Texana Thursday: Saving Fletcher Stockdale

Gov. Fletcher Stockdale and a brochure with one of his speeches (Friends of the Texas Governor’s Mansion image)

Gov. Fletcher Stockdale was in the news this week. Someone removed his official portrait from the third floor of the Capitol rotunda and threw it to the ground. (All former governors have official portraits on display in the rotunda.)

The painting, commissioned by the Texas Legislature in 1945, was damaged. State officials recovered the painting and are studying how best to fix it.

As for Stockdale himself, one might say he was in the right place at the right time.

He wasn’t there for long. He served only five days, from June 11-16, 1865, the shortest tenure in Texas gubernatorial history.

The Civil War was raging, and Texas was in the Confederacy, when Stockdale was elected lieutenant governor in 1863. He was born in Kentucky, but moved to Texas as a young man and had become a lawyer. He had served in the legislature and was a signer of the document by which Texas seceded from the Union to join the Confederacy.

The governor, Pendleton Murrah, fled to Mexico as the Civil War was coming to an end, leaving the governorship vacant and setting the stage for Stockdale. (Murrah made it to Mexico, and died there on June 17.)

The Civil War had ended in April. President Andrew Johnson appointed a new governor, Andrew J. Hamilton, to lead the state into the Reconstruction period.

What can one do in such a brief governorship? Not much, obviously. Hamilton became governor on June 17, but didn’t arrive in Austin until August. Stockdale served on the committee that met Hamilton in Austin, escorted him into town, and handed him the keys to the Texas archives and Capitol.

Upon leaving office Stockdale returned to Calhoun County, where he would remain active in politics and business until his death in 1890 at age 65.