User:Vami IV/sandbox6

{{Seealso|Gainesville, Texas#History}}

;Paragraph 1 - Texas and Cooke County

Cooke County, located in the region of North Texas and along the border with the U.S. State of Oklahoma,{{sfn|Handbook of Texas Online: Cooke County}} was organized in 1848. Its seat, Gainesville, was founded in 1850 and became the county seat on January 26, 1854. Colonization of North Texas began in 1841,{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|pp=9, 11}} when William S. Peters and a group of Anglo-American investors opened an empresario contract with the Republic of Texas.{{sfn|Handbook of Texas Online: Peters Colony}} Settlement was slow and, like in most of the Antebellum South, marked by violent vigilantism.{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|p=10}} In what became known as the Hedgcoxe War,{{sfn|Handbook of Texas Online: Hedgcoxe War}} colonists dissatisfied with Peters expelled his agent, Henry O. Hedgcoxe, in July 1852.{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|p=10}} The arrival in Gainesville in 1858 of the Butterfield Overland mail route, following a trail surveyed by U.S. Army Captain Randolph B. Marcy in 1849, brought a rapid rise in Cooke County's population from 220 people in 1850 to 3,760 in 1860.{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|p=12}} Most of these settlers were homesteaders from the Midwest or Upper South who did not own slaves. Cooke County, as in the rest of Texas, was by 1860 dominated politically, economically, and socially by slave-owning Lower Southerners, of which there 74 households – 10.9% of households – in Cooke County. By 1861, three of the county's commissioners, its chief justice, and its sheriff were slaveholders.{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|pp=9, 15–16}}

;Paragraph 2 - Evil Land, Violent Land

Cooke County was occasionally raided by the Comanche and Kiowa peoples, despite the protection of nearby US Army forts (first established in 1847){{sfn|McCaslin|1994|p=17}} and volunteer militias. These militias were also led by local slaveholders, among them Bourland,{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|p=18}} and engaged in cyclical violence with nearby native peoples.{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|p=19}}

Vigilante violence against migrants was common in North Texas as locals feared abolitionists, especially in the wake of the Bleeding Kansas conflict.{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|p=19–22}}

Three events caused everybody to lose their Goddamn minds. The first was John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, in October 1859. The second was the fires and subsequent hysteria of the Texas Troubles, in July 1860. The third was the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States later that year.

Matters were not helped by John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859 or a string of damaging fires across North Texas the next year (July 1860).{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|pp=22–23}} Abolitionists were suspected of starting the fires, and to prosecute their hysteria, Texans formed vigilance committees.{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|pp=23–25}}{{sfn|Handbook of Texas Online: Texas Troubles}} By September, at least thirty people had been lynched on suspicion of connection to the fires.{{sfn|Handbook of Texas Online: Texas Troubles}}{{Sfn|McCaslin|1994|p=24}}

;Paragraph 3 - Secession, Dissent, Descent

By 1860, Most Texans had come from the Upper South, but political and economic dominance was held by slave-owning Lower Southerners. They were ascendant in the 1850s thanks to the cultivation of cotton. That very decade, Texas's production of cotton increased more than sevenfold. This tied Texas's leadership very closely to the Lower South.{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|p=15}}

{{efn|The slaveholders of Cooke County did not grow cotton, as the constant clogging of the Red River by debris and lack of railways prevented its reaching any market. Slaveholders instead dominated the production of goods sold locally. The 74 slaveholding families in Cooke County collectively held 369 slaves by 1860.{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|p=16}}}}

In the 1859 gubernatorial election, 73% of Cooke County's residents voted for pro-Union candidate Sam Houston.{{sfn|Loewen|1999|p=164}}

The counties of North Texas voted against secession.{{Sfn|Handbook of Texas Online: Great Hanging at Gainesville}}

61% of Cooke County residents voted to remain in the Union in Texas's 1861 referendum on secession.{{sfn|Loewen|1999|p=164}}

Almost 75% of votes cast in Texas for the secession referendum were in favor.{{sfn|McCaslin|1994|p=9}} Only 18 of Texas's 122 counties voted against secession.{{sfn|Handbook of Texas Online: Secession}}

The Confederate government aggravated their already poor relations with North Texans when it enacted the conscription law of early 1862. And then again when it sent North Texas draftees to the eastern theater after promising not to.{{sfn|Loewen|1999|p=164}}

