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FIRST EDITION DEEP IN THE HEART A BRIEF TEXAS HISTORY BY CAROLE N LESTER UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS - DALLAS Bassim Hamadeh, CEO and Publisher Kassie Graves, Director of Acquisitions Jamie Giganti, Senior Managing Editor Miguel Macias, Senior Graphic Designer Jennifer McCarthy, Acquisitions Editor Sean Adams, Project Editor Luiz Ferreira, Senior Licensing Specialist Allie Kiekhofer, Associate Editor Copyright © 2017 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written permission of Cognella, Inc. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Cover image copyright © iStockphoto LP/dszc.. Interior image copyright © Depositphotos/_fla. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-63487-979-8 (pbk) / 978-1-63487-980-4 (br) Contents Preface v CH 1 The Land and Man 1 CH 2 The Consequences of Conquest: Texas 1500–1800 11 CH 3 New Masters for Old: Texas 1700–1830s 23 CH 4 Clash of Cultures and the Texas Revolution 1823–1836 35 CH 5 The Lone Star Republic to the Lone Star State: 1836–1848 51 CH 6 Texas the Frontier State and Antebellum United States: 1848–1860 61 CH 7 Texas Secession and the Civil War 69 CH 8 Reconstruction: Reformers to Redeemers — Texas 1868–1880s 81 CH 9 Texas and the Last Frontier 89 IN-DEPTH LOOK: THE TEXAS RANGERS 101 CH 10 Populists to Progressives and Beyond: 1890s to 1930s 109 IN-DEPTH LOOK: SPINDLETOP & BEYOND—DISCOVERY OF OIL 121 CH 11 Developing Modern Texas: 1940s–1980s 125 CH 12 The Texas Mystique into the Twenty-First Century 133 List of Illustrations 147 Preface HOW TO USE THIS DIGITAL TEXTBOOK s this just another Texas history book? Think about how many there are already in print. Consider the statistics: online bookseller Amazon.com lists more than 3,995 titles of books about Texas. However, many of those books are not suitable for studying Texas history. Many are fiction, I and many still tell only the mythic story of Texas’s past because it will not be ignored. In fact, when we study Texas, we study not only the facts surrounding its founding and development, but also the mystique and mythology surrounding it as well. So what is different about this Texas history? This one will connect the mystique with the reality of Texas and its place in the larger picture of United States history. This is an originally designed, interactive eBook that should appeal to you somewhat “tech-savvy” but reading-challenged individuals who think differently from students who did not grow up in the Internet age. This text was intended as an online resource and is best accessed in the digital format. Let me tell you how to use this online interactive eBook to your best advantage. When you begin reading each chapter, you will notice the URL addresses embedded in the text. These links will lead you to credible online resources that will enrich the narrative and provide you with extended source material for the chapter topics. Click on those links to access the in-depth information for each major topic of each chapter. These links can also be used as a starting point for any research you may be required to do for class assignments. In addition to the online links, you will also find study questions at the end of each chapter that can be used as review material or study guides for testing. You will also find a list of resources used for the text and suggestions for further reading. V 1 The Land and Man o matter how we approach Texas history, the first consideration in the study of this state is the land. At present, the state covers 268,596 square miles, stretching from the Red River in the north- N east, south to the Gulf of Mexico; and from the panhandle in the northwest, south along the edges of the mountains of New Mexico, along the Rio Grande to the Gulf. This area spans 770 miles east-to-west and 800 miles north-to-south. It is the second-largest state, covering 7 percent of the area of the United States. If you skateboarded around its borders, you would travel approximately 3,800 miles. (To view a topographical map of Texas, click on the following hyperlink: http://texasalmanac.com/topics/environment/environment). The climate and topography are more varied than almost any other state, with deserts, high plains, piney woods, and swampy bayous; this is a state of sudden and dramatic possibilities. Texas can be divided into roughly four physiographic regions: The Basin and Range areas of the Rocky Mountain system in the far west- ern portion of the state 1 2 DEEP IN THE HEART: A BRIEF TEXAS HISTORY The Great Plains area, stretching