Richard Coke

Richard Coke (March 18, 1829 – May 14, 1897) was an American lawyer, farmer, and statesman from Waco, Texas. He was the 15th governor of Texas from 1874 to 1876 and represented Texas in the U.S. Senate from 1877 to 1895. His uncle was Congressman Richard Coke, Jr..

Richard Coke was born in 1829 in Williamsburg, Virginia, to John and Eliza (Hankins) Coke. He graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1848 with a law degree.

In 1850, he moved to Texas and opened a law practice in Waco. In 1852, he married Mary Horne of Waco. The couple had four children, but all of them died before age 30.

Coke was a delegate to the Secession Convention at Austin in 1861. He joined the Confederate Army as a private.In 1862, he raised a company that became part of the 15th Texas Infantry and served as its captain for the rest of the war. He was wounded in an action known as Bayou Bourbeau on November 3, 1863, near Opelousas, Louisiana. After the war, he returned home to Waco.

In 1865, Coke was appointed a Texas district court judge, and in 1866, he was elected as an associate justice to the Texas Supreme Court. The following year, the military Governor-General Philip Sheridan fired Coke and four other judges as ‘an impediment to reconstruction’, in pursuit of unionist Reconstruction policies. The firing of the five judges became a cause célèbre and made their names famous, synonymous in the public eye with resistance to Union occupation.

No one benefited more from prevailing public sentiment than Richard Coke, who in 1873, leveraged resentment at Union occupation to construct a Democratic electoral coalition that ruled Texas for more than 100 years. This Democratic power was based on disfranchisement of blacks, Mexican Americans, and poor whites through the use of poll taxes and white primaries. For example, the number of black voters decreased sharply from more than 100,000 in the 1890s to 5,000 in 1906.

Having been fired by Sheridan, Coke ran for governor as a Democrat in 1873 and took office in January 1874. The Texas Supreme Court – forever after known as the "Semicolon" court due to this case – ruled his election invalid in an extraordinary habeas corpus writ styled Ex Parte Rodriguez. As recounted by the Texas State Historical Association, in response, "Disregarding the court ruling, the Democrats secured the keys to the second floor of the Capitol and took possession. [Incumbent Gov. Edmund] Davis was reported to have state troops stationed on the lower floor. The Travis Rifles (a Texas military unit created to fight Indians), summoned to protect Davis, were converted into a sheriff's posse and protected Coke. On January 15, 1874, Coke was inaugurated as governor. On January 16, Davis arranged for a truce, but he made one final appeal for federal intervention. A telegram from President Ulysses S. Grant said that he did not feel warranted in sending federal troops to keep Davis in office. Davis resigned his office on January 19. Coke's inauguration restored Democratic control in Texas."

Coke's administration was marked by vigorous action to balance the budget and by a revised state constitution adopted in 1876. He was also instrumental in creating the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, which became Texas A&M University. Having once been fired from the Texas Supreme Court, as governor, he appointed all its members, naming as Chief Justice Oran Roberts (after the US Senate had refused to seat him). George F. Moore, who was Chief Justice when he had been fired along with Coke, became the first chief justice elected under Texas' 1876 Constitution, an honor he held until his death. Others from the Texas judiciary under the Confederacy received key appointments.

Once the new Constitution had been negotiated, Coke resigned his office in December 1876, following his election by the legislature to the United States Senate. He was re-elected to federal office in 1882 and 1888, serving in the 45th – 53rd Congresses until March 3, 1895.Coke was not a candidate for reelection in 1894.

Coke retired to his home in Waco and his nearby farm. He became ill after suffering exposure while fighting a flood of the Brazos River in April 1897. After a short illness, he died at his home in Waco and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery. Coke County in West Texas is named in his honor.