Download or read book Samuel Maverick Texan 1803 1870 written by Samuel Augustus Maverick and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Alamo Remembered written by Timothy M. Matovina and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-12-06 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of all known Tejano accounts of the Battle of the Alamo. As Mexican soldiers fought the mostly Anglo-American colonists and volunteers at the Alamo in 1836, San Antonio’s Tejano population was caught in the crossfire, both literally and symbolically. Though their origins were in Mexico, the Tejanos had put down lasting roots in Texas and did not automatically identify with the Mexican cause. Indeed, as the accounts in this new collection demonstrate, their strongest allegiance was to their fellow San Antonians, with whom they shared a common history and a common plight as war raged in their hometown. Timothy M. Matovina here gathers all known Tejano accounts of the Battle of the Alamo. These accounts consist of first reports of the battle, including Juan N. Seguín’s funeral oration at the interment ceremony of the Alamo defenders, conversations with local Tejanos, unpublished petitions and depositions, and published accounts from newspapers and other sources. This communal response to the legendary battle deepens our understanding of the formation of Mexican American consciousness and identity. “A fascinating and much needed anthology of Tejano accounts of America's most storied battle. . . . There are no books like it in the field, despite considerable publishing on the Alamo and the Texas revolt.” —Paul Hutton, Executive Director, Western History Association “The first full-scale collection offers a rich insight into the formation of Mexican American identity in San Antonio. . . . [The book] speaks eloquently to a general audience trying to gain a more balanced perspective of the storied conflict [at the Alamo].” —Review of Texas Books “Matovina’s message is that historians who concentrate on the question of which side [Tejanos] joined or did not join miss the larger point: for the Tejanos themselves, the choice of sides during the revolt was not the overriding issue of their lives, nor was it the touchstone of their identity. What the Tejano accounts of the Alamo show, Matovina argues, is that the divisions engendered by the revolution failed to destroy what remained “an amazingly cohesive community” in which families, friends, and neighbors split apart by the war reunited in harmony in its aftermath.” —Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Download or read book Sam Maverick s Trail written by Daniel McNeel Lane, MD, PhD and published by Sunstone Press. This book was released on 2017-02-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Mexican Congress ratified the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo) was the legal boundary between Texas and Mexico. Under the treaty, the United States was obligated to prevent raids by “hostile tribes” in Mexico whose northern frontier had been ravaged by the raids. This obligation was accepted despite the absence of a wagon road between San Antonio and El Paso or any U.S. Army forts with soldiers stationed along the border. In fact, no Americans, including Texans who claimed the lands, knew where the border or tribal crossings were located. This is the story of the 1848 Hays Expedition, the first U.S. effort to search for a wagon road route along the new border to Chihuahua and El Paso. The original intent was to establish a trade route to Chihuahua but the Expedition’s efforts to explore the new lands proved to be far more difficult. Besides crossing the most rugged terrain in Texas with almost no water sources and starving from lack of food, the Expedition survived the first American exploration of the Texas-Mexico border and provided critical information that led to the settlement of far West Texas and a new route from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.

Download or read book Joe the Slave Who Became an Alamo Legend written by Ron J. Jackson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If we do in fact “remember the Alamo,” it is largely thanks to one person who witnessed the final assault and survived: the commanding officer’s slave, a young man known simply as Joe. What Joe saw as the Alamo fell, recounted days later to the Texas Cabinet, has come down to us in records and newspaper reports. But who Joe was, where he came from, and what happened to him have all remained mysterious until now. In a remarkable feat of historical detective work, authors Ron J. Jackson, Jr., and Lee Spencer White have fully restored this pivotal yet elusive figure to his place in the American story. The twenty-year-old Joe stood with his master, Lieutenant Colonel Travis, against the Mexican army in the early hours of March 6, 1836. After Travis fell, Joe watched the battle’s last moments from a hiding place. He was later taken first to Bexar and questioned by Santa Anna about the Texan army, and then to the revolutionary capitol, where he gave his testimony with evident candor. With these few facts in hand, Jackson and White searched through plantation ledgers, journals, memoirs, slave narratives, ship logs, newspapers, letters, and court documents. Their decades-long effort has revealed the outline of Joe’s biography, alongside some startling facts: most notably, that Joe was the younger brother of the famous escaped slave and abolitionist narrator William Wells Brown, as well as the grandson of legendary trailblazer Daniel Boone. This book traces Joe’s story from his birth in Kentucky through his life in slavery—which, in a grotesque irony, resumed after he took part in the Texans’ battle for independence—to his eventual escape and disappearance into the shadows of history. Joe, the Slave Who Became an Alamo Legend recovers a true American character from obscurity and expands our view of events central to the emergence of Texas.

