Hello, and welcome to the bookmark.

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today, my guest is Prosser Coke Newton, senior author of Richard Coke, Texas.

Thank you so much for being here today.

Thanks for having me back.

I would like to ask you to start by.

Can you just introduce the book to us generally?

Sure.

This is a book about Texas Governor Richard Coke, who came to Texas in 1850 and did some pretty incredible things for the state.

Starting when he was governor in 1874.

Now, people who are listening closely may notice a similarity in your names.

You have a personal connection to to the story.

We do.

He's a he's a great, great, great uncle.

And, and and, you know, we learned a lot about him growing up as kids, but there was never any central place where one could read about him.

And so, starting in about 1990, I became interested in writing this book.

And how.

So?

That's been a few years.

How did it evolve or where did you get serious about it, or how did it change over that course of time?

Well, in 1990, I was a law student at the University of Texas, and of course, the State Historical archives were there.

And so we had access to that to it.

My girlfriend at the time, who later became my wife, and I did a great outline of Richard Coke's life.

But like so many things when you're young, we did a great job at it and then went on to the next thing and we came back to it, around 2022.

And, and that's that's this book.

Wonderful, wonderful.

Why?

I mean, why did you want to be the one to to make to to write the book to to make the definitive history, I guess.

You know, I've asked myself that many times, there are so many talented, educated and wonderful people in our family.

I don't know why nobody did it before, but I had the time and the opportunity to do it.

Following Covid, and I did it with a great person, Carla Keenest, who who worked closely with us on this and, it all just came together very nicely.

I have I have had several authors say that to me.

As disruptive as the Covid time was.

I think we've gotten a lot of good books out of it, because people either had the time to write or they decided, I need to make this a real, a real possibility.

So I that's that's kind of been wonderful to see all the literature and all the all the research and all the things that got done when we had nothing else to distract us.

So true in this case.

That's true.

Well, I want to talk about the research a little bit, too, because you mentioned in the 90s being in Austin for state archives, but I'm sure you had to do much more research between now and then to, to flesh out the book.

The real gem of this book is the bibliography, which we hope is going to serve as a basis for future historians to do more work on this period.

I found that this is a very under-researched part of Texas history.

You know, the post-Civil War, era and so many important things happened during that period of time.

You know, that I'm, I'm confident that people will find use of the bibliography.

In terms of process, we deployed graduate students, to Baylor, Texas A&M, University of Texas, as well as the state Historical archives, and of course, with so many primary documents now having having been digitized.

We did a ton of work on the internet, in there, some, some, some subscriptions that we did, which also helped us a lot.

So there's a lot of new information about Coke in the book.

I want to, tease out something you just said there.

You mentioned that this is not a period that's been well researched.

I want to say, as a as a very armchair reader of history.

Especially doing the show.

This is not this.

That's a good example, because I haven't read a lot of this kind of reconstruction post-Civil War.

It seems like we get through the Civil War, and then we jump ahead to maybe the 50s or 60.

And, and so I think this is an important kind of, piece to add to our understanding of, of history generally, but especially here in Texas, is our local history, right?

No, I agree.

And, and, you know, there just wasn't a lot published about Coke before this.

There had been one very good book published about him and another governor.

But this is this is it.

And I would imagine that you mentioned primary sources.

And so, of course, I'm, you know, as, as a former governor and spoiler alert, also a senator later, there's a lot of, you know, public record, state and federal, probably papers about him, but you probably had access to some of his personal papers as a as a descendant of his.

We did, the, the unofficial historian of the United States.

Part of the family lives in Dallas.

Sheryl Coke and Sheryl had amassed tons of information over the past 20 years.

And I think some of the information she got actually also came from the from the family in England.

And so she was a great help.

And, you know, we had access to one of his niece's diaries, which was very instructive, particularly on the circumstances of his departure from Williamsburg, Virginia.

So it was it was it was it was good to do that.

Lots of primary sources.

That's wonderful.

You mentioned the bibliography, which I think goes to show that this is you.

You did your research.

This is a scholarly, you know, study.

But, one wrinkle in it to me would be, with the with something that has been passed down, maybe through your family sometimes their stories that maybe you can't always find the primary source or even a secondary source.

How do you go about untangling maybe family lore from from actual history?