Bourland was made the provost marshal of North Texas by the Confederate government.{{sfn|Handbook of Texas Online: James G. Bourland}}

Young was ambushed and shot to death by parties unknown while hunting on 16 October. 19 more people were hung in Gainesville to avenge his murder, as if they had anything to do with it.{{Sfn|Handbook of Texas Online: William Cocke Young}}

40 people were hung at Gainesville,{{sfn|Handbook of Texas Online: Great Hanging at Gainesville}} making it the largest mass hanging in American history.{{sfn|Loewen|1999|pp=163–64}}{{efn|The second largest mass hanging in American history, of 38 Lakota in Minnesota, also occurred in 1862.{{sfn|Loewen|1999|p=168}}}}

The hangings were applauded in contemporary Texan newspapers.{{sfn|Handbook of Texas Online: Great Hanging at Gainesville}}

Bourland was pardoned by the President of the United States and never punished for his involvement in the Great Hanging, despite accusations of war crimes even during the Civil War.{{sfn|Handbook of Texas Online: James G. Bourland}}

{{Portal|American Civil War|Texas}}

• Marais des Cygnes massacre
• Nueces massacre

{{notelist}}

{{Reflist|25em}}

{{refbegin}}

• {{cite book|last=Loewen|first=James W.|authorlink=James W. Loewen|title=Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong|year=1999|publisher=New Press|isbn=0-684-87067-3}}
• {{cite book|last=McCaslin|first=Richard B.|title=Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas 1862|year=1994|publisher=Louisiana State University Press|isbn=0-8071-1825-7}}

{{refend}}

;Texas State Historical Association

{{refbegin}}

• {{cite web|last=Buenger|first=Walter L.|title=Secession|url=https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/secession|publisher=Texas State Historical Association|work=TSHA Online|accessdate=19 March 2021|ref={{sfnref|Handbook of Texas Online: Secession}}}}
• {{cite web|last=Kemp|first=L.W.|editor-last=Campbell|editor-first=Randolph B.|title=Young, William Cocke|url=https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/young-william-cocke|publisher=Texas State Historical Association|work=TSHA Online|accessdate=19 March 2021|ref={{sfnref|Handbook of Texas Online: William Cocke Young}}}}
• {{cite web|last=McCaslin|first=Richard B.|title=Great Hanging at Gainesville|url=http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jig01|publisher=Texas State Historical Association|work=TSHA Online|accessdate=11 August 2013|ref={{sfnref|Handbook of Texas Online: Great Hanging at Gainesville}}}}
• {{cite web|last=McCaslin|first=Richard B.|title=Bourland, James G.|url=https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/bourland-james-g|publisher=Texas State Historical Association|work=TSHA Online|accessdate=19 March 2021|ref={{sfnref|Handbook of Texas Online: James G. Bourland}}}}
• {{cite web|last=McDaniel|first=Robert Wayne|title=Cooke County|url=https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/cooke-county|publisher=Texas State Historical Association|work=TSHA Online|accessdate=17 December 2020|ref={{sfnref|Handbook of Texas Online: Cooke County}}}}
• {{Cite web|last=Murphy|first=Victoria S.|title=Hedgcoxe War|url=https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/hedgcoxe-war|publisher=Texas State Historical Association|work=TSHA Online|accessdate=17 December 2020|ref={{sfnref|Handbook of Texas Online: Hedgcoxe War}}}}
• {{cite web|last=Reynolds|first=Donald E.|title=Texas Troubles|url=https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/texas-troubles|publisher=Texas State Historical Association|work=TSHA Online|accessdate=20 March 2021|ref={{sfnref|Handbook of Texas Online: Texas Troubles}}}}
• {{cite web|last=Wade|first=Harry E.|title=Peters Colony|url=https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/peters-colony|publisher=Texas State Historical Association|work=TSHA Online|accessdate=17 December 2020|ref={{sfnref|Handbook of Texas Online: Peters Colony}}}}

{{refend}}

{{Wikiquote|American Civil War}}

• {{cite web|url=https://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/Details/5097005347|title=Great Hanging at Gainesville, 1862 – Gainesville ~ Marker Number: 5347|date=1963|website=Texas Historic Sites Atlas|publisher=Texas Historical Commission}}

{{Texas in the Civil War NavBox}}

{{Lynching in the United States}}