Download or read book They Called Them Greasers written by Arnoldo De León and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tension between Anglos and Tejanos has existed in the Lone Star State since the earliest settlements. Such antagonism has produced friction between the two peoples, and whites have expressed their hostility toward Mexican Americans unabashedly and at times violently. This seminal work in the historical literature of race relations in Texas examines the attitudes of whites toward Mexicans in nineteenth-century Texas. For some, it will be disturbing reading. But its unpleasant revelations are based on extensive and thoughtful research into Texas' past. The result is important reading not merely for historians but for all who are concerned with the history of ethnic relations in our state. They Called Them Greasers argues forcefully that many who have written about Texas's past—including such luminaries as Walter Prescott Webb, Eugene C. Barker, and Rupert N. Richardson—have exhibited, in fact and interpretation, both deficiencies of research and detectable bias when their work has dealt with Anglo-Mexican relations. De León asserts that these historians overlooled an austere Anglo moral code which saw the morality of Tejanos as "defective" and that they described without censure a society that permitted traditional violence to continue because that violence allowed Anglos to keep ethnic minorities "in their place." De León's approach is psychohistorical. Many Anglos in nineteenth-century Texas saw Tejanos as lazy, lewd, un-American, subhuman. In De León's view, these attitudes were the product of a conviction that dark-skinned people were racially and culturally inferior, of a desire to see in others qualities that Anglos preferred not to see in themselves, and of a need to associate Mexicans with disorder so as to justify their continued subjugation.

Download or read book Soldiers of Misfortune written by Sam W. Haynes and published by Univ of TX + ORM. 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 From Dominance to Disappearance written by Foster Todd Smith and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed history of the Indians of Texas and the Near Southwest from the late 18th to the middle 19th century, a period that began with Native peoples dominating the region and ended with their disappearance, after settlers forced the Indians in Texas to take refuge in Indian Territory.

Download or read book Albert Sidney Johnston written by Charles P. Roland and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2013-07-24 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of the man whom Jefferson Davis could have considered one of his greatest generals during the American Civil War. A revised edition of the only full-scale biography of the Confederacy’s top-ranking field general during the opening campaigns of the Civil War. Albert Sidney Johnston was selected as one of the best one hundred books ever written on the Civil War by Civil War Times Illustrated in 1981 and by Civil War: The Magazine of the Civil War Society in 1995. Featuring a new forward by Gary W. Gallagher and a new preface by the author Praise for Albert Sidney Johnston “A biography of the Kentucky native who might have been mentioned in the same breath as Robert E. Lee had Johnston not died while commanding Confederate troops at the battle of Shiloh in 1862, only a year after the war started.”—Lexington Herald-Leader “Johnston’s early years, military career, and encounters with Indians, Mormons, and Union soldiers are the focus of this “masterly” study.”—Civil War Book Review “The view of army life and the terrible decisions that many southern officers had to make at the beginning will provide an excellent background for further understanding the Civil War.”—Paper Wars

