the silliness is only minor this year.
And it starts today with "A Texas Christmas Carol" -- a holiday song in twelve daily parts.
(Please forgive me if my tune bucket is a mite leaky.) Here we go.
On the first day of Christmas a Texan gave to me...
Sept. 22, 1862: The Beginning of the End
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| President Lincoln Writing the Proclamation of Freedom oil on canvas by David Gilmour Blythe, 1863 (Library of Congress collection) |
—from the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Page 2
On Sept. 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, alerting the Confederacy of his intention to free the 3.1 million slaves in the ten states still in rebellion at the time. The four-page document pertained only to persons held as slaves in the rebellious states; another nearly one million slaves existed in seven slave states that were at least partially exempted. The four so-called “border states” — Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri — were not included in the order because they did not secede. Tennessee, though part of the Confederacy, already was occupied by Union forces, as were portions of Louisiana, including New Orleans. Forty-eight Virginia counties were exempted because they were in the process of forming the free state of West Virginia, which joined the Union in June 1863.
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| First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln (Lincoln and his cabinet) oil on canvas by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, 1864 |
None did. Texas slave owners completely ignored the proclamation. In the other nine Confederate states specifically named in the final version of the document, an estimated 50,000 slaves were freed on the day the proclamation was issued. The remainder gradually gained their freedom over the next two and one-half years.
Instead of encouraging capitulation as the president and his supporters had hoped, the proclamation galvanized the Confederacy, which viewed Lincoln’s order as an arrogant attempt to countermand the laws of a sovereign nation. Robert E. Lee suggested the proclamation was a Union move to bolster its dwindling military ranks with freedmen.
The order also countermanded the wishes of the U.S. Congress, which in an April 1862 attempt to placate Southern slaveholders, declared the federal government would compensate everyone who freed their “property.” The Emancipation Proclamation notably rescinded that offer, authorizing Union forces to employ military muscle in separating slaves from their owners, thereby forcing massive financial losses on struggling Confederates. In effect, the proclamation broke the back of the Confederacy’s economy and its war machine, which relied on slaves to produce and prepare food, build fortifications, repair railways, work in hospitals, and provide other manual labor. Consequently, European countries backed away from providing further aid to the South.
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| 1865 copy of the Emancipation Proclamation (part of a private collection on display at the Lincoln Boyhood Memorial) |
While the Emancipation Proclamation officially freed the slaves in ten states when it was issued Jan. 1, 1863, it neither abolished slavery outright nor granted the rights of citizenship to freedmen and their descendants. That required several acts of Congress: The Thirteenth (outlawed slavery), Fourteenth (equal protection), and Fifteenth (voting rights) amendments to the Constitution were ratified in 1865, 1868, and 1870, respectively.
The entire text of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation is here.
The complete text of the proclamation as issued is here.
Dallas Stoudenmire: A Cure as Bad as the Disease
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| El Paso City Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire, 1881 (courtesy El Paso County Historical Society) |
The city was not entirely without a law-and-order presence. The county sheriff’s office was only fifteen miles away—a half-day’s ride on horseback. Fort Bliss was closer, but the Army had its hands full defending settlers from Indians and cross-border marauders. Nearest of all was an entire company of the Texas Rangers Frontier Battalion, headquartered right there in town. Even a force of forty fearsome men who a few years later would adopt the motto “one riot, one Ranger” couldn’t be everywhere at once, though, especially when they had a 1,250-mile unruly border with Mexico to police.
El Paso needed a tough city marshal, and it couldn’t seem to find one. During the eight months starting in July 1880, the town employed four different men in the position. One resigned after two months in office. Another was relieved for “neglect and dereliction of duty.” A third was allowed to resign after a dispute over his pay left El Paso full of bullet holes. By April 1881, the town drunk wore the badge because he was the only man who would take the job.
City fathers thought they were in luck when, on April 11, they enticed a six-foot-four shootist with experience as a soldier, Texas Ranger, and city lawman to claim the marshal’s star. Dallas Stoudenmire, 36, was described by newspapers of the day as a temperamental, physically imposing man with an even more imposing reputation for gunplay.
Born in Alabama, Stoudenmire enlisted in the Confederate army at 15. After the war, he migrated to Texas and joined a company of Rangers tasked with subduing renegade Indians in the southern part of the state. Only 20, Stoudenmire reportedly “killed a few men” during his year with the Rangers, ostensibly in the line of duty.
