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This historical study offers “a new understanding of the human cost of the [Republic of Texas’s] vainglorious attempt to attack Mexico” (Western Historical Quarterly). The Somervell and Mier Expeditions of 1842, culminating in the famous "black bean episode" in which Texas prisoners drew white or black beans to determine who would be executed by their Mexican captors, still capture the public imagination in Texas. But were the Texans really martyrs in a glorious cause, or undisciplined soldiers defying their own government? How did the Mier Expedition affect the border disputes between the Texas Republic and Mexico? What role did Texas President Sam Houston play? In Soldiers of Misfortune, Sam W. Haynes addresses this and other important historical questions. Expertly researched yet accessible and engaging, Haynes’s narrative includes many dramatic excerpts from the diaries and letters of expedition participants./DIV
Among the greatest of tragedies of the American frontier—the Donner Party, the Alamo, Wounded Knee—a little known but no less tragic event was the Texas Mier Expedition. Originally part of a 1,200-man invasion to retaliate against Mexican incursions on Texas soil in 1842, the Expedition unfolded when several hundred fighters stubbornly defied President Sam Houston’s orders to disband and return home at once. Fiercely independent and recently reorganized under new leadership, this motley mix of Texas volunteers and militia turned south and proceeded to invade Mexico, determined to avenge past humiliations at the hands of Mexican dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna. Once in Mexico they engaged the enemy in a dramatic day-long battle when they were suddenly tricked into surrendering and marched 1,300 miles to Perote prison. It was a march of attrition during which many Texans were executed or died from exposure, disease, or starvation. Once in Perote, they were forced to sleep on stone floors in chains and put to hard labor. Of the original three hundred and eight members of the rogue expedition who survived, only half left the prison alive. After two years in captivity, the prisoners were finally released only to be ignored and forgotten by their own countrymen upon their return home. Drawing from over a dozen first-hand accounts, author Ken Lizzie extracts this exciting narrative recounting the pathos of these fighting men—from the blood-soaked Battlefields of Mier and the subsequent surrender to their harrowing 1,300-mile forced march to Perote Prison.
Authoritative guide to everything in print about lawmen and the lawless—from Billy the Kid to the painted ladies of frontier cow towns. Nearly 2,500 entries, taken from newspapers, court records, and more.
Few episodes in Texas history have excited more popular interest than the Mier Expedition of 1842. Nineteen-year-old Joseph D. McCutchan was among the 300 Texans who, without the cover of the Lone Star flag, launched their own disastrous invasion across the Rio Grande. McCutchan's diary provides a vivid account of his experience—the Texans' quick dispatch by Mexican troops at the town of Mier, the hardships of a forced march to Mexico City, over twenty months of imprisonment, and the journey back home after release. Although there are other firsthand accounts of the Mier Expedition, McCutchan was the only diarist who followed the Tampico route to Mexico City. His account documents a different experience than that of the main body of prisoners who marched to the national capital by way of Monterrey, Saltillo, and Agua Nueva. Among the last of the prisoners to be freed, McCutchan covers in his journal the whole period of confinement from December 26, 1842, to the final release on September 16, 1844. The McCutchan diary is set apart from other Mier accounts not only by the new information it provides, but also by Joseph Milton Nance's superb editing. Nance is an acknowledged authority on the hostilities between Texas and Mexico during the era of the Texas Republic. He has transcribed, edited, and annotated the diary with characteristic scholarship and painstaking attention to detail.
The term “filibuster” often brings to mind a senator giving a long-winded speech in opposition to a bill, but the term had a different connotation in the nineteenth century—invasion of foreign lands by private military forces. Spanish Texas was a target of such invasions. Generally given short shrift in the studies of American-based filibustering, these expeditions were led by colorful men such as Augustus William Magee, Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, John Robinson, and James Long. Previous accounts of their activities are brief, lack the appropriate context to fully understand filibustering, and leave gaps in the historiography. Ed Bradley now offers a thorough recounting of filibustering into Spanish Texas framed through the lens of personal and political motives: why American men participated in them and to what extent the US government was either involved in or tolerated them. “We Never Retreat” makes a major contribution by placing these expeditions within the contexts of the Mexican War of Independence and international relations between the United States and Spain.
It is 1842—a dramatic year in the history of Texas-Mexican relations. After five years of uneasy peace, of futile negotiations, of border raids and temporary, unofficial truces, a series of military actions upsets the precarious balance between the two countries. Once more the Mexican Army marches on Texas soil; once more the frontier settlers strengthen their strongholds for defense or gather their belongings for flight. Twice San Antonio falls to Mexican generals; twice the Texans assemble armies for the invasion of Mexico. It is 1842—a year of attack and counterattack. This is the story that Joseph Milton Nance relates, with a definitiveness and immediacy which come from many years of meticulous research. The exciting story of 1842 is a story of emotions which had simmered through the long, insecure years and which now boil out in blustery threats and demands for vengeance. The Texans threaten to march beyond the Sierra Madres and raise their flag at Monterrey; the Mexicans promise to subdue this upstart Texas and to teach its treacherous inhabitants their place. With communications poor and imaginations fertile, rumors magnify chance banditry into military raids, military raids into full-scale invasions. Newspapers incite their readers with superdramatic, intoxicating accounts of the events. Texans and Mexicans alike respond with a kind of madness that has little or no method. Texas solicits volunteers, calls out troops, plans invasions, and assembles her armies, completely disregarding the fact that her treasury is practically empty—there is little money to buy guns. Meanwhile, in Mexico, where gold and silver are needed for other purposes, “invasions” of Texas are launched—but they are only brief forays more suitable for impressive publicity than for permanent gains. Still, the conflicts of threat and retaliation, so often futile, are frequently dignified by idealism, friendship, courage, and determination. Both Mexicans and Texans are fighting and dying for liberty, defending their homes against foreign invaders, establishing and maintaining friendships that cross racial and national boundaries, struggling with conflicting loyalties, and—all the while—striving to wrest a living for themselves and their families from the grudging frontier. Attack and Counterattack, continuing the account which was begun in After San Jacinto, tells from original sources the full story of Texas-Mexican relations from the time of the Santa Fe Expedition through the return of the Somervell Expedition from the Rio Grande. These books examine in great detail and with careful accuracy a period of Texas history that had not heretofore been thoroughly studied and that had seldom been given unbiased treatment. The source materials compiled in the notes and bibliography—particularly the military reports, letters, diaries, contemporary newspapers, and broadsides—will be a valuable tool for any scholar who wishes to study this or related periods.