The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 30, July 1926 - April, 1927 Page: 165
330 p. : maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Greenback Party in Texas
of the elections, however, revealed the true state of the party. Its
candidate, General B. F. Butler, polled but 175,370 votes, or
about 57 per cent of the total polled by Weaver four years before.
In no subsequent campaign was the Greenback party represented;
hence we must conclude that, in so far as presidential elections
are concerned, the party was at the peak of its power in 1880, and
that shortly thereafter a period of decline set in from which it
never recovered.
In the meantime, the party had busied itself in local elections,
and had met with a fair degree of success in some states. In
1877, the Illinois Senate elected an independent candidate, Hon.
David Davis, to the United States Senate, and in the following
year some fifteen Greenback candidates were elected from several
states to the House of Representatives. A few of these were re-
elected in 1880, although the party's representation in Congress
after the elections of that year was considerably weaker numerically
than it had been two years before. In fact, it became apparent to
experienced observers as early as 1878 that the Greenback cause
was even then enjoying its period of greatest strength, and that it
was soon to experience a disintegration and a loss in power which
were destined to mark the end of the party. The beginning of the
end was seen by 1880, and by the middle eighties Greenbackism
as a movement nation-wide in importance had gone the way of
all third party movements.3
The Greenback movement, just as had the Granger movement
some years before, reached Texas several years after the establish-
ment of the party as a national organization. The agents of
Pomeroy (the national organizer of local units) were active in
the organization of Greenback clubs as early as 1876, and the
first state convention of the party was held at Austin in March,
1878.4 A second convention which met at Waco in August of the
same year nominated candidates for state officers, and the party
was able to present a fairly united front in the elections of 1878.
It is not until the first of the year 1878 that definite information
concerning the Greenback party in Texas is available. At that
time, leaders of the State Grange made complaint repeatedly that
A brief history of Greenbackism as a national issue and of the party
which supported it may be found in Solon J. Buck's The Agrarian Crusade
(New Haven, 1920), Chapter VI.
'The Texas Capital (Austin), March 17, 1878.165
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 30, July 1926 - April, 1927, periodical, 1927; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117142/m1/185/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.