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| In May 2001, Dallas Stoudenmire’s Smith & Wesson American, serial number 7056, sold at auction for $143,000. His El Paso city marshal’s badge sold for $44,000 in a separate lot. (source: Little John Auction Service catalog, May 2001) |
Stoudenmire lit out for New Mexico, soon coming to rest as marshal of Socorro in the northern part of the territory. By early 1881, he was back in Llano County, Texas. That’s where the El Paso city fathers found him.
It would take them only a few short days to realize they’d made a mistake, but a total of thirteen violent, frightening months would pass before they removed him from office. Ultimately, only Stoudenmire’s untimely demise freed the city of his presence. Some called the man a criminal with a badge; others credited him with doing more than any other single individual to tame El Paso’s lawless element.
The trouble started three days after Stoudenmire pinned on the marshal’s star. In an incident that came to be known as the Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight, Stoudenmire’s twin .44 Colts dispatched three people—one an innocent bystander attempting to take cover. The other two were an accused cattle rustler and one of El Paso’s former city marshals. The fourth casualty, whose death at the hands of the alleged cattle rustler started the ruckus, was a county constable. Stoudenmire, unscathed, received a raise.
Three days later, friends of the dead men hired another former El Paso city marshal to assassinate Stoudenmire. In the course of firing eight or nine shots at his attacker, Stoudenmire obliterated the would-be assassin’s privates.
The notorious gunman continued to collect enemies while he performed some aspects of his job admirably. Even his detractors credited him with a steel-nerved ability to face down miscreants, six of whom he reportedly introduced to Boot Hill. Stoudenmire collected fines and taxes with alacrity, at the same time shooting dogs whose owners neglected to pay the $2 annual license fee. He angered the local religious community by using a prominent church’s bell for target practice while he policed the streets, disrupting the peace in the middle of the night. The jail and prisoners were well tended, but the marshal’s records were a mess, and unauthorized expenditures caused friction with the city council.
Stoudenmire also drank heavily, often on duty, leading the editor of the El Paso Times to call into question his fitness as an officer of the law. When the Texas Rangers took an interest in Stoudenmire’s idiosyncratic approach to law enforcement, he called them a pack of cowards and liars and tried to get the entire force banned from El Paso, without success.
The city decided it had endured enough in February 1882, when Stoudenmire and his new bride returned from their wedding trip to find her brother murdered and the accused killer absolved of charges. Vowing revenge, Stoudenmire went on a violent drinking binge. One writer called his behavior “as irresponsible and dangerous as the town hoodlums.” Right away the city council passed a resolution mandating a stiff fine for any lawman caught drinking in public. Since Stoudenmire collected the fines, the law was woefully ineffective.
Public sentiment against the marshal had reached a crescendo…and so had the city council’s fear of the monster they had created. In May the council called a meeting to fire Stoudenmire, but when the marshal showed up drunk and waving his infamous Colts, the meeting quickly adjourned. Two days later he sobered up and resigned.
Despite the public’s ill will, Stoudenmire and his wife remained in El Paso. The now ex-marshal continued to drink, get into fights, and settle arguments with his guns; nevertheless, in July he was appointed deputy U.S. marshal.
Over the next few months, Stoudenmire’s feud with the man accused of his brother-in-law’s murder escalated. Stoudenmire mocked and insulted the man and his two brothers in public, daring them to fight. When other citizens ventured an opinion about his behavior, Stoudenmire cursed and threatened them. The El Paso Lone Star warned “citizens stand on a volcano,” and the streets might be “deluged with blood at any moment.”
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| Dallas Stoudenmire had the barrel of this 1860 Colt Army revolver sawed off so the gun could be concealed. The Colt was retrieved from the El Paso street where Stoudenmire was killed in a shootout on September 18, 1882. (source: The Peacemakers: Arms and Adventure in the American West by R.L. Wilson) |
Separate trials acquitted the brothers of murder. They left El Paso and died of natural causes in 1915 and 1925.
Stoudenmire’s widow buried him in Colorado County, near Columbus, Texas, where they had been married a few months earlier. The Freemasons, of which he was a member, paid all funeral expenses for the destitute widow. Although a commemorative marker documenting Stoudenmire's Confederate service exists, no stone marks his gravesite, and all records of its location have been lost.
An obituary in the Colorado [County] Citizen called Stoudenmire “a brave and efficient officer, and very peaceable when sober.”
This post originally appeared June 20, 2012, on Sweethearts of the West.
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