An illustrated history of Fort Bend County, Texas, paired with histories of the local companies.

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.

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.

Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares, originally published in 1985, was the first book to make an in-depth examination of the cadre of African American lawmakers in Texas after the Civil War. Those few books that addressed the subject at all treated black legislators en masse and offered little or nothing about their individual histories. Early scholars tended to present isolated events of the violence and political deterrents inflicted upon black voters but said very little about how these obstacles affected black lawmakers. Author Merline Pitre has departed from this traditional method and relied upon the untapped original materials found on these black lawmakers. This third edition features a new preface and extended, updated appendixes, ensuring that this study will remain useful to political scientists, sociologists, and historians of Texas political history, Afro-American history, and revisionists of Reconstruction.