by H. W. Brands
Documentos Inéditos o Muy Raros para la Historia de México. Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1974 ed.
Documents of Texas History. Edited by Ernest Wallace, David M. Vigness, and George B. Ward. Austin: State House Press, 1994.
Ehrenberg, Herman. With Milam and Fannin: Adventures of a German Boy in Texas’ Revolution. Originally published as Texas und Seine Revolution; Leipzig, 1843. Translated by Charlotte Churchill. Dallas: Tardy Publishing Co., 1935. Something has been lost in the translation and editing, but very much of value remains.
Featherstonhaugh, G. W. Excursion Through the Slave States from Washington on the Potomac to the Frontier of Mexico. 2 volumes. London: John Murray, 1844.
Fehrenbach, T. R. Comanches: The Destruction of a People. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.
Field, Joseph E. Three Years in Texas, Including a View of the Texan Revolution and an Account of the Principal Battles. 1836. Austin: Steck Company, 1935.
Filisola, Vicente. Memoirs for the History of the War in Texas. 2 volumes. 1848. Translated by Wallace Woolsey. Austin, Tex.: Eakin Press, 1985.
———. “Representation Addressed to the Supreme Government,” in Castañeda, ed., The Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution.
Flores, Dan L., ed. Journal of an Indian Trader: Anthony Glass and the Texas Frontier, 1790–1810. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985.
Foote, Henry Stuart. Texas and the Texans, or, Advance of the Anglo-Americans to the South-west. 2 volumes. 1841. Austin: Steck Company, 1935. A standard source, still very useful.
Fuentes Mares, José. Santa Anna, el Hombre. Mexico City: Editorial Grijalbo, 1982 ed.
Garrison, George P., ed. Diplomatic Correspondence of the Republic of Texas. 2 volumes. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1908–11.
Gonzalez Pedrero, Enrique. Pals de un Solo Hombre: El México de Santa Anna. 2 volumes to date. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Esconómica, 1993–2003.
Gracy, David B., II. Moses Austin: His Life. San Antonio, Tex.: Trinity University Press, 1987. The only good work on Moses Austin.
Gregory, Jack, and Rennard Strickland. Sam Houston with the Cherokees, 1829–1833. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967.
Haley, James L. Sam Houston. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. Less literary than James’s biography, but more thorough and reliable. The current standard.
Hammond, George P., and Agapito Rey. Narratives of the Coronado Expedition, 1540–1542. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1940.
Hardin, Stephen L. Texian Iliad: A Military History of the Texas Revolution, 1835–1836. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Succinct and solid, the best account of the rebel campaign. The renderings of uniforms and arms are a delightful bonus.
Hatcher, Mattie Austin. The Opening of Texas to Foreign Settlement, 1801–1821. Austin: University of Texas, 1927. (University of Texas Bulletin, no. 2714: April 8, 1927.)
Heale, M. J. “The Role of the Frontier in Jacksonian Politics: David Crockett and the Myth of the Self-Made Man.” Western Historical Quarterly, volume 4 (1973), 405–23.
Herring, Patricia Roche. General José Cosme Urrea: His Life and Times, 1797–1849. Spokane, Wash.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1995.
Hogan, William Ransom. The Texas Republic: A Social and Economic History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946. Life under the Lone Star.
Holley, Mary Austin. Texas: Observations Historical, Geographic and Descriptive. 1833. New York: Arno Press, 1973. Also the 1836 edition, subtitled Original Narratives of Texas History and Adventure, reprinted Austin: Steck Company, 1935.
———. The Texas Diary, 1835–1838. Edited by J. P. Bryan. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965.
Houston, Sam. “Houston’s Speech in the United States Senate,” in Barker, “The San Jacinto Campaign.”
———. The Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston. Edited by Madge Thornall Roberts. 4 volumes. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1996–2001.
———. The Writings of Sam Houston. Edited by Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Barker. 8 volumes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1938–43. Indispensable but uneven.
