Most histories of Civil War Texas—some starring the fabled Hood’s Brigade, Terry’s Texas Rangers, or one or another military figure—depict the Lone Star State as having joined the Confederacy as a matter of course and as having later emerged from the war relatively unscathed. Yet as the contributors to this volume amply demonstrate, the often neglected stories of Texas Unionists and dissenters paint a far more complicated picture. Ranging in time from the late 1850s to the end of Reconstruction, Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance restores a missing layer of complexity to the history of Civil War Texas. The authors—all noted scholars of Texas and Civil War history—show that slaves, freedmen and freedwomen, Tejanos, German immigrants, and white women all took part in the struggle, even though some never found themselves on a battlefield. Their stories depict the Civil War as a conflict not only between North and South but also between neighbors, friends, and family members. By framing their stories in the analytical context of the “long Civil War,” Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance reveals how friends and neighbors became enemies and how the resulting violence, often at the hands of secessionists, crossed racial and ethnic lines. The chapters also show how ex-Confederates and their descendants, as well as former slaves, sought to give historical meaning to their experiences and find their place as citizens of the newly re-formed nation. Concluding with an account of the origins of Juneteenth—the nationally celebrated holiday marking June 19, 1865, when emancipation was announced in Texas—Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance challenges the collective historical memory of Civil War Texas and its place in both the Confederacy and the United States. It provides material for a fresh narrative, one including people on the margins of history and dispelling the myth of a monolithically Confederate Texas.

Only eighteen years old when he marched off to war, young Confederate Robert Campbell already possessed the keen, perceptive eye of a seasoned journalist. After fighting with the 5th Texas Infantry Regiment in the famed Hood's Texas Brigade, Campbell recorded the first months of his service for the benefit of future generations of his family. Now editors George Skoch and Mark W. Perkins bring Campbell's riveting eyewitness accounts from the frontline to the public in Lone Star Confederate: A Gallant and Good Soldier of the 5th Texas Infantry, a lively and telling glimpse into a Johnny Reb's life. This young Confederate's tale of battle begins with his introduction to the unit in Virginia and continues through to his furlough home after he suffers a serious battle wound at Second Manassas. Among the thousands who served in what arguably was the most renowned combat unit in the Southern army, Hood's Texas Brigade, Campbell holds the dubious distinction of being the most wounded man, sustaining six wounds during the course of the war. Campbell praises Southern women who cared for soldiers along the railroad line from Richmond to Montgomery and recalls eating ten ears of green corn after three days of short rations and a hard day of fighting. He recounts falling asleep on picket duty despite the fear of punishment by death, and describes being under cannon fire and suffering a painful leg injury. The terrible conditions of battle—eating and sleeping too little, marching and drilling too much, cleaning weapons and standing watch in the rain and cold—are vividly real under Campbell's pen, which also praises his leaders, Lee, Jackson, and other Confederate officers. Skoch and Perkins have supplemented the record of Campbell's wartime service with his letters written during and after the war. His remarkable firsthand account of life in the 5th Texas will find a permanent niche in the literature of the Civil War.

From the bitter disputes over secession to the ways in which the conflict would be remembered, Texas and Texans were caught up in the momentous struggles of the American Civil War. Tens of thousands of Texans joined military units, and scarcely a household in the state was unaffected as mothers and wives assumed new roles in managing farms and plantations. Still others grappled with the massive social, political, and economic changes wrought by the bloodiest conflict in American history. The sixteen essays (eleven of them new) from some of the leading historians in the field in the second edition of Lone Star Blue and Gray illustrate the rich traditions and continuing vitality of Texas Civil War scholarship. Along with these articles, editors Ralph A. and Robert Wooster provide a succinct introduction to the war and Texas and recommended readings for those seeking further investigations of virtually every aspect of the war as experienced in the Lone Star State.

