Much of the Civil War west of the Mississippi was a war of waiting for action, of foraging already stripped land for an army that supposedly could provision itself, and of disease in camp, while trying to hold out against Union pressure. There were none of the major engagements that characterized the conflict farther east. Instead, small units of Confederate cavalry and infantry skirmished with Federal forces in Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana, trying to hold the western Confederacy together. The many units of Texans who joined this fight had a second objective—to keep the enemy out of their home state by placing themselves “between the enemy and Texas.” Historian Anne J. Bailey studies one Texas unit, Parsons's Cavalry Brigade, to show how the war west of the Mississippi was fought. Historian Norman D. Brown calls this “the definitive study of Parsons's Cavalry Brigade; the story will not need to be told again.” Exhaustively researched and written with literary grace, Between the Enemy and Texas is a “must” book for anyone interested in the role of mounted troops in the Trans-Mississippi Department.

The Third Texas Cavalry Regiment, recruited from twenty-six counties of northeastern Texas, was one of the most famous Confederate units from the Lone Star State. Douglas Hale narrates troop movements and battle actions, sensitively portraying the sufferings and private thoughts of individual cavalrymen and their commanders as they marched back and forth across the Southern landscape.

A well-researched volume, drawing from primary documents, official records, manuscripts and printed sources and works of other Texas and Civil War historians.

In Why Texans Fought in the Civil War, Charles David Grear provides insights into what motivated Texans to fight for the Confederacy. Mining important primary sources—including thousands of letters and unpublished journals—he affords readers the opportunity to hear, often in the combatants’ own words, why it was so important to them to engage in tumultuous struggles occurring so far from home. As Grear notes, in the decade prior to the Civil War the population of Texas had tripled. The state was increasingly populated by immigrants from all parts of the South and foreign countries. When the war began, it was not just Texas that many of these soldiers enlisted to protect, but also their native states, where they had family ties.

Examines the contributions of the veteran Texas Rangers to the Civil War as "horse soldiers," and highlights their confrontations, in which they were often outnumbered but frequently managed to turn the tide of battle.

Annotation A comprehensive study of the East Texas unit that served as a part of Walker's Texas division in the Trans-Mississippi Department.