Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Nineteenth Century

2. “Valor, Wisdom, and Experience”: Early Texas Rangers and the Nature of Frontier Leadership

50 ★ 2 ★ “Valor, Wisdom, and Experience”: Early Texas Rangers and the Nature of Frontier Leadership Stephen L. Hardin S purred by Napoleonic notions of glory, Luther Giddings followed General Zachary Taylor into Mexico in 1846. As an officer in the First Regiment of Ohio Volunteers, he was no spitand -polish regular. The Ohioan nonetheless shared a number of assumptions with West Pointers. Giddings believed, for example, that a soldier identified himself by wearing an assigned uniform; a soldier observed a code that demanded obedience to superiors; a soldier belonged to a fellowship of arms, and members of that exclusive fraternity—even the enemy—deserved respect and professional courtesy. Finally, Giddings held that a soldier was an agent of the state, protecting his nation’s interest, at his country’s beck and call. Although he had not read the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, Giddings would have endorsed his oft-misquoted dictum, “War is the continuation of political intercourse with the intermixing of other means.” Then, at Camargo, Giddings encountered fighting men who challenged most of his preconceptions. To categorize these outrageous partisans he sought analogies from history: Early Texas Rangers and the Nature of Frontier Leadership ★ 51 The character of the Texas Ranger is now well known by both friend and foe. As a mounted soldier he has had no counterpart in any age or country. Neither Cavalier nor Cossack, Mameluke nor Moss-trooper are like him; and yet, in some respects, he resembles them all. Chivalrous, bold and impetuous in action, he is yet wary and calculating, always impatient of restraint, and sometimes unscrupulous and unmerciful. He is ununiformed, and undrilled, and performs his active duties thoroughly, but with little regard to order or system. Giddings did not know what to make of these merciless Texans. They had already established a reputation as Los Diablos Tejanos, devils who viewed war as an opportunity for personal vengeance. He admitted their brute efficiency in a “chaparral skirmish,” but was reluctant to accept them as real “soldiers.” It was no accident that Giddings compared these unrestrained primitives to Cossacks, those savage denizens of the steppes. Indeed, to Giddings and others of Taylor’s Army of Observation, Texas Rangers seemed conspicuous by their “loose discipline” and their indulgence in “madcap revels.” In brief, provincials who knew little of the sanctioned customs of civilized war. They were mistaken. Rangers understood the protocol: they simply rejected it. A system that tyrannized their ancestors had conditioned Anglo -Celtic Texans to cast off some three hundred years of Western military culture. The seventeenth century witnessed the rise of nation-states and war became, in John Dryden’s phrase, “the trade of kings.” In such a form of government, armies founded on strict discipline, centralized administration, and trained troops were inherent . The professional soldier, formerly a “free-lance” who sold his services to the highest bidder, enrolled in the service of the state. This new system demanded discipline and obedience to lawful superiors . It drew sharp distinctions between the “lawful bearer of arms” and the rebel, freebooter, and brigand. By the eighteenth century, wealth generated by trade financed standing soldiers and the regiment became the pre-eminent unit of 52 ★ Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Nineteenth Century military establishments. In war, regulars were instruments of policy ; in peacetime, they often became toys for bored monarchs who paraded them around palace grounds for the amusement of visiting dignitaries. Increasingly, garrisons withdrew from the populace. As English historian John Keegan observed: “[Regiments] had been founded to isolate society’s disruptive elements for society’s good, though that had been forgotten. They ended by isolating themselves from society altogether, differentiated by their own rules, rituals and disciplines .” A recruit who took the king’s shilling expected to do his bidding. Many civilians began to see regulars as bullyboys who had turned against their own people for royal silver. That apprehension was keen during revolts against the monarchy . At the battle of Culloden, during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745–1746, British redcoats killed some one thousand Highlanders in combat and captured a thousand more. The British regulars slaughtered most of their prisoners out of hand. After all, as civilians, the rebels were no part of the regimental order and could hardly expect the honorable treatment normally accorded professionals . During the subsequent Highland Clearances, many of the defeated Scots fled to the southern colonies of North America, bringing with them...