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Texas During the Rebellion: A Recent Historiography
Lawrence S. Heidbreder
The American people’s fascination with the Civil War began soon after the ink from Lee’s signature dried at Appomattox. A gauge to the intensity of this interest is the amount of books published on the subject. Since 1865, there have been several cycles of publication fervor on Civil War subjects, but compared to the total of all Civil War books, Texas is represented by a small number. When considering the amount of books published about Texas during the Rebellion, two decades emerge as the most prolific: 1960s and 1990s. The 1960s saw the observation of the 100th anniversary of all the battles, creating a renewed infatuation with the war and the role Texans played in the conflict. Publication numbers increased through out the 1960s and then declined until about 1987 when the second cycle began. A factor in this increase was the quantify and quality of graduate history students the universities have produced in the last fifteen years.
There
were 100 books published between 1988 and 2000 that tell the story of Texas
during the Rebellion. With such a large quantity of new books being produced, a
historiography is required to assure that each work is not lost in a mountain of
information. This research is an attempt to survey all the books published about
Texas history (1861-1865) in the last twelve years. Therefore this work does not
serve to evaluate the historical value, craftsmanship, nor scholarship of any
book, leaving these decisions to the reader of each book mentioned here.
There is one recent historiography
written that describes Texas Civil War books and one essay that includes the
period within a much larger time frame. In 1988, Cummings and Bailey ed., A
Guide to the History of Texas (New York, 1988), compiled essays by
recognized authorities in several Texas historical time periods. Ralph Wooster
wrote “The Civil War and Reconstruction in Texas” for this book. He
discusses 50 books, graduate student theses and dissertations, journal articles,
and popular magazine articles. He evaluates each work and selects only the ones
that he felt were of significant scholarship. Wooster explains that scholars
have not been able to interpret the war and Reconstruction in the same volume,
so he adds materials that dealt with the period from 1865 to 1872 in his essay.
Randolph Campbell, “Statehood, Civil War and Reconstruction, 1846-76” in Texas
Through Time, ed. Buenger, Walter, Calvert, Robert, (College Station, 1991),
said too many people write only about the narrow period of the war and do not
blend the antebellum with the Reconstruction years. He admits that writing about
the thirty years from statehood until readmittance to the Union is a daunting
task but should be the more correct era. Campbell focuses on the question of how
Texas changed over his chosen time period and not specifically the effect the
war had on Texans. He cites books, theses, and articles written about Texas
during the Rebellion.
As Wooster and Campbell suggest, a
few books have been included in this historiography that focus on the immediate
years before and after the war. They were chosen because of the importance and
relevance of their text. There are
also a few books about Texas that cover a much broader time period but have a
chapter that gives insight into the lives of people during the years of the War
Between the States. Furthermore, there are a few books written about the
Confederacy as a whole that interpret what role Texas played as a part of the
new nation. These works do refer to Texas occasionally
but concentrate on the states east of the Mississippi River.
Recording historical works on
electronic media is a trend that is gaining popularity in the field. Some books
are converted from the printed page onto CD-ROM, while others are being
converted and published for Internet access. The enormous amount of information
in multiple volume sets, such as Confederate Military History (Carmel,
1997), makes it advantageous to condense these onto a single computer disk.
University
of North Carolina, through its Academic Affairs Library, is providing Internet
access for a series of books about the American South. There are two e-books
available now that have information about Texas: Louise Wigfall Wright, A
Southern Girl in ‘ 61, (Chapel Hill, 1998), and Anita Withers, Diary of
Anita Dwyer Withers, (Chapel Hill, 1999). Wright’s is a memoir about her
life as the daughter of a Confederate Senator from Texas. She tells about social
customs and women’s daily lives in Texas and later in Virginia during the war.
Anita Withers’ book is an autobiography of her life as a wife of a Federal
army officer stationed in San Antonio before the war. When the south seceded,
John Withers resigned his commission and joined the Confederate Army as a staff
officer. The Withers family relocated to Richmond and the book details the
woman’s side of life in the city until the final surrender of Lee’s Army.
Several other universities are converting the full text of books on Civil War
subjects for Internet access but there are only a few dealing with Texas during
the period.
Another avenue to view e-books is
offered by Netlibrary. The company has a few books available at no charge to the
public, but to view the private collection requires a membership fee of $29.00
per year. Books in the private collection can also be purchased on CD-ROM from
the Netlibrary web site. To date, the company has over 800 books on American
history with 46 specifically about various Texas subjects. An example of a book
offered through Netlibrary is Richard Lowe, The Texas Overland Expedition of
1863. Lowe tells about the Texas cavalry that fought in New Mexico and then
traveled to Louisiana to fight in the Red River Campaign. Any of these
complete books can be viewed on the Internet with just a few keystrokes.
Historical references are the
foundation of any research program. They contain obscure facts that are useful
in helping the researcher find specific information about Texas during this
period. Some of these books are narrow in their scope, such as Smith and Tombs, Confederate
Veterans, Llano County, Texas (Texas, 1996) and Milan County, Texas in the
Civil War, James Williams (Cameron, 1993). These three books are a small
sample of the twenty books written by local historians to record the
contributions that people of a particular region gave to the war effort. All of
these books are less than 100 pages in length with several being loose leaf
photocopies. This category of books has been listed separately in the
bibliography but little information is available about their contents.
