Download or read book The Civil War on the Rio Grande 1846 1876 written by Roseann Bacha-Garza and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Runner-up, 2019 Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Book Award, sponsored by the Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Association (TOMFRA) "A valuable read for anyone interested in Texas or Mexican history, as well as the Civil War, life on the frontier, and race relations." --The NYMAS Review "The Civil War on the Rio Grande is an unconventional history, but an informative one. Some of the chapters are written in academic style. These often make slow reading. Yet the result is rewarding. The book reveals the complexities of the war fought along the nation's southern boundary."--Galveston County Daily News "The entire effort clearly demonstrates that Civil War South Texas offers opportunities for study far beyond the Battle of Palmito Ranch."--Southwestern Historical Quarterly Long known as a place of cross-border intrigue, the Rio Grande's unique role in the history of the American Civil War has been largely forgotten or overlooked. Few know of the dramatic events that took place here or the complex history of ethnic tensions and international intrigue and the clash of colorful characters that marked the unfolding and aftermath of the Civil War in the Lone Star State. To understand the American Civil War in Texas also requires an understanding of the history of Mexico. The Civil War on the Rio Grande focuses on the region's forced annexation from Mexico in 1848 through the Civil War and Reconstruction. In a very real sense, the Lower Rio Grande Valley was a microcosm not only of the United States but also of increasing globalization as revealed by the intersections of races, cultures, economic forces, historical dynamics, and individual destinies. As a companion to Blue and Gray on the Border: The Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail, this volume provides the scholarly backbone to a larger public history project exploring three decades of ethnic conflict, shifting international alliances, and competing economic proxies at the border. The Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846-1876 makes a groundbreaking contribution not only to the history of a Texas region in transition but also to the larger history of a nation at war with itself.

Download or read book The Civil War on the Rio Grande 1846 1876 written by Roseann Bacha-Garza and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020, Texas Historical Commission's Governor's Award for Historic Preservation was awarded to the Community Historical Archaeology Project with Schools (CHAPS) at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. This book grew out of the CHAPS program. Runner-up, 2019 Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Book Award, sponsored by the Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Association (TOMFRA) Long known as a place of cross-border intrigue, the Rio Grande’s unique role in the history of the American Civil War has been largely forgotten or overlooked. Few know of the dramatic events that took place here or the complex history of ethnic tensions and international intrigue and the clash of colorful characters that marked the unfolding and aftermath of the Civil War in the Lone Star State. To understand the American Civil War in Texas also requires an understanding of the history of Mexico. The Civil War on the Rio Grande focuses on the region’s forced annexation from Mexico in 1848 through the Civil War and Reconstruction. In a very real sense, the Lower Rio Grande Valley was a microcosm not only of the United States but also of increasing globalization as revealed by the intersections of races, cultures, economic forces, historical dynamics, and individual destinies. As a companion to Blue and Gray on the Border: The Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail, this volume provides the scholarly backbone to a larger public history project exploring three decades of ethnic conflict, shifting international alliances, and competing economic proxies at the border. The Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846–1876 makes a groundbreaking contribution not only to the history of a Texas region in transition but also to the larger history of a nation at war with itself.

Download or read book Blue and Gray on the Border written by Christopher L. Miller and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Runner-up, 2019 Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Book Award, sponsored by the Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Association (TOMFRA) Most general histories of the Civil War pay scant attention to the many important military events that took place in the Lower Rio Grande Valley along the Texas-Mexico border. It was here, for example, that many of the South’s cotton exports, all-important to its funding for the war effort, were shuttled across the Rio Grande into Mexico for shipment to markets across the Atlantic. It was here that the Union blockade was felt perhaps most keenly. And it was here where longstanding cross-border rivalries and shifting political fortunes on both sides of the river made for a constant undercurrent of intrigue. And yet, most accounts of this long and bloody conflict give short shrift to the complexities of the ethnic tensions, political maneuvering, and international diplomacy that vividly colored the Civil War in this region. Now, Christopher L. Miller, Russell K. Skowronek, and Roseann Bacha-Garza have woven together the history and archaeology of the Lower Rio Grande Valley into a densely illustrated travel guide featuring important historical and military sites of the Civil War period. Blue and Gray on the Border integrates the sites, colorful personalities, cross-border conflicts, and intriguing historical vignettes that outline the story of the Civil War along the Texas-Mexico border. This resource-packed book will aid heritage travelers, students, and history buffs in their discovery of the rich history of the Civil War in the Rio Grande Valley.

