The 1860 Henderson Fire

After the fire of August 5, 1860 destroyed the courthouse and nearly all of Henderson's business section, the Handbook of Texas says most residents blamed pro-Union arsonists. Suspicion settled on Green Herndon, a recent arrival from the North known for abolitionist sentiments, after a Black woman reportedly confessed that he had hired her to set the fire. A mob lashed him to a horse and dragged him around the public square until he died, then hanged his body from a tree and shot it. Rusk County was then Texas's most populous, with 15,803 people, 6,132 of them enslaved.

What the plaque says

The 1860 Henderson Fire The fire of August 5, 1860 in Henderson, Texas, marked the beginning of the end of the Union in Texas. As a successful agricultural and commercial center, Henderson was one of the most important cities in Texas. Fires erupted all over Texas during the extremely hot summer of 1860, and Texans were becoming afraid and angry that their towns were burning at the hands of northern abolitionists and slaves. By the time the fire in Henderson burned the entire business district of the town, people all over the state were ready to fight for their way of life. This fire is argued to be what ignited Texan secession. By September of 1860, news of the Henderson fire had reached all over the country, from New York city to San Francisco. Fifty-two citizens were selected in Henderson to investigate the fire, and they hanged Green Herndon and his female slave for setting the fire. Evidence of guilt or innocence is unknown. Louis T. Wigfall wasted no time using the fire to rally Texans to the banner of secession. "the secession flood in Texas" was too strong for leaders like Sam Houston to resist, and a draft of Texas' formal Declaration of Causes for Secession was drawn up by Texas delegates, among them Rusk County's Malcom D. Graham. Graham laid the blame for the fire on northern abolitionists and their political allies. The delegates approved Graham's Declaration and when compiling a chronology of events leading to secession, listed the burning of Henderson first, as the end of the Union in Texas. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 10 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• East Texas Oil Museum — 16 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• Tex Ritter Museum and Texas Country Music Hall of Fame — 27 mi
  Carthage's country music museum, with Tex Ritter's boots, guitars and saddles in a room styled like a movie theater, and exhibits on other Texas stars, Jim Reeves among them.

More markers nearby

• Merritt Building — steps away
• Henderson — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Henderson — steps away
• Judge William Wright Morris — steps away