Broadening
the scope to the entire state is Confederate Indigent Families List of
Texas by Linda Mearse (San Marcos, 1995). The information in this work is useful for anyone tracing
genealogies and a researcher will have statistics about people on the homefront
that were left destitute by the war. Janet Hewett’s two volume set, Texas
Confederate Soldiers (Wilmington, 1997),
is taken from the Official Records and muster roll collection of
documents at Broadfoot Press. Each individual is listed as well as his regiment
and company. An explanation of the overall military organization of Texas units
is supplied by Stewart Sifakis, Compendium of Confederate Armies: Texas
(1994). Command, staff officers, and company officers are listed for each
regiment raised in Texas. This includes the many militia and state troops who
never left the state.
An important reference work that is
strictly Texas oriented is Basic Texas Books,
an invaluable annotated bibliography about Texas by John Jenkins (Austin,
1988). Although the Civil War is not the emphasis of this work, several books on
Texas military figures and events are noted. Jenkins includes full synopses of
224 books and mentions more than
1,000 other Texas history books. The most informative of the Civil War
bibliographical works is The Civil War in Books: An Analytical Bibliography,
David Eicher (Champaign, 1996).
Eicher gives a concise 264 word synopses on each of
the 1,100 books that he felt important for any student of the Civil War
to know about. Fifty percent of the books Eicher lists were published between
1880 and 1950. Twelve percent of all the books included by Eicher were published
between 1990 and 1995. An attractive feature of the book is that it has two
indexes; one by authors and one by title. Although Eicher’s work covers the
whole nation, any Texas researcher will benefit from the information.
Out of all these references, Confederate
Imprints, Parrish and Willingham (Austin, 1987), is the most enjoyable for a
historian to read. The authors, building on a previous work from 1951, have
compiled descriptions of 9,500 documents that were copyrighted throughout the
Confederate States of America. This work describes each document as well as
giving the location of the library or private collection that holds it. Any
Texas Civil War researcher will be interested in this book because there are
numerous documents held in university and museum archives across the state. Many
Texas towns are listed as original sources of various printed material ranging
from text books, military manuals, sheet music, play-bills, military recruiting
broadsides, almanacs and novels. These references are priceless tools for
learning about the lives of the people who lived through the Rebellion.
With
a coastline of several hundred miles in length, maritime history is an important
part of Texas. From Sail to Steam, Richard Francaviglia (Austin, 1998),
covers four hundred years of ships on the Gulf Coast. One chapter deals with
both Union and Confederate naval action in Texas waters. Thomas Campbell
mentions naval battles between the two nations in Texas waters in his Fire
and Thunder: Exploits of the Confederate States Navy (Shippensburg, 1998).
Campbell tells a few stories about blockade runners and the importance of the
navy in the Battle of Galveston. A book, from McWhitney’s Press, about
Galveston and other navel action is Cottonclads!, Don Frazier (Fort
Worth, 1996). Frazier explains why and how the Confederate Navy lined the sides
of some of their gunboats with cotton bales giving them the name cottonclads.
The result of many naval battles in
Texas waters was the sunken ship. Tom Townsend tells the location of the ships
that sunk either from storm or battle along the coast in Texas Treasure Coast
(Austin, 1996). In one chapter Townsend uses various source materials to detail
the sinking of Union and Confederate ships. Included in the story of each ship
is a most probable present day location for each wreck. Another book that
details ships that have wrecked on the Texas coast is Barto Arnold’s U.S.
Navy Wrecks in Texas (Austin, 1995). Arnold did an underwater archaeological
survey for the Texas Historical Commission on these ships. He tells the location
of the known ships that were sunk during the Battle of Galveston and the
artifacts that should be contained on the wrecks.
A
book that combines stories from soldiers, sailors, and civilians is Edward
Cotham’s Battle on the Bay (Austin, 1998). He explains what life was
like on the island before the war, during the Union invasion and then the
Confederate recapture. Until the 1990s this battle was almost forgotten by
scholars writing about Civil War Texas.
The threat of invasion from the sea
created extra problems for the Confederate
leaders. Texans built and manned coastal defense outposts to keep watch for
possible Union forces on Texas soil. Sargent Beach Project, Martha
Freeman (Austin, 1994), and Confederates on the Caney, Bobby McKinney
(1994) are two works that describe what the Confederate army did to prepare for
a Union attack on the middle Texas coast. These books detail the skirmishes
between Texans and Union gunboats in the area around Matagorda Bay. McKinney
provides several maps and locations of the camps where the soldiers lived while
on duty watching the coast. He also has photographs of artifacts dug up at the
camp sites.
The everyday life along the coastline
of Texas and the interior went through a dramatic upheaval due to the war, and
many people wrote about what they saw. As people traveled on the homefront of
Texas, they wrote accounts of what they experienced in letters, journals, and
newspaper articles. After the war, there were many autobiographies and histories
printed by the participants in the conflict. Merton Coulter collected these
writings and assembled them into Travels in the Confederate States (Baton
Rouge, 1994). Witnesses to the troubled times were given an opportunity to
speak: soldiers, prisoners of war, civilians, refugees, women, chaplains, and
doctors. Out of the 492 entries, 51 deal with people making observations about
the effects of the war in Texas.