from the Edwards Plateau northward to the Llano Estacado The Interior Lowlands of the north and east Texas prairie and piney woods The Coastal Plain of southeastern Texas, from the lower Rio Grande valley to the bayous of the Louisiana border With the exception of the small mountainous section in far-west Texas, the state consists of three gently sloping plains separated by escarpments (Texas Almanac: http://texasalmanac.com/topics/ environment/physical-regions-texas). As historian David McComb noted, if you could accelerate the erosion process to smooth the land to an even surface, you could start rolling a bowling ball at the 4,600-foot elevation in the panhandle and it would roll steadily southeastward into the Gulf of Mexico; the tilt and momentum would carry it under the water until it dropped off the continental shelf six miles out. This “tilt” is why all of the major rivers of Texas flow in the same general south- easterly direction. They do not hurry to the Gulf; they meander gently. They have never been good for hydroelectric power, nor have they been extensively navigable. The weather in the state is just as variable as the terrain: either too much or too little, almost never moderate. Annual rainfall in the area far west of the 98th meridian (roughly along the north–south interstate, I-35) averages eight inches, while people in the far-eastern section of the state receive nearly fifty-eight inches a year. Heavy snow is uncommon, but the high plains of the panhandle have often experienced blizzards. Drought is a constant visitor to the state, hitting mainly the western regions, and can be accompanied by devastating dust storms (US Weather Service, NOAA National Climatic Data Center: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ama/?n=drought). South-central Texas is at the southern end of “Tornado Alley,” the most tornado-prone area in the world. From 1950 to 2010, the US Weather Service recorded that approximately 7,300 tornados hit Texas, an average of forty- eight a year (US Weather Service, NOAA National Climatic Data Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ climate-information/extreme-events/us-tornado-climatology). Hurricanes are the major weather event along the Gulf Coast region. The 1900 Galveston hurricane was the worst natural disaster, in terms of mortality, in the history of the US, with six thousand killed (US Weather Service, NOAA National Climatic Data Center: www.history.noaa.gov/ stories_tales/cline2.html) The more common weather complaints, though, are about the excessive heat of the summers and the “blue northers” of the winters. The most common joke about the Texas weather is credited to Philip Sheridan, a US Army general who, as a junior officer, was stationed at Fort Clark in 1855: “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in in the other place” (Wisconsin State Register, 14 April, 1866, p. 2, col. 3: https://almostchosenpeople.wordpress.com/tag/phil-sheridan/). The vegetation of the state is as varied as the climate and topography; from the sparse grass of the high deserts to the lush growth of the East Texas piney woods, the state has something for THE LAND AND MAN 3 everyone. Not to be outdone by the land, the animal life is just as diverse, and includes bears, wolves, roadrunners, alligators, rabbits, deer, turkeys, javelinas, ducks, and, of course, the armadillo. The most deadly snakes (copperheads, rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, and coral snakes) also live in Texas, but the animal that could be counted as most important to the state was not a native: the cow. Man was also not native to Texas. We don’t know with great certainty exactly when they came, but the first to arrive made their home on the high plains and left their relics behind in the limestone formations of the plateaus of Texas. Human bones found in the stone formations date as old as the Pleistocene (Ice Age) horse found with them. (For the geology of Texas, see http://www.nhnct.org/ geology/timescale.html.) Like all Ice Age men, they were hunters and left behind thousands of flint chipped-stone spearheads. They roamed the area from Clovis, New Mexico to Abilene, Texas and from Abilene to the Perdenales River, just above the Balcones Escarpment, and they hunted Ice Age elephants on the Llano Estacado (Staked Plains) (https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ ryl02). Early man’s time in Texas covered thousands of years, but the climate and land changed, and the Ice Age inhabitants either died out or totally changed over the millennia so as to be historically unrecognizable.