Customer Reviews

Brush Men and Vigilantes: Civil War Dissent in Texas (Sam Rayburn)

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This is a very well researched book pertaining to the Civil War tensions that arose in northeast Texas prior to and during the Civil War. A lot of the settlers were from non slave holding areas of Kentucky and Tennessee while others were from slave staes and owned slaves. The two groups had opposing views, with one supporting the Union while the other supported the Confederacy. The wealthier slave owning group who supported the Confederacy put down those with Unionist views by making them leave or in some cases hanging them after mock trials. Some Unionists escaped to a dense thicket in the area, only to be later captured and hanged. This book is not a work of fiction. It is based on real events about real people. I highly recommend it to anyone with family connections to the Hunt County, Texas area and to anyone with an interest in those unfortunate people who ended up in the Confederate States, but were still loyal to the Union.

This is the most comprehensive study of the subject of the men who fought the "silent war" in northeast Texas that saw innocent men die just because they were suspected of being pro-union. The amount of research that went into this book is tremendous and should be a real asset to those interested in not only the history of the era, but the geneology of the families involved in a terrible time of Texas history. This book should be a must have for anyone interested in Texas history in depth.

I was initially attracted to this book because i grew up in the area in question (northeast texas, sulphur river forks) and because i knew the authors. I found it really illuminates the cultural mindset of that area. i always wondered - how was it that all of us were so contentious, suspicious of outsiders and independent? where did that all start? apparently we were pretty feisty from way back, and this book illustrates the kind of additional conflict that orientation created there during the civil war. certainly anyone from the area would be interested in this sort of cultural history, but to a broader audience it demonstrates the simple fact that not everyone in the confederacy was cut from the same piece of cloth, and not everyone considered themselves a part of that southern way of life in exactly the same way. i also have to say the authors did a fine job of piecing their story together from what must have been scanty, incomplete and hard-to-find sources. well i swan, i reckon ya'll did a fine job.