Download or read book Mier Expedition Diary written by Joseph D. McCutchan and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few episodes in Texas history have excited more popular interest than the Mier Expedition of 1842. Nineteen-year-old Joseph D. McCutchan was among the 300 Texans who, without the cover of the Lone Star flag, launched their own disastrous invasion across the Rio Grande. McCutchan's diary provides a vivid account of his experience—the Texans' quick dispatch by Mexican troops at the town of Mier, the hardships of a forced march to Mexico City, over twenty months of imprisonment, and the journey back home after release. Although there are other firsthand accounts of the Mier Expedition, McCutchan was the only diarist who followed the Tampico route to Mexico City. His account documents a different experience than that of the main body of prisoners who marched to the national capital by way of Monterrey, Saltillo, and Agua Nueva. Among the last of the prisoners to be freed, McCutchan covers in his journal the whole period of confinement from December 26, 1842, to the final release on September 16, 1844. The McCutchan diary is set apart from other Mier accounts not only by the new information it provides, but also by Joseph Milton Nance's superb editing. Nance is an acknowledged authority on the hostilities between Texas and Mexico during the era of the Texas Republic. He has transcribed, edited, and annotated the diary with characteristic scholarship and painstaking attention to detail.
Download or read book Mier Men written by Josephine Harper and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Soldiers of Misfortune written by Sam W. Haynes and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-22 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historical study offers “a new understanding of the human cost of the [Republic of Texas’s] vainglorious attempt to attack Mexico” (Western Historical Quarterly). The Somervell and Mier Expeditions of 1842, culminating in the famous "black bean episode" in which Texas prisoners drew white or black beans to determine who would be executed by their Mexican captors, still capture the public imagination in Texas. But were the Texans really martyrs in a glorious cause, or undisciplined soldiers defying their own government? How did the Mier Expedition affect the border disputes between the Texas Republic and Mexico? What role did Texas President Sam Houston play? In Soldiers of Misfortune, Sam W. Haynes addresses this and other important historical questions. Expertly researched yet accessible and engaging, Haynes’s narrative includes many dramatic excerpts from the diaries and letters of expedition participants./DIV
Download or read book The Odyssey of Texas Ranger James Callahan written by Joseph Luther and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017-04-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Callahan entered Texas armed, a quixotic young man enlisted in the Georgia Battalion for the cause of independence. He barely survived the 1836 Battle of Refugio and the Goliad Massacre. Undaunted by the perils of his adopted home, he remained in the line of fire for the next twenty-one years, fighting to protect Texas settlers from Apaches, Comanches, Seminoles, Kickapoos, outlaws, mavericks and the Mexican army. As a Texas Ranger, he rode with the legendary men of Seguin and San Antonio. In 1855, he commanded the punitive expedition into Mexico that bears his name, a fiasco that has been shrouded by mystery and shadowed by controversy ever since. In this first-ever biography, Joseph Luther traces the tragic course of the wayfarer who crossed so much of the Texas frontier and created so much of its story.
Download or read book Cult of Glory written by Doug J. Swanson and published by Viking. This book was released on 2020 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A twenty-first-century reckoning with the legendary Texas Rangers that does justice to their heroic moments while also documenting atrocities, brutality, and corruption The Texas Rangers rode into existence in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico, and continue today as one of the most famous of all law enforcement agencies. In Cult of Glory, Doug J. Swanson offers a sweeping account of the Rangers that chronicles both their epic, daring escapades and how the white and propertied power structures of Texas have used them as enforcers and protectors. Fleshing out key episodes and individuals in Texas Ranger history, Swanson begins by covering their birth and emergence as conquerors of the wild and violent Texas frontier, as they skirmished with Apaches and Comanches and assisted the U.S. Army in the Mexican War. Beginning around 1870, the Rangers transformed themselves from a frontier battalion into a state police force. Although the Rangers found themselves rocked by a series of corruption scandals in the 1930s, their reputation soared thanks to pulp novelists, movies, and the radio series and television show "The Lone Ranger." As the Rangers have entered the contemporary era, they have attempted to present themselves as a modern crime-fighting force, dealing with flashpoints like school integration, farmworkers' strikes, and patrol of the U.S. Mexico border. But they have been stymied by their hidebound ways and the glorification of their past. As Swanson shows, Rangers and their supporters have for decades used propaganda, deception, and outright falsehoods to depict scandalous, oppressive, and illegal Ranger behavior as heroic triumphs. Cult of Glory sets the record straight for the first time.
