New Acquisitions

Below is a list of the books the DRT Library has received and added to its collection since April 2009. For additional information about these and other works in our collections, please consult the library’s online catalog.

The History of Medicine in Brazos County by Frank G. Anderson, Jr., and Edith Anderson Wakefield

Early Texas Schools: A Photographic History by Mary S. Black, photographs by Bruce F. Jordan

Goliad: The Other Alamo by William R. Bradle

Empire Builder in the Texas Panhandle: William Henry Bush by Paul H. Carlson

Moss Bluff Rebel: A Texas Pioneer in the Civil War by Philip Caudill

Turn-of-the-Century Photographs from San Diego, Texas by Ana Carolina Castillo Crimm and Sara R. Massey

Journey to Gonzales by Melodie A. Cuate

Emily Austin of Texas, 1795-1851 by Light Townsend Cummins

Historic Photos of San Antonio by Frank S. Faulkner, Jr.

Buffalo Music by Tracey E. Fern, illustrations by Lauren Castillo

The Birth of a Texas Ghost Town: Thurber, 1886-1933 by Mary Jane Gentry

History of St. Mary’s Parish, Brenham, Texas: and Catholicism of Washington County and Early Texas researched and compiled by Bruno Gorzycki, edited by Wava Jackson

Charles Goodnight: Father of the Texas Panhandle by William T. Hagan

The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones by Helen Hemphill

Texas Confederate, Reconstruction Governor: James Webb Throckmorton by Kenneth Wayne Howell

Texas Odyssey: The Life and Times of a Forgotten Patriot of the Republic of Texas: Colonel Eleazar Louis Ripley Wheelock (1793-1847) by Mary Foster Hutchinson

The Mason County “Hoo Doo” War, 1874-1902 by David D. Johnson

The Hogg Family and Houston: Philanthropy and the Civic Ideal by Kate Sayen Kirkland

The Development of Early Emigrant Trails in the United States East of the Mississippi River by Marcus W. Lewis

On the Texas Trail of Cabeza de Vaca by Peter Lourie

An Expanded Genealogy of the Baker Family and Related Lines by Vircenoy Baker Macatee

Sacred Memories: The Civil War Monument Movement in Texas by Kelly McMichael

The Uncompromising Diary of Sallie McNeill, 1858-1867 edited by Ginny McNeill Raska and Mary Lynne Gasaway Hill

Archaeological Survey and Historic Background Research Conducted for the Alamo Community College District at the Former Site of Playland Park, San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas by Barbara Meissner

Storm Over the Bay: The People of Corpus Christi and Their Port by Mary Jo O’Rear

The Sutton-Taylor Feud: The Deadliest Blood Feud in Texas by Chuck Parsons

Politics–Texas Style by W. R. Poage

Opening Doors: The Connelly Expedition by Rita M. Rogers

A History of the Baptists at Iredell, Texas by Donavon Duncan Tidwell

Texas Epic: An American Story by Martha Anne Turner

The Law Comes to Texas: The Texas Rangers, 1870-1901 by Frederick Wilkins

Santa Anna’s Invitation to American Soldiers

I recently discovered an interesting document in our archival collections, and in conducting research about the context in which it was created I learned something new and fascinating about the Mexican War (1846-1848).

Santa Anna's broadside from August 15, 1847, urging American troops to desert.

The document is an English-language broadside issued by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna – who regained and lost power several times following his surrender at San Jacinto in 1836 – on August 15, 1847. In it, the Mexican leader urges American soldiers to desert the United States army and promises them a reward of “rich fields and large tracts of land, which being cultivated by your industry, shall crown you with happiness and convenience.” Santa Anna penned this broadside from El Peñon, a high hill approximately seven miles east-southeast of the center of Mexico City. His troops faced Gen. Winfield Scott’s army, which had reached the outskirts of Mexico City; within a month U.S. troops entered the capital and raised the American flag over the National Palace. The capture of Mexico City marked the end of the major military operations of the war, although politicians and diplomats negotiated until the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in February 1848.

Santa Anna’s leaflet was part of a larger propaganda mechanism during the Mexican War that endeavored to promote desertion among American forces. According to historian Robert Ryal Miller in Shamrock and Sword, several reasons drove men to desert from the army, including “brutal military discipline, which seemed unjust to some soldiers; hatred of military life or unsuitability for it; sickness and disease, which may have disoriented some men; harassment or discrimination against foreign-born soldiers by their native-born officers; religious sentiments and ideological beliefs; the lure of women; and drunkenness, which sometimes led to their capture by the enemy” (150). As demonstrated in the above handbill, Santa Anna further encouraged American soldiers to desert by promising enticements of cash prizes, rank promotions, and land bonuses.

