Richard Coke
1829 - 1897
Richard Coke, Texas governor and United States senator, son of John
and Eliza (Hankins) Coke, was born near Williamsburg, Virginia, on March 13,
1829. He entered William and Mary College in 1843 and in July 1848 was awarded a
diploma in civil law. In 1850 he moved to Waco, then only a shantytown on the
Texas frontier, where he soon earned a reputation as an able lawyer in both
civil and criminal cases. In 1852 he married Mary Evans Horne of Waco, who was
only fifteen years old. They had two daughters who died in infancy, and two
sons, both of whom died before the age of thirty.
In 1859 Coke was appointed by Gov. Hardin R. Runnels to a commission
that decided that Comanche Indians on the Brazos Indian Reservation should be
removed from Texas. In 1861 Coke was a delegate to the Secession Convention in
Austin and voted for secession. The next year he raised a company that became
part of Joseph W. Speight's Fifteenth Texas Infantry and, as captain, served
throughout the War for Southern Independence, except for a sixty-day leave in 1864. He was wounded
at Bayou Bourbeau (Muddy Creek), near Opelousas, Louisiana, on November 3, 1863.
In September 1865 he was appointed judge of the Nineteenth Judicial District by
Gov. A. J. Hamilton, who valued Coke's integrity in spite of their political
differences. Coke was elected associate justice of the state Supreme Court in
1866 but was removed a year later by Philip Henry Sheridan, the military
commander. Coke won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1873 and, in a
bitter and sometimes violent election, defeated Governor Edmund J. Davis, the
Republican candidate, by a vote of 85,549 to 42,663. He took office in January
1874 in spite of Davis's resistance and an attempt of the Texas Supreme Court to
nullify the election by its decision in the case Ex parte Rodríguez.
Governor Coke tried to restore financial order by cutting expenditures for
public printing and the state asylums, but the cost of securing the safety of
the Mexican border and combating Comanche and Kiowa Indians on the western
frontier offset such reductions. On one occasion he ignored threats of physical
violence when he vetoed a popular bill for a subsidy to the International-Great
Northern Railroad. The new governor was burdened with job applications, pleas
for pardons, and requests for six-gun permits and for reward money to aid in the
capture of criminals. Under the Constitution of 1876,qv
adopted during his term, Coke served on a three-member board that supervised a
new, decentralized system of public education. Vocational education benefited
from the opening of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas
A&M University), at which Coke made an eloquent speech. He was reelected
governor by a ratio of three to one over William Morton Chambers, the Republican
candidate. He was elected to the United States Senate in May 1876 and resigned
the governorship in December. He began his first term as senator on March 4,
1877, replacing Morgan C. Hamilton.
Coke was generally regarded as an able and well-informed member of the
Senate. "Old Brains," as his admirers called him, supported the
Bland-Allison Act of 1878 and the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. On grounds of
unconstitutionality and extravagance, he opposed the Blair Bill for federal aid
to the common schools. He also opposed the protective tariff, the suspension of
silver coinage, and the Force Bill, which would have provided federal protection
for voters and elections threatened by intimidation and violence. Meanwhile,
Coke continued his involvement in Texas politics. He spoke as a strong opponent
of prohibition throughout the state. In 1892 he traveled home to support the
reelection of Gov. James S. Hogg over George Clark of Waco, Coke's former friend
and campaign manager. Coke was reelected to the Senate in January 1883 and again
in January 1889, both times by unanimous vote in the legislature. In 1894 he
announced that he would not seek another term.