Richard B. McCaslin – författare

Andrew Johnson remains a paradox to those who study the controversial era of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The effort to understand Johnson has produced a tremendous outpouring of works that provide fascinating perspectives on one of our most contradictory chief executives. Many scholars condemn him for his actions; others compare him favorably to other presidents. The resulting body of scholarly writing has been enriched by the debate. This volume provides the first systematic, thorough bibliography on the contradictory mass of material, both primary and secondary, on Johnson.Following a short chronology of Johnson's life, the volume opens with chapters on manuscript and archival resources and the writings of Andrew Johnson. Chapter 3 covers biographical publications, and the next seven chapters cover different periods in his life from childhood to his post-presidential career. The final chapters are devoted to Johnson's associates, his personal life, historiographical materials, and iconography. A separate section covers periodicals, and the work concludes with author and subject indexes.

Winner of the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Book Prize and a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History In the early morning hours of October 1, 1862, state militia arrested more than two hundred alleged Unionists from five North Texas counties and brought them to Gainesville, the seat of Cooke County. In the ensuing days, at least forty-four of the prisoners were hanged, and several other men were lynched in neighboring communities. This event proved to be the grisly climax of a heritage of violence and vigilantism in North Texas that began before the Civil War and lasted long afterward.Until relatively recently, a legacy of silence restricted historical writing on the Great Hanging. In the first systematic treatment of this important event, Richard B. McCaslin also sheds much light on the tensions produced in southern society by the Civil War, the nature of disaffection in the Confederacy, and the American vigilante tradition.

Winner of the Austin Civil War Round Table's Laney Prize and the Virginia Historical Society's Richard L. Slatten Award for Excellence in Virginia BiographyWhile most historians agree that Robert E. Lee's loyalty to Virginia was the key factor in his decision to join the Confederate cause, Richard B. McCaslin further demonstrates that Lee's true call to action was the legacy of the American Revolution viewed through his reverence for George Washington. In this thematic biography, McCaslin locates the sources of Lee's devotion to Washington and shows how this bond affected his performance as a general. The enduring paradox, McCaslin shows, is that Washington earned his reputation as a statesman, whereas Lee never escaped his self-imposed image as a revolutionary in Washington's shadow.

It's one thing to understand that over twenty-thousand Confederate and Union soldiers died at the Battle of Murfreesboro. It's quite another to study an ambrotype portrait of twenty-year-old private Frank B. Crosthwait, dressed in his Sunday best, looking somberly at the camera. In a tragically short time, he'll be found on the battlefield, mortally wounded, still clutching the knotted pieces of handkerchief he used in a hopeless attempt to stop the bleeding from his injuries. Private Crosthwait's image is one of more than 250 portraits - many never before published - to be found in the highly anticipated ""Portraits of Conflict: A Photographic History of Tennessee in the Civil War"". The eighth in the distinguished ""Portraits of Conflict"" series, this volume joins the personal and the public to provide a uniquely rich portrayal of Tennesseans - in uniforms both blue and gray - who fought and lost their lives in the Civil War. Here is the story of a widow working as a Union spy to support herself and her children. Of a father emerging from his house to find his Confederate soldier son dying at his feet. Of a nine-year-old boy who attached himself to a union regiment after his mother died. Their stories and faces, joined with personal remembrances from recovered letters and diaries and ample historical information on secession, famous battles, surrender and Reconstruction, make this new ""Portraits of Conflict"" a Civil War treasure.

William L. Wright (1868–1942) was born to be a Texas Ranger, and hard work made him a great one. Wright tried working as a cowboy and farmer, but it did not suit him. Instead, he became a deputy sheriff and then a Ranger in 1899, battling a mob in the Laredo Smallpox Riot, policing both sides in the Reese-Townsend Feud, and winning a gunfight at Cotulla.His need for a better salary led him to leave the Rangers and become a sheriff. He stayed in that office longer than any of his predecessors in Wilson County, keeping the peace during the so-called Bandit Wars, investigating numerous violent crimes, and surviving being stabbed on the gallows by the man he was hanging. When demands for Ranger reform peaked, he was appointed as a captain and served for most of the next twenty years, retiring in 1939 after commanding dozens of Rangers.Wright emerged unscathed from the Canales investigation, enforced Prohibition in South Texas, and policed oil towns in West Texas, as well as tackling many other legal problems. When he retired, he was the only Ranger in service who had worked under seven governors. Wright has also been honored as an inductee into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame at Waco.

