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  • The Reckoning: The Triumph of Order on the Texas Outlaw Frontier by Peter R. Rose, foreword by T. R. Fehrenbach
  • Brandon Jett
The Reckoning: The Triumph of Order on the Texas Outlaw Frontier. By Peter R. Rose, foreword by T. R. Fehrenbach. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2012. Pp. 278. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index.)

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The Texas Rangers are some of the most controversial figures in Texas history. On the one hand, they represent the rugged, hard-nosed style of law enforcement that permeates popular perceptions of frontier life. On the other hand, the [End Page 330] Rangers are cast negatively because of their questionable tactics. In The Reckoning: The Triumph of Order on the Texas Outlaw Frontier, Peter Rose presents a nuanced view of the Texas Rangers. Although their methods were at times questionable, Rose emphasizes the positive aspects of the Rangers who “spearheaded the fight against the extortionary criminal element that populated the forks of the Llano River” (xxi). As the Rangers fought against the outlaws who had come to dominate Kimble County, Texas, citizens “gradually began to organize and assert themselves against the criminal element” (6). It was the confluence of the Rangers’ efforts and the determination of law-abiding residents, Rose argues, that eventually established law and order in Kimble County.

Rose lays the foundation of the study by outlining his two goals: to document the coming of law and order in Kimble County and to “tell a fascinating, heroic, and tragic tale” (xxi). He succeeds in both of his efforts. Utilizing Texas Ranger files and newspapers in combination with oral histories from locals in Kimble County, Rose meticulously analyzes the geography of the Edwards Plateau, migration patterns of early settlers, violence, intersections of race and law, and the nuanced understanding of criminal justice on the Texas frontier. He highlights the importance of the Frontier Battalion through a series of short biographical sketches of Rangers and detailed accounts of their efforts to thwart the Confederation, a gang led by the Potter and Dublin families that by 1876, “had achieved effective control” (52) over power structures in Kimble County. After years of unsuccessful attempts to eliminate the Confederation, the stalwart Rangers in conjunction with local law enforcement and vigilante groups eradicated the outlaw threat from the region and “order had finally been established—if very irregularly—and the rule of law could begin” (155).

A seeming contradiction in the book, however, is that vigilantism played an important role in the final “reckoning” from which the book gets its title. Local law enforcement colluded with the vigilantes who killed John Potter, signaling the end of the Confederation’s presence in Kimble County. Even though Tom Dowdy, the vigilante ringleader, was brought to trial, he was acquitted. Rose states, “The district attorney … was as complicit in Tom Dowdy’s acquittal as the law officers of Kimble County had been in John Potter’s lynching” (159). Law enforcement, local prosecutors, and the larger community condoned the vigilantism that, as Rose suggests, brought order and the rule of law to their county. However, what does rule of law mean when notions of popular justice still infused the county’s legal system? At times, it appears, the only way to secure law and order was to operate outside of the law. The book would have benefited from a discussion of what law...

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