Well, in this case, we couldn't on one subject, which was how Coke got from Williamsburg, Virginia to Waco, Texas.

And conventional story say that he took a steamer from Virginia around Florida and ended up in Galveston.

But there's also stories in the family that he rode his horse, 1400 miles.

So what we did is we just put both in the book.

But, you know, him seemed like that was the only proper thing.

Sure.

Yeah.

Full transparency.

You can choose your own adventure.

What do you think he did?

Well, let's, let's get into actually talking about, his life.

You mentioned Williamsburg, Virginia.

That's where he originally came from.

He talk about his because origin story, I guess the the family came from, from England in 1724 to Williamsburg.

John Coke was the first of the family to emigrate to the United States.

And, you know, and Richard had had a lot of siblings.

And he got into a lot of trouble in Williamsburg.

And one day his father came to him and said, look, I want you to take a really good horse from the stables and $3,000 and put it in a saddle bag and go, go away.

And so that's how his, his, his, his story began for Texas.

And he got he got to, he got to Galveston and was told that he should go to Waco because there was only one lawyer there, and they needed at least two, you know, old story, but Anyway, he got to Waco and really started his career as a lawyer in Texas.

There.

I want to I want to pause briefly on his trip into Texas, because there's kind of a little interesting anecdote there.

On his way before he got to Waco, he bumped into another amazing history, history figure, which is Sam Houston.

Sam Houston.

Yeah.

And, Sam Houston was in Congress at the time, as I recall, and, told him to go down and see former one of the former Texas governors, which he did.

And, and he's the one that sent him to Waco, which is such an intern.

We'll get to it.

But it's interesting because they would later kind of maybe bump up against each other.

So he settles in Waco.

He's a successful lawyer.

But this is also kind of the start of the 1860s.

This is a, as we all know, a very dynamic time in history.

And Texas chooses to see this is where him and Sam Houston, if they were in in correspondence at all, they would have butted heads because Sam Houston famously did not want Texas these two to go against the union.

He didn't.

And, Coke voted for secession.

At the secession convention and, you know, and Houston was defeated.

You know, tough.

That had to be a tough, personal, event for so many of the delegates there.

Yeah.

It's everybody had to make their own decision.

It was very difficult.

And a long time viewers would maybe remember we had a book called exiled about what happened to Houston after because he kind of was set adrift a little bit, because that's not the way the tide of the state and the South, was going.

So like many if not most young men of his time, he did fight in the Civil War.

Can you tell us about his time in the service?

He was in, Speight's brigade, and most of his time was spent in northern Louisiana and Arkansas.

They saw, action.

The big fight that they were in was Bio Lafourche, and, Coke was wounded.

Shot in the chest, as I recall.

And, and, and, but anyway, came back, went home, recovered, and came back to his men and, and then after the Civil War, he returned to their, farm south of Waco, right on the Brazos River.

You had mentioned he had a a large family.

I want to say it was like ten brothers.

It was a lot of a lot of.

And all of them survived the war, which is incredibly unusual.

Well, remember, Williamsburg was occupied very early in the war.

And so, you know, a lot of people, if you if you weren't already out in the deployed, you know, you were pretty much trapped.

But but they all survived.

There were I think there were six of them.

And, and it was a pretty much a miracle.

Yeah.

I mean, it's the odds on that have to be, have to be incredible.

So he, like you say he comes back to Waco.

What what does he do once he's back after the war?

Well, he, he, you know, he gets going with his legal practice again.

And, he was a very good lawyer.

And, you know, did everything from, high profile murder cases in one case, to where I think he made most of his, his his living was, dealing with land grants because you had Spanish land grants, Mexican land grants.

Republic of Texas land grants, United States land grants.

And somebody had to untangle that from a title standpoint.

So anyway, he did a lot of that.

He also got involved in politics.

He was elected to the Texas Supreme Court, after, you know, after the war and summarily removed by, but by the, the, the federal, you know, the federal reconstruction commissioner as an impediment to reconstruction.

And then, you know, in 1873, he was, he was nominated to be, you know, as a candidate for governor.

And, before we go into that, I do want to talk about there's kind of an opposing figure, in his life that you detail in the book.

Edmund Davis.

Can you tell us about about him?

Davis was a very interesting character.

He was, he was a Texan.

And married a, a propertied woman in South Texas.

He was a, federal official.

