Hill County Rebellion

Radical Republican-dominated Twelfth Legislature of 1870

attempted to control crime in the state. In October 1870

Davis threatened Hill County with martial law for its

tolerance of criminals. Conditions in the county seemed

improved by late 1870, but in December a freedman and his

wife were murdered in neighboring Bosque County, and

State Policeqv Lt. W. T. Pritchett moved into Hill County

chasing suspects James J. Gathings, Jr., and Sollola

Nicholson. Pritchett raised the ire of James J. Gathings,

Sr.,qv by seeking to arrest his son. The elder Gathings, Hill

County’s largest landowner, incited a mob that pushed

county officials to arrest and detain the State Police troopers

in Hillsboro in early January 1871. On January 11 Davis

declared martial law in Hill County and dispatched adjutant

general James Davidsonqv and the State Militia to rescue the

jailed police. Davidson arrived on January 15 with fifty state

militia troops from Georgetown, commanded by Capt. E. H.

Napier. Davidson arrested the elder Gathings, his brother

Phillip, and his sonsinlaw, James Denmember and Dr. A.

M. Douglas, for hampering Pritchett’s investigation. The

adjutant general fined the four $3,000, rather than assessing

the entire county as mandated by law. Martial law ended on

January 17. Controversy over incidents in Hill and Walker

counties led to an investigation by the state Senate

committee on militia in February 1871. The committee

supported Davis’s actions; the senator from Hill County, G.

P. Shannon, a Democrat, was the lone dissenter. In 1874,

despite a strained budget and Democratic attacks upon

Radical extravagance, Governor Richard Cokeqv signed a

bill that returned Gathings’s money.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ann Patton Baenziger, "The Texas State

Police during Reconstruction: A Reexamination,"

Southwestern Historical Quarterly 72 (April 1969). Barry

A. Crouch, "A Spirit of Lawlessness: White Violence, Texas

Blacks, 1865-1868," Journal of Social History 18 (Winter

1984). Ricky Floyd Dobbs, `A Slow Civil War’: Resistance

to the Davis Administration in Hill and Walker Counties,

1871 (M.A. thesis, Baylor University, 1989). Hill County

Historical Commission, A History of Hill County, Texas,

1853-1980 (Waco: Texian, 1980). A Memorial and

Biographical History of Johnson and Hill Counties

(Chicago: Lewis, 1892).