Howren, Alleine. “Causes and Origin of the Decree of April 6, 1830,” SWHQ 16 (April 1913), 378–422.
Hunter, Robert Hancock. Narrative of Robert Hancock Hunter, 1813–1902. Austin: Cook Printing Co., 1936.
Huson, Hobart. Captain Phillip Dimmitt’s Commandancy of Goliad, 1835–1836: An Episode of the Mexican Federalist War in Texas, Usually Referred to as the Texian Revolution. Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones Co., 1974.
Jackson, Andrew. Correspondence of Andrew Jackson. Edited by John Spencer Bassett. 7 volumes. Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1926–35.
James, Marquis. The Raven: The Life Story of Sam Houston. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1929. Written with the flair James brought to all his writings. The book that made Houston a national hero.
Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. Edited by Merrill D. Peterson. New York: Library of America, 1984.
Jenkins, John H., ed. The Papers of the Texas Revolution. 10 volumes. Austin: Presidial Press, 1973. A work more of love than of scholarship, but one that no serious student of the Texas Revolution can do without.
Jenkins, John Holland. Recollections of Early Texas: The Memoirs of John Holland Jenkins. Edited by John Holmes Jenkins III. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958.
Johnson, Frank W. A History of Texas and Texans. Edited by Eugene C. Barker. Chicago: American Historical Society, 1914. By a Texas revolutionary turned historian.
Jones, Oakah L., Jr. Santa Anna. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1968.
Kavanagh, Thomas W. Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective, 1706–1875. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
Kuykendall, J. H. “Kuykendall’s Recollections of the Campaign,” in Barker, “The San Jacinto Campaign,” 291–306.
Kilgore, Dan. How Did Davy Die? College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1978. Dissects the controversy that makes sense only to Texans, and not to all of them.
Labadie, N. D. “San Jacinto Campaign,” in Day, 142–77.
Lack, Paul D. The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History, 1835–1836. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992. The complement to Hardin.
Lamar, Howard, ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998.
Lamar, Mirabeau Buonaparte. The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. Edited by C. A. Gulick et al. 6 volumes. Austin: A. C. Baldwin Printers and Von Boeckmann-Jones Co., 1921–27.
Lee, Rebecca Smith. Mary Austin Holley: A Biography. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962.
Lester, C. Edwards. The Life of Sam Houston: The Only Authentic Memoir of Him Ever Published. New York: J. C. Derby, 1855. Although Houston collaborated closely in the writing of this book, Marquis James errs in calling it a “virtual autobiography” (James, 437). Houston may have supplied the facts, but the voice is Lester’s.
Lundy, Benjamin [“By a Citizen of the United States”]. The War in Texas . . . Philadelphia: Merrihew and Gunn, 1837.
Martínez, Antonio. The Letters of Antonio Martínez, Last Spanish Governor of Texas, 1877–1822. Edited by Virginia H. Taylor. Austin: Texas State Library, 1957.
Martínez Caro, Ramón. “A True Account of the First Texas Campaign, and the Events Subsequent to the Battle of San Jacinto,” in Castañeda, ed., Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution, 90–159.
Matovina, Timothy N. The Alamo Remembered: Tejano Accounts and Perspectives. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.
Maverick, Samuel. Samuel Maverick, Texan: 1803–1870: A Collection of Letters, Journals and Memoirs. Edited by Rena Maverick Green. San Antonio: privately printed, 1952.
McDonald, Archie P. Travis. Austin: Jenkins Publishing Co., 1976. Not great, but the best devoted solely to its subject. Superseded in many respects by Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo.
McLean, Malcolm
D. Papers Concerning Robertson’s Colony in Texas. Compiled and edited by Malcolm D. McLean. 18 volumes. Arlington: University of Texas at Arlington Press, 1974–93.
Menchaca, Antonio. Memoirs. San Antonio: Yanaguana Society, 1937.
