Frontier Defense in the Civil War : Texas' Rangers and Rebels

Texans faced two foes in 1861: the armed forces of the United States, and the Plains Indians. Some Texans believed the conflict with the Union would be short and successful; those on the frontier knew the struggle with the Comanches and Kiowas would be long and painful. While other Southerners threw their resources and lives into battle against their Northern kin, Texans had to defend their homes and families against Indians and army deserters as well. This book offers the first full, in-depth treatment of this frontier defense during the war years. Before the war, not even the full might of the Texas Rangers and the U.S. Army had stopped the raiding and killing that marked Texas' frontier. More vicious on both sides than in Indian-settler confrontations elsewhere, the violence had continued to escalate. This story has been well chronicled, as has the story of frontier defense after the war. In this breakthrough piece of original research and analysis, David Paul Smith demonstrates that the Texas frontier held its own during the eventful war years, in spite of factors that could easily have overwhelmed it: intergovernmental squabbling over funding and authority; the increasingly serious depredations of deserters, draft dodgers, bushwhackers, and Jayhawkers; and the immense commitment of men, time, and money to the war effort. Smith explains the policies that characterized frontier defense during antebellum years and describes the organizations established by state and Confederate authorities during the war. Combat units such as the Texas Mounted Rifles, the better-known Frontier Regiment, and local minutemen groups were charged with protecting settlers from Indians and rounding upreluctant conscripts for the Confederate army. Administrative units responsible for overseeing these efforts included the Confederate Northern Sub-District of Texas and the state's own Frontier Organization. Their story as Smith tells it includes much of the human drama of war as well