His political outlook has changed again, regardless; ultimately, he came to support a faster rebuilding of Texas. He opposed the Radicals' plan to turn West Texas into a separate Union state and withdrew his support for black suffrage. But as a result, Hamilton became one of the state's leading Republican Republicans and ran for office against the radical Edmund J. Davis in the 1869 governor's race. Davis was the one who won the elections, but Hamilton remained an oratory opponent of radical policies. He never looked for an open position after that fall. But he was still a leader in the Taxpayers' Convention in 1871. He continued to practice law and work on his farm near Austin, but later, on April 11, 1875, he died of tuberculosis and was buried in the cemetery from Oakwood to