In what may have been the single largest outbreak of vigilante
violence in American history, forty suspected Unionists were hanged
at Gainesville, Texas, in October 1862. Civil War tensions had been
running high. The Cooke County community located just across the
Red River from Indian Territory was split between natives of the
Deep South who often supported the Confederacy and natives of the
Upper South and Midwest who were sometimes indifferent or hostile
to it. When active resistance to conscription into the Confederate
army combined with long-running rumors of an invasion of North
Texas by Kansas Jayhawkers and their Indian allies, many of the
former decided action must be taken.More than 150 suspected
Unionists were arrested and put before a "citizen's court" of
twelve jurors. The trial was marked by acrimony and violence, which
included the lynching of fourteen men by an angry mob. Minister
Thomas C. Barrett served on that jury and attempted to mitigate the
vengeful rage of his neighbors. He had some success in the matter,
but after two high-profile assassinations, the hangings continued.
His 1885 memoir of the trial and the hangings is collected in this
volume. Also collected here is the account based on records of the
citizen's court completed in 1876 by George Washington Diamond,
whose brother, James J. Diamond, helped organize the trial. Placed
together in one volume, these writings offer important insight into
the tensions that tore apart American communities during the Civil
War era. Renowned Civil War historian Richard B. McCaslin provides
an introduction, while L. D. Clark, a descendant of one of the men
hanged, reveals the extent to which tensions remain in Gainesville
even generations later.
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