Edmund J. Davis was one of the about 2,000 Texans who fought in the Union army during the Civil War. He survived to become the last Reconstruction governor.
But there were many more who offered their dissent at home and some were punished for it, including in the still-celebrated Nueces Massacre of German Unionists and the little-remembered Great Hanging in Gainesville of suspected Anglo Unionists, possibly the largest example of vigilante violence in American history.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 