Download or read book The Lost Cause written by Andrew F. Rolle and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the midst of the heartbreak, confusion, and rumors that followed Appomattox, some Southerners resolved to emigrate rather than surrender, and emigrate they did-to South America, Europe, Canada, and Mexico. Mexico's Emperor Maximilian, trying to secure his shaky throne against Juarez' opposition, encouraged these recalcitrant Confederates to settle in Mexico. But, doomed to defeat by the internal crisis in Mexico and by the Southerners' failure to face reality, the Confederate colonies were established and destroyed within two years' time. Later, many of the colonists who survived the ordeal tried to forget that they had ever gone into exile. Among the emigrants were many prominent Southern leaders, barred from holding public office and, in some cases, facing possible arrest: General Jo Shelby, the hero of the Confederacy, who later became so reconciled to the victory of the North that he voted for a Republican; Commodore Matthew Maury, internationally recognized oceanographer and naval astronomer, who was welcomed to Mexico by Maximilian himself; Henry Watkins Allen, "the single great administrator produced by the Confederacy," who founded the English language Mexican Times; and Thomas Caute Reynolds, former lieutenant governor of Missouri, who encouraged Maximilian to stay in Mexico but who himself left. In all there may have been between eight and ten thousand Confederates in Mexico. The exodus, exile, and repatriation of the Confederates constitute a hitherto incompletely known incident in American history. In this fully documented account, Andrew F. Rolle reveals the hope, humor, disappointment, and defeat of Americans who believed that the only way to save their way of life was to leave their homeland.
Download or read book A Pictorial History of Texas written by Homer S. Thrall and published by . This book was released on 1883 with total page 910 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book ADVENTURES AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF AMERICANS written by HENRY HOWE and published by . This book was released on 1859 with total page 748 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Journal of the Texian Expedition Against Mier written by Thomas Jefferson Green and published by . This book was released on 1845 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Petra s Legacy written by Jane Clements Monday and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-28 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The matriarch of one of the most important families in Texas history, Petra Vela Kenedy has remained a shadowy presence in the annals of South Texas. In this biography of Petra Vela Kenedy, the authors not only tell her story but also relate the history of South Texas through a woman’s perspective. Utilizing previously unpublished letters, journals, photographs, and other primary materials, the authors reveal the intimate stories of the families who for years dominated governments, land acquisition, commerce, and border politics along the Rio Grande and across the Wild Horse Desert. From Petra’s early life in the landed ranchero society of northern Mexico, through her alliance with Luis Vidal—an officer in the Mexican army to whom she bore eight children—until her move to Brownsville after Vidal’s death, Petra lived in Mexico. When she moved to Texas, having taken Vidal’s name, she represented a link to the landed families of the region. Mifflin Kenedy, a steamboat captain who had first come to Texas during the Mexican War, married into her world, acquiring local respectability and stature when he took Petra as his wife. The story of their life together encompasses war, the taming of a frontier, the blending of cultures, the origin of a ranching empire, and the establishment of a foundation and trust that still endure today, giving millions to Texas through charitable gifts. An attractive woman of business acumen, strong religious convictions, and intense family loyalty, Petra Vela Kenedy’s influence through her husband and her children left a legacy whose exploration is long overdue.
Download or read book Rogue Soldiers written by Ken Lizzio and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the greatest of tragedies of the American frontier—the Donner Party, the Alamo, Wounded Knee—a little known but no less tragic event was the Texas Mier Expedition. Originally part of a 1,200-man invasion to retaliate against Mexican incursions on Texas soil in 1842, the Expedition unfolded when several hundred fighters stubbornly defied President Sam Houston’s orders to disband and return home at once. Fiercely independent and recently reorganized under new leadership, this motley mix of Texas volunteers and militia turned south and proceeded to invade Mexico, determined to avenge past humiliations at the hands of Mexican dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna. Once in Mexico they engaged the enemy in a dramatic day-long battle when they were suddenly tricked into surrendering and marched 1,300 miles to Perote prison. It was a march of attrition during which many Texans were executed or died from exposure, disease, or starvation. Once in Perote, they were forced to sleep on stone floors in chains and put to hard labor. Of the original three hundred and eight members of the rogue expedition who survived, only half left the prison alive. After two years in captivity, the prisoners were finally released only to be ignored and forgotten by their own countrymen upon their return home. Drawing from over a dozen first-hand accounts, author Ken Lizzie extracts this exciting narrative recounting the pathos of these fighting men—from the blood-soaked Battlefields of Mier and the subsequent surrender to their harrowing 1,300-mile forced march to Perote Prison.