Other
eyewitness accounts of Texas during the Rebellion are contained in Texas:
Dark Corner of the Confederacy by B.P. Gallaway (Lincoln, 1994). Visitors to
the state discussed the land and climate along with the unequal distribution of
wealth and the increasing population. Other stories include riding on the
Houston railroad in 1863 and a view from a returning Confederate. To accurately
see what it was like in Texas during this time, Moneyhon and Roberts have
collected a story through pictures in their Portraits of Conflict: A
Photographic History of Texas in the Civil War (Fayetteville, 1998). This is
primarily portraits of soldiers in the studio. The authors wrote an introduction
about photography in Texas during the 1860s that is very informative. Under each
picture is an explanation about who the subject is, what unit they fought with,
and, occasionally, about their death on a particular battlefield.
There were no great battles within
the boundary of the state, but many Texas troops fought and died close to the
border in New Mexico and in the Indian Territory. Alvin Josephy explains the
battles that involved Texas men in The Civil War in the American West
(New York, 1991). The conflicts between Union and Confederate soldiers are not
the only battles discussed. Josephy details several battles Native Americans had
with the Union Army as well as Confederate soldiers in the western regions.
Another book that illustrates the armed conflict between Confederate, Union and
Native American forces is Into The Far Wild Country, Jerry Thompson,
editor, (El Paso, 1996). This is an autobiography written by George Baylor of
his adventures roaming from Texas to California. He tells about his service as
an officer in the Confederate Texas cavalry that fought in New Mexico and in
Louisiana. In editing this work, Thompson wrote a 40 page introduction detailing
Baylor’s total career and his personal hatred of Native Americans. The work
includes extensive footnotes about every person mentioned by Baylor in the text.
There is a bounty of details on Native American military tactics and
descriptions of the individuals who participated in the struggle to control west
Texas. As Thompson pointed out Union soldiers were not the only enemy that Texas
Confederates fought. Frontier Defense in the Civil War, David Smith
(College Station, 1992), gives the details about Confederate troopers fighting
Native Americans and army deserters on the Texas frontier. According to
Smith, most of the men defending this vast area were informal militia trying
to protect their homes.
The majority of books in this survey
are written about men. Fortunately, three books were written that explore the
lives of women during the Civil
War. This area needs more scholarship and publications to give better insight
about the contributions of Texas women. Drew Faust’s subject was the upper
class slaveholding women and how they coped with the complete change of their
lifestyle in Mothers of Invention (Chapel Hill, 1996). Faust
writes about one Texas lady, Aneta Barr, who was a prime example of many women
throughout the south. She had to learn to manage the land and slaves to survive
while her husband and sons were absent. Women that had slaves desert the
plantation were forced to work at chores that were unfamiliar to them. Faust
speculates that the Confederacy failed to protect these women’s interest and
maintain them in their antebellum lifestyle. She claims that this eroded support
for the war and helped the end come more quickly. The other side of the slavery
story is told by Rutie Winegarten, Black Texas Women (Austin, 1995) and Brave
Black Women (Austin 1997). In both books Winegarten tells about several
women that were slaves and how their lives changed after the war.
Although the main emphasis of both books is not 1861-1865, many of the
biographies were about women that lived through the time period.
Lifestyle transformation of
the plantation owners after the war was only the beginning for the changing
Southern agriculture system. John Otto, Southern Agriculture During the Civil
War Era (Westport, 1994) illustrates the life of the agricultural producer
before, during and after the war. He claims the overnight change of the Southern
labor force was a major revolution. Otto discusses the land use policy of the
Texas government, including cattle raising and standard crops grown in the state
during and after the conflict.
News of major events occurring in the
eastern part of the Confederacy would take time getting to Texas, but the effect
would eventually be seen within the state. When the Bells Tolled for Lincoln,
Carolyn Harrell (Mercer, 1997) explores the reaction of people in the south to
Lincoln’s assassination. Harrell examined newspaper articles, personal
letters, and government records from across the South. She argues that the
reaction was similar within a region. It is interesting that Harrell used
writings from the famous people as well as the obscure common man. According to
Harrell the general reaction in Texas was maniacal glee. Lincoln’s successor,
Andrew Johnson, was saddled with a monumental task of guiding the reassembling
of the nation. Paul Bergeron has taken the job of editing the papers of
President Johnson in his The Papers of Andrew Johnson: Volume II
(Knoxville, 1994). Several letters from Texas politicians are included in the
600 documents that Bergeron chose to publish. This was a critical time in the
history of Texas and Bergeron sheds some light on the political climate of the
day.
In some
instances, the image of Texans always being in an armed conflict is misleading;
there were important contributions to the state by non-combatants as well.
