A New York Times bestseller, The Midnight Assassin is a sweeping narrative history of a terrifying serial killer--America's first--who stalked Austin, Texas in 1885. In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch. Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders, and the crimes would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city. With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life.

Riding the rough and sometimes bloody peaks and canyons of border politics, Santos Benavides’s rise to prominence was largely the result of the careful mentoring of his well-known uncle, Basilio Benavides, who served several terms as alcalde of Laredo, Texas, and Chief Justice of Webb County. When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Basilio was one of only two Tejanos in the state legislature. During Santos’s lifetime, five flags flew over the small community he called home—that of the Republic of Mexico, the ill-fated Republic of the Rio Grande, the Republic of Texas, an expansionist United States, and in March 1861, the rebellious Confederate States of America. It was under the Confederacy in the disputed Texas-Mexico borderlands that Santos Benavides reached the pinnacle of his military career as the highest-ranking Tejano in the entire Confederate army. In the decades that followed the Civil War, he became an esteemed political leader, highly respected on both sides of the border. This is the first scholarly study of this important historical figure. At the pinnacle of his political career in 1879, Benavides held the distinction of being the only Tejano in the Texas legislature. Through strife, sweat, blood, and heroism in defense of the border, Benavides rose to economic and political heights few could dream of. As a friend and confidant of two Mexican presidents, he was one of the single most influential individuals in the nineteenth-century history of the border. His life was one of enduring perseverance as well as binational leadership and skilled diplomacy. He was without doubt the single most important individual in the long and often violent history of Laredo. The niche he carved in the tumultuous transnational history of the Texas-Mexico borderlands seems secure.

This history of secession in the Lone Star State offers both a vivid narrative and a powerful case study of the broader secession movement. In 1845, Texans voted overwhelmingly to join the Union. Then, in 1861, they voted just as overwhelmingly to secede. The story of why and how that happened is filled with colorful characters, raiding Comanches, German opponents of slavery, and a border with Mexico. It also has important implications for our understanding of secession across the South. Combining social and political history, Walter L. Buenger explores issues such as public hysteria, the pressure for consensus, and the vanishing of a political process in which rational debate about secession could take place. Drawing on manuscript collections and contemporary newspapers, Buenger also analyzes election returns, population shifts, and the breakdown of populations within Texas counties. Buenger demonstrates that Texans were not simply ardent secessionists or committed unionists. At the end of 1860, the majority fell between these two extremes, creating an atmosphere of ambivalence toward secession which was not erased even by the war.

Texas was the South's frontier in the antebellum period. The vast new state represented the hope and future of many Southern cotton planters. As a result, Texas changed tremendously during the 1850s as increasing numbers of Southern planters moved westward to settle. Planters brought with them large numbers of slaves to plant, cultivate and pick the valuable cash crop; by 1860, slaves made up 30 percent of the total Texas population. No state in the South grew nearly as fast as Texas during this decade, and as the booming economy for cotton led the economic development, the state became increasingly embroiled in the national debate about whether slavery should exist within a democratic republic dedicated to the freedom and independence of man. This work is centered on the role played by the town of Chappell Hill during this portion of Texas history. It offers details about the area's pre-war prosperity as a center of wealth, influence and aristocracy and describes the angry fervor of the period leading up to the war. Men of this small town played a role in many of the major campaigns and battles of the war, and their motivations for enlisting and their tales of duty are included here. Through excerpts from their correspondence and journals, the book emphasizes personal experiences of the soldiers. Post-war adventures are also offered as the author explores Texas resistance to Federal occupation, the town's yellow fever epidemic and a period of reconciliation as aging veterans gather at Blue-Gray reunions to reunite the nation.