John H. Reagan had risen via the ranks of Texas frontier politics, serving as a neighborhood choose and legislator and finally a member of Congress. He had fought for Texas secession and later turned a member of the Accomplice cupboard. However with the tip of the Civil Struggle at hand, all the pieces he had labored for was now at stake.
By late April 1865, with the Confederacy disintegrating, Jefferson Davis named Reagan, already postmaster common of the Confederacy, as appearing secretary of the treasury. By this level, the Accomplice authorities was on the run and most Accomplice navy models had surrendered. He could be answerable for a treasury of now-worthless Accomplice cash. Inside weeks, Reagan and Davis had been each captured by Union troops in Georgia, together with former Texas Gov. Francis R. Lubbock, now a navy aide to Davis, and despatched to Ft. Warren in Boston. There Reagan was stored in solitary confinement for 5 months, unsure of his destiny.
Whereas imprisoned, he learn many northern newspapers and their blistering assaults on the South within the wake of the Civil Struggle. Reagan wrote an open letter to the individuals of Texas urging cooperation with Reconstruction, warning that the enraged North would tolerate no resistance and would inflict even harsher penalties on the South if challenged. His letter provoked anger in a Texas humiliated by defeat. However the violence of Reconstruction, the navy response, and martial regulation throughout the state later proved he was proper. Reagan was later granted amnesty and returned to Texas in shame.
In 1874, after the chaos of Reconstruction had ended, he was elected to his previous seat in Congress. Whereas serving in Congress, Regan additionally served as a delegate for the brand new state constitutional conference. This conference produced the Texas Structure of 1876, which remains to be utilized by the state right now. No matter actions he had dedicated for the Confederacy had been shortly forgiven by his colleagues as soon as he returned to Congress. He was shortly named chairman of the brand new submit workplace committee after which turned chair of the influential Home Committee on Commerce after his 1876 re-election.
Whereas in Congress, Reagan turned his pursuits to the railroad business. More and more, farmers throughout the nation had been upset with railroad monopolies and unfair hauling charges. He started pushing for laws to control railroads however acquired robust pushback from the business. In 1887, the state legislature elected him to the U. S. Senate, and Reagan was in a position to push via the Interstate Commerce Act. This laws regulated railroad costs and practices and created the primary federal regulatory physique within the nation’s historical past.
Gov. Jim Hogg efficiently pushed via an analogous regulation in Texas in 1891, the Texas Railroad Fee. Hogg invited Reagan to function the primary chair of the fee. Now 73, Reagan stepped down from the Senate to return to Texas to serve on this place. Reagan would proceed to function chairman for the subsequent 12 years.
He maintained an energetic curiosity in historical past and the story of his personal position within the climactic occasions of the mid-nineteenth century. In 1897, he co-founded the Texas State Historic Affiliation. In 1903, he revealed his memoirs. The state legislature additionally honored him by naming Reagan County after him in West Texas, close to San Angelo. Later that very same yr, now aged 84, he retired from the railroad fee.
In March 1905, he contracted pneumonia and died at his house in Palestine at age 86. A number of faculties had been named after him within the years after his dying and a statue was erected to him on the College of Texas. The state even named an workplace constructing on the Capitol grounds after him. Nonetheless, his protection of slavery and the Confederacy has led many to re-evaluate many of those honors in recent times.
Ken Bridges is a author, historian and native Texan. He holds a doctorate from the College of North Texas. Bridges will be reached by electronic mail at drkenbridges@gmail.com.
