Customer Reviews

Civil War Texas (Fred Rider Cotton Popular History Series)

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This publication is about halfway in size between a pamphlet and a small book, having a total of 84 pages, of which 18 are index, notes, and identification of the author. However, even though it is quite small, it succinctly lays out the high points of the involvement of the people of Texas in the War Between the States. Pleasingly enough, it touches upon the high points of the period such as the Battle of Sabine Pass and the low, such as the murder of Union sympathizers near Fredricksburg and Gainesville.

This book is not really for the avid Texas history enthusiast because it is so small that most of its information would already be known by that group. However, it is a nice, well-written little book for the reader who wants to spend an hour or so to get an overall summary of the involvement of Texas and Texans in the Civil War era.

This book is not overly ambitious but is nevertheless a good overview of a very hard period of Texas history. It should be used primarily as a synopsis leading to more detailed study of important events.

Even though the book is almost an outline, I still learned things I hadn't heard before. I didn't realize, for example, that most Texas men of military men joined the Confederate military. I don't doubt the accuracy of this but believe, from a patriotism perspective, that this is remarkable. I can't think of any other war in U.S. history where men would have joined in these kinds of percentages. Granted, the Confederacy ultimately resorted to the draft but apparently most of these people were volunteers.

I think that this must have been one of the reasons for the lethality of the Civil War. No doubt Northerners in some states joined with similar fervor. The result was huge armies composed of highly motivated men meeting on the field of battle--620,000 deaths--more than all other wars in U.S. history combined. Modern propagandists promote the idea that this blood bath "unified" the nation. I wonder.

Ron Braithwaite, author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico