Hello and welcome to the Bookmark.

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today my guest is John Adams, author of "The Old Alcalde: The Life and Times of a Texas Fire-Eater, Oran Milo Roberts".

John, thank you so much for coming back.

Good to be your first appearance.

Absolutely great to be here again.

Always happy to have you talk about some history.

Today, this is maybe a lesser known person or story.

So can you introduce this book to us?

Well, yes and no.

He was a, juror, jurist.

He was with Supreme Court and was a Texas governor and served, and was active during the late 1800s.

And, of course, was a controversial figure in his own right.

Given a civil war.

Yet he was a leader in education and other things.

That makes it quite a contradiction in a man who, Well, so he was a product of his time and so states rights and trying to understand how Texas should go forward.

He got in the middle of all that.

But he's comes out of it.

And like I say, he was ends up being governor and becomes a very pivotal person in higher education in the state.

But I want to define a term in the title that maybe people haven't heard or aren't familiar with.

What is a fire eater?

Fire eater?

Where were those?

Southerners who were, in a way, radicals for the cause of the South for states rights?

They obviously, were behind the institution of slavery as far as an economic standpoint.

And the fire eater group were those who were, I guess, a little more vocal radical.

And also in his case, he was out front as one of the major leaders of the cause in the state of Texas and led that towards succession by 1861.

So how as I mentioned, you've written a lot of history books.

You've done kind of a lot of local history, Texas A&M history, but all over the state.

What brought you to this story?

What interested you in this person?

Well, I'd previously done two books, one on Saul Ross at A&M, and this is in the same period.

They were contemporaries.

And then, oddly enough, Edward Blackshear, who was one of the leading educators at Prairie View.

Well, the older Colby, Roberts keeps cropping up.

You know, I don't think much about it.

And then as I'm moving forward, I, I'm in I'm in Austin, I'm going through the records at the, at at the center for American History and I'm asking and I said, you have a book on this.

You have any information?

No, we have a couple of dissertations.

So I said, well, let's pull me a couple of boxes of stuff.

And it's just fascinating stuff.

The man, his life is, he is, ahead of his time.

I mean, he immigrates to Texas in the early 1840s.

He's he's less than a half of 1% who attends college, goes to University of Alabama, gets a law degree, and and he has family.

And it's not real clear in Texas that were part of 1840.

So he just loads up and moves to San Augustine, Texas.

And it's funny, when he gets there, everything is still in flux with The New Republic and Texas and everything.

Well, they make him retake all the law exams, the schooling and everything.

Plus he had to be a level of bilingual because of all the Spanish documents and everything, riparian water rights.

And he dove in and, quickly passed all the test.

And the one of the most interesting little sidelights is he's here he is a new attorney.

He's over there and he's probably a little gregarious and outgoing and bumps into this guy in town named Sam Houston.

And Sam Houston is going through there, and he's got some legal problems with some property.

So this young kid becomes Sam Houston's attorney.

Not for long, but he has claim to fame, was he?

He knew Sam and worked with Sam.

And all the way through the early 60s, 1860s.

Sure.

So for such an important figure in his own time, as you mentioned, he he was here pre statehood and then during the Civil War.

And then of course, you know, he he was involved in governor, he was chief justice.

He did all these things that made him known.

Well, certainly well known in his time.

Why do you think there was no why did nobody if they're writing dissertations, why are there no books?

Why?

Well, he's a controversial figure, and I don't know, whether people felt that maybe this was too sensitive to handle or to to deal with.

There surely other books on file readers in all the states across the South.

There legend I mentioned a number of them in there.

He was no, by no means.

The the biggest radical in his neighborhood and why it's been left.

And he's a governor.

We've got we've got histories on Rawls and Throckmorton and Hogg and Culberson and our governors.

And we have these histories.

And this was a this was a gap.

There were 2 or 3 dissertations that cursory touched on the subject.

Then they did a good job.

But the records when I found them I thought, oh there'll be a box or two.

No, there's a just a treasure trove of fabulous documents, his diaries, personal papers, and of course, that one of the rather real treasure troves in Texas, if you can find him while the old newspapers and the newspapers, that was the media, that was it.

