Capt. (CSA), Richard Coke, Governor, U.S. Senator

COKE, RICHARD (1829–1897)

Richard Coke, Texas governor and United States senator, son of John and Eliza (Hankins) Coke, was born near Williamsburg, Virginia, in March 1829. He entered William and Mary College in 1843 and in July 1848 was awarded a diploma in civil law. In 1850 he moved to Waco, then only a shantytown on the Texas frontier, where he soon earned a reputation as an able lawyer in both civil and criminal cases. In 1852 he married Mary Evans Horne of Waco, who was only fifteen years old. They had two daughters who died in infancy, and two sons, both of whom died before the age of thirty.

In 1859 Coke was appointed by Gov. Hardin R. Runnels to a commission that decided that Comanche Indians on the Brazos Indian Reservation should be removed from Texas. In 1861 Coke was a delegate to the Secession Convention in Austin and voted for secession. The next year he raised a company that became part of Joseph W. Speight's Fifteenth Texas Infantry and, as captain, served throughout the Civil War, except for a sixty-day leave in 1864. He was wounded at Bayou Bourbeau (Muddy Creek), near Opelousas, Louisiana, on November 3, 1863. In September 1865 he was appointed judge of the Nineteenth Judicial District by Gov. A. J. Hamilton, who valued Coke's integrity in spite of their political differences. Coke was elected associate justice of the state Supreme Court in 1866 but was removed a year later by Philip Henry Sheridan, the military commander. Coke won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1873 and, in a bitter and sometimes violent election, defeated Governor Edmund J. Davis, the Republican candidate, by a vote of 85,549 to 42,663. He took office in January 1874 in spite of Davis's resistance and an attempt of the Texas Supreme Court to nullify the election by its decision in the case Ex parte Rodríguez.

Governor Coke tried to restore financial order by cutting expenditures for public printing and the state asylums, but the cost of securing the safety of the Mexican border and combatting Comanche and Kiowa Indians on the western frontier offset such reductions. On one occasion he ignored threats of physical violence when he vetoed a popular bill for a subsidy to the International-Great Northern Railroad. The new governor was burdened with job applications, pleas for pardons, and requests for six-gun permits and for reward money to aid in the capture of criminals. Under the Constitution of 1876, adopted during his term, Coke served on a three-member board that supervised a new, decentralized system of public education. Vocational education benefited from the opening of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University), at which Coke made an eloquent speech. He was reelected governor by a ratio of three to one over William Morton Chambers, the Republican candidate. He was elected to the United States Senate in May 1876 and resigned the governorship in December. He began his first term as senator on March 4, 1877, replacing Morgan C. Hamilton.

Coke was generally regarded as an able and well-informed member of the Senate. "Old Brains," as his admirers called him, supported the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 and the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. On grounds of unconstitutionality and extravagance, he opposed the Blair Bill for federal aid to the common schools. He also opposed the protective tariff, the suspension of silver coinage, and the Force Bill, which would have provided federal protection for voters and elections threatened by intimidation and violence. Meanwhile, Coke continued his involvement in Texas politics. He spoke as a strong opponent of prohibition throughout the state. In 1892 he traveled home to support the reelection of Gov. James S. Hogg over George Clark of Waco, Coke's former friend and campaign manager. Coke was reelected to the Senate in January 1883 and again in January 1889, both times by unanimous vote in the legislature. In 1894 he announced that he would not seek another term.

Grave of Richard Coke

In the spring of 1897 he suffered from exposure while caring for his flooded Brazos valley farm and was ill for three weeks. He died at his home in Waco on May 14. After a state funeral, he was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Waco. Information about Coke's religion is scanty; he was probably raised as an Episcopalian but in later years attended the Baptist Church. A white-bearded, hulking figure who towered six feet, three inches and weighed 240 pounds, Coke was a commanding presence. It is said that on the political platform he could bellow "like a prairie bull." His Senate speeches, while often ponderous, were factual, well-organized, and persuasive. He is considered one of the important leaders in Texas in the late nineteenth century.

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/coke-richard

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• Sources
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Coke
  • https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/C000601

Richard Coke (March 13, 1829 – May 14, 1897) was an American lawyer, farmer, and statesman from Waco, Texas. He was the 15th governor of Texas from 1874 to 1876 and represented Texas in the U.S. Senate from 1877 to 1895. His uncle was Congressman Richard Coke, Jr..

Coke was born in Williamsburg, Virginia, to John and Eliza (Hankins) Coke. He graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1848 with a law degree. In 1850, he moved to Texas and opened a law practice in Waco. In 1852, he married Mary Horne of Waco. The couple would have four children, but all of them died before age 30.

Coke was a delegate to the Secession Convention at Austin in 1861. He joined the Confederate Army as a private. In 1862 he raised a company that became part of the 15th Texas Infantry, and served as its Captain for the rest of the war. He was wounded in an action known as Bayou Bourbeau on November 3, 1863, near Opelousas, Louisiana. After the war, he returned home to Waco.

In 1865, he was appointed a Texas District Court judge, and then in 1866 he was elected as an associate justice to the Texas Supreme Court. The following year the military governor, General Philip Sheridan, fired Coke and four other judges as ‘an impediment to reconstruction’, in pursuit of unionist Reconstruction policies. The firing of the five judges became a cause celebre and made their names famous, synonymous in the public eye with resistance to Union occupation.

No one benefited more from prevailing public sentiment than Richard Coke, who in 1873 leveraged resentment at Union occupation to construct a Democratic electoral coalition that ruled Texas for more than 100 years. Having been fired by military governor Phillip Sheridan, Coke ran for Governor as a Democrat in 1873 and took office in January 1874. The Texas Supreme Court - forever after known as the "Semicolon" court thanks to this case - ruled his election invalid in an extraordinary habeas corpus writ styled Ex Parte Rodriguez. As recounted by the Texas State Historical Association, in response, "Disregarding the court ruling, the Democrats secured the keys to the second floor of the Capitol and took possession. [incumbent Gov. Edmund] Davis was reported to have state troops stationed on the lower floor. The Travis Rifles (a Texas military unit created to fight Indians), summoned to protect Davis, were converted into a sheriff's posse and protected Coke. On January 15, 1874, Coke was inaugurated as governor. On January 16, Davis arranged for a truce, but he made one final appeal for federal intervention. A telegram from President Ulysses S. Grant said that he did not feel warranted in sending federal troops to keep Davis in office. Davis resigned his office on January 19. Coke's inauguration restored Democratic control in Texas."

Coke's administration was marked by vigorous action to balance the budget and by a revised state constitution adopted in 1876. He was also instrumental in creating the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, which became Texas A&M University. Having once been fired from the Texas Supreme Court, as Governor he appointed all its members, naming as Chief Justice Oran Roberts (after the US Senate had refused to seat him). George F. Moore, who was Chief Justice when he'd been fired along with Coke, became the first Chief Justice elected under Texas' 1876 Constitution, an honor he held until his death. Others from the Texas judiciary under the Confederacy received key appointments.

Once the new Constitution had been negotiated, Coke resigned his office in December 1876 following his election to the United States Senate. He would be reelected to federal office in 1882 and 1888, serving in the 45th - 53rd Congresses until March 4, 1895. Coke was not a candidate for reelection in 1894.

He retired to his home in Waco and his nearby farm. He became ill after suffering exposure while fighting a flood of the Brazos River in April 1897. After a short illness, he died at his home in Waco and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery. Coke County in West Texas is named in his honor. Find A Grave MEMORIAL ID 6798738