"So why were these guys commonly armed to the teeth? I'm gonna quote one John D. McAdoo, in 1864 appointed Brigadier General in charge of keeping the peace and preserving order in the Sixth Military Distict. Here he is commenting on conditions around Fredericksburg at that time (as given in Smith "Frontier Defense in the Civil War"..."
Yet in the Fremantle diary which recounts Lt. Col Arthur Freemantle's journey to the "seat of the war" in 1863 in his recounting of the portion of his trip from Mexico to San Antonio he mentions that one settlemnet (Oakville?) there were no functioning guns in the community. Guess it depended on who and where you were.
Carry on.
Probably true to some extent, BCR, but the degree of lawlessness in Texas up until the mustering of the great Ranger companies in 1874 by Governor Coke was well-documented.
One has to consider the highly unusual events and circumstances that occurred in what we now call Texas in a span of less than 50 years. Steven Austin led his first group of American colonists into Texas in 1821. In the next 25 years there was a revolution, establishment of a republic, and then unprecedented levels of immigration of Americans into the region that established a low-density population over millions of square miles of agrarian paradise. This was largely a very peaceful process throughout most of the state, although there was plenty of Indian extermination that the settlers apparently regarded as nothing much to write about, the only exceptions being the depredations of the more warlike tribes like the Comanche on the western frontier. Government functions were primarily civil. Crime was not a big problem because in a subsistence farming/ranching economy, there isn't much to steal.
Just about the time the towns were growing prosperous, the Civil War broke out. Most of the strength of Texas, its able-bodied working men, went east and got slaughtered. In the absence of strength, weak men moved in. They were able to operate with impunity. Then, when the war ended and the men returned to re-establish order, the Reconstructionists blocked this process. Local law enforcement was negligible, the Army cared little for enforcing the law. More and more bad actors came to Texas and found it was a land of opportunity for the unscrupulous. Gov. Ed Davis's State Police made matters worse, often actively participating in criminal conspiracies. Lawlessness didn't just happen all at once, it evolved over time. By 1870, lawlessness and vigilantism had led to effective states of war involving entire counties: the Sutton-Taylor Feud in DeWitt County and the Horrell-Higgins Feud in Lampasas were two well-known examples. The Sutton-Taylor Feud resulted in the deaths of more men than some Civil War engagements. By 1875, 10 years after the war, when Gov. Coke's election ended the reign of the the Reconstructionists, the state was in a shambles.
At that point in time, depending on where you were, folks might have enjoyed a peaceful, almost idyllic existence in some parts of Texas, while in others it was a matter of taking your life in your hands to go to town once a year to sell your surplus crop.
I am grateful to all you guys, especially Birdwatcher, for bringing forward the historical information that has been posted in this thread so far. I am particularly interested in getting hold of Rip Ford's and Hamlainen's (sp?) stuff. When I posted the first review of "Empire of the Summer Moon" at the beginning of this thread, I had no idea what kind of can of worms I was opening!! My hat is off to you more diligent historians.
My own readings have been focused elsewhere. Since I moved here into the trans-Pecos last autumn, I've been reading everything I can get my hands on dealing with the Rangers' time period (1874-1885 or so), particularly first-person accounts by James Gillett, George Durham, and others. Then, taking a page from Birdy's book, so to speak, I've been getting on the road and driving to the places I've been reading about. It's fascinating stuff.
Carry on, gentlemen.
