Overview

2022 Ramirez Family Award for Most Significant Scholarly Book, Texas Institute of Letters An in-depth history of the Civil War in the Texas Hill Country, this book examines patterns of violence on the Texas frontier to illuminate white Americans’ cultural and political priorities in the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century, Texas’s advancing western frontier was the site of one of America’s longest conflicts between white settlers and native peoples. The Texas Hill Country functioned as a kind of borderland within the larger borderland of Texas itself, a vast and fluid area where, during the Civil War, the slaveholding South and the nominally free-labor West collided. As in many borderlands, Nicholas Roland argues, the Hill Country was marked by violence, as one set of peoples, states, and systems eventually displaced others. In this painstakingly researched book, Roland analyzes patterns of violence in the Texas Hill Country to examine the cultural and political priorities of white settlers and their interaction with the century-defining process of national integration and state-building in the Civil War era. He traces the role of violence in the region from the eve of the Civil War, through secession and the Indian wars, and into Reconstruction. Revealing a bitter history of warfare, criminality, divided communities, political violence, vengeance killings, and economic struggle, Roland positions the Texas Hill Country as emblematic of the Southwest of its time.

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9781477330746

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Reviews

"[Roland] weaves a detailed and well-researched narrative of the years before, during, and after the Civil War, providing the reader with a vivid image of Hill Country life during this time...Roland has created a well-written work that greatly enhances the historiography related to the period and region...General readers and historians alike will enjoy this book both for its readability and for the author's diligent primary source research.-- ""Journal of the Civil War Era"" (11/13/2022 12:00:00 AM) Roland does a great job of contributing to the study of violence in Texas, joining scholars such as Barry Crouch, James Smallwood, and Kenneth Howell by bringing the study into the realm of the Civil War where most research focuses on the Reconstruction Era. The author weaves throughout the narrative unique stories of individual violence to highlight how personal many of the killings were. He also supports many points with quantitative analysis. His unique approach in this study allows him to contribute to many subfields in Texas history including frontier, German, and Civil War history.-- ""Western Historical Quarterly"" (2/19/2022 12:00:00 AM) Roland provides a good narrative of what happened in the Hill Country, and he should be commended as the first to place these well-known violent events, especially the aptly named Nueces River Massacre, within a broader historical context...Roland does an excellent job of using a variety of primary resources--including government records, newspapers, letters, and memoirs--to create a thorough narrative.-- ""H-CivWar"" (9/20/2021 12:00:00 AM) This is an important addition to the literature on Texas during the Civil War and to frontier and violence studies. Roland's extensive endnotes, especially those on the Nueces River battle, will be particularly useful for scholars seeking to expand their understanding of this important topic.-- ""Southwestern Historical Quarterly"" (1/14/2022 12:00:00 AM) This well-written, meticulously researched book offers a scholarly assessment of many long-popularized stories and events...Recommended.-- ""CHOICE"" (3/1/2022 12:00:00 AM) [A] fascinating new study...Employing a sophisticated and creative research and analysis of Texas Hill Country patterns of interpersonal, ethnic, political, and economic violence during the key transitional period of the mid to late nineteenth-century, Nicholas Roland skillfully weaves into his narrative a host of local, state, and national contexts the overall assessment of which forms a welcome, even vital, contribution to the literature of westward expansion. A multitude of scholarly and popular reading audiences, including American Civil War, Indian Wars, Southwest borderlands, and German American immigrant history students, are abundantly well served through the contents of this book. Violence in the Hill Country is highly recommended.-- ""Civil War Books and Authors"" (3/8/2021 12:00:00 AM)"

Author Information

Nicholas Roland is a historian at the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, DC.

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