Texas in Turmoil: The Saga of Texas, 1849-1875, and: Texas in the War, 1861-1865 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS277 subject to the disciplining and challenging retorts of the senior statesmen, whose interpretations were, after all, not quite unknown. Nonetheless, this splendid collection is a classic of its type and will undoubtedly elicit widespread gratitude for the efforts of the Institute and of its director, Professor Knoles. Thomas B. Alexander University of Alabama Texas in Turmoil: The Saga of Texas, 1849-1875. By Ernest Wallace. (Austin: Steck-Vaughn Company, 1965. Pp. vii, 293. $2.95.) Texas in the War, 1861-1865. By Marcus J. Wright. Edited by Harold B. Simpson. (Hillsboro, Texas: The Hill Junior College Press, 1965. Pp. xx, 246. $7.50.) Professor Wallace has attempted in Texas in Turmoil to present a connected narrative of Texas history during the turbulent decades of the late antebellum, Civil War, and reconstruction periods. This was an era when Texas was much more of a frontier region than part of the Old South, and her role was in large part shaped and colored by frontier characteristics. In portraying frontier problems and developments, as he does in the first and the last chapters, the author is at his best. Even without supporting citations , Professor Wallace's knowledge and understanding of the Indian problem is obvious to to the reader. In other respects the volume has outstanding shortcomings. As is evidenced by his preface and his epilogue (or bibliographical essay), the author sought to achieve an "accurate history as humanized, interesting, and artistic literature." Brevity may well have contributed to his failure to reach this goal, as he indicates, but even more fundamental defects mar the work. Obviously this volume is not written for the specialized historian but rather for the general reader or for the non-professional historical buff, and the absence of citations is thus understandable. On the other hand, Professor Wallace, as an historian, is responsible for the historical accuracy of his facts. Hood's Texas Brigade was not sent to join Jackson's corps after "McClellan abandoned his Peninsula Campaign," nor were the Texans responsible for McClellan "soon retreating toward the Potomac" after Gaines Mill. It is also highly speculative, and almost certainly inaccurate, to assume that Texans in the twentieth century "still looked with suspicion and contempt upon every 'damned yankee,' " and even a cursory analysis of the various reconstruction plans would reveal that Johnson's process of reconstruction was not "essentially the same as Lincoln's." How a "sizeable gain in population, heavily Negro" made economic conditions worse in Texas in 1870 is difficult to understand, particularly in view of the fact that the proportion of Negro to white population increased by less than two percentage points according to the author's own figures. As "humanized, interesting, and artistic literature" this volume is less open to criticism. The author's style is clear and succinct. Intimate and exciting 278CIVIL WAR HISTORY anecdotes, as well as colorful writing, lend interest to the work and should make it popular with the general reading public. Again, however, brevity at times detracts from interest qualities, as in the chapter on politics of the 1850's which has more the appearance of a political genealogy than an historical resumé of the period. In short, Professor Wallace's objectives and stated purposes are laudatory, but scholars and laymen alike must still await a study in depth of these years of turmoil in the Lone Star state. Texas in the War, 1861-1865 will serve as a valuable reference work for future researchers in Texas military history. The nucleus of the volume is an extensive compilation of statistical data on Texas units and commanders in the Confederate armed forces by General Marcus J. Wright. Since Wright assisted in the compiling of the Official Records, he was in an unusually advantageous position to collect state materials, a task he undertook for Texas, Tennessee, and Arkansas. His manuscripts on the latter two states have previously been published, and in this work Colonel Simpson rescues the manuscript on Texas from archival obscurity. To the original manuscript Simpson has added voluminous notes of biographical and historical nature, portraits of military leaders, and appendices of further elaboration. The title is somewhat misleading, but it follows the precedent set...