At the Club House, conference by Serge Noirsain: “The Great Hanging at Gainesville”. In December 1862, in Cooke County, Texas, state troops led by Col. James G. Bourland arrested more than seventy residents, all alleged abolitionists who were accused of fomenting insurrection and disorders to facilitate the arrival of a Federal force in Texas. Back in Gainesville with his prisoners, Bourland and Col. William C. Young of the Eleventh Texas Cavalry supervised the setting up of a “citizen's court” of twelve jurors. Together they owned nearly a fourth of the slaves in Cooke County, and seven of the jurors chosen were slaveholders. Their decision to convict on a majority vote was a bad omen for the prisoners. All were convicted of civil disobedience or treason and when the jury condemned seven of them to the death penalty, an angry mob took matters into its own hands and lynched fourteen more prisoners before the jurors recessed. Violence in Gainesville continued and peaked the next week when unknown assassins killed Colonel Young. The court’s decision already made to release the rest of the prisoners was reversed, and many were tried again. Nineteen more men were convicted and hanged. After the war it was established that the northern generals who operated on the Texas border had no contact whatsoever with the victims. On the other hand, it is proven that the forty hanged men rejected slavery and had openly opposed the secession of their State …