Download or read book Soldiers of Misfortune written by Sam W. Haynes and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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? These are the questions that Sam Haynes addresses in this very readable book, which includes many dramatic excerpts from the diaries and letters of expedition participants.

Download or read book A Brave Boy a Good Soldier written by Mary Margaret McAllen Amberson and published by Texas State Historical Assn. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortly before his fourteenth birthday, John Christopher Columbus Hill left home with his father and older brother to join the ill-fated 1842 Texas expedition to Mier, Tamaulipas, Mexico, to end any questions over ownership of Texas. John Hill's capture and subsequent adoption by President Antonio L�pez de Santa Anna is one of the most fascinating and curious to come out of this extraordinary episode in Texas history. After a series of escalating events, including Mexican Gen. Adri�n Woll's sudden siege of San Antonio, the Texas Rangers sent out a call for volunteers. On Christmas Day, 1842, the Texans encountered the Mexican army at Mier, and the ensuing battle lasted until the next afternoon. During the fight, John Hill killed at least twelve Mexican soldiers; his brother was seriously wounded; and all of the surviving Texans were captured. John was sent back to Mexico City, while his father and brother stayed with the rest of the group. The Texan prisoners subsequently escaped from prison and were recaptured. A furious Santa Anna demanded that they all be executed. The ensuing decision, to execute one-tenth of the group through a drawing of black beans from a jar, is one of the most legendary events in Texas history. In Mexico City, young John Hill asked President Santa Anna to release his father and brother, who were still in prison. Santa Anna agreed, on the condition that he be allowed to adopt John and raise him in Mexico. John's father agreed, and he and John's brother returned to Texas. John stayed in Mexico City and was enrolled at the Colegio de Miner�a, or College of Mining, from which he graduated in 1850 with a doctorate in engineering and a degree in mining. The story of John C. C. Hill is one of the most remarkable stories to emerge from Texas's struggle for independence. This volume, offered with an educator's guide for classroom use, will appeal to young and old readers alike.

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 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 Adventures of Big Foot Wallace the Texas Ranger and Hunter written by John Crittenden Duval and published by University of Michigan Library. This book was released on 1870 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relates the adventures of Bigfoot Wallace as he travels to Texas, participates in battles against Mexico, serves time as a hostage, and pioneers in the American West.

Download or read book The Boy Captive of the Texas Mier Expedition written by Fanny Chambers Gooch Iglehart and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tale of John C.C. Hill's experiences as a thirteen year old boy with the Mier Expedition. Taken down as told to Mrs. Gooch-Inglehart by Hill himself before his death, she also completed research, and includes a source bibliography.

Download or read book The Texanist written by David Courtney and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of Courtney's columns from the Texas Monthly, curing the curious, exorcizing bedevilment, and orienting the disoriented, advising "on such things as: Is it wrong to wear your football team's jersey to church? When out at a dancehall, do you need to stick with the one that brung ya? Is it real Tex-Mex if it's served with a side of black beans? Can one have too many Texas-themed tattoos?"--Amazon.com.

Download or read book New Texas History Movies written by Jack Jackson and published by Texas State Historical Assn. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades Texas History Movies taught thousands of school children the varied history of Texas, from Columbus to the discovery of oil. Though the original version is now considered racist, it was for many students their first and only taste of Texas history.

Download or read book Savage Frontier Volume 4 written by Stephen L. Moore and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Texas by Ter n written by General Mier and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An extremely valuable original source on Texas history that heretofore has not been available to scholars or the reading public.” —Donald E. Chipman, Professor of History, University of North Texas Texas was already slipping from the grasp of Mexico when Manuel Mier y Terán made his tour of inspection in 1828. American settlers were pouring across the vaguely defined border between Mexico's northernmost province and the United States, along with a host of Indian nations driven off their lands by American expansionism. Terán’s mission was to assess the political situation in Texas while establishing its boundary with the United States. Highly qualified for these tasks as a soldier, scientist, and intellectual, he wrote perhaps the most perceptive account of Texas' people, politics, natural resources, and future prospects during the critical decade of the 1820s. This book contains the full text of Terán’s diary—which has never before been published—edited and annotated by Jack Jackson and translated into English by John Wheat. The introduction and epilogue place the diary in historical context, revealing the significant role that Terán played in setting Mexican policy for Texas between 1828 and 1832.

Download or read book A Wild and Vivid Land written by Jerry D. Thompson and published by Texas State Historical Assn. This book was released on 1997 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With more than 160 images, many never before published, historian Jerry Thompson tells stories from the Coahuiltecan Indians and Spanish colonizers who clustered along the banks of the Rio Grande, to the cattlemen and wildcatters who conquered the brush country. Six centuries of exciting and entertaining history thoroughly reasearched.