Everything.

There was no, no other media.

And the papers are passed around and all of a sudden he's appearing in the papers and of course, he becomes a local, da and county judge and, and then appointed to the Texas Supreme Court and they reported the cases out to circulate, circulate them rapidly in the newspapers.

More than just a title, but they would print out most of the finding in the case in the papers.

So you, you know, when they're in session, it's hard not to find him mentioned as the chief justice are as just one of the members.

And so it was fascinating to me at the level of information that there was.

But I will say there is no question he's a controversial figure at that moment in time.

I mean, and but remember, he's a product of his period, clearly things and, and positions he took would be totally against any most of the things we would think today.

But, you know, he he is a leader.

The other thing he lives a long time.

He lives from the he's in Texas from the, the 40s all the way to the late 1890s.

So he knows works with friends and enemy with every major player in Texas history in the late 18, late late 18 hours.

That's an item that really makes him intriguing very quickly.

You sure he was witness to or a part of?

No.

Course of major events.

At the end of the century.

Second half of that century.

Right.

Which is fascinating.

I imagine this must have been very fun to research when there's not a lot, maybe publicly, out there, to dig through those archives to find finding his diaries, find it.

That must have been so.

Well, it is.

And that come across saying there's Doctor Aaron Burr, who's, he, there's a number of people have done articles and stuff that were out there and there, all these great little pieces, and then you start finding them.

And, for instance, his lore when he, he was he technically saw is the first employee of the university of Texas.

He hires himself is what he does.

He says, I want to be the first teacher of the law school.

Well, there are no books.

And so he writes out all his his case studies and his course in these journals, and they're all in Austin.

So someone else has got a great book over there, some legal scholar who wants to look at what the late 1800 legal situation was.

And of course, once you start reading them, they're just fascinating.

And there's notes about the class and and he made the he made the students copy them.

He'd leave them, they'd copy them.

So those copies went out and he was basically, you know, this is the first major law school in the state that's training all the attorneys.

Well, let's, let's talk about his life a little more in detail, I guess.

You mentioned he was not from of course, not from Texas in the beginning.

Talk about his early life and where he came from.

He was born in northern Alabama and, a modest means his family, he, he no one else, the children went to school.

They all they they were big on education.

And somehow he found his way around.

He had he had gone ahead and taken secondary school, did some prep school.

A brother sponsored him to pay for him to go to University of Alabama.

He all tried a year or they stayed two years, three years.

And he will he will stay to graduate.

It's financially tough.

He, goes back home.

Not sure what he wants to do at that time.

The law practice was done by sitting and studying with an existing attorney, and you would either go to the courts with them or you go to their office and read law.

And basically it was, homeschool law course is basically what it is.

And they only you could take you six months or six years do where they felt you were ready.

And then a group of, the senior attorneys in the town or the state, I guess, would sit and quiz you.

And if you if you passed all the test, you became an attorney.

Well, he he did that and he went back to a little town in northern Alabama.

And just about starved to death wasn't done.

Then he did something as crazy.

He ran for the legislature and he's he's probably in his mid 20s.

He said it was the worst time of his life because he has no seniority.

He never speaks on the floor of the Alabama, Senate or House.

He never has for two.

And he says, God, what is all this about?

And then be either because of economic conditions or I think he's got friends that have preceded him to Texas.

The magnet, the story of the magnet of Texas, the guy who's gone to Texas and there's books on it and Chronicles is just incredible.

He didn't go over to Mississippi or go over to stop in Louisiana or go north.

They go, we want to go to Texas.

And the magnetism of that is just fascinating subject to me and loads up, 2 or 3 wagons.

His family, everything they own has trouble getting across the Sabine River.

Gets in there.

The biggest, the biggest.

The largest town in Texas at that time was Galveston.

There was no Houston.

There was no Austin.

There were 12 people living in Dallas but San Augustine and that caduceus, or the largest communities in East Texas, very active.

They were trade centers.

And of course, a lot of the practicing people and doctors and attorneys, they it was a good place to camp out to grow.

