Guadalupe County is the county that is the subject of my report. Texas gained independence from Mexico in 1836 then Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845. The Republic of Texas organized Guadalupe County as a judicial county in 1842, but discontinued it later that year when the Texas Supreme Court declared judicial counties to be unconstitutional. In March 1846 after the annexation, the legislature established Guadalupe County from parts of other counties. Guadalupe County had an area of 862 square miles in 1846. The Guadalupe County takes its name from the Guadalupe River, which was named in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The geographic location of Guadalupe County is classified in the central Texas region …show more content…
In 1896 the county voted Republican and from then on, Democratic presidential candidates carried the county only five times after 1896. The slave population increased from 300 slaves to over 1,700 slaves from 1850 to 1860. A Freedmen's Bureau office opened in Seguin in 1866 and supervised work contracts between former slaves and area farmers until 1868. Some blacks stayed in Seguin; others became sharecroppers or tenant farmers. As a percentage of the total population, the number of blacks in the county steadily declined after 1868. Guadalupe County suffered a severe economic decline immediately following the Civil War and throughout the Reconstruction period. Lost property was in slaves and other losses came from loss of farm acreage and farm value as well as livestock values. Values had fallen nearly 50 percent by the time of the 1870 census. Cotton became a major crop after the county recovered from the Civil War and Reconstruction. There was a decline in tenant farming and sharecropping, which had accounted a large percent of the county's farms in