William Pitt Ballinger: Texas Lawyer, 1825-1888. (Book Reviews).
Wooster, Ralph A.
William Pitt Ballinger: Texas Lawyer, 1825-1888, by John Anthony
Moretta. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2000. xii, 331 pp.
$29.95 cloth.
THE DUST JACKET OF THIS FINE WORK notes that "few people have
played a more important role in the history of Texas than William Pitt
Ballinger." While this is perhaps an overstatement there is little
question that Kentucky-born Ballinger made significant contributions to
political and legal affairs in the Lone Star state during the second
half of the nineteenth century. A highly successful attorney, Ballinger
(named for the British statesman William Pitt) became one of
Texas's most respected citizens and a friend and confidant of some
of the state and nation's most influential personalities.
The oldest son of a Kentucky state legislator and elector for the
national Whig party, Ballinger came to Galveston in 1843 to complete his
legal training under his uncle James Love. He had almost finished his
legal apprenticeship when, in 1846, he joined a company of Texans for
service in the Mexican War. Enlisting as a private, he was elected first
lieutenant in the First Texas Regiment of Volunteers and was later
appointed as adjutant on the staff of Albert Sidney Johnston.
Ballinger returned to Galveston after his term of enlistment
expired. He passed the bar examination and, after a brief tenure with
the prestigious Jones and Butler law firm, was appointed U.S. attorney
for the Eastern District of Texas, a position he held from 1850 until
1853. He formed a legal partnership with his brother-in-law Tom Jack in
1854 and quickly gained the reputation of being one of the state's
most promising young attorneys. This reputation was enhanced when he
successfully represented the Galveston Wharf Company (a group of
prominent Galvestonians including Michael Menard and Samuel May
Williams) in a suit brought by the city of Galveston. By 1860 Ballinger,
only thirty-five years of age, was one of Galveston's leading
citizens.
The growing sectional conflict deeply disturbed Ballinger. A
Staunch nationalist, Ballinger, himself a small slaveholder, was opposed
to secession. Like many Texas unionists, however, Ballinger threw his
support to the Confederacy once the majority of Texans voted for
separation. He was appointed receiver of alien enemy property and
labored tirelessly for a Southern victory in the war.
When it was apparent that the Confederate cause was lost Ballinger
urged fellow Texans to accept the military verdict and worked to bring
Texas back into the Union as quickly as possible. Although he remained
convinced of the inferiority of African Americans he urged fellow Texas
to accept the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments as a practical
matter. During the Reconstruction period he worked to end Radical rule
while at the same time opposing the more extreme positions of Southern
Redeemers. He played an active role as a delegate in the 1875 Texas
constitutional convention but was unhappy with the executive, judicial,
and educational features of the completed document. He was asked to
serve as a member of the Texas Supreme Court by Governor Richard Coke
but declined for personal reasons. He was prominently mentioned for
appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court in the late 1870s but refused to
seek the appointment. He continued to gain stature in the legal
profession, becoming one of the nation's most respected railroad
lawyers. At the time of his death in 1888 he was eulogized as "one
of the most brilliant lights known to the present age of
jurisprudence" (p. 256).
John Moretta, a doctoral graduate of Rice University and professor
of history at Houston Community College, has done an excellent job in
tracing the life and times of William Pitt Ballinger. Utilizing both
printed and manuscript materials (especially Ballinger's diaries
and personal papers and letters), Moretta paints a full picture of both
the public and private man. A devoted husband and loving father,
Ballinger worked diligently for his family's security while at the
same time playing a significant role in creating a stable and orderly
society. A compassionate conservative who believed all men should be
treated with fairness and dignity, he remained a product of his time and
his environment. Like most Southern whites of the nineteenth century, he
believed that African Americans were an inferior people, lacking
"the faculties of mind, the disposition, the character, to rise
much above their present condition" (p. 176).
This is a well-written and carefully researched volume which should
appeal to all those interested in nineteenth-century politics, society,
and culture. The author does a particularly fine job in showing how
Ballinger succeeded in his professional life through hard work, careful
study, and the use of family and personal contacts. At the same time
Moretta shows that Ballinger was frequently unsuccessful in public
affairs, losing battles against the election of Abraham Lincoln,
secession from the Union, Federal military victory in the Civil War,
Radical and Redeemer extremism, and the adoption of an inadequate state
constitution in 1876. The author correctly concludes that Ballinger was
"a nineteenth-century man who shared many of the same experiences,
disappointments, and tribulations of his contemporaries" (p. 261).
Through his story we learn much more about the complexities of life in
our state and region in the nineteenth century.
RALPH A. WOOSTER
Lamar University
