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.The symbols, slogans, and shibboleths of this society, asevents would show, deeply influenced McDonald s youth.10The earliest tragedies of Bill McDonald s life came with the dis-solution of that society.Lincoln s election, southern secession, andthe firing on Fort Sumter brought a crisis in American institutions.In Mississippi Confederate sentiment was strongly entrenched.Davis led the Confederacy; the Stars and Bars flew atop the statecapital; and Mississippi s whites eagerly enlisted and steadfastlyserved in Confederate armies.Enoch McDonald joined the Fortieth Mississippi Infantry.Heheld the rank of major and served as a regimental staff officer.If hedemonstrated any attachment to the Union, it was not conveyed tohis family, for there is no recollection among family records otherthan of dedicated service to the Lost Cause.That young Bill Jessloved and missed his father is attested to by a family story that tellshow he walked miles to share some time with his father at anencampment.At the end of the trip the lad had his first encounterwith a train, got scared by the sound of a locomotive, caught upwith his startled father on the drill field, and had to have his mother{ }2 7 YOURS TO C OMMANDcome to the railroad junction and take him back home.The deathof Major McDonald in a frontal assault at the Battle of Corinth inOctober 1862 was a devastating loss to his family.11In the years that followed, the blight of the Civil War spreadover the South.Ruin and poverty followed in its wake.The battlesfought in Mississippi disrupted governmental functions, laid wasteto the land, scattered blood relatives in various directions, and putlarge numbers of Confederate soldiers in their graves.By the timeof Appomattox, many southern families had been destroyed andmany southern women confronted a serious problem of rebuildingfamily life.EARLY DAYS IN EAST TEXASEunice McDonald, widowed and left with young children, wasfaced with managing a plantation, preserving a family, and survivingin a vanquished country.She went about these tasks with anindomitable will.Although Enoch McDonald left no will upon hisdeath, Eunice still kept her properties together (three farms with agin house on one of them) and provided for her family throughworking the land.Former slaves continued to stay with her.At theend of the Civil War she even sold a crop of cotton at twenty-fivecents per pound.Then Eunice made a momentous decision.Shedecided to move her family to Texas in 1866 or 1867 (the partiesinvolved differ on the exact date).Here she would keep house forher bachelor brother, Thomas Durham, who owned a farm near thetown of Henderson in Rusk County.Within a year or two, thesickly Thomas passed away, with his homestead being bought byanother brother, D.D.Durham.To get to Texas the McDonaldstook a public conveyance through Shreveport, Louisiana, andEunice paid for the trip.12Besides bringing her family to Texas, Eunice McDonald playedanother important role in the affairs of the McDonald-Durhamclan.She acted as a banker.For years she loaned money with{ }2 8 THE MAKI NG OF A TEXAS LAWMANinterest to her children and other relatives.Although Paine in hiscelebrated study stressed that the McDonalds lived in a state ofpoverty after the Civil War, that was not the case.Before she leftMississippi Eunice sold lands and stock to various people and keptsome property to rent.She also allowed at least one piece of realestate, probably the remnants of the plantation that her husbandhad built, run down after the war and worth a few hundred dollars,to go to the state for taxes.Thus, Eunice brought with her to Texas$1,000 in gold, more or less.She continued to have monies sent toher from Mississippi and she received some land and stock whenher father died in that state in the 1870s.Although Eunice visitedMississippi during that decade, she had already become a Texan.13Bill McDonald s youth ebbed away in those early years whenthe family lived in East Texas.His mother continued to be a home-maker.Although she bankrolled family members, Eunice had nodesire to fight for women s rights.At the same time, though, shewas no weary and forlorn female living in a man s world.She likedbeing a woman of means.She enjoyed the give-and-take with fam-ily members.Eunice just wanted to be left alone by those outsideher family circle.Bill McDonald moved to East Texas without entering an alienworld.Through the centuries this region, with its well-wateredlands and forests, became home to people of different creeds andcolors.These included Indians, Spanish-Mexican colonists, south-ern pioneers with a Celtic heritage, and black individuals held in orfreed from slavery.Confederate dead were buried in the ground.Inthis new environment McDonald s formal schooling continued offand on.He also found time to hunt coon and other game with dogs,but increasingly his life was taken up with farm chores and the hardwork of splitting wood.The opportunities and mode of life avail-able to the son of a Mississippi plantation owner were lost [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]