Download or read book Mystic Sails Texas Trails written by Robert Davant and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-25 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This four-generation saga, written with Mickey Herskowitz, begins with Richard Grimes, who became a sea captain at the astonishing age of 21, and made the first of his fortunes carrying passengers from Mystic Seaport, Connecticut, to the West Indies. In 1821, he heard of the land grants being developed in the territory west of New Orleans and the port of Matagorda. It was the final year of Spanish rule, and the Captain began to sail and trade in the waters of what was now known as Mexican Texas, in the heart of the colony granted to Moses Austin. By 1836, he was sailing 2,400 miles to bring settlers, troops, gunpowder, whiskey and provisions to aid Texas in its struggle to free itself from Mexico. After the war, as the new republic was coming to life, the Captain pursued maritime trading along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. When his son William Bradford Grimes joined him after years of schooling in the north, he made he gradual transition from life at sea to land and cattle baron. After the Civil War, Bradford established the legendary WBG ranch and led the first trail drives from Texas to Kansas along the Chisholm Trail. Bradford eventually passed on the WBG Ranch to his children to move to Kansas City, where he became hugely successful in banking and the mercantile business.

Download or read book Tejano Journey 1770 1850 written by Gerald E. Poyo and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-22 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A century before the arrival of Stephen F. Austin's colonists, Spanish settlers from Mexico were putting down roots in Texas. From San Antonio de Bexar and La Bahia (Goliad) northeastward to Los Adaes and later Nacogdoches, they formed communities that evolved their own distinct "Tejano" identity. In Tejano Journey, 1770-1850, Gerald Poyo and other noted borderlands historians track the changes and continuities within Tejano communities during the years in which Texas passed from Spain to Mexico to the Republic of Texas and finally to the United States. The authors show how a complex process of accommodation and resistance—marked at different periods by Tejano insurrections, efforts to work within the political and legal systems, and isolation from the mainstream—characterized these years of changing sovereignty. While interest in Spanish and Mexican borderlands history has grown tremendously in recent years, the story has never been fully told from the Tejano perspective. This book complements and continues the history begun in Tejano Origins in Eighteenth-Century San Antonio, which Gerald E. Poyo edited with Gilberto M. Hinojosa.

Download or read book Recollections of a Tejano Life written by Antonio Menchaca and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: San Antonio native, military veteran, merchant, and mayor pro tem José Antonio Menchaca (1800–1879) was one of only a few Tejano leaders to leave behind an extensive manuscript of recollections. Portions of the document were published in 1907, followed by a “corrected” edition in 1937, but the complete work could not be published without painstaking reconstruction. At last available in its entirety, Menchaca’s book of reminiscences captures the social life, people, and events that shaped the history of Texas’s tumultuous transformation during his lifetime. Highlighting not only Menchaca’s acclaimed military service but also his vigorous defense of Tejanos’ rights, dignity, and heritage, Recollections of a Tejano Life charts a remarkable legacy while incorporating scholarly commentary to separate fact from fiction. Revealing how Tejanos perceived themselves and the revolutionary events that defined them, this wonderfully edited volume presents Menchaca’s remembrances of such diverse figures as Antonio López de Santa Anna, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, General Adrián Woll, Comanche chief “Casamiro,” and Texas Ranger Jack Hays. Menchaca and his fellow Tejanos were actively engaged in local struggles as Mexico won her independence from Spain; later many joined the fight to establish the Republic of Texas, only to see it annexed to the United States nine years after the Battle of San Jacinto. This first-person account corrects important misconceptions and brings previously unspoken truths vividly to life.

Download or read book Texian Iliad written by Stephen L. Hardin and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hardly were the last shots fired at the Alamo before the Texas Revolution entered the realm of myth and controversy. French visitor Frederic Gaillardet called it a "Texian Iliad" in 1839, while American Theodore Sedgwick pronounced the war and its resulting legends "almost burlesque." In this highly readable history, Stephen L. Hardin discovers more than a little truth in both of those views. Drawing on many original Texan and Mexican sources and on-site inspections of almost every battlefield, he offers the first complete military history of the Revolution. From the war's opening in the "Come and Take It" incident at Gonzales to the capture of General Santa Anna at San Jacinto, Hardin clearly describes the strategy and tactics of each side. His research yields new knowledge of the actions of famous Texan and Mexican leaders, as well as fascinating descriptions of battle and camp life from the ordinary soldier's point of view. This award-winning book belongs on the bookshelf of everyone interested in Texas or military history.