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (SC01.001)

Other propaganda pieces employed different strategies to encourage desertion. For example, a supplement to Santa Anna’s broadside of April 1847 – published in the Mexican newspaper Diario del Gobierno on September 10, 1847, and reprinted in the New York Herald on October 17 of that same year – targeted Irish Catholic soldiers:

Irishmen! Listen to the words of your brothers, hear the accents of a Catholic people…Is religion no longer the strongest of human bonds?…Can you fight by the side of those who put fire to your temples in Boston and Philadelphia? Did you witness such dreadful crimes and sacrileges without making a solemn vow to our Lord? If you are Catholic, the same as we, if you follow the doctrines of Our Saviour, why are you seen sword in hand murdering your brethren? Why are you antagonistic to those who defend their country and your own God?

Are Catholic Irishmen to be the destroyers of Catholic temples, the murderers of Catholic priests, and the founders of heretical rites in this pious nation?…

Come over to us; you will be received under the laws of that truly Christian hospitality and good faith which Irish guests are entitled to expect and obtain from a Catholic nation…

May Mexicans and Irishmen, united by the sacred tie of religion and benevolence, form only one people!

Using Catholicism to realign and redefine Irish soldiers’ allegiance made sense given that, according to Richard Bruce Winders in Mr. Polk’s Army, “one former enlisted man estimated that, during the 1830s, two-thirds of the soldiers” in the American army were foreign-born, specifically in countries such as Germany, Ireland, and Great Britain (60). Moreover, foreign-born soldiers faced bullying in the army due to their nationality and religion, circumstances that mirrored rising nativist sentiments in the United States more broadly. Indeed, approximately 39 percent of the soldiers in the famous San Patricio battalion were born in Ireland and 13 percent were natives of Germany (21 percent were born in the United States).

Henry Schenck Tanner's 1847 map of Mexico, which includes the dates of significant battles of the Mexican War and shows the movement of American forces. Tanner's maps were the most detailed and accurate maps of Mexico available in the United States at that time. (This digital image is from the David Rumsey Map Collection.)

From the point of view of American government officials and military commanders, desertion was a significant problem. Various historians calculate different desertion rates ranging from under 7 percent to 8.3 percent of a total American force ranging from approximately 112,000 to 116,000 soldiers. On one hand, this was a marked improvement over desertion rates in the peacetime army prior to the Mexican War, which some years reached twenty percent. Historian James M. McCaffrey also asserts that George Washington “lost as many as one-fourth of his army through desertion, and during the Civil War losses were correspondingly high” (110-111). On the other hand, historian Robert Ryal Miller asserts that desertion rates in the Mexican War were high compared to America’s other foreign wars, namely the Spanish-American War (1.6 percent), World War I (1.3 percent), World War II (5.3 percent), the Korean War (1.9 percent), and the Vietnam War (4.1 percent) (174).

References and further reading:

The United States and Mexico at War (encyclopedia) edited by Donald S. Frazier

Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846-1848 by James M. McCaffrey

Shamrock and Sword: The Saint Patrick’s Battalion in the U.S.-Mexican War by Robert Ryal Miller

Crisis in the Southwest: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle Over Texas by Richard Bruce Winders

Mr. Polk’s Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War by Richard Bruce Winders

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.

Texas Newspapers Report the Battle of Gettysburg and the Fall of Vicksburg

An illustration depicting part of the Battle of Gettysburg from Harper's Weekly, August 8, 1863. (This newspaper is not in the collections of the DRT Library.)

Many historians have labeled the Battle of Gettysburg, together with the fall of Vicksburg, as the major turning point of the Civil War. This assertion remains under dispute, as scholars and other experts on the conflict have offered alternative events and battles as possible turning points. Moreover, primary sources written during the war indicate that many people – lacking scholars’ hindsight and ability to see the implications of an event – did not necessarily identify the outcomes at Gettysburg and Vicksburg as turning points.

A scene from the siege of Vicksburg from Harper's Weekly, July 25, 1863. (This newspaper is not in the collection of the DRT Library.)

