Andrew Jackson Hamilton (1815-1875), governor of Texas, was born in Huntsville, Alabama, on January 28, 1815. He moved to Texas in 1846 and practiced law in La Grange before moving to and settling in Austin. He married Mary Bowen, also of Alabama. Governor Peter H. Bell of Texas appointed Hamilton acting attorney general in 1849. From 1851 to 1853, Hamilton represented Travis County in the state House of Representatives. In 1859, Hamilton was voted into the United States House of Representatives. After returning to Texas in 1861, he won a special election to the state Senate.
Hamilton was appointed military governor of Texas by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 and provisional governor by Andrew Johnson in 1865, a position he held for one year. He was a proponent of black suffrage and assisted in the organization of the Southern Loyalists' Convention in Philadelphia in 1866. For a short while, Hamilton moved to New Orleans and worked as a bankruptcy judge, but in 1867 he returned to Texas as an associate justice on the state Supreme Court. After proving to be a prominent figure in the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1868–1869, as well as serving on the Republican National Executive Committee, Hamilton changed his views and began to oppose the plan to turn West Texas into a separate, Unionist state and withdrew his support for black suffrage. Because of this viewpoint change, Hamilton became one of the state's leading moderate Republicans and ran (though unsuccessfully) against radical Edmund J. Davis in the 1869 governor's race. Hamilton never sought public office again after losing this election. He died of tuberculosis on April 11, 1875, and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Austin.
Source:
Correspondence, speeches, legal records, scrapbook, a proclamation, and a commission comprise the Andrew Jackson Hamilton Papers, 1847-1913, which document Hamilton’s political and legal career in Texas. The papers include speeches given by Hamilton in his position as a state Representative, as a state Senator, and as military and provisional governor. Additionally, the papers relate to secession, Reconstruction, and black suffrage. Due to the fragility of the originals, transcripts of the correspondence and speeches are provided for patron use.
The collection is open for research.
Due to the fragility of the originals, transcripts of the correspondence and speeches are provided for patron use.
Andrew Jackson Hamilton Papers, 1847-1913, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
This collection processed by Frances Rodgers, March 1975, Angela Olivera, May 1986.
Basic processing and cataloging of this collection was supported with funds from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for the Briscoe Center’s