2020, Texas Historical Commission's Governor's Award for Historic Preservation was awarded to the Community Historical Archaeology Project with Schools (CHAPS) at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. This book grew out of the CHAPS program. Runner-up, 2019 Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Book Award, sponsored by the Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Association (TOMFRA) Long known as a place of cross-border intrigue, the Rio Grande’s unique role in the history of the American Civil War has been largely forgotten or overlooked. Few know of the dramatic events that took place here or the complex history of ethnic tensions and international intrigue and the clash of colorful characters that marked the unfolding and aftermath of the Civil War in the Lone Star State. To understand the American Civil War in Texas also requires an understanding of the history of Mexico. The Civil War on the Rio Grande focuses on the region’s forced annexation from Mexico in 1848 through the Civil War and Reconstruction. In a very real sense, the Lower Rio Grande Valley was a microcosm not only of the United States but also of increasing globalization as revealed by the intersections of races, cultures, economic forces, historical dynamics, and individual destinies. As a companion to Blue and Gray on the Border: The Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail, this volume provides the scholarly backbone to a larger public history project exploring three decades of ethnic conflict, shifting international alliances, and competing economic proxies at the border. The Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846–1876 makes a groundbreaking contribution not only to the history of a Texas region in transition but also to the larger history of a nation at war with itself.

Runner-up, 2019 Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Book Award, sponsored by the Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Association (TOMFRA) "A valuable read for anyone interested in Texas or Mexican history, as well as the Civil War, life on the frontier, and race relations." --The NYMAS Review "The Civil War on the Rio Grande is an unconventional history, but an informative one. Some of the chapters are written in academic style. These often make slow reading. Yet the result is rewarding. The book reveals the complexities of the war fought along the nation's southern boundary."--Galveston County Daily News "The entire effort clearly demonstrates that Civil War South Texas offers opportunities for study far beyond the Battle of Palmito Ranch."--Southwestern Historical Quarterly Long known as a place of cross-border intrigue, the Rio Grande's unique role in the history of the American Civil War has been largely forgotten or overlooked. Few know of the dramatic events that took place here or the complex history of ethnic tensions and international intrigue and the clash of colorful characters that marked the unfolding and aftermath of the Civil War in the Lone Star State. To understand the American Civil War in Texas also requires an understanding of the history of Mexico. The Civil War on the Rio Grande focuses on the region's forced annexation from Mexico in 1848 through the Civil War and Reconstruction. In a very real sense, the Lower Rio Grande Valley was a microcosm not only of the United States but also of increasing globalization as revealed by the intersections of races, cultures, economic forces, historical dynamics, and individual destinies. As a companion to Blue and Gray on the Border: The Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail, this volume provides the scholarly backbone to a larger public history project exploring three decades of ethnic conflict, shifting international alliances, and competing economic proxies at the border. The Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846-1876 makes a groundbreaking contribution not only to the history of a Texas region in transition but also to the larger history of a nation at war with itself.

Runner-up, 2019 Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Book Award, sponsored by the Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Association (TOMFRA) Most general histories of the Civil War pay scant attention to the many important military events that took place in the Lower Rio Grande Valley along the Texas-Mexico border. It was here, for example, that many of the South’s cotton exports, all-important to its funding for the war effort, were shuttled across the Rio Grande into Mexico for shipment to markets across the Atlantic. It was here that the Union blockade was felt perhaps most keenly. And it was here where longstanding cross-border rivalries and shifting political fortunes on both sides of the river made for a constant undercurrent of intrigue. And yet, most accounts of this long and bloody conflict give short shrift to the complexities of the ethnic tensions, political maneuvering, and international diplomacy that vividly colored the Civil War in this region. Now, Christopher L. Miller, Russell K. Skowronek, and Roseann Bacha-Garza have woven together the history and archaeology of the Lower Rio Grande Valley into a densely illustrated travel guide featuring important historical and military sites of the Civil War period. Blue and Gray on the Border integrates the sites, colorful personalities, cross-border conflicts, and intriguing historical vignettes that outline the story of the Civil War along the Texas-Mexico border. This resource-packed book will aid heritage travelers, students, and history buffs in their discovery of the rich history of the Civil War in the Rio Grande Valley.

2020, Texas Historical Commission's Governor's Award for Historic Preservation was awarded to the Community Historical Archaeology Project with Schools (CHAPS) at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. This book grew out of the CHAPS program. Runner-up, 2019 Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Book Award, sponsored by the Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Association (TOMFRA) Long known as a place of cross-border intrigue, the Rio Grande’s unique role in the history of the American Civil War has been largely forgotten or overlooked. Few know of the dramatic events that took place here or the complex history of ethnic tensions and international intrigue and the clash of colorful characters that marked the unfolding and aftermath of the Civil War in the Lone Star State. To understand the American Civil War in Texas also requires an understanding of the history of Mexico. The Civil War on the Rio Grande focuses on the region’s forced annexation from Mexico in 1848 through the Civil War and Reconstruction. In a very real sense, the Lower Rio Grande Valley was a microcosm not only of the United States but also of increasing globalization as revealed by the intersections of races, cultures, economic forces, historical dynamics, and individual destinies. As a companion to Blue and Gray on the Border: The Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail, this volume provides the scholarly backbone to a larger public history project exploring three decades of ethnic conflict, shifting international alliances, and competing economic proxies at the border. The Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846–1876 makes a groundbreaking contribution not only to the history of a Texas region in transition but also to the larger history of a nation at war with itself.

This is another Civil War history book, but it deals with an aspect of the Civil War that does not appear-even as an aside or footnote-in the vast majority of the other fifty thousand books and pamphlets that address that war. This is the untold story of the complicated cross-border, multi-sided Civil War era specific to the Rio Grande Valley in both Texas and Mexico that took place most intensively between 1861 and 1867, yet the roots of which reach back to at least 1846 and extend forward to at least 1877.

The historical record of the Rio Grande valley through much of the nineteenth century reveals well-documented violence fueled by racial hatred, national rivalries, lack of governmental authority, competition for resources, and an international border that offered refuge to lawless men. Less noted is the region’s other everyday reality, one based on coexistence and cooperation among Mexicans, Anglo-Americans, and the Native Americans, African Americans, and Europeans who also inhabited the borderlands. War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830–1880 is a history of these parallel worlds focusing on a border that gave rise not only to violent conflict but also cooperation and economic and social advancement. Meeting here are the Anglo-Americans who came to the border region to trade, spread Christianity, and settle; Mexicans seeking opportunity in el norte; Native Americans who raided American and Mexican settlements alike for plunder and captives; and Europeans who crisscrossed the borderlands seeking new futures in a fluid frontier space. Historian Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga draws on national archives, letters, consular records, periodicals, and a host of other sources to give voice to borderlanders’ perspectives as he weaves their many, varied stories into one sweeping narrative. The tale he tells is one of economic connections and territorial disputes, of refugees and bounty hunters, speculation and stakeholding, smuggling and theft and other activities in which economic considerations often carried more weight than racial prejudice. Spanning the Anglo settlement of Texas in the 1830s, the Texas Revolution, the Republic of Texas , the US-Mexican War, various Indian wars, the US Civil War, the French intervention into Mexico, and the final subjugation of borderlands Indians by the combined forces of the US and Mexican armies, this is a magisterial work that forever alters, complicates, and enriches borderlands history. Published in association with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas

Gives insight into an elite planter-class Texas woman's loneliness and hunger to experience the non-traditional world of a Southern Belle. Her contextual observations on slavery, family relations, and the Civil War contribute to Southern history.