So he ends up there an interesting story is he ends up next door to Rip Ford, the famous Texas Ranger.

RIP Ford had gone to medical school and down the road from him, down the block from him, hung on a shingle to be a medical doctor.

I didn't know report was a medical doctor because he later on he goes on to be a Texas Ranger.

And you know, his history is written about the West and the frontier and and all of that.

So again, he is around some of the wildest bunch of characters, you know, in the state of Texas never, never goes West.

I don't think he ever got across the high 35 or 45.

You know, they didn't have that then.

But the fact of the matter is, that was their world was East Texas.

They had dropped Austin, but Austin was on the edge of the frontier, and it was only active and busy when they were in session.

And really, I don't believe he had he did not go to Austin until probably in his 30s, which I thought was amazing because again, all their life was around East Texas.

He used to begin to grow in Waco.

So that's the trading center of of the activity.

That's that's going on very different make of, I don't know, quite hard to imagine.

I think it's interesting that I love in a biography like this, when you can see kind of those seeds of what they're going to become later.

His early interest in politics, his devotion to the law, you know, it bears out much later in his life.

And I like when you have that that connection from youth to when he's an elder statesman.

Yeah.

It's he's you know, he it's kind of glib.

He did once he realized he wanted to be an attorney, a lawyer, you know.

You hear that?

Oh, well, I'm going to grow up, be a doctor, attorney, whatever.

But he did.

And and it wasn't like he word on his sleeve, but he was going down that path.

He must really want it.

Because when he arrived in Saint Augustine, they did not honor his license for Alabama.

So he had that restudy reset with 2 or 3.

Attorneys, had to learn Spanish, had to learn riparian water rights, had to learn, all the documents obviously being transferred from Mexico to Texas and that, you know, he had an entire business just trying to sort through.

And all our early culture had the same thing.

When he got to go, Sam Houston told Coke, Richard Coke, when the University of Virginia made Sam Houston Sun go down to go to the boat, get off in Galveston, buy a horse, a saddle and a gun and go up the river.

Do you get to Waco?

They don't need attorney because they get so fouled up with all these land rights.

Well, the coke becomes a good close friend with, with, Orrin Roberts.

All these guys are all crossing paths with each other.

It's a very he thought about them.

I've got to tell one of the most wild and most, unbelievable story is it's about 50 years old when the war starts.

The Civil war.

He's eager.

They want to get involved.

He had kind of avoided it, but he ends up a listing, becomes a major colonel.

And they put him over on Sabine River in Louisiana.

He's kind of on guard duty or whatever.

Well, the Union Army is come up the river, up the Sabine River, and they're coming up to try to, you know, capture parts of Texas and Louisiana.

Well, he's called up the commander of the unit, got sick and left or something.

And the general on General Green says, all right, Robert, you're now Colonel.

You're in command of this.

Go over there and stop these guys.

Well, when he goes over there, he moves his unit all night.

They march all night.

When he gets there, he's got three units.

He's.

And he's in command of.

And this is where it's just a fabulous story.

On his left is a young captain of a company named Richard Coke.

On his right.

Who?

Both of them want to be captains.

Or was Hubbard.

So within 400 yards of each other, you have three governors of the state of Texas on that moment in that time on the battlefield.

That's fascinating.

And Coke was a big man.

He was six, 3 or 4 big heavyset guy.

Just a real gregarious guy.

He is hit in the chest.

The mini ball is apparently fairly well spent.

It did go in.

It did not do major damage, but it knocked him out on the road.

So Coke, the future governor, lay on the road over there.

Roberts hands the horse shot out from under him and he keeps gets up and keeps moving.

And Hubbard, the future governor, they move up and they're basically they're able to push push the Yankees back.

And it's a stalemate.

And they push him and all that.

And this is an article I found buried, you know, about this little engagement.

And then he, his son gets, extremely ill, diphtheria.

I believe.

And so he tries to get him back home to Saint Augustine.

So he takes his home back, and and he ends up taking medical leave.

And I do want to rewind just a little bit, because when the secessionist movement is happening, they and they call the convention, he was a major player in that political moment.

