The Fate of Texas

Cover

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Title Page, Copyright Page

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pp. iii-iv

Contents

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pp. vii-viii

Illustrations and Maps

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pp. ix-

Series Editors’ Preface

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pp. xi-xii

The Civil War in the West has a single goal: to promote historical writing about the war in the western states and territories. It focuses most particularly on the Trans-Mississippi theater, which consisted of Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, most of Louisiana (west of the Mississippi River), Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma)...

Acknowledgments

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pp. xiii-

Many people helped me develop this book. Dr. Donald S. Frazier initiated the project, and thanks to an inquisitive phone call I made, he granted me the anthology. Lawrence J. Malley, the director of the University of Arkansas Press, gave of his time (and patience) to make this work possible. ...

Introduction

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pp. xv-xxi

In the spring of 1861, alarms calling for war spread across the Lone Star State. “Men of Texas, Look to Your Arms!” exclaimed Ben McCulloch, hero of many of Texas’s conflicts, in Corsicana’s Navaro Express. He concluded his appeal for soldiers using the history and memory of his past struggles for Texas: “Texians! remember your former victories, and prepare to march to others. ...

1. Texas, Jefferson Davis, and Confederate National Strategy

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pp. 1-23

Historians have devoted increasing attention to the Confederacy’s Trans-Mississippi region.¹ Especially since 1960, they have treated a range of Trans-Mississippi military, political, economic, and social topics. In studies of strategy in the Civil War, however, Texas is not mentioned or only gets passing notice.² ...

2. Warriors, Husbands, and Fathers: Confederate Soldiers and Their Families

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pp. 25-35

In traditional combat histories written during the first century after the American Civil War, the relationships of soldiers and their families were not examined in any detail. Who won battles and wars, and why and how they won them—these were the foremost questions in conventional historical accounts, and few readers asked for more. ...

3. “If We Should Succeed in Driving the Enemy Back Out of My Native State”: Why Texans Fought East of the Mississippi River during the Civil War

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pp. 37-51

For well over a century, historians have examined the reasons why Southern men joined the Confederate military. Most scholars have concluded that the defense of hearth and home was a primary factor pushing soldiers to the front. None of them, however, have clearly defined or examined the complex nature of this motivation. ...

4. The Price of Liberty: The Great Hanging at Gainesville

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pp. 53-67

The deadliest lynching in U.S. history occurred in Texas during the Civil War. Militia mustered under Confederate authority in Cooke County arrested more than 150 men in October 1862. Vigilantes in Gainesville, the county seat, hanged 40 men. A few more were executed in other counties, but Gainesville became most closely linked to the “Great Hanging.” ...

5. The Civil War and the Lives of Texas Women

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pp. 69-81

The majority of women in Texas never had to deal with the upheaval of Union troops fighting in, marching through, or occupying their homes and farms as did women elsewhere in the South. Much historical literature has documented the profound effect the presence or threat of warring armies had on women’s lives, roles, and expectations. ...

6. Slaves Taken to Texas for Safekeeping during the Civil War

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pp. 83-103

The victory of Ulysses S. Grant’s soldiers at Shiloh in the spring of 1862 and the subsequent surrender of New Orleans, along with the ensuing movement of the U.S. Navy up the Mississippi River, dramatically increased the flow of Confederate refugees into Texas. Among them were many slaveholders, especially from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi...

7. New Perspectives on Texas Germans and the Confederacy

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pp. 105-119

Texas, which was home to 20,000 of the 70,000 Germans residing in the eleven Confederate states, was the only place where the German element was large enough to play an appreciable role in politics and war.¹ Just what role these Texans played, however, still remains under dispute. ...

8. After the Surrender: The Postwar Experiences of Confederate Veterans in Harrison County, Texas

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pp. 121-135

For more than a century, the Civil War and the soldiers who fought it have been the subjects of an unending flood of books and articles. Interest in the soldiers, however, generally ends with Lee’s surrender in 1865. As historian Maris Vinovskis observed in 1989, “Almost nothing has been written about the postwar experiences of Civil War veterans.”¹ ...

9. “I Seemed to Have No Thought of the Past, Present, or Future”: Texans React to Confederate Defeat

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pp. 137-153

In mid-May 1865 Confederate general Sterling Price and others met at New Orleans with Maj. Gen. E. R. S. Canby to negotiate a surrender of Southern forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department. After agreeing on terms, Canby sent Brig. Gen. Edmund J. Davis, a former state judge who had joined Union forces in 1862, to Galveston so that Gen. E. Kirby Smith could sign the document. ...

10. Causes Lost but Not Forgotten: George Washington Littlefield, Jefferson Davis, and Confederate Memories at the University of Texas at Austin

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pp. 155-179

In April 1990 two incidents of racial strife shook the campus of approximately fifty thousand students at the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin). First, on Monday, April 9, students learned that a car used by the Zeta Tau Delta fraternity during the previous weekend’s Sixtieth Annual Spring Round-Up Parade...

11. “Tell It Like It Was”: Texas, the Civil War, and Public History

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pp. 181-196

In April 2000 the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin brought together a group of experts to discuss the memoirs of José Enrique de la Peña, a Mexican army lieutenant who fought with Santa Anna at the Alamo. In his account Peña described the surrender and execution of Davy Crockett. ...

Notes

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pp. 197-250

Selected Bibliography

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pp. 251-256

Contributors

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pp. 257-258

Index

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pp. 259-272

Author

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pp. 273-

Charles D. Grear is assistant professor of history at Prairie View A&M University. He serves as book review editor for H-CivWar, and he has received the Lawrence T. Jones III Research Fellowship in Civil War Texas History for the Texas State Historical Association. ...

Back Cover

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