I don't know, Paso.

Before he came back, to Austin.

And he was Coke's nemesis.

The, there was no love lost between them.

You know, Davis was a brigadier general for the Union and in so many ways was like Sam Houston.

As a matter of fact, he was he was the, he was there when the Union forces in Texas surrendered on, on the United States naval ship off the coast of Texas.

So he was very much the opposite of of of what?

Of the path that Coke took.

Their lives intersected.

Pretty meaningfully.

When Coke was elected governor.

In a, you know, in the elections of 1873.

Yes, I want to before we talk about that, too, but I want to talk about, I want to ask about during this reconstruction period, someone like Davis was kind of installed, I guess because of the way the reconstruction work, there wasn't necessarily a full free election.

So he didn't have the full force of maybe the votes behind him.

But even amongst his own party, he wasn't the most popular figure.

So he didn't have broad support even among who would normally be his supporters, which I think makes for an interesting kind of figure.

It is interesting.

He his support when he was finally made governor, came from Washington.

And, and, and you know, his buddies from the, the union General Group supported him pretty strongly for, for governor and and that's how it happened.

You know, Texas after reconstruction was not so much of a democracy as it was a product of martial law.

And I mean, for example, when Davis was governor, he, he had militia in every county that he controlled, which gave him a lot of power.

So anyway, he, you know, he, he, he had a different view of democracy than a Coke did.

I can't imagine that would have made him very popular, knowing what I know about Texans and, our love for independence and, and not wanting to feel like someone, you know, in charge.

Well, I mean, like that.

I mean, I mean, imagine Travis at the Alamo and shooting a cannon ball when asked to surrender.

So I agree with you completely.

So, when Cooke decided to challenge him, why did he decided to run for governor?

Well, he was drafted by the Democratic Party.

And, and people thought that he was the person that could beat Davis.

You know, I don't think it was a terribly convenient time for him to do it.

You know, his personal life was pretty tragic.

He had children that died.

Early and late.

He died without issue.

But he did it.

He was a well known statewide candidate, having been elected to the Supreme Court.

And so, you know, he took up the banner and and and did it.

He, he won by about 2 to 1 in the voting because this was when more, the more democratic voting process was kind of reinstated.

Right.

Everybody got to vote.

Which led to that landslide.

Right.

But I mean the 2 to 1, a 2 to 1 win in the in the popular vote is pretty meaningful.

And of course, both houses of the legislature were elected Democrat.

And to support Coke's, you know, proposals.

This is where I would say one of the most interesting maybe pieces of the story comes into play.

He's elected overwhelmingly, as you say.

And he's preparing to take office as one does.

But, Davis didn't want to leave.

So this is where their big kind of showdown happens.

It is.

It's a it's a great piece of Texas history.

Coke and and the the Senate and the House marched up Congress Avenue one night and, and installed both houses of the legislature.

Meanwhile, Governor Davis is in his office telegraphing president Grant in Washington that the Southerners are rebelling.

And, you know, Grant, to his credit.

Didn't take didn't take the bait and told Davis that there would be no federal troops, no federal support for his governorship.

And so, Davis alighted out of the governor's office in the night in a carriage and went back to Pennsylvania.

I think that that says something about the the the overwhelming circumstances of, of the of the popular vote that even Grant would say, you gotta you have to let this be you have to abide by the will of the people in this case.

Well, it was an important moment.

I mean, it really was the restoration of democracy as we know it today back in Texas.

And I think each each state, each southern state has its own story.

About this moment.

But this is ours.

And thankfully no no blood was shed.

It, it, it was a little contentious and maybe a little tense but it, it ended peacefully and power was transferred.

Well both sides had armed people there at the statehouse and it could have gone very wrong.

But as you point out, it didn't.

And you know that's a, it's a, that's a, you know, that's one good thing about the transfer of power at that moment.

So what was his tenure as governor like.

What were some of his key things that he worked on or accomplished?

Well, and some parallels to today when cope took the, governorship.

The state was broke.

Couldn't couldn't sell a bond, and, was in need of money.

You know, he famously said that he wanted to institute pay, which you owe and pay as you go, which, you know, might have some interesting parallels in the United States today.

The other thing that he did that that reverberates today is they put in a new constitution, and it's the same constitution that we have today in Texas.

