In The Old Army in Texas, U.S. Army officer and historian Thomas "Ty" Smith presents a comprehensive and authoritative single-source reference for the activities of the regular army in the Lone Star State during the nineteenth century. Beginning with a series of maps that sketch the evolution of fort locations on the frontier, Smith furnishes an overview with his introductory essay, "U.S. Army Combat Operations in the Indian Wars of Texas, 1849–1881." Reprinted from the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Smith's essay breaks new ground in an innovative analysis of the characteristics of army tactical methods and the nature of combat on the Texas frontier, introducing a unique historical model and methodology to examine the army-Indians conflicts. The second part of this guide, "Commanders and Organization, Department of Texas, 1848–1900," lists the departmental commanders, the location of the military headquarters, and the changes in the administrative organization and military titles for Texas. Part III, "U.S. Army Sites in Texas 1836–1900," provides a dictionary of 223 posts, forts, and camps in the state. It is the most extensive inventory published to date, including essential information on all of the major forts, as well as dozens of obscure sites such as Camp Las Laxas, Camp Ricketts, and Camp Lugubrious. The fourth part, "Post Garrisons, 1836–1900," gives a year by year snapshot of total army strength in the state, the regiments assigned, and the garrisons and commanders of each major fort and camp. Supplying the only such synopsis of its kind, the "Summary of U.S. Army Combat Actions in the Texas Indian Wars, 1849–1881," the guide's Part V, offers a chronological description of 224 U.S. Army combat actions in the Indian Wars with vivid details of each engagement. The 900 entries in the selected bibliography of Part VI are divided topically into sections on biographical sources and regimental histories, histories of forts, garrison life, civil-military relations, the Mexican War, and frontier operations. In addition to being a helpful catalog of standard histories, there are two important and unusual aspects to the bibliography. It contains a complete range of primary source microfilm material from the National Archives, including the roll numbers of specific periods of forts and units; and secondly, the bibliography integrates nearly all of the published archeological reports into the section on fort histories. The Old Army in Texas is an indispensable reference and research tool for students, scholars, and military history aficionados. It will be of great value to those interested in Texas history, especially military history and local and regional studies. This superb reference work is illustrated with a number of maps and rare photographs of the U.S. Army in nineteenth century Texas.

The all-volunteer army served the country as professional soldiers for reasons of patriotism or adventure or even economics, since monthly pay of twenty-one dollars was to some men better than nothing and better than charity. Many men reenlisted time and time again. Whether a private was stationed in Texas or New Jersey for his three-year hitch, he first had basic training, the length of which varied according to how long it took each soldier to master the fundamental skills of the infantryman. If an enlisted man grew tired of the disciplined life where he had no responsibility except to follow basic orders, he could purchase an honorable discharge. If he couldn't come up with the cash from his twenty-one dollar pay envelope or winnings from poker or dice, he could go AWOL and after ninety days the army would simply remove the soldier from the rolls with a court-martial in absentia and a dishonorable discharge.

The U.S. Army's oddest recruits: Camels! In this strange but true historical tale, 34 camels were imported to Texas to work as pack animals for the army in 1856. Many people had never seen such strange animals; they didn't believe that these smelly beasts could possibly be useful. Despite many Texans' initial doubts, the camels thrived in the state's desert and transported important military messages and supplies.

Two forgotten weeks in 1836 and one of the most consequential events of the entire Texas Revolution have been missing from the historical record - the tale of the Mexican army's misfortunes in the aptly named Sea of Mud, where more than 2,500 Mexican soldiers and 1,500 female camp followers foundered in the muddy fields of what is now Wharton County, Texas. In 1996 a pediatrician and avocational archeologist living in Wharton, Texas, decided to try to find evidence in Wharton County of the Mexican army of 1836. Following some preliminary research at the Wharton County Junior College Library, he focused his search on the area between the San Bernard and West Bernard rivers.Within two weeks after beginning the search for artifacts, a Mexican army site was discovered, and, with the help of the Houston Archeological Society, excavated.

On November 11, 1918, what was then called “the Great War” ended. The consequences of four years of warfare in Europe reverberated throughout the world, leaving few places untouched. Even though it was far from the scenes of conflict, Texas was forever changed, as historian Gregory W. Ball details in Texas and World War I. This accessible history recounts the ways in which the war affected Texas and Texans politically, socially, and economically. Texas’s position on the United States border with Mexico and on the western edge of the American South profoundly influenced the ways in which the war affected the state, from fears of invasion from the across the Rio Grande—fears that put the state’s significant German American population under suspicion—to the racial tensions that flared when African American soldiers challenged Jim Crow. When thousands of Texas men were drafted into the U.S. Army and the federal government developed a host of training grounds and airfields (many close to the state’s burgeoning cities) in response to U.S. entry into the war, this heavily rural state that had long been outside the national mainstream was had become more “American” than ever before.

Even before Pancho Villa’s 1916 raid on Columbus, New Mexico, and the following punitive expedition under General John J. Pershing, the U.S. Army was strengthening its presence on the southwestern border in response to the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Manning forty-one small outposts along a three-hundred mile stretch of the Rio Grande region, the army remained for a decade, rotating eighteen different regiments, primarily cavalry, until the return of relative calm. The remote, rugged, and desolate terrain of the Big Bend defied even the technological advances of World War I, and it remained very much a cavalry and pack mule operation until the outposts were finally withdrawn in 1921. With The Old Army in the Big Bend of Texas: The Last Cavalry Frontier, 1911–1921, Thomas T. “Ty” Smith, one of Texas’s leading military historians, has delved deep into the records of the U.S. Army to provide an authoritative portrait, richly complemented by many photos published here for the first time, of the final era of soldiers on horseback in the American West.

Often thought of as the inventor of baseball - the great American pastime - Abner Doubleday was first and foremost a soldier. My Life in the Old Army is comprised of a set of previously unpublished writings (the originals are housed at the New-York Historical Society) with an emphasis on Doubleday's tour of duty during the Mexican War. He was on hand for the first shots of the conflict, for the battles of Monterrey and Buena Vista, and later served in Saltillo after the campaign moved farther south toward Mexico City. Fluent in Spanish, he traveled far and wide in Mexico and describes his experiences in this volume.