Download or read book Attack and Counterattack written by Joseph Milton Nance and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1965-01-01 with total page 797 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 1842—a dramatic year in the history of Texas-Mexican relations. After five years of uneasy peace, of futile negotiations, of border raids and temporary, unofficial truces, a series of military actions upsets the precarious balance between the two countries. Once more the Mexican Army marches on Texas soil; once more the frontier settlers strengthen their strongholds for defense or gather their belongings for flight. Twice San Antonio falls to Mexican generals; twice the Texans assemble armies for the invasion of Mexico. It is 1842—a year of attack and counterattack. This is the story that Joseph Milton Nance relates, with a definitiveness and immediacy which come from many years of meticulous research. The exciting story of 1842 is a story of emotions which had simmered through the long, insecure years and which now boil out in blustery threats and demands for vengeance. The Texans threaten to march beyond the Sierra Madres and raise their flag at Monterrey; the Mexicans promise to subdue this upstart Texas and to teach its treacherous inhabitants their place. With communications poor and imaginations fertile, rumors magnify chance banditry into military raids, military raids into full-scale invasions. Newspapers incite their readers with superdramatic, intoxicating accounts of the events. Texans and Mexicans alike respond with a kind of madness that has little or no method. Texas solicits volunteers, calls out troops, plans invasions, and assembles her armies, completely disregarding the fact that her treasury is practically empty—there is little money to buy guns. Meanwhile, in Mexico, where gold and silver are needed for other purposes, “invasions” of Texas are launched—but they are only brief forays more suitable for impressive publicity than for permanent gains. Still, the conflicts of threat and retaliation, so often futile, are frequently dignified by idealism, friendship, courage, and determination. Both Mexicans and Texans are fighting and dying for liberty, defending their homes against foreign invaders, establishing and maintaining friendships that cross racial and national boundaries, struggling with conflicting loyalties, and—all the while—striving to wrest a living for themselves and their families from the grudging frontier. Attack and Counterattack, continuing the account which was begun in After San Jacinto, tells from original sources the full story of Texas-Mexican relations from the time of the Santa Fe Expedition through the return of the Somervell Expedition from the Rio Grande. These books examine in great detail and with careful accuracy a period of Texas history that had not heretofore been thoroughly studied and that had seldom been given unbiased treatment. The source materials compiled in the notes and bibliography—particularly the military reports, letters, diaries, contemporary newspapers, and broadsides—will be a valuable tool for any scholar who wishes to study this or related periods.
Download or read book Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas written by John Henry Brown and published by Dalcassian Publishing Company. This book was released on with total page 1202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Arredondo written by Bradley Folsom and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-03-10 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this biography of Joaquín de Arredondo, historian Bradley Folsom brings to life one of the most influential and ruthless leaders in North American history. Arredondo (1776–1837), a Bourbon loyalist who governed Texas and the other interior provinces of northeastern New Spain during the Mexican War of Independence, contended with attacks by revolutionaries, U.S. citizens, generals who had served in Napoleon’s army, pirates, and various American Indian groups, all attempting to wrest control of the region. Often resorting to violence to deal with the provinces’ problems, Arredondo was for ten years the most powerful official in northeastern New Spain. Folsom’s lively account shows the challenges of governing a vast and inhospitable region and provides insight into nineteenth-century military tactics and Spanish viceregal realpolitik. When Arredondo and his army—which included Arredondo’s protégé, future president of Mexico Antonio López de Santa Anna—arrived in Nuevo Santander in 1811, they quickly suppressed a revolutionary upheaval. Arredondo went on to expel an army of revolutionaries and invaders from the United States who had taken over Texas and declared it an independent republic. In the Battle of Medina, the bloodiest battle ever fought in Texas, he crushed the insurgents and followed his victory with a purge that reduced Texas’s population by half. Over the following eight years, Arredondo faced fresh challenges to Spanish sovereignty ranging from Comanche and Apache raids to continued American incursion. In response, Arredondo ignored his superiors and ordered his soldiers to terrorize those who disagreed with him. Arredondo’s actions had dramatic repercussions in Texas, Mexico, and the United States. His decision to allow Moses Austin to colonize Texas with Americans would culminate in the defeat of Santa Anna in 1836, but not before Santa Anna had made good use of the lessons in brutality he had learned so well from his mentor.
