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At the time of the fire, the population of Dallas totaled 678 people. The fire devastated the city’s economic health because, Dallas operated as the service center for the surrounding rural communities. The city depended entirely on selling goods. The fire destroyed storefronts, in addition to inventory, thus halting the city’s commercial activity and delaying continued growth.
Many residents of Dallas and others across the state charged that abolitionists and slaves were responsible for the fire. Staunch pro-slavery advocates argued that Northerners had infiltrated the state and were planning to alter the status quo using violent means to reach their chaotic goals and local pro-slavery advocates.
The Dallas Herald reported in 1892 that one local politician acknowledged, Three slaves were convicted of arson and hanged as punishment and two Iowa preachers were exiled from Dallas.
Historian Michael Phillips accused local pro-Confederate activists of exploiting the fire for political purposes. Philllips wrote in his 1999 piece, “White Violence, Hegemony, and Slave Rebellion in Dallas, Texas, Before the Civil War,” that “Dallas County voted for secession by 76 percent, but it was seven months after the Dallas fire occurred” and that Dallas support for the Southern cause was not inevitable, stating, “The ‘southerness’ of Dallas could be measured by the length of a hangman’s rope.” In 1860, Dallas was an overwhelmingly white city for a growing Southern town. The African American population totaled 97 persons.
Even Sam Houston, who supported slavery, claimed that local officials exploited a series of accidents to conjure support for Southern slavery. Today, some people remain skeptical that a fire occurred, ascribing to conspiracy theories that allege local officials and pro-slave advocates were really in fact responsible. Conspiracy theorists believe that policy makers sought to undermine the appeal of abolitionists in a town with a small black population and strong Western principles of freedom and liberty by staging the fire to join the greater South in leaving the Union.
Dallas eventually recovered from the fire, and was rebuilt in the later part of the decade after the Civil War had ended. The city’s rebuilding was helped partly thanks to its strategic site as the quartermaster, commissary and administrative headquarters for the Confederate Army during the war.
Dallas’ new status as a central point in Texas and in the South, brought new residents and business to the city. Dallas city also experienced no fighting in its boundaries, protecting the city from further economic blight, aiding in the city’s recovery and growth in the post-war era.
July 8, 2010 at 5:01 am
for breakfast this was not a good choice 