Indeed, editions of the Austin Tri-Weekly State Gazette from July 14 to July 30, 1863, in the collections of the DRT Library demonstrate that news of the battles traveled slowly to Texas, as reports published in eastern newspapers were reprinted in papers further west. When information finally did reach Texas, much of it was conflicting and inconsistent. As the newspaper’s editor admitted on July 18, a full two weeks after the battle of Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg, “the dispatches we have been receiving lately are so contradictory and confused that that we must leave our readers to draw their own conclusions.”

Front page of the Austin Tri-Weekly State Gazette from July 14, 1863.

As late as July 14, D. Richardson, the editor of the Gazette, argued that “from a careful perusal of all the dispatches, we are led to the conclusion” that news of the fall of Vicksburg “cannot be true.” Still, he notes, “it behooves us to prepare for the worst.” This arrived two days later when Richardson was forced to admit that he had received “full confirmation” of Vicksburg’s fall. Still, doubters remained, as the Gazette noted on July 21 that “notwithstanding the apparently well authenticated reports we have had of the fall of Vicksburg, there are many in this city who still have doubts on the subject.”

Some information published in the Gazette ultimately proved to be grossly incorrect. Throughout the latter part of July, the newspaper reported stunning Southern victories in Washington, D. C. and other northern cities:

• On July 23, “The news from Lee’s army is glorious – better than we at first anticipated. We have now every assurance that the news before published was true, and that both Harrisburg [the state capital of Pennsylvania] and Washington City are in our hands, with an immense number of prisoners.”

• On July 25, “The News says Johnston telegraphed Col. Carpenter at Natchez, that beyond a doubt Gen. Lee now occupied Washington City.”

• And on July 28, “The [Houston] Telegraph is in receipt of Northern papers as late as the 11th…the general impression everywhere seems to be that all the accounts of Lee’s victories are reliable, and that our successes in the North, so far as heard from already, are a full off for the loss of Vicksburg.”

During this same period, the Battle of Gettysburg appears to have been mentioned only once, in an article on July 18 stating “from Richmond we learn that a fight took place at Gettysburg on the 1st in which our losses are reported enormously heavy. It is said to have been a drawn battle. The battle reported in our last, at which Lee captured 40,000 prisoners[,] took place on the 4th at Martinsburg. It is somewhat singular we should have heard nothing at the time of the battle of Gettysburg.”

Front page of the Austin Tri-Weekly State Gazette, July 30, 1863. This edition of the newspaper also reported the death of General Sam Houston.

It wasn’t until July 30, almost a month after Lee was defeated at Gettysburg, that Texans learned of the loss. The newspaper reported that the Houston Telegraph “copies two official dispatches from Gen. Meade, who was in command at Gettysburg, which will be found below, showing that the fight there was not in our favor as first stated.” At the same time, Texans found that their exuberance over the fall of Washington D. C. and the capture of Memphis was unfounded. “It is evident,” reported the Gazette, trying for a cheerful tone, “that we have been ‘most delightfully humbugged,’ as the [Houston] Telelgraph says, in relation to the capture of Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia.”

Front page of the Austin Tri-Weekly State Gazette, July 16, 1863.

Front page of the Austin Tri-Weekly State Gazette, July 21, 1863.

While reports of far-away battles consumed the front page of the Gazette throughout July 1863, the newspaper also carried stories about events closer to home. Almost all of this news related to the war effort, showing glimpses of life on the Texas homefront during the Civil War. Such news included casualty lists; rewards for deserters from the Confederate army; notices seeking assistance for destitute families of Confederate soldiers; articles about the impressment of cotton, tax regulations, and elections; and notices describing runaway slaves, slave auctions, and ordinances governing the behavior of slaves and free African Americans.

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.

Ninth Family History Seminar: Land Research Workshop

Join us on Saturday, September 5, for our ninth Family History Seminar. This year’s seminar will be a “Land Research Workshop” focusing on land records as an important resource in genealogical research. Participants will learn how to locate and use different types of federal and state land records such as maps and deeds. Our special guest speaker will be Mr. Donald Raney, a sixth-generation Texan who has been an active genealogist for over thirty years.

Registration is $45 per person, which includes a box lunch. Reservations will remain open as long as seating is available. Additional information about the seminar is available on the library’s website; you can also call the library at 210-225-1071 or send an email to drtl@drtl.org if you have further questions.

We hope to see you on September 5th!