Randolph Campbell, An Empire for Slavery (Baton Rouge, 1989) describes
the life of a slave in Texas until freedom came in
June 1865. All aspects of the daily existence are discussed: religion,
work, owner treatment, music, behavior, and desire for freedom. In conjunction
with this information, Campbell includes laws and Anglo attitudes toward
African-Americans before the war. A
work that examines the slavery issue in a
different context is by Michael Morrison, Slavery and the American West
(Chapel Hill, 1997). Morrison gives a balanced approach to the issue by neither
diminishing the role of slavery as a cause for the war or using it as a central
theme. He prepossess that territorial issues, with slavery being the main one of
these, was the root cause of the war. By tracking the growth of sectionalism,
Morrison is able to link the era of Jacksonian politics and the Civil War. To
continue the story of African-Americans after the Rebellion David Williams wrote
Bricks Without Straw (Austin, 1997). Williams uses biographies of well
known and some not so well known blacks to tell their story. He discusses the
black leaders in Texas during Reconstruction at length but also tells about
African-Americans in the 20th century.
Drew Faust contributes to the
knowledge about the southern viewpoint of slavery in Southern Stories:
Slaveholders in Peace and War (Columbia, 1992). Faust examines the rhetoric
of the proslavery movement and shows an association to the popular religious
leaders of the South. She relates stories that combine evangelicalism, slavery
and Confederate nationalism. One story tells about violence and slave management
in Texas during the Civil War.
In The Freedmen’s Bureau and
Black Texans, Barry Crouch
(Austin, 1992), focuses on the period immediately after the Confederate
surrender. Crouch attempts to revise the long standing idea that the Bureau was
ineffective and did not fulfill its purpose. The plight of Freedmen in Texas was
deeply interwoven with local and state political leaders.
Not every one in Texas supported the
idea of secession and the problems it would bring. Daniel Crofts compares the
Texas political system with the other upper south states in Reluctant
Confederates (Chapel Hill, 1989). He tells how unionists attempted to stall
the secession movement and try to reach a compromise to maintain the Union.
Crofts states that local elites influenced communities to either support the
union or vote for secession. He says that the Texas vote would have been
different if the Whig party was stronger at the time. Crofts admits that, after
Lincoln called for troops to put down the rebellion, the unionists were not able
to postpone the separation of Texas from the United States. A more in-depth
study of Texas politics during the war is provided by Dale Baum, The
Shattering of Texas Unionism (Baton Rouge, 1998). Baum uses a technique called ecological regression to make
estimates about how certain groups voted in past elections.
He argues that the German community and Disciples of Christ were the
strongest supporters of keeping the union. Baum has discovered evidence of
corruption in the governor election of 1869 using his special method of
statistics.
There were many other viewpoints
associated with Texas and the unionist belief. Texas Divided, by James
Marten (Lexington, 1990), explores the shifting of loyalties of the people
trying to keep Texas in the union and opposing
secession. Marten points out that ethnic groups were excluded from having any
influence over the dominant Anglo culture. He says that Texans were never united
in the cause of the Confederacy because of the ethnic diversity. Instead of
these ethnic groups being considered dissenters they were just excluded. Marten
suggests that the ideal of white supremacy, after the war, united the Anglos
more than the struggle during the war.
One ethnic group that contributed to
the war effort but has almost been forgotten was the Czech-Americans. J.F.
Wright’s Czechs in Gray and Blue, Too!, (San Antonio, 1988) relates the
Czech participation in the Civil War on both sides. Wright details what units
the Czechs joined in Texas and the units that were formed by this ethnic group
in the Union Army. For background information, Wright uses some essays written
in local Czech newspapers that supported the Confederacy. Several of these
essays were translated from Czech.
A
revealing look into the Texas political arena during the war is given by Patsy
Spaw in The Texas Senate, Volume II (College Station, 1999). Spaw lists
all the members of the Texas Senate during the conflict, and the role each
played in this position. She explores the issues that were fought, and the
legislation that was voted on. On a national political level, Texas was well
represented in the U.S. Senate by Louis T. Wigfall. His story is included in The
Fire-Eaters, Eric Walther (Baton Rouge, 1992). Walther researched the
careers of nine southern antebellum politicians. He proposes that secession was
brought to fruition by these men with their efforts starting after the
Compromise of 1850. After secession, the states banded together and formed the
Confederate government which was based on the U.S. model.
Texas was represented in the
Confederate Senate by William Oldham at the time of Lee’s surrender. From
Richmond to Texas, Buck Yearns
(1998) narrates Oldham’s evacuation of Richmond and his flight to evade
capture by Union forces. Eventually Oldham reached home in Texas, and Yearns
relates some of Oldham’s political activities after the war. There were
several other representatives from Texas that were elected to the Confederate
Congress. Information about each government official has been compiled by
Kenneth Martis, The Historical Atlas of the Congresses of the Confederate
States of America (New York, 1994). Martis illustrates with maps the
districts that each man was elected from and gives background information about
each person. He talks about the laws enacted and proposed by the Congress and
each representative’s voting record. One law that proved to be unpopular in
Texas was the conscription law requiring men of military age to join the army.
David Smith Conscription and Conflict on the Texas Frontier, 1863-1865 (Kent,
1990) discusses the reaction to the law in the western part of the state.