Download or read book The Civil War Era and the Lower Rio Grande Valley written by Rolando Avila and published by . This book was released on 2018-03-30 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is another Civil War history book, but it deals with an aspect of the Civil War that does not appear-even as an aside or footnote-in the vast majority of the other fifty thousand books and pamphlets that address that war. This is the untold story of the complicated cross-border, multi-sided Civil War era specific to the Rio Grande Valley in both Texas and Mexico that took place most intensively between 1861 and 1867, yet the roots of which reach back to at least 1846 and extend forward to at least 1877.

Download or read book War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier 1830 1880 written by Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical record of the Rio Grande valley through much of the nineteenth century reveals well-documented violence fueled by racial hatred, national rivalries, lack of governmental authority, competition for resources, and an international border that offered refuge to lawless men. Less noted is the region’s other everyday reality, one based on coexistence and cooperation among Mexicans, Anglo-Americans, and the Native Americans, African Americans, and Europeans who also inhabited the borderlands. War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830–1880 is a history of these parallel worlds focusing on a border that gave rise not only to violent conflict but also cooperation and economic and social advancement. Meeting here are the Anglo-Americans who came to the border region to trade, spread Christianity, and settle; Mexicans seeking opportunity in el norte; Native Americans who raided American and Mexican settlements alike for plunder and captives; and Europeans who crisscrossed the borderlands seeking new futures in a fluid frontier space. Historian Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga draws on national archives, letters, consular records, periodicals, and a host of other sources to give voice to borderlanders’ perspectives as he weaves their many, varied stories into one sweeping narrative. The tale he tells is one of economic connections and territorial disputes, of refugees and bounty hunters, speculation and stakeholding, smuggling and theft and other activities in which economic considerations often carried more weight than racial prejudice. Spanning the Anglo settlement of Texas in the 1830s, the Texas Revolution, the Republic of Texas , the US-Mexican War, various Indian wars, the US Civil War, the French intervention into Mexico, and the final subjugation of borderlands Indians by the combined forces of the US and Mexican armies, this is a magisterial work that forever alters, complicates, and enriches borderlands history. Published in association with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas

Download or read book The Uncompromising Diary of Sallie McNeill 1858 1867 written by Sallie McNeill and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gives insight into an elite planter-class Texas woman's loneliness and hunger to experience the non-traditional world of a Southern Belle. Her contextual observations on slavery, family relations, and the Civil War contribute to Southern history.

Download or read book Civil War Texas written by Ralph A. Wooster and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-30 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by one of the deans of Texas history, Civil War Texas provides an authoritative, comprehensive description of Texas during the Civil War as well as a guide for those who wish to visit sites in Texas associated with the war. In one compact volume, the reader or tourist is led on an exciting historical journey through Civil War Texas. Because most of the great battles of the Civil War were fought east of the Mississippi River, it is often forgotten that Texas made major contributions to the war effort in terms of men and supplies. Over 70,000 Texans served in the Confederate army during the war and fought in almost every major battle. Ordnance works, shops, and depots were established for the manufacture and repair of weapons of war, and Texas cotton shipped through Mexico was exchanged for weapons and ammunition. The state itself was the target of the Union army and navy. Galveston, the principal seaport, was occupied by Federal forces for three months and blockaded by the Union navy for four years. Brownsville, Port Lavaca, and Indianola were captured, and Sabine Pass, Corpus Christi, and Laredo were all under enemy attack. A major Federal attempt to invade East Texas by way of Louisiana was stopped only a few miles from the Texas border. The Civil War had significant impact upon life within the state. The naval blockade created shortages requiring Texans to find substitutes for various commodities such as coffee, salt, ink, pins, and needles. The war affected Texas women, many of whom were now required to operate farms and plantations in the absence of their soldier husbands. As the author points out in the narrative, not all Texans supported the Confederacy. Many Texans, especially in the Hill Country and North Texas, opposed secession and attempted either to remain neutral or work for a Union victory. Over two thousand Texans, led by future governor Edmund J. Davis, joined the Union army. In this carefully researched work, Ralph A. Wooster describes Texas's role in the war. He also notes the location of historical markers, statues, monuments, battle sites, buildings, and museums in Texas which may be visited by those interested in learning more about the war. Photographs, maps, chronology, end notes, and bibliography provide additional information on Civil War Texas.