Yes.

And and what's interesting about that, he's sitting on the Supreme Court and, he wants to join and go do something, and they tell him, no, you're going to be the conscience of this.

We need somebody to, from the legal standpoint, orchestrate this on how we're going to do it.

One of their biggest concerns was how to deal with Sam Houston.

Sam Houston did not want to succeed from the union.

He said, guys, we've already done this.

I'm too old to have another fight.

And listen, if you want to do this, why don't we just reform the Republic of Texas?

If you want to get out and do something, we can have all the things we want.

Well, there is a group that Roberts gets drawn into.

Other fire eater type people, and it's a small opinions group who capture the political opinion.

Roberts helps draft the documents, and they try to figure out whatever legal means to succeed from the union, and they draft things up that they believe.

Well, this will justify what we're doing.

And so he he literally is the scribe for the the succession convention, runs the, the, agenda.

And he's the one who encourages Sam Houston to come in the last day in March of 61 to explain to him that this is what's going to happen.

Sam does show up.

He's introduced.

They have due respect, but they say, this is over.

We're going to succeed.

And Sam goes, Will, I'm going home.

And Sam went home to San Jacinto, was kind of exiled and and he was.

And he was honored but but clearly exiled at that point.

And, you know, Texas was ready to bust out.

I mean, the the growth, the immigration, in Texas was in a very strong position to, to do real well.

If they had gone back to the Republic of Texas.

And so, that was a to a touchy thing.

I always wondered about that.

One thing I mentioned to you is he was very involved in education, that we're going to talk about that.

Well, let me go ahead and say something about it.

Go ahead.

You know, he's he's he's a succession convention.

He's he's in the war.

He's obviously he's he has to file for, clemency after the war and everything comes back, literally goes back to East Texas out of the war and a school.

And then hooker croquis practice law ends up becoming governor.

But one of the most fascinating things is after he becomes governor, he really is a proponent of higher education, public higher education.

And one of the schools that he helped finds.

And he is the he is the father of it is Sam Houston or Huntsville.

And I'm thinking, here he is.

He goes over, here's a man that Sam Houston is gone.

Sam Houston passed away in 1862 or 3.

He he is the public's he is the primary speaker for the dedication of Sam Houston University College or normal School or whatever it was called then.

And and of course, he was extremely, deferential and polite and everything, but, you know, the, the, the inner and the intertwining of all these people is just incredible.

Yeah.

That that relationship between, you know, he gives them a job, he recommends them and then they can.

That was really fascinating to me to watch how how he navigates that, being on his side, being on the opposition and and then honoring him in the end.

It was an interesting thread of history.

It is.

And they're all they're all all these folks are in this is happening friends and enemies throughout life with a level of due respect, you know, to a degree, I guess.

I mean, I mean, the, the Ross family did not want to succeed.

Ross's dad, Shapley Ross, had just gotten back in a factor.

This all started in late 1860, early 1861.

He had just returned to the frontier.

Comes in the house coated with mud.

Mother sends him, go get cleaned up, come back for dinner.

He comes back to dinner and there is Sam Houston with the local attorney, Richard Coke, and his dad, Shapley.

Shapley Ross and Sam is there.

He's on a kind of a tour to gauge how the people feel, and the people are just split, and Shapley them says, no, wait, you know, we want to represent Texas, but we don't need to do this.

And it was it was pretty confrontational.

It was kind of an ugly scene.

But he ran into this 2 or 3 places where he spoke and realized that, you know, there were enough people that were willing to rabble rousers to do this.

And then the election was held a little bit later and happened.

But the fact that here again, here they are on New Year's Eve in Waco having dinner, this group of people and, you know, and, they take care of him, they make sure he's protected.

Apparently, 2000 people showed up the next day at the courthouse to hear Sam Houston speak.

You know, and I hear you've got Soul Roth witnessing this and Richard Coke.

And, you know, all these future leaders are there watching how this guy handles this.

And, of course, no one really will mess with Sam Houston, regardless of whether you're for him or against me.

We're dealing with Sam Houston.

Exactly.

Period.

Exactly.