To get a good illustration about how
people related to each other during the war a study of the social history is
required. In Daniel Sutherland’s book Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence
on the Confederate Home Front (Fayetteville, 1999), he compiles several
essays by noted historians about non-military violence on civilians. The essay
about Texas discusses if a person can dissent against the war and still be loyal
to his state. This dilemma was the root cause for a breakdown in social behavior
at Gainesville, Texas, and Richard McCaslin relates the story in Tainted
Breeze (Baton Rouge, 1994). Members of the Texas Peace Society were arrested
in 1862 for dissent against the war. They were tried in a citizen’s court,
convicted, and eventually executed by hanging. When the hanging stopped 42 men
had lost their lives because of fear in the community. McCaslin argues that
there was no real armed threat, and the hangings were simply a result of social
tension. An eyewitness account of this incident is found in L.D. Clark’s
Civil War Recollections of James Lemuel Clark and the Great Hanging at
Gainsville, Texas (Plano, 1997). Clark, an enlisted solider at the
time, tells what he saw during this period of mob rule. He gives a personal
narrative that was taken from his diary. The Gainesville incident was not an
isolated occurrence, many communities had to deal with this type of violence.
David Pickering tells of similar injustice in Northeast Texas in his book Brushmen
and Vigilantes (College Station, 1998). Pickering relates how men grouped
together to form gangs that took advantage of the situation when the better law
enforcement officers joined the army. Then he tells of the reaction and
retaliation by the local citizens to bring law and order under control.
From the surrender in 1865 until the
present, the mainstay of all histories concerning Texas during the Rebellion is
the biography. So much was written by the participants in the form of diaries,
journals, and letters that there seemingly is no end to the books being
published in this genera. It is significant to realize that not all important
stories come from the combatant. Adventures of a Frontier Naturalist,
Lincecum and Phillips (College Station, 1994), details the studies of Dr. Gidion
Lincecum. His relationship with Texas started in 1834 while on a
scientific exploration studying plants. He moved to Texas in 1847 where he
eventually became a constant vocal supporter of the Confederacy. Like several
other Confederates fearing reprisals from the Union forces after the war, he
moved to Mexico for a brief time. His story continues on through out
Reconstruction, but his support for the war had its lasting effects on him. Dr.
Lincecum was a noteworthy man in his time; it has always been popular to write
biographies about this type of person. A Texas physician that wrote a journal
was Henry Dye Medical Case History Journal (Houston, 1989). Dr. Dye kept
his journal from 1862 until 1873 with the war years being in service to the
Confederacy in Texas.
Since Lee’s surrender the trend has
been to write biographies about the great politicians and leaders during the
war. The following two books are examples of these types of books. More
Confederate Generals in Gray, Bruce Allardice (Baton Rouge, 1995). Allardice
writes concise descriptions of 137 men that obtained the rank of general in the
Confederate Army. He included a brief sketch on 135 more officers that claimed
the rank of general. All Texans with that rank are listed with a good biography
about each man. Ralph Wooster Lone Star Generals in Gray (Austin, 2000),
separated the Texas generals out of all the Confederates and gives details of
their lives. For most of the men listed, Wooster tells about them before the
war, their military career and their return to civilian life. A single biography
about a little known Texas general is Charles Anderson Confederate General
William Read “Dirty Neck Bill” Scurry 1821-1864 (Snyder, 1999).
However, the trend in the last fifteen years has been
to tell the story of the common man, his tribulations, and how the war affected
the rest of his life. Readers are given a taste of daily life during the
war through each soldier’s narrative. Many of the soldier’s stories
are from their diaries that they rewrote into a book for publication years
after they returned home. A few of the diaries being published today were never
rewritten and stayed in possession of family members or were donated to a
library. A trend in the 1990s has been to find those diaries in archives, edit
them, and then publish a finished book built around the primary
documents, resulting in a semi-autobiography from a soldier.
Military biographies can be divided
into two types, those taken from a personal diary and those from a scholarly
research of several primary sources. A diary is usually edited and includes
annotations explaining the people or events that the primary author is writing
about. The books, A Rebel Private: Front and Rear,
William Fletcher (New York, 1995), and A Texan in Search of a Fight,
John C. West (Baltimore, 1994) are prime examples of this technique. A Texas
Cavalry Officer’s Civil War, Richard Lowe (Baton Rouge, 1999), is taken
from the journal and letters of James Bates. His story is unusual because he was
college educated and very articulate. Lowe reprints
the letters Bates sent home but also fills in the gaps with information
from numerous other primary sources. Although severely wounded in the mouth and
in bleak circumstances at the end of the war, Bates still wrote about his belief
that the South would prevail in the conflict. This is a valuable insight into
the thinking of the common man asked to give his life every day of the war.
The
editing and annotations makes these books useful to the contemporary reader
because the original author’s writings are explained in detail. In The
Civil War Diary of Charles Leuschner, Charles Spurlin (Austin, 1992), the
editor had to fill in gaps of time with an explanation from his own research.
Leuschner’s narrative gives details of his action in the Texas infantry that
fought in many of the Trans-Mississippi battles. By the late part of the war, he
was transferred to fight at Atlanta.
Another soldier’s story about the
Atlanta campaign was written by Douglas Carter As It Was edited by
Michael Parrish (Austin, 1990). Carter enlisted in the cavalry and saw mounted
action in the early Trans-Mississippi battles. Later he was transferred to the
infantry and remained there for the last three years of the war. He fought at
Atlanta and marched barefooted into Tennessee with Bragg. He became critical of
his commanding generals in the later years, with his dissatisfaction being a
theme in the diary more and more as time moved on. There are some details of
Carter’s life after the surrender and how he viewed Reconstruction.
