More than 200 alleged Unionists from five northern Texas counties were rounded up in October 1862, brought to Gainesville, and subsequently hanged or lynched. This detailed account follows the course of mounting tensions and violence that preceded the roundup. Ironically, both the vigilantes and their victims shared a concern for order and the status quo, differing only in that the alleged Unionists saw Federal rule as the means for suppressing slave insurrections and hostile Indian attacks. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas 1862

History

McCaslin, Richard B.

Americas

Louisiana State Univ Pr

Winner of the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Book Prize and a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History In the early morning hours of October 1, 1862, state militia arrested more than two hundred alleged Unionists from five North Texas counties and brought them to Gainesville, the seat of Cooke County. In the ensuing days, at least forty-four of the prisoners were hanged, and several other men were lynched in neighboring communities. This event proved to be the grisly climax of a heritage of violence and vigilantism in North Texas that began before the Civil War and lasted long afterward. Until relatively recently, a legacy of silence restricted historical writing on the Great Hanging. In the first systematic treatment of this important event, Richard B. McCaslin also sheds much light on the tensions produced in southern society by the Civil War, the nature of disaffection in the Confederacy, and the American vigilante tradition.

Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas, 1862 (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War)

LSU Press

While most scholars agree that Robert E. Lee's loyalty to Virginia was the key factor in his decision to join the Confederate cause, Richard McCaslin goes further to demonstrate that Lee's true call to action was the legacy of the American Revolution viewed through his reverence for George Washington. Like Washington, Lee wore a colonel's uniform. He rode a horse named for one of his idol's mounts, Traveller, and carried one of Washington's swords. On January 19, 1861, his fifty-fourth birthday, Lee sat alone in his room at Fort Mason and faced the prospect of war by reading the latest book by his hero. 
In his thematic biography of the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, McCaslin locates the sources of Lee's devotion to Washington and shows how this bond affected his performance as a general in battle. He argues that Lee used the strategy of attrition to attempt to persuade the North to quit just as Washington had wearied the British. But reliance on Washington as a role model led to tragic irony: in 1864 it was Lee's Confederates who became trapped like the British in the Yorktown campaign. After his surrender Lee could no longer emulate Washington the revolutionary, and he became the president of a small college that bore Washington's name, surrounding himself with mementos of his hero. 
Challenging conventional interpretations, McCaslin's absorbing book lays to rest the argument that a posthumous "Lee cult" superimposed Washington symbolism onto Lee's life to link it with the Revolution. Rather, Lee himself created the association, which yielded an enduring paradox: Washington earned his reputation as a statesman, whereas Lee never escaped his self-imposed image as a revolutionary in Washington's shadow.

Lee in the Shadow of Washington (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War)

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Winner of the Austin Civil War Round Table’s Laney Prize and the Virginia Historical Society’s Richard L. Slatten Award for Excellence in Virginia Biography While most historians agree that Robert E. Lee’s loyalty to Virginia was the key factor in his decision to join the Confederate cause, Richard B. McCaslin further demonstrates that Lee’s true call to action was the legacy of the American Revolution viewed through his reverence for George Washington. In this thematic biography, McCaslin locates the sources of Lee’s devotion to Washington and shows how this bond affected his performance as a general. The enduring paradox, McCaslin shows, is that Washington earned his reputation as a statesman, whereas Lee never escaped his self-imposed image as a revolutionary in Washington’s shadow.

Lee In the Shadow of Washington (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War)

"History like that of Texas is rare. . . . Is it not discreditable to the people of Texas, that they should leave the collection of material for the history of the State to the great endowed Northern libraries? . . . Let Texas arouse herself for very shame, and begin at once the discharge of her filial duty." So wrote George Pierce Garrison in the first issue of the Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, published in July 1897, just months after the establishment of the organization on March 2. The state of Texas was just half a century old; the city of Austin, going back to the days of the Republic, was a little older—a few years past its half-century; and the University of Texas, where Garrison was "the history professor," was not yet fourteen. Earlier attempts to organize historical societies in Texas, traced in the opening chapter, illuminate the factors that came ultimately to be decisive in the success of the Association: the wisdom in linking the organization with the University of Texas, the inclusion of lay historians, and the continued insistence on high academic standards. And, from the beginning, the Association has established a tradition for publishing in the Quarterly, in addition to the Anglo story, the stories of the Indians, the Spanish, and the French. According to author Richard B. McCaslin, "It may be that the Association survived where its predecessors had not because Garrison, who was as much a Progressive historian as any of his contemporaries, understood the value of inclusiveness." The text is organized in chronological chapters by the tenures of the seven directors, George Garrison to Ron Tyler, all of whom were professors in the UT history department. Within the larger framework of the directors, the programs, and the publications, McCaslin gives shape to the unique interaction of forces—university, political, and the academic/lay membership—that has accorded the Association a character and suppleness that continues to ensure its long endurance. The book is profusely illustrated, and sidebars culled from past issues of the Quarterly complement the text. Winner of the Award of Merit from the Philosophical Socierty of Texas

