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Brush men & vigilantes : Civil War dissent in Texas / David Pickering and Judy Falls ; foreword by Richard B. McCaslin.

By: Pickering, David, b. 1939.
Contributor(s): Falls, Judy, 1947-.
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookSeries: Sam Rayburn series on rural life: no. 1.Publisher: College Station : Texas A & M University Press, c2000Edition: 1st ed.Description: xxv, 223 p. : maps ; 24 cm.ISBN: 089096923X (alk. paper); 9780890969236 (alk. paper).Other title: Brush men and vigilantes.Subject(s): Texas -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Social aspects | Unionists (United States Civil War) -- Sulphur River Watershed (Tex. and Ark.) -- History -- 19th century | Vigilantes -- Sulphur River Watershed (Tex. and Ark.) -- History -- 19th century | Sulphur River Watershed (Tex. and Ark.) -- Social conditions -- 19th century | Sulphur River Watershed (Tex. and Ark.) -- Economic conditions -- 19th century | Violence -- Sulphur River Watershed (Tex. and Ark.) -- History -- 19th century | United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Social aspectsAdditional physical formats: Online version:: Brush men & vigilantes.DDC classification: 973.7/1
Contents:
Foreword / Richard B. McCaslin -- Where North Met South: The Sulphur Forks Watershed Counties of Northeast Texas -- The Hanging of the Hembys and Howards, 1862 -- Hangings in Hunt and Hopkins Counties, 1863 -- "Blessed with Peace!": War's Bitter Aftermath -- Forgetting.
Summary: "As Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain dramatized, dissenters from the Confederacy lived in mortal danger across the South. In scattered pockets from the Carolinas to the frontier in Texas, some men clung to a belief in the Union or to an unwillingness to preserve the slaveholding Confederacy, and they died at the hands of their own neighbors. Brush Men and Vigilantes tells the story of how dissent, fear, and economics developed into mob violence in a corner of Texas -- the Sulphur Forks river valley northeast of Dallas.".
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Book University of Texas At Tyler
Stacks - 3rd Floor 		E580 .P54 2000 (Browse shelf) Available 0000001479898

Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-201) and index.

"As Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain dramatized, dissenters from the Confederacy lived in mortal danger across the South. In scattered pockets from the Carolinas to the frontier in Texas, some men clung to a belief in the Union or to an unwillingness to preserve the slaveholding Confederacy, and they died at the hands of their own neighbors. Brush Men and Vigilantes tells the story of how dissent, fear, and economics developed into mob violence in a corner of Texas -- the Sulphur Forks river valley northeast of Dallas.".

Foreword / Richard B. McCaslin -- 1. Where North Met South: The Sulphur Forks Watershed Counties of Northeast Texas -- 2. The Hanging of the Hembys and Howards, 1862 -- 3. Hangings in Hunt and Hopkins Counties, 1863 -- 4. "Blessed with Peace!": War's Bitter Aftermath -- 5. Forgetting.

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CHOICE Review

Pickering and Falls (independent scholars)have written an absorbing account of a violent episode in Texas Civil War history involving Unionists and Confederates in a small northeastern section of Texas once known as "the dark corner of the Confederacy." Here were many nonslaveholders with outspoken pro-Unionist views who would not fight in the Rebel Army. Conflicts with their neighbors caused many "to take to the brush" to hide in the dense forests of indigenous tangled vines, briars, and brambles known as thickets. The largest and most notorious was Jernigan's Thicket, which covered an area of some 15 square miles. In 1863 Confederate authorities believed 1,000 deserters and draft evaders were in these thickets. Rebel Texans took the law into their own hands to deal with these "brushmen," and these vigilantes killed more than a dozen men. As one contemporary remarked, "Nothing seems more common or less condemned than assassination ... it is a matter of course that an obnoxious person should be put to death by some offended neighbor." This is a good reconstructionist description of how clashing political, economic, and social values led to so much violence. Highly recommended to general and academic readers at all levels. ; Gordon College

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