The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State During the Civil War Era Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This is a wonderful book. It is not an easy book to read, so be forewarned. It avoids many familiar assumptions about political distinctions, and relies on statistics more than narrative and drama.
Baum explores the idea that Texas, alone among the rebel states, might have rejoined the Union with a color-blind Republican administration. Given American history, this is an outrageous hypothesis, but Baum makes a good case for his theory.
Baum starts with the surprising victory of pro-union Sam Houston in 1859. This proves the existence, however tenuous, for a anti-planter or anti-slav-ocrat majority. Given the outcome of the war, Baum ask why this pro-union majority didn't assert itself in 1870?
While this hypothesis may seem implausible, Baum does an extraordinary job of teasing contemporary opinion from a county by county review of voting patterns. He looks at the available voting records, including the physical ballots, for every election between 1858 and 1869. Since few historians seem willing to go beyond summarizing contemporary newspaper articles, this provides a wonderful tonic.
Additionally, Baum calls upon records of the Freedmen's Bureau and military reports. From these, Baum builds a compelling argument that grass-roots terrorism shaped each election after 1859, though not deciding the outcome in every case. The terror was perpetrated by unreconstructed rebels, but Baum finds plenty of evidence that klan terror could be defeated. Though appalling, the reader is dragged through a county by county, election by election, tale of torture, lynching, and midnight murders. It sounds dramatic, but isn't. Baum fails to identify any moral response. The few individuals willing to fight the Klan terror are quickly murdered or run out of the state. Thus, it seems to lose its dramatic aspects. It is simply a repetitious list of horrors.
Baum seems to argue that the issue of property redistribution polarized the elections after 1865. The rumor of '40 acres and a mule' for every union veteran threatened yeoman farmer and slav-ocrat planter. When Lee surrendered at Appomattox, there were about 200,000 southerners of color in the federal army. Imagine the political process of handing over 8 million Southern acres to colored union veterans.
The history of terror and fraud within American democratic tradition needs to be better understood. If nothing else, we might do a better job in Iraq. Platitudes about democracy are hardly based on American history.

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State During the Civil War Era

Click here for more information about The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State During the Civil War Era