At the Heart of Texas: One Hundred Years of the Texas State Historical Association, 1897-1997

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Diets & Weight Loss

Texas State Historical Assn

Commitment to excellence: One hundred years of engineering education at the University of Texas at Austin

Engineering Foundation of the College of Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin

The Civil War presented the first major opportunity for Americans to photograph fighting men and the places they battled and to create an extensive visual record of war. Most collections of such photographs, however, have focused on the leaders of the conflict and have treated the images only as illustrations for traditional narratives. Centering on the common soldier, Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of North Carolina in the Civil War, the sixth in the University of Arkansas Press's award-winning series, tells the stories of the actual people, rich and poor, whose lives were changed forever by the nation's great drama. Here is the tale of a wife who disguised herself as a new recruit so she could avoid separation from her husband, and the brothers who suffered identical injuries and leg amputations within two weeks of each other. With over 250 photographs, maps, and related documents, McCaslin has superbly detailed the physical and spiritual suffering of ordinary Carolinians in their fight for their country, its land, and their own freedoms.

Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of North Carolina in the Civil War

Univ of Arkansas Pr

It’s one thing to understand that over twenty-thousand Confederate and Union soldiers died at the Battle of Murfreesboro. It’s quite another to study an ambrotype portrait of twenty-year-old private Frank B. Crosthwait, dressed in his Sunday best, looking somberly at the camera. In a tragically short time, he’ll be found on the battlefield, mortally wounded, still clutching the knotted pieces of handkerchief he used in a hopeless attempt to stop the bleeding from his injuries. Private Crosthwait’s image is one of more than 250 portraits―many never before published―to be found in the much anticipated Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Tennessee in the Civil War. The eighth in the distinguished Portraits of Conflict series, this volume joins the personal and the public to provide a uniquely rich portrayal of Tennesseans―in uniforms both blue and gray―who fought and lost their lives in the Civil War. Here is the story of a widow working as a Union spy to support herself and her children. Of a father emerging from his house to find his Confederate soldier son dying at his feet. Of a nine-year-old boy who attached himself to a Union regiment after his mother died. Their stories and faces, joined with personal remembrances from recovered letters and diaries and ample historical information on secession, famous battles, surrender, and Reconstruction, make this new Portraits of Conflict a Civil War treasure.

Portraits of Conflict: Tennessee: A Photographic History of Tennessee in the Civil War (Portraits of Conflict (Hardcover))

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

University of Arkansas Press

In Sutherland Springs, Texas, Richard B. McCaslin explores the rise and fall of this rural community near San Antonio primarily through the lens of its aspirations to become a resort spa town, because of its mineral water springs, around the turn of the twentieth century. Texas real estate developers, initially more interested in oil, brought Sutherland Springs to its peak as a resort in the early twentieth century, but failed to transform the farming settlement into a resort town. The decline in water tables during the late twentieth century reduced the mineral water flows, and the town faded. Sutherland Springs’s history thus provides great insights into the importance of water in shaping settlement. Beyond the story of resort spa aspirations lies a history of the community and its people itself. McCaslin provides a complete history of Sutherland Springs from early settlement through Civil War and into the twentieth century, its agricultural and oil-drilling exploits alongside its mineral water appeal, as well as a complete community history of the various settlers and owners of the springs/hotel.

Sutherland Springs, Texas: Saratoga on the Cibolo (Volume 2) (Texas Local Series)

University of North Texas Press

William L. Wright (1868-1942) was born to be a Texas Ranger, and hard work made him a great one. Richard B. McCaslin argues that, considering his lineage, it is hard to imagine what else he might have done. Eight of Wright's relatives served as Rangers before the Civil War, five joined the Frontier Battalion from 1874 to 1901, and twenty-two were in the Ranger Force from 1901 to 1935.&nbsp; Wright tried working as a cowboy and farmer, but it did not suit him. Instead, he became a deputy sheriff and then a Ranger in 1899, battling a mob in the Laredo Smallpox Riot, policing both sides in the Reese-Townsend Feud, and winning a gunfight at Cotulla. His need for a better salary led him to leave the Rangers and become a sheriff. He stayed in that office longer than any of his predecessors in Wilson County, keeping the peace during the so-called Bandit Wars, investigating numerous violent crimes, and surviving being stabbed on the gallows by the man he was hanging. When demands for Ranger reform peaked, he was appointed as a captain and served for most of the next twenty years, retiring in 1939 after commanding dozens of Rangers. Wright emerged unscathed from the Canales investigation, enforced Prohibition in South Texas, and policed oil towns in West Texas, as well as tackling many other legal problems. When he retired, he was the only Ranger in service who had worked under seven governors. More important, historians have included him among the "Big Four" captains of the Ranger Force. Wright thus joins such leaders as Francis A. "Frank" Hamer, Thomas R. "Tom" Hickman, and Manuel T. Gonzaullas, all of whom accompanied him in being inducted into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame at Waco.

Texas Ranger Captain William L. Wright

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