Download or read book Voices in the Kitchen written by Meredith E. Abarca and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-16 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Literally, chilaquiles are a breakfast I grew up eating: fried corn tortillas with tomato-chile sauce. Symbolically, they are the culinary metaphor for how working-class women speak with the seasoning of their food.”—from the Introduction Through the ages and across cultures, women have carved out a domain in which their cooking allowed them to express themselves, strengthen family relationships, and create a world of shared meanings with other women. In Voices in the Kitchen, Meredith E. Abarca features the voices of her mother and several other family members and friends, seated at their kitchen tables, to share the grassroots world view of these working-class Mexican and Mexican American women. In the kitchen, Abarca demonstrates, women assert their own sazón (seasoning), not only in their cooking but also in their lives. Through a series of oral histories, or charlas culinarias (culinary chats), the women interviewed address issues of space, sensual knowledge, artistic and narrative expression, and cultural and social change. From her mother’s breakfast chilaquiles to the most elaborate traditional dinner, these women share their lives as they share their savory, symbolic, and theoretical meanings of food. The charlas culinarias represent spoken personal narratives, testimonial autobiography, and a form of culinary memoir, one created by the cooks-as-writers who speak from their kitchen space. Abarca then looks at writers-as-cooks to add an additional dimension to the understanding of women’s power to define themselves. Voices in the Kitchen joins the extensive culinary research of the last decade in exploring the importance of the knowledge found in the practical, concrete, and temporal aspects of the ordinary practice of everyday cooking.

Download or read book El Mesquite written by Elena Zamora O'Shea and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The open country of Texas between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande was sparsely settled through the nineteenth century, and most of the settlers who did live there had Hispanic names that until recently were rarely admitted into the pages of Texas history. In 1935, however, a descendant of one of the old Spanish land-grant families in the region-a woman, no less-found an ingenious way to publish the history of her region at a time when neither Tejanos nor women had much voice. She told the story from the perspective of an ancient mesquite tree, under whose branches much South Texas history had passed. Her tale became an invaluable source of folk history but has long been out of print. Now, with important new introductions by Leticia M. Garza-Falcón and Andrés Tijerina, the history witnessed by El Mesquite can again inform readers of the way of life that first shaped Texas. Through the voice of the gnarled old tree, Elena Zamora O'Shea tells South Texas political and ethnographic history, filled with details of daily life such as songs, local plants and folk medicines, foods and recipes, peone/patron relations, and the Tejano ranch vocabulary. The work is an important example of the historical-folkloristic literary genre used by Mexican American writers of the period. Using the literary device of the tree's narration, O'Shea raises issues of culture, discrimination, and prejudice she could not have addressed in her own voice in that day and explicitly states the Mexican American ideology of 1930s Texas. The result is a literary and historic work of lasting value, which clearly articulates the Tejano claim to legitimacy in Texas history. ELENA ZAMORA O'SHEA (1880-1951) was born at Rancho La Noria Cardenena near Peñitas, Hidalgo County, Texas. A long-time schoolteacher, whose posts included one on the famous King Ranch, she wrote this book to help Tejano children know and claim their proud heritage.