Moorhead, Max L. The Apache Frontier: Jacobo Ugarte and Spanish-Indian Relations in Northern New Spain, 1769–1791. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968.
Morton, Ohland. Terán and Texas: A Chapter in Texas-Mexican Relations. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1948.
Muir, Andrew Forest, ed. Texas in 1837: An Anonymous, Contemporary Narrative. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958.
Nagel, Paul C. John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
Newell, Chester. History of the Revolution in Texas, Particularly of the War of 1835 & ’36. 1838. New York: Arno Press, 1973.
Noyes, Stanley. Los Comanches: The Horse People, 1751–1845. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993.
Peterson, Merrill D. The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Polk, James K. Correspondence of James K. Polk. Edited by Herbert Weaver et al. 9 volumes to date. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1969–.
Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861. Completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson. 3 volumes. New York: Harper & Row, 1977–84. The most thorough and reliable of the lives of Old Hickory.
Roberts, Randy, and James S. Olson. A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory, New York: Free Press, 2001. The history and the history of the history.
Robertson, William Spence. Iturbide of Mexico. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1952.
Ruiz, Francisco Antonio. “Fall of the Alamo, and Massacre of Travis and His Brave Associates.” Translated by J. A. Quintero. Texas Almanac, 1860. Reprinted in The Texas Almanac, 1857–1873: A Compendium of Texas History. Compiled by James M. Day. Waco: Texian Press, 1967.
Sánchez, José María. “A Trip to Texas in 1828.” Translated by Carlos E. Castañeda. SWHQ 29 (April 1926), 249–88.
Santa Anna, Antonio López de. The Eagle: The Autobiography of Santa Anna. Edited by Ann Fears Crawford. Austin: Pemberton Press, 1967. Should be handled with even greater care than that accorded most memoirs. But does reveal the mind of the man who, more than anyone else, lost Texas.
———. “Extracts from Santa Anna’s Report,” in Barker, “The San Jacinto Campaign.”
———. “Manifesto which General Antonio López de Santa Anna Addresses to His Fellow-Citizens Relative to His Operations During the Texas Campaign and His Capture of 10 of May 1837,” in Castañeda, ed., The Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution, 2–89.
Santos, Richard G. Santa Anna’s Campaign Against Texas, 1835–1836: Featuring the Field Commands Issued to Major General Vicente Filisola. Salisbury, N.C.: Texian Press, 1968.
Seguín, Juan N. A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Seguín. Edited by Jesús F. de la Teja. Austin: State House Press, 1991.
Shackford, James Atkins. David Crockett: The Man and the Legend. Edited by John B. Shackford. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956. The point of departure on Crockett.
Sibley, Marilyn McAdams. Travelers in Texas, 1761–1860. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967.
Siegel, Stanley. A Political History of the Texas Republic, 1836–1845. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1956.
Simmons, Marc, ed. Border Comanches: Seven Spanish Colonial Documents, 1785–1819. Santa Fe, N.M.: Stagecoach Press, 1967.
Simpson, Lesley Byrd, ed. The San Saba Papers: A Documentary Account of the Founding and Destruction of San Saba Mission. Translated by Paul D. Nathan. San Francisco: John Howell Books, 1959.
Smith, Justin H. The Annexation of Texas. 1911. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1941.
Smithwick, Noah. The Evolution of a State, or Recollections of Old Texas Days. Compiled by Nanna Smithwick Donaldson. Austin: Gammel Book Company, 1900. Facsimile reprint: Austin: Steck Company, n.d. Even after allowing for the passage of time between the doing and the telling, and for Smithwick’s skills as a raconteur, it remains one of the most informative eyewitness accounts of the Texas revolution.
Sparks, S. F. “Recollections of S. F. Sparks,” SWHQ 12 (1908), 61–79.
Stevens, Donald Fithian. Origins of Instability in Early Republican Mexico. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991.
Swisher, John M. The Swisher Memoirs. Edited by Rena Maverick Green. San Antonio: Sigmund Press, 1932.
