Robbing the treasury

The term “hell breaking loose” is apt when describing what Texas was like in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. It got that way when word finally reached Texas that the war was over and the South had lost. The word was not widely believed and many Texans carried on as they had for four years prior to this rumor of peace and defeat. 

As late as May 3, 1865, three weeks after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederacy at Appomattox, Texas Governor Pendleton Murrah was saying, “They lie who say our cause is hopeless!” When he realized they were telling the truth, Murrah hightailed it to Mexico— and died there a few months later— as Confederate warehouses and quartermaster stores were being robbed in Houston and Galveston. The troops sent to Galveston to quell the riot instead joined in the mayhem. 

In Austin, with Murrah and the rest of the Confederate officials already gone and Union occupation forces yet to arrive, the lawless stepped in to fill the void. One observer noted that it was hard to determine whether soldiers or citizens were the worst offenders. 

The government fell apart at a time when the capitol was being re-roofed under a state contract. The contractor figured (correctly) that he wasn’t going to get paid, so he walked away with the job half-done; the old roof had been mostly removed but the new roof had yet to be installed. Many an office would be ruined before a new roof was put over the capitol. 

Right next to the capitol was the treasury building, home to some $27,525 in specie, $800 in Louisiana bank bills, and several million dollars in bonds and other securities from the state’s school fund. A small army— some 50 or so— determined that the treasury and its inherent riches were there for the taking. They hatched a plan to do the taking. 

When so many people are in on a scheme, even if all of them swear to secrecy, somebody is going to peep. Word of the upcoming robbery reached Nathan Shelley, a former Confederate general who lived in Austin. Shelley passed this information along to another recently deposed Confederate, George Freeman, who had organized a group of 30 or so volunteers to help restore order and protect the capitol. His troops restored enough order to abandon full-time duty, though they remained on call. 

On June 11, 1865, with a full moon hanging over Austin, Shelley and Freeman walked to the capitol to see what they could see and saw light from an upstairs window in the treasury building. They heard the kind of loud clanging you would expect to hear if men were attacking safes with pickaxes, which was indeed the case. 

The signal to assemble was a church bell in downtown Austin. Shelley and Freeman had the church’s pastor ring the bell, which triggered a response in about 20 volunteers.

 “Of a large assembly on the streets, nineteen men volunteered and moved with me upon the robbers,” Freeman reported. As might be expected, a gunfight ensued.  

Sentries for the bandits fired an obligatory volley at Freemen’s men and then fled, never to be seen or heard from again. The men inside the treasury building also fled. Many of them were slowed by the hauling of their ill-gotten gains but only one man failed to escape.

That man was Alex Campbell, the lone holdout from the retreat. He fired off a few shots at Freemen’s men and was rewarded for his poor judgement with a bullet to the stomach and another to the elbow. Judging from the smell, Campbell bled whiskey until he died a short time later. 

The rest of the robbers fled toward Mount Bonnell. Freemen’s men, outnumbered, waited until the next morning to pursue. All they found was a trail of coins, scattered like bread crumbs, leading to Mt. Bonnell. 

The bandits got away with about $17,000 worth of loot, or the equivalent of about $250,000 in today’s money. The legislature recognized Freeman and his men for their actions but the reward they were promised never materialized. The bad deed went unpunished, and the good deed remains unrewarded.