Download or read book Am rico Paredes written by Manuel Medrano and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Américo Paredes (1915-1999) was a folklorist, scholar, and professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is widely acknowledged as one of the founding scholars of Chicano Studies. Born in Brownsville, Texas, along the southern U.S.-Mexico Border, Paredes’ early experiences impacted his writing during his later years as an academic. He grew up between two worlds—one written about in books, the other sung about in ballads and narrated in folktales. He attended a school system that emphasized conformity and Anglo values in a town whose population was 70 percent Mexican in origin. During World War II, he worked for the International American Red Cross and wrote for the Stars and Stripes army newspaper in the Far East. He returned to Texas with a new bride and a passion for continuing his formal education and his writing. Paredes did both at the University of Texas at Austin, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1956. With the publication of his dissertation, “With His Pistol in His Hand”: A Border Ballad and Its Hero in 1958, Paredes soon emerged as a challenger to the status quo. His book questioned the mythic nature of the Texas Rangers and provided an alternative counter-cultural narrative to the existing traditional narratives of Walter Prescott Webb and J. Frank Dobie, among others. For the next forty years he was a brilliant teacher and prolific writer who championed the preservation of border culture and history. He was a soft-spoken, at times temperamental, yet fearless professor. He was a co-founder in 1970 of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and is credited with introducing the concept of Greater Mexico, decades before its wider acceptance today among transnationalist scholars. He received numerous awards, including La Orden del Aguila Azteca, Mexico’s most prestigious service award to a foreigner. Paredes became a scholar of scholars, guiding many students to become academic leaders. Manuel F. Medrano interviewed Paredes over a five-year period before Paredes’ death in 1999, and also interviewed his family and colleagues. For many Mexican Americans, Paredes’ historical legacy is that he raised, carried, and defended their cultural flag with a dignity that both friends and foes respected.

Download or read book Mr Polk s Army written by Richard Bruce Winders and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on numerous diaries, journals, and reminiscences, Richard Bruce Winders presents the daily life of soldiers at war; links the army to the society that produced it; shares his impressions of the soldiers he "met" along the way; and concludes that American participants in the Mexican War shared a common experience, no matter their rank or place of service. Taking a "new" military history approach, Mr. Polk's Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War examines the cultural, social, and political aspects of the regular and volunteer forces that made up the army of 1846-48, presents the organizational framework of the army, and introduces the different styles of leadership exhibited by Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott.

Download or read book Historic Rio Grande Valley written by Marjorie Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Remembering the Hacienda written by Vincent Anthony Pérez and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What the plantation has been to the history and literature of the American South, the hacienda has been to Mexico and the American Southwest. In Remembering the Hacienda, Vincent Perez makes the case that the hacienda offers the emblem of an antebellum, agrarian social order that predates the United States. It is the site in which the Mexican American community's heroic, genteel forebears lived in dignity and pride, and it is the heritage from which they were cast out as orphans, both in mother Mexico by the Revolution and in the American Southwest when the wars of 1836 and 1846-48 and capitalist land grabs dispossessed the Mexican hacendados. The hacienda, Perez argues, had its own orphans, too: Indians, mestizos, women, and peons. American culture, Perez examines five novels and autobiographies: Jovita Gonzalez and Eve Raleigh's Caballero: A Historical Novel (written in the 1930s and 1940s and later published by Texas A&M University Press), Maria Maparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don (1885), Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo's Historical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Alta, California (1874), Leo Carrillo's The California I Love (1961), and Francisco Robles Perez's immigrant autobiography Memorias. The last work is Perez's own grandfather's life narrative.