On February 1, 1861, delegates at the Texas Secession Convention elected to leave the Union. The people of Texas supported the actions of the convention in a statewide referendum, paving the way for the state to secede and to officially become the seventh state in the Confederacy. Soon the Texans found themselves engaged in a bloody and prolonged civil war against their northern brethren. During the curse of this war, the lives of thousands of Texans, both young and old, were changed forever. This new anthology, edited by Kenneth W. Howell, incorporates the latest scholarly research on how Texans experienced the war. Eighteen contributors take us from the battlefront to the home front, ranging from inside the walls of a Confederate prison to inside the homes of women and children left to fend for themselves while their husbands and fathers were away on distant battlefields, and from the halls of the governor’s mansion to the halls of the county commissioner’s court in Colorado County. Also explored are well-known battles that took place in or near Texas, such as the Battle of Galveston, the Battle of Nueces, the Battle of Sabine Pass, and the Red River Campaign. Finally, the social and cultural aspects of the war receive new analysis, including the experiences of women, African Americans, Union prisoners of war, and noncombatants.

The idea of Texas was forged in the crucible of frontier warfare between 1822 and 1865, when Anglo-Americans adapted to mounted combat north of the Rio Grande. This cavalry-centric arena, which had long been the domain of Plains Indians and the Spanish Empire, compelled an adaptive martial tradition that shaped early Lone Star society. Beginning with initial tactical innovation in Spanish Tejas and culminating with massive mobilization for the Civil War, Texas society developed a distinctive way of war defined by armed horsemanship, volunteer militancy, and short-term mobilization as it grappled with both tribal and international opponents. Drawing upon military reports, participants' memoirs, and government documents, cavalry officer Nathan A. Jennings analyzes the evolution of Texan militarism from tribal clashes of colonial Tejas, territorial wars of the Texas Republic, the Mexican-American War, border conflicts of antebellum Texas, and the cataclysmic Civil War. In each conflict Texan volunteers answered the call to arms with marked enthusiasm for mounted combat. Riding for the Lone Star explores this societal passion--with emphasis on the historic rise of the Texas Rangers--through unflinching examination of territorial competition with Comanches, Mexicans, and Unionists. Even as statesmen Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston emerged as influential strategic leaders, captains like Edward Burleson, John Coffee Hays, and John Salmon Ford attained fame for tactical success.

In a rare departure from the narrow periodization that marks past studies of Texas politics during the Civil War era, this sweeping work tracks the leadership and electoral basis of politics in the Lone Star State from secession all the way through Reconstruction. Employing a combination of traditional historical sources and cutting-edge quantitative analyses of county voting returns, Dale Baum painstakingly explores the double collapse of Texas unionism—first as a bulwark against secession in the winter of 1860–1861 and then in the late 1860s as a foundation upon which to build a truly biracial society. By carefully tracing the shifting alliances of voters from one election to the next, Baum charts the dramatic assemblage and subsequent breakup of Sam Houston’s coalition on the eve of the war, evaluates the social and economic bases of voting in the secession referendum, and appraises the extent to which intimidation of anti-secessionists shaped the state’s decision to leave the Union. He also examines the ensuing voting behavior of Confederate Texans and shows precisely how antebellum alignments and issues carried over into the war years. Finally, he describes the impact on the state’s electoral politics brought about by the policies of President Andrew Johnson and by broad programs of revolutionary change under Congressional Reconstruction. Baum presents the most sophisticated examination yet of white voter disfranchisement and apathy under Congressional Reconstruction and of the social and political origins of the state’s Radical Republican “scalawag” constituency. He also provides a rigorous statistical investigation of one of the most controversial elections ever held in Texas—the 1869 governor’s race, lost by conservative Republican Andrew Jackson Hamilton to Radical Edmund J. Davis, which nonetheless effectively ended Congressional Reconstruction. Through his innovative exploration of unionist sentiment in Texas, Baum illuminates the most turbulent political period in the history of the state, interpreting both the weight of continuity and the force of change that swept over it before, during, and immediately after the American Civil War. Students of the South, the Civil War, and African American history, as well as sociologists and political scientists interested in election fraud, political violence, and racial strife, will benefit from this significant volume.