Henderson County, Texas, 1846-1861 is unlike any other history of Henderson County during its formative period. It is well documented and places the county in the historical context of Texas and the United States, but it does not lose sight of the importance of local events and people. The author focuses on the evolutionary changes of this East Texas county prior to the Civil War. Henderson County, Texas, illustrates particularly well the story of how frontier settlements in the South were transformed by an influential minority of slave holders moving west across the southern region of the United States—the expansion of the Dixie frontier. During the 1850s, the county's social structure, economics, and politics had become aligned to the patterns set by older states of the cotton South. Increasingly, commercial planters gained control over the county's original community of small independent farmers and local merchants. Ultimately, the Civil War brought an end to this trans-formation before it was fully complete.