A Southern Community in Crisis: Harrison County, Texas, 1850-1880

by Randolph B. Campbell, Andrew J. Torget (Foreword by)

Overview

Historians have published countless studies of the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865 and the era of Reconstruction that followed those four years of brutally destructive conflict. Most of these works focus on events and developments at the national or state level, explaining and analyzing the causes of disunion, the course of the war, and the bitter disputes that arose during restoration of the Union. Much less attention has been given to studying how ordinary people experienced the years from 1861 to 1876. What did secession, civil war, emancipation, victory for the United States, and Reconstruction mean at the local level in Texas? Exactly how much change—economic, social, and political—did the era bring to the focus of the study, Harrison County: a cotton-growing, planter-dominated community with the largest slave population of any county in the state? Providing an answer to that question is the basic purpose of A Southern Community in Crisis: Harrison County, Texas, 1850–1880. First published by the Texas State Historical Association in 1983, the book is now available in paperback, with a foreword by Andrew J. Torget, one of the Lone Star State’s top young historians.  
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625110404
Publisher:	Texas State Historical Assn
Publication date:	10/31/2016
Edition description:	Second Edition, New edition
Pages:	450
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

RANDOLPH B. CAMPBELL is Regents' Professor of History at the University of North Texas in Denton. One of the leading historians of Texas of his generation, he has served as Chief Historian of the Texas State Historical Association and is the author of numerous articles and books, including An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865 and Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State. ANDREW J. TORGET is associate professor of history at the University of North Texas and the author of Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800–1850.

Table of Contents

List of Tables ix

List of Illustrations xiii

Acknowledgments xv

Foreword Andrew J. Torget xix

Preface to the Paperback Edition (2016) Randolph B. Campbell xiii

Introduction 3

Part 1 The Antebellum Community 15

1 The Land and the People 7

2 The Agricultural Economy 45

3 The Non-Agricultural Economy 73

4 Community Institutions and Social Lie 97

5 Slavery: "The Peculiar Institution 119

6 Antebellum Political Life: Conflict within Consensus 147

Part 2 Secession and Civil War 181

7 The Secession Crisis, 1860-1861 183

8 The Community at War, 1861-1865 199

9 Theophilus and Harriet Perry: "War Makes Its Widows by the Thousand" 221

Part 3 Reconstruction 243

10 Presidential Reconstruction: May, 1865-March, 1867 245

11 Congressional Reconstruction, March, 1867-April, 1870 273

12 Republican Government, 1870-1878 305

13 "Redemption," 1878-1880 337

Part 4 Threshold of the "New South" 365

14 Harrison County in 1880: Change and Continuity since 1850 367

Appendices 397

1 The Census Samples of 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 399

2 Non-Heads of Household in the Population Samples 404

Bibliography 407

Index 427

Interviews

Denton, Texas