A great many Texans rode west, instead of east, to fight the Union army
in New Mexico. Two accounts of the New Mexico expedition are Westward the
Texans (El Paso, 1990) and From Desert to Bayou (El Paso, 1991).
Both of these books, edited by Jerry Thompson, are diaries of troopers in the
2nd Mounted Rifles that started the war in New Mexico and were transferred to
finish the war in the east. Here are two different views of the same campaigns
and events. One added attraction to From Desert to Bayou is the drawings
that Morgan Merrick, the original diarist, included with his writing. Merrick
made sketches of what he experienced in New Mexico and then in Louisiana during
the Red River Campaign.
Not all the biographies published
since 1988 were based on a diary. Another method to bring one man’s war to
life was to compile the letters he wrote home. These letters relate details of
the things that were seen and gives some type of interpretation about what they
meant.
In Rebel Brothers, Edward
Williams editor, (College Station, 1995), the Trueheart brothers were born in
Virginia and moved to Galveston, Texas as young boys. Charles postponed his
medical studies to join the Army of Nothern Virginia when the war started. His
letters tell the reader about his personality and his devotion to his family and
the Confederacy. His brother Henry, on the other hand, gives insight into the
day to day life of a cavalry trooper and the details of fighting in battle.
There are thousands of letters
written by the soldiers from this period and an editor has to work hard at
making a collection unique. Sometimes, it is the individual writing the letters
that makes the job easier through their unique personality. Personal Civil
War Letters of General Lawrence Sullivan Ross,
Shelly Morrison (Austin, 1994), is an example of the unique writer
destined for a higher purpose. Ross rose to the level of brigade commander
because of his competence on the battlefield and the relationship with his men.
His letters reveal his aspirations for higher command and frustrations with his
commanders. The value of this book is in watching the shaping of the man that
will become governor of Texas and do greater things later in his life. Although
Ross does not have the reputation of Forrest or Wheeler, his place in the war
was just as important. A Texan that was in a crucial position during the entire
war was Major Thomas Goree. In Longstreet’s Aide, Thomas Cutrer,
editor, (Charlottesville, 1995), Goree’s
letters home describe being present in Longstreet’s meetings with Lee and all
his staff. His letters discuss the controversy of Lee’s orders and Longstreets
actions at Gettysburg months after the battle. Goree shares his opinions about
the leading generals of the Confederacy as he saw them first hand. In the
aftermath of many of the battles, he would write home a clear description of the
events and explain the importance of them. The world knows more about men like
Truehearts, Ross, and Goree because they wrote letters home describing the
details of their lives. For information about other soldiers, primary sources
have to be consulted, and then a narrative has to be developed around this
material.
Two biographies from McWhiney
Foundation publication efforts are about men from Texas that lead Texans into
battle. John Bell Hood and the Struggle for Atlanta, David Coffey
(Abilene, 1998), explains Hood and his actions while trying to hold Sherman out
of Atlanta. Coffey gives a brief treatment of Hood’s early life and the
battles he participated in up to that point. He includes thumbnail sketches on
all the major commanders in this campaign and their influence on the outcome.
The second book, Sam Bell Maxey and the Confederate Indians, John Waugh
(Fort Worth, 1995), tells about Maxey’s rise to brigadier general
leading a company of Texas infantry. He was promoted to command all of the
Confederate held parts of Indian Territory. Maxey proved his field
command abilities when he lead a force of Cherokee in the Red River Campaign. He
is credited with keeping the Union forces out of north Texas. Maxey is not as
popular as the next two gentlemen when it comes to books being written about
them. McCulloch and Ford were legendary Texas Rangers before the war and their
actions during the conflict made them even more famous. Ben McCulloch and the
Frontier Military Tradition, Thomas Cutrer (Chapel Hill, 1993), and Rebellious
Ranger: Rip Ford, W.J. Hughes (Norman, 1990), are two more books added to
the volumes that have been published about each of these individuals.
John Magruder was a Confederate
commander that started out in the east and was then sent to Texas to oversee
military operations there. The reason he was banished to the west by Confederate
high command is related by Paul Casdorph, Prince John Magruder (Somerset,
1996). Magruder’s success in recapturing Galveston is detailed at
length. After Lee’s surrender in 1865, Magruder fled to Mexico where he served
for a time in Maximilian’s army.
Magruder’s command was in the
Trans-Mississippi theater of the war. The number of biographies about men
fighting in this region has been sparse, filling this gap is B.P. Gallaway, The
Ragged Rebel (Austin, 1988). Gallaway gives an account of David
Nance’s trials and tribulations as a cavalry trooper fighting in Arkansas and
Louisiana. Nance’s story is a small portion of the larger drama called the Red
River Campaign. Curt Anders Disaster in Deep Sand (Carmel, 1998),
gives a complete description of the several battles as the Union army is
defeated at Mansfield and then retreats back toward Alexandria, Louisiana. A
biography that tells one man’s ordeal in New Mexico and then Louisiana is
Brian Sayers On Valor’s Side: Tom Green and the Battles for Early Texas
(Hemphill, 1999). Green’s early life before the war is detailed and
then his service with Sibley’s command is explained. He was promoted to
general and participated in the Battle of Galveston. Tom Green eventually lost
his life during the final stages of the Red River Campaign.