Download or read book Maury Maverick written by Richard B. Henderson and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-22 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maury Maverick was possibly the first liberal United States Congressman from Texas to achieve national and even international stature. A dedicated Democrat, he was ready to attack Franklin D. Roosevelt whenever he felt that Roosevelt was flagging in his enthusiasm for reform. He was honest to the point of rudeness, and he belonged to the "damn the torpedoes" class that pulled ahead regardless of political consequences. He was at home with the literate—he was a prodigious writer and speaker—but always ready to puncture their pretensions. And he could cuss with sailors, pecan shellers, and any breed of saloon keeper. Put all that together with a short, stocky, bulldog frame, a fierce face and a voice to match, and you have one of the nation's more colorful political figures.

Download or read book The River Has Never Divided Us written by Jefferson Morgenthaler and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, William P. Clements Prize, Best Non-Fiction Book on Southwestern America, 2004 Not quite the United States and not quite Mexico, La Junta de los Rios straddles the border between Texas and Chihuahua, occupying the basin formed by the conjunction of the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the Chihuahuan Desert, ranking in age and dignity with the Anasazi pueblos of New Mexico. In the first comprehensive history of the region, Jefferson Morgenthaler traces the history of La Junta de los Rios from the formation of the Mexico-Texas border in the mid-19th century to the 1997 ambush shooting of teenage goatherd Esquiel Hernandez by U.S. Marines performing drug interdiction in El Polvo, Texas. "Though it is scores of miles from a major highway, I found natives, soldiers, rebels, bandidos, heroes, scoundrels, drug lords, scalp hunters, medal winners, and mystics," writes Morgenthaler. "I found love, tragedy, struggle, and stories that have never been told." In telling the turbulent history of this remote valley oasis, he examines the consequences of a national border running through a community older than the invisible line that divides it.

Download or read book After San Jacinto written by Joseph Milton Nance and published by Univ of TX + ORM. This book was released on 2011-05-18 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A balanced account of the skirmishes along Texas’ borderland during the years between the Battle of San Jacinto and the Mexican seizure of San Antonio. The stage was set for conflict: The First Congress of the Republic of Texas had arbitrarily designated the Rio Grande as the boundary of the new nation. Yet the historic boundaries of Texas, under Spain and Mexico, had never extended beyond the Nueces River. Mexico, unwilling to acknowledge Texas independence, was even more unwilling to allow this further encroachment upon her territory. But neither country was in a strong position to substantiate claims; so the conflict developed as a war of futile threats, border raids, and counterraids. Nevertheless, men died—often heroically—and this is the first full story of their bitter struggle. Based on original sources, it is an unbiased account of Texas-Mexican relations in a crucial period. “Solid regional history.” —The Journal of Southern History

Download or read book The Blood of Heroes written by James Donovan and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On February 23, 1836, a large Mexican army led by dictator Santa Anna reached San Antonio and laid siege to about 175 Texas rebels holed up in the Alamo. The Texans refused to surrender for nearly two weeks until almost 2,000 Mexican troops unleashed a final assault. The defenders fought valiantly-for their lives and for a free and independent Texas-but in the end, they were all slaughtered. Their ultimate sacrifice inspired the rallying cry "Remember the Alamo!" and eventual triumph. Exhaustively researched, and drawing upon fresh primary sources in U.S. and Mexican archives, The Blood of Heros is the definitive account of this epic battle. Populated by larger-than-life characters -- including Davy Crockett, James Bowie, William Barret Travis -- this is a stirring story of audacity, valor, and redemption.

Download or read book Attack and Counterattack written by Joseph Milton Nance and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-09-12 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.