Download or read book Felix Longoria s Wake written by Patrick J. Carroll and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, Tullis Prize, Texas State Historical Association, 2004 Private First Class Felix Longoria earned a Bronze Service Star, a Purple Heart, a Good Conduct Medal, and a Combat Infantryman's badge for service in the Philippines during World War II. Yet the only funeral parlor in his hometown of Three Rivers, Texas, refused to hold a wake for the slain soldier because "the whites would not like it." Almost overnight, this act of discrimination became a defining moment in the rise of Mexican American activism. It launched Dr. Héctor P. García and his newly formed American G.I. Forum into the vanguard of the Mexican civil rights movement, while simultaneously endangering and advancing the career of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, who arranged for Longoria's burial with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. In this book, Patrick Carroll provides the first fully researched account of the Longoria controversy and its far-reaching consequences. Drawing on extensive documentary evidence and interviews with many key figures, including Dr. García and Mrs. Longoria, Carroll convincingly explains why the Longoria incident, though less severe than other acts of discrimination against Mexican Americans, ignited the activism of a whole range of interest groups from Argentina to Minneapolis. By putting Longoria's wake in a national and international context, he also clarifies why it became such a flash point for conflicting understandings of bereavement, nationalism, reason, and emotion between two powerful cultures—Mexicanidad and Americanism.

Download or read book The Prisoners of Perote written by William Preston Stapp and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1977-11-01 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In late 1842, Private William Preston Stapp and about three hundred other citizens of the Republic of Texas took it upon themselves to invade Mexico. They intended to retaliate for a recent Mexican attack on San Antonio and to humiliate President Sam Houston, who had been hesitant to seek revenge. Stapp provides a closely observed, day-by-day narrative of the disastrous adventure later known as the Mier expedition. While his style might be described as "elegantly restrained" in comparison to the literary excesses of that early Victorian age, Stapp's flair for drama and description makes for colorful reading. In response to the public outrage prompted by the San Antonio incident, Houston issued a presidential proclamation inviting volunteers for a retaliatory expedition across the Rio Grande. After the bloodless "capture" and pillage of two Mexican border towns, he called the volunteers back home. Most were relieved to comply, but some felt compelled to pursue the honor of the Republic further, and the Mier expedition was launched on December 20, 1842. On the day after Christmas, all save a forty-man camp guard were captured outside of Mier, a few miles across the Mexican border. The prisoners faced a brutal forced march to Mexico City. Stapp was one of a large group that escaped along the way, became lost in the mountains, and suffered badly from hunger and thirst before recapture. He survived the notorious Black Bean Episode in which 17 of the 176 returned escapees were shot after drawing black beans in a lottery. The Texans were delivered to Perote Prison near Mexico City in September 1843, where a few of them tunneled to freedom and many more died in captivity. Mexico released the last of the prisoners in 1844, and Stapp was among them. First published in 1845 and later issued in pamphlet form in 1933 by the La Grange Journal, The Prisoners of Perote is a fascinating view of a painful episode in Texas history. The foreword by Joe B. Frantz provides a perspective on the Texas-Mexico relations during this period "when both countries were shaking down and had not yet found their way." He points out that The Prisoners of Perote provides some clues to the reasons behind the inherent tenseness that exists between Texas and Mexico today.

Download or read book The Annexation of Texas written by Justin Harvey Smith and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Diezmo written by Rick Bass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006-06-15 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This novel of young men seeking glory in the Republic of Texas is “a surprisingly absorbing rendition of a terrible episode in American history” (The Oregonian). The Diezmo tells the incredible story of the Mier Expedition, one of the most absurd and tragic military adventures in the history of Texas—a country and a state, as Rick Bass writes, that was “born in blood.” In the early days of the Republic of Texas, two young men, wild for glory, impulsively volunteer for an expedition Sam Houston has ordered to patrol the Mexican border. But their dreams of triumph soon fade into prayers for survival, and all that is on their minds is getting home and having a cool drink of water. After being captured in a raid on the Mexican village of Mier, escaping, and being recaptured, the men of the expedition are punished with the terrible diezmo, in which one man in ten is randomly chosen to die. The survivors end up in the most dreaded prison in Mexico. There they become pawns in an international chess game to decide the fate of Texas, and with their hopes of release all but extinguished, they make one desperate, last-ditch effort to escape. “The best literary adventure story I've read since Legends of the Fall. Full of unusual history, exciting events, timely ideas, and stunning wilderness scenery . . . a wonderfully told novel of the human capacity for survival in the face of the very worst that war can do to us.” —Howard Frank Mosher, author of Points North “A vivid, graphic, harrowing tale of wild men and bad blood, a fable universal and timeless in its application.” —Kent Haruf, author of Plainsong “Terrific . . . powerful.” —Los Angeles Times

Download or read book Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws written by William MacLeod Raine and published by Skyhorse Publishing Inc.. This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws is a classic for everyone interested in history and what is was like in the Old West. Get swept back to a time when sheriffs did their best to keep order in a lawless land. Read about the likes of Tom Horn, the "Apache Kid", "Bucky" O'Neill, Tom Nickson, and many more!

Download or read book Samuel H Walker s Account of the Mier Expedition written by Samuel Hamilton Walker and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The autobiography of Samuel Walker, a Texas Ranger both on the frontier and during the Mexican War.