Another
area that has been left out of the historical publications until recently is the
New Mexico Campaign of Sibley’s command. Two books that cover specific
battles from the several that made up the whole campaign are, Glory, Glory,
Glorieta, Robert Scott (Boulder, 1992), and Bloody Valverde, John
Taylor (Albuquerque, 1995). These are narrow in focus and relate only
information about the one battle. For a complete look at the campaign from start
to finish Don Frazier, Blood and Treasure (College Station, 1997),
provides information on the motivations for the campaign, troop movements,
battles, and the retreat back to Texas. Frazier speculates what could have
happened with a Confederate victory and adds his interpretation of the defeat.
Frazier includes the organization of the regiments and the staff officers that
lead them. An overview of military operations in the far western reaches of
Texas is by Steve Cottrell Civil War in Texas and New Mexico Territory
(Gretna, 1998).
The basic unit of any Civil War army
was the regiment; often, it was a close knit group that enlisted from
neighboring counties. Almost every regiment had a historian that wrote a
regimental history after the war with hopes of it being published. These
writings were often biased and written with the influence of current events
during Reconstruction. Today, the regimental history has a different tone that
reflects scholarship and truth more than a way to justify actions. The period
under study has produced some outstanding accounts of different regiments.
Before
1988 the emphasis on regimental histories had been about infantry units. The
trend has changed with the 12 year period under study producing a generous
amount of cavalry regimental histories. Between the Enemy and Texas: Parsons
Texas Cavalry in the Civil War, Anne Bailey (Fort Worth, 1989), set the
standard for the current regimental histories. Bailey detailed the social
status, wealth, and educational backgrounds of the commanding staff and company
officers. She showed balance in reporting and analyzing the battles that the
regiment fought. Doug Hale, Third Texas Cavalry in the Civil War (Norman,
1993), added to Bailey’s model and did extensive social and economic studies
of the company officers and staff. A generalization of the rank and file
troopers’ social backgrounds was added. Hale discussed the
ownership of slaves by the troopers and related statistics on the issue.
Jane Johansson
Peculiar Honor: History of the 28th Texas Cavalry 1862-1865 (Fayetteville,
1998), followed Bailey’s lead and makes an in-depth social study of the men
that enlisted in this regiment. She compares the age and wealth of the members
with the standard of other Texas units. Stanley McGowen, Horse Sweat and
Powder Smoke (College Station, 1999), does not emphasize the social-economic
history of this group of men. The purpose of his work was to dispel myths about
this Texas Confederate cavalry regiment. McGowen sets straight the facts
concerning the 1st Texas Mounted Rifles and its action against a group of German
Unionists. He also contradicts the old notion that all cavalry troopers were
undisciplined and out of control. McGowen details the European education of
Augustus Buchel, the regiment’s colonel, and his ability to maintain respect
and order in the ranks.
Some
works are difficult to categorize because the regimental history is an
autobiography also. Terry Texas Ranger Trilogy, Thomas Cutrer, editor,
(Austin, 1996), fits into the difficult to categorize place. It is a combination
of three men writing about their experiences in the same Texas cavalry regiment.
Cutrer combines the three different viewpoints into a cohesive recollection of
this unit. The Cypress Rangers in the Civil War, James Davis (Texarkana,
1991), is an unusual history because it is about a small company of 80 men from
the same community. Davis discusses the Rangers joining the Confederate Cherokee
and fighting Union Indians in Indian Territory. Afterwards, the unit was
transferred east to fight in the battles around Atlanta. The last two cavalry
books to be published to date is Martha Crabb All Afire to Fight: The Untold
Tale of the Civil War’s Ninth Texas Cavalry (Avon, 2000), and James Arnold
Jeff Davis’s Own: The Second Cavalry in Texas (New York, 2000). Crabb
details the lives of the men that fought under Lawrence Sul Ross. She uses
diaries, letters and Official Records to tell about a unit that was active
without furlough through out the war. Crabb describes
the ugly side of war with disease and death a constant shadow over the men. Arnold tracks the careers of the officers of
this cavalry unit before and during the war. He shows that this service was the
training ground for many generals in the conflict to come.
Two autobiographies used as a regimental histories are The Campaigns
of Walker’s Texas Division, J.P. Blessington (Austin, 1994), and With
the 18th Texas Infantry, David Norris, editor, (Hillsboro, 1996). These
books give small details of camp life and the author’s perspective of the
battles they witnessed. Another book about the same regiment is James Davis Texans
in Gray: a Regimental History of the Eighteenth Texas Infantry (Tulsa,
1999). Davis used many of the first hand accounts from diaries to compile this
history. Following the lead from Bailey he includes a social history of the men
and what communities the companies enlisted from.
Not
to be completely left out one artillery unit is the subject of a book by John
Perkins Daniel’s Battery: The 9th Texas Field Battery (Hillsboro,
1998). This regiment saw action in Louisiana during the Red River Campaign.