Download or read book Turmoil on the Rio Grande written by William S. Kiser and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-14 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mid-nineteenth century was a tumultuous yet formative time for the Mesilla Valley, home to present-day Las Cruces, New Mexico. With the coming of the U.S. Army to Mexican territory in 1846, the region became the site of a continent-shaping power struggle between two rival nations. When Mexican governor Manuel Armijo unexpectedly fled Santa Fe, he left the New Mexico territory undefended, and it fell to forces under Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny in a bloodless occupation. In the ensuing two decades, the southern portion of New Mexico's Rio Grande Valley played a prominent role in the conflict that overtook the infant American territory. In Turmoil on the Rio Grande, William S. Kiser has mined primary archives and secondary materials alike to tell the story of those rough-and-tumble years and to highlight the effect the region had in the developing U.S. empire of the West. Kiser carefully limns in the culture into which the U.S. soldiers inserted themselves before going on to describe the armed forces that arrived and the actions in which they were involved. From the thirty-minute Battle of Brazito—in which the greenhorn recruits of the 1st Regiment of Missouri Volunteers, led by Col. Alexander Doniphan, vanquished Mexican troops through superior technology—to the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the international boundary disputes, and the Confederate victory at Fort Fillmore, Kiser deftly describes the actions that made the Mesilla Valley important in American history.

Download or read book U S Army on the Mexican Border A Historical Perspective written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This occasional paper is a concise overview of the history of the US Army's involvement along the Mexican border and offers a fundamental understanding of problems associated with such a mission. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the historic themes addressed disapproving public reaction, Mexican governmental instability, and insufficient US military personnel to effectively secure the expansive boundary are still prevalent today.

Download or read book A Kine o Remembers written by Lauro F. Cavazos and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2008-02-19 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On September 20, 1988, Lauro Cavazos became the first Hispanic in the history of the United States to be appointed to the Cabinet, when thenvice president George H. W. Bush swore him in as secretary of education. Cavazos, born on the legendary King Ranch in South Texas and educated in a two-room ranch schoolhouse, served until December 1990, after which he returned to his career in medical education and academic administration. In this engaging memoir, he recounts not only his years in Washington but also the childhood influences and life experiences that informed his policies in office. The ranch, he says, taught him how to live. These pages are full of glimpses into life on the famous ranch. Cavazos tells of Christmas parties, cattle work, and schooling. In his home, he was introduced to a natural bilingualism: he and his siblings were encouraged to speak only English with their father and only Spanish with their mother. Cavazos describes the high educational expectations his parents held. After service in World War II, Cavazos went to college and earned a doctorate from Iowa State University, launching him on a career in medical education. In 1980 he returned to his alma mater, Texas Tech University, as its tenth presidentthe first Hispanic and the first graduate of the university to serve in that post. As secretary of education, Cavazos stressed a commitment to reading. Indeed, he once told a group of educators that the curriculum for the first three years of school should be “reading, reading, and more reading.” His career is as interesting as it is inspiring, and Cavazos’ memoir joins the ranks of emerging success stories by Mexican Americans that will provide models for aspiring young people today.

Download or read book Early Tejano Ranching written by Andrés Sáenz and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For two and a half centuries Tejanos have lived and ranched on the land of South Texas, establishing many homesteads and communities. This modest book tells the story of one such family, the Sáenzes, who established Ranchos San José and El Fresnillo. Obtaining land grants from the municipality of Mier in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, these settlers crossed the Wild Horse Desert, known as Desierto Muerto, into present-day Duval County in the 1850s and 1860s. Through the simple, direct telling of his family’s stories, Andrés Sáenz lets readers learn about their homes of piedra (stone) and sillares (large blocks of limestone or sandstone), as well as the jacales (thatched-roof log huts) in which people of more modest means lived. He describes the cattle raising that formed the basis of Texas ranching, the carts used for transporting goods, the ways curanderas treated the sick, the food people ate, and how they cooked it. Marriages and deaths, feasts and droughts, education, and domestic arts are all recreated through the words of this descendent, who recorded the stories handed down through generations. The accounts celebrate a way of life without glamorizing it or distorting the hardships. The many photographs record a picturesque past in fascinating images. Those who seek to understand the ranching and ethnic heritage of Texas will enjoy and profit from Early Tejano Ranching.