With a lot of amendments, naturally.

But, but, but it's basically the same constitution.

That codify, most of the democratic principles under which we live today.

We would be remiss sitting here on the Texas A&M campus, not to mention that he was governor when this university was founded.

Yes.

And I was over at the Coke Administration building recently.

There's a good portrait of him over there.

And there's a street named after him.

And we certainly we certainly are honoring him here on our campus.

He didn't, finish his term as governor, though, because he had another interesting potential job opportunity.

Can you talk about that?

Well, the he was nominated to be a United States senator, from Texas, and he took the job.

And it was a little controversial.

A lot of the newspaper criticized him for it, saying that, you know, they had endorsed him and that people had voted for him because they wanted him to serve out his full term.

But he went to Washington and he was there until the mid 1890s.

His nickname was Old Brains.

He was a smart guy and, and did some interesting things up there.

But you know, that that was that was what he did.

And then after he, he retired, he returned, to Texas and died shortly later.

Shortly thereafter.

You mentioned earlier that he he died without issue.

Can you talk about his family life?

He did have a very devoted wife.

I think the detail I remember reading is that she was buried with his letters to her when she passed, when he got to Waco.

One of the first things she saw was a woman getting out of a carriage named Mary Horn.

And he would later say that he knew he was going to marry her because she had great ankles.

And they did get married, and they had a number of children, and a plantation south of Waco on the Brazos.

It's all built over now, but, but she she suffered with poor health, as did their children.

So, you know, I think it was it was a difficult thing for him.

He was he was a pretty, pretty vibrant man.

However.

And and you know toughed out a lot of situations and did a lot of things for Texas.

So her you know, I do want to mention there was another fun anecdote that I really enjoyed in the book when he was senator.

He's for three terms.

And when he left, he left his lunch behind.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, he left in his locker in the Senate and, you know, and and the attendant, you know, did some things with it.

But yeah, that was his thing.

He, he would make a lunch and eat it in the Senate, which, you know, it's kind of interesting.

It's a humble thing.

A lot of humility in that.

And I mean, I can admire that.

So he, as you, as you say, then he comes back to Texas.

What did you do in his retirement.

Did he just kind of stay out of the public eye, or was he still involved in politics at all or he slowed down?

You know, I think his health was was declining.

And, you know, they stayed out the plantation, the, you know, you know, he worked pretty hard out there.

And ultimately, I think his final illness was, was a function of, you know, working at the plantation, when it was pouring down rain in the cold.

To try to save some some crops or what have you, but, but anyway, he, he died in Waco and, you know, he, he, he, he did a number of things to talk about his legacy.

There was, you know, his best friend, you know, took took some notes.

Those notes are nowhere to be found, by the way.

In their entirety.

We looked.

But, but but, you know, anyway, he he died and and was buried with full state honors.

Yes.

There was a as a former governor, he he got a a very large funeral.

It's just mentioned in the book.

Yeah.

So, we are running a little short on time here in our final three or so minutes.

What do you want people to take away from this, this book or this project?

You know, he's an interesting man.

That that, I think shows us that with a little education, some fairness and a commitment to democracy, people can make a difference.

And he certainly made a difference in Texas.

That's one thing.

And I think the other thing is that, you know, Texans don't need to be reminded this too often, but it's good to say it from time to time.

Freedom just doesn't come free.

And, I would say those are the two things that people should take away from this.

Well, I want to thank you so much for for coming and being here and for writing this book.

As, as we discussed, this is an area of Texas or a period of time where we don't we don't study, maybe in school or in our Texas history classes and and we should we should get the full history, the broad history, especially as a former governor.

We should we should know everything that we can about about his life and his legacy and what he's done so well.

Thank you for the nice words.

I yeah.

You're welcome.

I appreciate your, contributing to the canon.

And I also want to highlight, too, it's it's well, it's written in a way that doesn't feel like a, you know, boring history book.

It's like telling a story.

Which which certainly makes it much easier to digest.

And I would hope more people would pick it up for that reason.

Well, thank you, Carl and I worked hard to try to make it that way, and I'm grateful I and and I want to highlight again that bibliographies there.

When you finish this book you can dig in and learn so much more.

So, well, thank you so much for being here.

That is all the time we have for today.

The book again is called Richard Kolk Texan.

And thank you so much for joining us.