Taylor, Creed. Tall Men with Long Rifles. As told to James T. DeShields. San Antonio: Naylor Company, 1935, 1971. Shows the hand of the ghostwriter but retains the voice of the rebel.
Terán, Manuel de Mier y. Texas by Terán: The Diary Kept by General Manuel de Mier y Terán on His 1828 Inspection of Texas. Edited by Jack Jackson. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000. The contemporary account by the man who struggled to save Texas for Mexico, and ended as a victim to despair.
Terrell, A. W. “Recollections of General Sam Houston,” SWHQ 14 (October 1912), 113–36.
Tijerina, Andrés. Tejanos and Texas Under the Mexican Flag, 1821–1836. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1994.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Journey to America. Translated by George Lawrence. Edited by J. P. Mayer. London: Faber and Faber, 1959.
Tolbert, Frank X. The Day of San Jacinto. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.
Travis, William Barret. The Diary of William Barret Travis: August 30, 1833–June 26, 1834. Edited by Robert E. Davis. Waco: Texian Press, 1966. Revealing rather than uplifting.
Tyler, Ron, et al., eds. The New Handbook of Texas. 6 volumes. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996. The finest fruit of Texas nationalism. Indispensable. The online version is even better.
Urrea, José. “Diary of the Military Operations of the Division which under the Command of General José Urrea Campaigned in Texas,” in Castañeda, ed., The Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution, 204–83.
Valadés, José C. Mexico, Santa Anna, y la Guerra de Texas. 1936. Mexico City: Editores Mexicanos Unidos, 1965.
Visit to Texas: Being the Journal of a Traveler Through Those Parts Most Interesting to American Settlers. New York: Goodrich & Wiley, 1834; Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1966.
Wallace, Ernest, and E. Adamson Hoebel. The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952. The most useful survey of the people who controlled most of Texas for most of the period discussed in the present book.
Warren, Harris Gaylord. The Sword Was Their Passport: A History of American Filibustering in the Mexican Revolution. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1943.
Weber, David J. The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982. Texas in the context of Mexico’s northern frontier.
Weddle, Robert S. The Wreck of the Belle, the Ruin of La Salle. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001.
Wharton, Clarence R. El Presidente: A Sketch of the Life of General Santa Anna. Austin: Gammel’s Book Store, 1926.
Wooten, Dudley G., ed. A Comprehensive History of Texas, 1685 to 1897. 2 volumes. Dallas: William G. Scarff, 1898. Reprint edition: Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1986. Combines first- and second-hand accounts. Unwieldy but indispensable.
Yoakum, Henderson. “History of Texas, 1685–1845,” in Wooten, ed., A Comprehensive History of Texas, 1–434. With Foote, one of the first serious studies.
Zuber, William Physick. My Eighty Years in Texas. Edited by Janis Boyle Mayfield. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971.
A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
The author would like to thank the many archivists and librarians who made the research for this book possible, rewarding, and nearly always pleasant. The staffs at the Center for
American History and the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin, the Texas State Library, the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Cushing and Sterling Evans Libraries at Texas A&M University were most helpful and professional.
The author would also like to thank Roger Scholl and William Thomas of Doubleday and James Hornfischer of Hornfischer Literary Management.
Other Books by H. W. Brands
The Age of Gold
The First American
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The Reckless Decade
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brands, H. W.
Lone star nation: how a ragged army of volunteers won the battle for Texas independence—and changed America / H. W. Brands.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Texas—History—Revolution, 1835–1836. 2. Texas—History—To 1846. 3. Texas—History—1846–1850. I. Title.
F390.B833 2004
976.4'03—dc22 2003061921
Copyright © 2004 by H. W. Brands
All Rights Reserved
Visit our web site at www.randomhouse.com/anchor
eISBN: 978-1-4000-9634-3
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ALSO BY
H. W. BRANDS
A masterful biography of the Civil War general and two-term president who saved the Union twice—on the battlefield and in the White House.