When a book did not fit neatly into a
specific category, it was grouped with other general works about Texas or Texans
during the Rebellion. Texas War Horses F. Lee,
Lawrence (Austin, 1995) is an example of a work that fits into this
classification. Lawrence describes several horses that charged into battle
carrying Texans to immortality, with one chapter specifically about the Texas
Confederate cavalry. To explore the subject of
cavalry further Anne Bailey wrote Texans in the Confederate Cavalry
(Abilene, 1998), a publication of McWhiney’s Foundation. Bailey gives a
general overview of all the cavalry units from Texas and the battles that they
fought. She gives a good description of the everyday life of the Texas cavalry
trooper as he defends the soil of other states.
The Civil War was not the only time
Texas men served in the military.
The Texas Military Experience, Joseph Dawson, editor, (College Station, 1995),
traces the experience of Texas men at arms for over 100 years. Dawson assembled
several essays written by well known historians specializing in different eras
on the subject of the Texas fighting man. Confederate units from Texas were well
summarized explaining their role in all of the fighting.
Ralph Wooster wrote three books that
fit into a general category. Lone Star Blue and Gray (Austin, 1995), is a
collection of previously published essays on various topics of Texas Civil War
history. Several battles in Texas are described along with slavery and the
attempt at canning beef in East Texas for the soldiers in the east. One of the
better books for the non-academic reader is Civil War Texas, Ralph
Wooster (Austin, 1998). All Civil War historical markers, statues, monuments,
battle sites and museums in Texas are listed in this volume. Wooster included an
overview of the role that the people of Texas played during the war. He expanded
this overview in Texas and Texans in the Civil War, Ralph Wooster
(Austin, 1995). Wooster combines
autobiographies, journals, regimental histories, and contemporary works to
create a tapestry of Texan lives during the period. He includes maps of battles
and period photographs of the people he mentions.
Several locations mentioned by
Wooster were prisoner-of-war camps within the state. Lonnie Speer, Portals of
Hell (Stackpole, 1997), describes the camps located around San Antonio and
how the Texas government managed them. He draws information from several
journals and diaries of Union soldiers as well as writings from some Confederate
guards.
Not all Texans agreed with secession
and joined the Confederate Army. Richard Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists
(Boston), tells about the men that came from the south and joined the
Union army. He states there were about 2,000 men from Texas that fought for the
U.S. Whether the man fought for the north or the south, he went into
battle following a flag. Every day men sacrificed their lives to honor their
regimental banner. Battle Flags of Texans in the Confederacy, Alan
Sumrall (Austin, 1995), gives the histories of several flags that Texans died
trying to defend. Sumrall includes photographs of some flags that have survived
the conflict plus illustrations of others that did not.
This research detected a trend that many books written by Texas authors
circa 1900 were rediscovered and published again. Most of these are diaries and
eyewitness accounts of battles, with a few regimental histories. Another source
of reprints are books produced in the 1960s. Many books
published by Hill County College Press have been picked up by another
publisher and reprinted giving new life to already classic works in Texas Civil
War history. A list of some of the reprints has been included in the
bibliography.
Several
theses from the 1980s eventually became books listed in this work. Over thirty
theses were written in the 1990s
and should be the seed material for books to be published within the next five
years. No new areas of Texas Civil War research have been explored in the
current theses. Standard themes that were written about are politics, regimental
histories, ethnic roles, reminiscences, military prisons, and one work about the
impact on the family. These theses reflect a move away from the rigid academic
research format toward a more popular style of historical writing. This is a
trend that will dominate the field for the next twenty years.
To complete the human dimension of
Texas during the Rebellion several areas need further research. A few Texas
regiments might not have a scholarly history that has been published. Books
surveyed in this work began the type of regimental history that investigated the
social and economic status of the citizen solider. An in-depth analysis of the
character and morals of the common Texas solider should be forthcoming in the
future. Previous books have done an exceptional job relating what the solider
did day to day. But, a question that remains unanswered is, Why would a man
travel 800 miles east of his native
soil and die on ground that met nothing to him personally?
Women’s roles in during the
Rebellion have had some research and a few publications in the last 12 years but
more details remain untold. At the time of the war, a large portion of Texas was
still an untamed frontier. Women and their children were left to defend
themselves against few resources, Indians, bandits, and natural catastrophes.
The fact that any families existed to come home to is a testament to the strong
will of Texas women. One area of life
that has been overlooked is what happened to the family of the solider that did
not return. This war created a mass of Texas children that were orphaned
overnight. Also the stress of losing a husband brought many women to the depths
of despair and some never recovered. What were the lasting effects on the next
generation of Texans? Much has been published of the success in later life of
some the defeated Confederates but where is the children’s story?
Many stories written about the war
include descriptions of a Huge pile of amputated arms and legs after a battle.
How did the farmer that went off to war, make a living when he returned without
a leg or arm? What did this disfigurement do to his relationship with his
family?
A controversial subject that is
lacking in scholarship is the role of Texas black men in the Confederate Army.
Some freedmen fought for the South but how many and who they were is
still being debated. Were any of these men born on Texas soil? Many volumes have
been written about the underground railway. Slaves in Texas ran south to Mexico
instead of north to gain their freedom. Very little information has been
published about the routes and assistance these runaways received on their
journey.
There is still much work to be done
on the subject of Texas during the Rebellion. This situation gives the
expectation of great works being produced by the historical community in the
near future. All areas are far from being exhausted and a wealth of information
is still waiting to be discovered. If the publication cycle continues through
the next decade, Texans can look forward to an extraordinary amount of Civil War
books being available.
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