Download or read book Riot and Rebellion in Mexico written by Ana Sabau and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2023 Best Book in the Humanities, Latin American Studies Association Mexico Section Challenging conventional narratives of Mexican history, this book establishes race-making as a central instrument for the repression of social upheaval in nineteenth-century Mexico rather than a relic of the colonial-era caste system. Many scholars assert that Mexico’s complex racial hierarchy, inherited from Spanish colonialism, became obsolete by the turn of the nineteenth century as class-based distinctions became more prominent and a largely mestizo population emerged. But the residues of the colonial caste system did not simply dissolve after Mexico gained independence. Rather, Ana Sabau argues, ever-present fears of racial uprising among elites and authorities led to persistent governmental techniques and ideologies designed to separate and control people based on their perceived racial status, as well as to the implementation of projects for development in fringe areas of the country. Riot and Rebellion in Mexico traces this race-based narrative through three historical flashpoints: the Bajío riots, the Haitian Revolution, and the Yucatan’s caste war. Sabau shows how rebellions were treated as racially motivated events rather than political acts and how the racialization of popular and indigenous sectors coincided with the construction of “whiteness” in Mexico. Drawing on diverse primary sources, Sabau demonstrates how the race war paradigm was mobilized in foreign and domestic affairs and reveals the foundations of a racial state and racially stratified society that persist today.
Download or read book The Memoirs of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier written by Fray Servando Teresa de Mier and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-10-29 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On December 12, 1794, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier preached a sermon in Mexico City that led to his arrest by the Inquisition. He was exiled to Spain--only to escape and spend ten years traveling throughout Europe, as none other than a French priest. So began the grand adventure of Fray Servando's life, and of this gripping memoir. Here is an invitation hard for any reader to resist: a glimpse of the European "Age of Enlightenment" through the eyes of a fugitive Mexican friar. In this memoir, one sees a portrait of manners and morals that is a far cry from the "civilized" spirit that the Empire wanted to impose on its Colonies. This book takes a look at history from an upside down perspective, asking this question: who were the real savages, the colonizers themselves, or the supposed "savages" they were struggling to convert? After ten years, Fray Servando finally returned home to an independent Mexico, where he served the new government before his death. Heretic and rebel, fugitive and visionary, character in a novel and father of his country--Fray Servando Teresa de Mier was all of these things. Translated into English for the first time, this memoir truly captures the passionate spirit of a fantastic man.
Download or read book History of Texas written by John Henry Brown and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a 19th century history of Texas, focusing on its Spanish and Mexican past, as well as the war for independence. From the preface: "The field for historical research in Texas, covering two centuries of time, is wide and, for the most part, deeply interesting. To the present and future generations, however, its chief historic value is confined to that period of time beginning about the close of the 18th and the commencement of the 19th century. Anterior to that time, outside of feeble settlements at San Antonio, Goliad and Nacogdoches and a few straggling missions, the country remained a primeval wilderness. Nor did any real progress toward reclamation occur until an effort was made to secure an Anglo-Saxon (chiefly North American) population, the first fruits of which became manifest in a few families and single men from January to December, 1822. From the latter year we trace all of Texas identified with those principles of liberty, and representative constitutional government held, at least by all English speaking people, to be essential to the continued progress and happiness of mankind. This work is undertaken with a sincere desire to give truth absolute control; to eschew every prejudice; to do justice to all who served their country with fidelity; and to guard against the great injustice of withholding merit due to some and awarding merit not due to others. Most of the numerous books on Texas, including several published in, or prior to 1836, were too early to reach much of its most important history, and before many facts touching the then past were known, or when they were but partially known. The author, at intervals, for nearly half a century, has sought to find and preserve historical data omitted in other works, or incorrectly stated by them. Ours is not like the history of any other State of the Union, settled and fostered by a progressive people and government, and aided by great interior resources and means of transportation of which practically Texas had nothing. Wild barbarians infested Texas, undisturbed until its settlement by Americans, and its frontiers continued subject to all the horrors, more or less extensive, of savage warfare from the beginning in 1822, to its practical cessation in 1876, a period of fifty four years, beside the period from 1835 to 1845, inclusive, of a state of war with Mexico. Her history, taken as a whole, is unique and unlike that of any other member of the Union. To be understood it must be correctly given and carefully read. The author is enabled to correct many errors-some of minor and a few of material importance-heretofore published, and to embrace numerous important facts never before given in any work; and yet, much of interest, in the very nature of things, resulting from the want of official records, the absence in large part of current newspaper files, and the failing memory of many old and patriotic men, must remain untold. Eschewing fiction and exaggeration and guided by the spirit of truth and justice this work is given to the people of Texas by her loyal son."