With Washington on the Brazos: Cradle of the Texas Republic, noted historian Richard B. McCaslin recovers the history of an iconic Texas town. The story of the Texas Republic begins and ends at Washington, but the town’s history extends much further. Texas leaders gathered in the new town on the west bank of the Brazos in March 1836 to establish a new republic. After approving a declaration of independence and constitution, they fled as Santa Anna's army approached. The government of the Republic of Texas returned there in 1842, but after the United States annexed Texas in 1846, Austin replaced Washington as the capital of the Lone Star State. The town became a thriving river port in the 1850s, when steamboat cargoes paid for many new buildings. But the community steeply declined when its leaders decided to rely on steamers rather than invest in a railroad line, although German immigrants and African American residents kept the town alive. Later, Progressive Era plans for historic tourism focused the town’s central role in the Texas Republic brought renewed interest, and a state park was founded. The Texas centennial in 1936 and the hard work of citizens’ organizations beginning in the 1950s transformed this park into Washington-on-the-Brazos, the state historic site that serves today as the primary focus for preserving the history of the Republic of Texas.  

Francis Asbury Vaughan left his home in Guadalupe County, Texas on July 4, 1862, to fight in the Civil War. But he did not join a Confederate unit. Unlike twenty-one of his brothers and cousins, and most white male Texans who fought in that conflict, he became a captain in the First Texas Cavalry, USA, the best-known Union outfit from the Lone Star State. Fortunately for historians, he recorded some of his wartime experiences in what he called a memorandum, which remains in the possession of his descendants along with other treasured records concerning him and his relatives. These documents are the foundation for this book, which provides a unique insight into the ideals and actions of a Texan who not only served for three years as a Union officer but afterward became a Republican for the remaining three decades of his life in Texas. As a Texan in blue, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1868, a federal appointee and elected local official several times over, and a successful businessman and father, Vaughan established a legacy that offers useful perspectives not only on him, but on the events that surrounded and involved him.

Oil redefined Texas in the twentieth century. During the nineteenth century, Texans had won their independence from Mexico, joined fellow Southerners in losing the Civil War, and made a great economic recovery with cattle and cotton. All of that provided more than enough history to give Texas a distinct image in the eyes of many observers. Then Spindletop exploded in 1901, flooding the surrounding landscape with barrels of black gold. Other drillers found glory and profit in the Lone Star State, and by 1927 Texas led the United States in oil production. Texans also profited greatly from natural gas, refining, pipelines, petrochemicals, and other oil-related enterprises, all of which redefined not just the Texas economy, but also its politics and society. This can clearly be seen in articles that have appeared in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, the oldest continuously published academic journal in the United States. This volume includes seventeen selections on oil and gas history from the Quarterly, providing a broad perspective on its evolution and impact.

In Making the Unknown Known, leading scholars throughout Texas explore the significant role women artists played in developing early Texas art from the nineteenth century through the latter part of the twentieth century. The biographies presented here allow readers to compare these women’s experiences across time as they negotiated the gendered expectations about artists in society at large and the Texas art community itself. Surveying the contributions women made to the visual arts in the Lone Star state, Making the Unknown Known analyzes women’s artistic work with respect to geographic and historical connections. Including surveys of the work of artists such as Louise WÜste, Emma Richardson Cherry, Eleanor Onderdonk, Grace Spaulding John, and others, it offers a groundbreaking assessment of the role women artists have played in interpreting the meaning, history, heritage, and unique character of Texas. It places women artists within the larger social and cultural contexts in which they lived. In that regard, it contains an analysis of their varied styles of art, the media they employed, and the subject matter contained in their art. It thus evaluates the contributions made by women artists to defining the nature of the wider Texas experience as an American region. Beautifully illustrated throughout with rich, full-color reproductions of the works created by the artists, this volume provides an enriched understanding of the important but underappreciated role women artists have played in the development of the fine arts in Texas. At last, the unknown story can be known.