Texas Troubles
From Dixiepedia: The PC-Free Encyclopedia
In the summer of 1860, starting July 9th, 1860 in Dallas, a series of suspicious fires burned several towns and isolated houses in northern Texas and the San Antonio area:
Dallas (Peak's drug store), Black Jack Grove, Denton, Pilot Point, Ladonia, Belknap and Melford, Gainesville, Kaufman, Navarro, Waxahatchie, Eaken's, Georgetown, Bernet, Tyler, Brenham, Henderson, Tennessee Colony in Anderson County, Dangerfield, Athens, which were found in the counties of Henderson, Dallas, Ellis, Tarrant, and Denton, Anderson, Hempstead, Wood, Quitman, Lamar County, Bastrop, Titus and Caldwell.
The fires continued into August: Henderson, Texas was "almost completely burned" on the evening of August 5th.
Texas suffered a drought that summer, and conditions were dry.
The highest temperatures, however, that summer were in June. The highs in July were lower than the June extreme high temperatures. The extreme high tempreatures in August were cooler than those of July, so as the summer got cooler, the number of fires increased.
Some eyewitnesses reported seeing phosphorous matches spontaneously combust that summer (which is chemically possible). Some of the fires (e.g. Henderson), however, were started in the evenings, when temperatures were lower and humidity higher, which would undermine the spontaneous combustion theory. In addition, individuals were caught in the process of setting fires.
A Reverend Bewley, a Northern Methodist preacher, was apprehended in connection with the fires and lynched.
The rash of fires in the summer of 1860 caused a near-panic in Texas and throughout the South. The events were reported widely across the South as the Presidential election approached. Regardless of the real cause, coming as it did in the wake of John Brown's attempted insurrection at Harper's Ferry the previous autumn, and Republican efforts to protect Harper's Ferry men from prosecution, Abolitionist conspiracies were blamed for the fires. Politicians across the South asked whether this was a glimpse of the future under a Republican administration. See Yancey's speech in Washington in September 1860, Robert Toombs's Speech to the Georgia Legislature November 13, 1860, and the speech of Tennessee Governor Isham Harris January 7th, 1861. See also, the secession declarations of Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas.