I do want to make sure we talked a little bit about his governorship, but I want to expand on his commitment to education because he did a lot of things as governor.

He was very concerned about the budget and cutting costs, but also he wanted to expand education.

He just wanted to be smart about how they paid for it.

We might be sitting here later because one of the next papers or books I'm going to do is this man is the godfather, father, whatever of higher education in the state of Texas.

Like I told you about the Sam Houston story, that school is done.

He gets it all organized.

It's opened.

Then purview.

Down the road, it begins to have problems there.

Here's an incredible, interesting fact.

Here's Prairie View, the first African-American school in in, Texas, the largest school west of the Mississippi River.

They've got major problems when they open in 78, 79, trying to get things going and everything.

And he could of, as governor said, fine, close it down.

I mean, there's a state's rights guy.

Here's a radical guy.

He is.

No, absolutely no.

It says it's in the Constitution.

We're going to figure out how to do it.

The letters alone that he's writing between minor Lawrence Minor, the principal or president of Prairie View and himself are just fascinating.

So he says fund it, figure it out.

Then, a year and a half later, A&M has a complete meltdown.

In 1879, there's a fight over who will be the cadet corps commander.

Basically, it's an internal political squabble between eight members of the faculty and they split, with Garth Wright being the fifth vote.

Do not elect this kid the senior student.

And so they're they're against, Garth Wright primarily.

And so there's a major fight.

Students are almost walk out.

Parents are upset.

It's a real mess.

Well, Roberts is the chairman of the board.

As governor of the Texas A&M, the A&M College of Texas.

So he comes over here and they have a massive 4 or 5 day hearing.

And Brian and late November and on December 1st, he thanks them all.

And fires the entire faculty.

He is already set up to hire, Colonel James at the Texas Military Academy and all their people, and they come over.

So here he goes.

He has restructured A&M.

So that's the third school, Huntsville, Prairie View A&M.

Then as governor, he's really irritated because they've drug their feet opening the University of Texas.

Enough is enough.

He personally goes up there the whole 40 acres and helps stake it out.

He knows about the oak trees.

He drives a stake in the ground and tells them where are they going to put the the original main building.

He's bird dog in this all the time.

Finally, they're telling him we don't have money.

He goes, no, we'll find the money.

So the another incredible twist of the story.

So here's the governor.

He goes to the head, the Senate Finance Committee.

This is 1881, 1882.

Well, guess who the head of the Senate Finance Committee is?

None other than Lawrence Southern Senator Lawrence Sullivan Ross.

So Ross comes up with $180,000 to put in the kitty to hold so he can get the bill through in 82.

And then the university opens in September of 1883.

A fascinating another little twist to the story is, they hadn't heard anybody yet.

They're trying to figure out what to do.

They've got a board and that's fine.

And he said, we're going to have law school.

So he's governor.

He waits the election and he writes a memo to himself, I'm going to hire me to be the first, first of the first, teacher of the law law school teacher.

And I'm going to pay myself.

I'm making, I think, $2,500.

Now I'm going to pay myself $2,500, and I'm hired and signs his own, his own application.

And then he hires one of his friends for the other one and then hires the rest of people.

But basically, technically, he's kind of the first employee of the University of Texas.

It's a fascinating story.

Unfortunately, we are running a little short on time here.

So in our final minute, what would you hope people take away from this book?

Well, it's a fascinating story of a person who clearly was at a, a critical time in the state of Texas.

One little tidbit he will also help find the Texas State Historical Association, be it present and make major presentations.

So you have a person that is is clearly a very, dynamic person.

But, did you know, in spite of what, you know, the, the, the the times didn't make major contributions to the state of Texas?

Well, thank you so much for being here.

I also want to thank you.

Just writing this book.

I think, as you say, this is a controversial story and there's some controversial pieces, but we need to we need to have all of our history documented.

Yeah.

And it's all out there.

So we've got sons and we have we have it scratched the surface yet.

Well, in part two coming soon I hope.

Part two, thank you so much for being here.

That book again is called The Old El Kaldi.

It's all the time we have for today, so I will see you again soon.