Texas's 150-Year-Old Cold Case
One hundred fifty years ago this week, the city of Austin, and a large portion of Texas, was effectively lawless. As news of the Confederacy’s loss of the Civil War hit Texas in the spring of 1865, many state and municipal officials abandoned their posts out of fear they’d be prosecuted by the Union. One of these officials was Pendleton Murrah, the state’s governor, who fled to Mexico and died in August of that year.
With that in mind, a fortuitous band of former Rebels decided to ride on the state’s capital, perpetrate the largest raid in Texas’s history and ride off to Mexico with all the gold in the state’s coffers.
It should be clarified, the state wasn’t altogether lawless. Local militias had gathered to keep peace in some cities. In Austin, former Confederate Capt. George R. Freeman organized a militia to successfully quell a riot in May of 1865. A month later, on June 11, Freeman received a tip that a band of robbers were planning to sack the treasury, according to the Texas State Historical Association.
By the time Freeman had gathered his men that night, around 50 robbers had broken into the abandoned treasury and had already begun tipping over safes and hacking away at them with pickaxes in search for the gold reserves, known as specie. They didn't have the skills to crack the locks themselves, according to Mike Cox of True West Magazine.
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