Mandred Wood may have caught a glint off the Bowie knife that
sank into his belly—but probably not. On the afternoon of
November 11, 1837, he had exchanged "harsh epithets" with
David James Jones, a hero of the Texas Revolution. When words
failed, Jones closed the argument with his blade. Such affrays were
common in Houston, the fledgling capital of the Republic of Texas.
This one, however, was singular. Wood was a gentleman and Jones
a member of a disruptive gang of vagrants that the upper crust
denounced as the "rowdy loafers." Jones went to jail; Wood went to
his grave.
In the weeks that followed, the killing resounded throughout the
squalid, verminous city that one resident described as the "most
miserable place in the world." Stephen L. Hardin's suspenseful and
witty narrative reads like a contemporary page-turner, yet all is
carefully documented history. He entwines the murder into the
story of the sordid city like the strands of a hangman's rope.
It is an astonishing tale peopled by remarkable characters: the
one-armed newspaper editor and political candidate who employs
the crime to advance his sanctimonious agenda; the Kentucky
lawyer who enjoys champagne breakfasts and collecting human
skulls; the German immigrant who sees rats gnaw the finger off an
infant lying in his cradle; the Alamo widow whose circumstances
force her to practice the oldest profession; the sociopathic
physician who slaughters an innocent man in a duel; the Methodist
minister horrified by the drunken debaucheries of government
officials; and the president himself—the Sword of San Jacinto—
who during a besotted bacchanal strips to his underwear.
Skillfully conceived and masterfully written, Texian Macabre:
A Melancholy Tale of a Hanging in Early Houston will transport
readers to a lost time and place.
_________________________________________________________
STEPHEN L. HARDIN has been a historical consultant on several
motion pictures including the 2004 production of The Alamo. His
book Texian Iliad won the T.R. Fehrenbach Book Award and the
Summerfield G. Roberts Award. He is chair of the department of
history at Victoria College in Victoria, Texas.
What people are saying about this book
"Erudite and entertaining in equal measure, Texian Macabre is
bound to become a classic in the historiography of the Texas
Republic. The book splendidly re-creates early Houston with
scenes that will long linger in the reader's memories. Hardin not
only richly contextualizes the hanging of the unfortunate David
James Jones, but also teases out information on the elusive
perpetrator and his fellow roughs and rowdies from an impressive
variety of obscure (and often opaque) sources. But while Hardin
brings to life scores of early Texan personalities in vivid detail, it is
above all the crude and ambitious city of Houston, with its denizens
high and low, that emerges as the main character of this drama.
Finally, anyone doubting the appropriateness of the term "macabre"
to describe this story will be set straight in Hardin's climactic chapter,
as the author graphically describes the indignities visited upon the
bodies of both the living and the dead—especially poor David James
Jones, who killed the wrong person at exactly the wrong time."
—James E. Crisp, author Sleuthing the Alamo: Davy Crockett's Last
Stand and Other Mysteries of the Texas Revolution
"Texian Macabre is one of the best books ever written about life on
the Texas frontier. Stephen L. Hardin is a rare combination of
scrupulous historian and high-spirited storyteller, and his account of
the early days of Houston is alive with vivid characters, gruesome
incidents, and mordant insights. This is a marvelous narrative from a
peerless authority."—Stephen Harrigan, author of The Gates of the
Alamo
"Amid the vast richness of Texas history, Steve Hardin has found and
brought to life the incredible story of a man whose life encapsulates
the full gamut of frontier history, from adventurer to patriot, survivor of
atrocity to almost passive victim of circumstances. Texian Macabre is
as well the finest portrait we have of the culture of a frontier community
on its way to becoming the Houston of today—an outstanding
contribution to our understanding of the making of Texas."—William C.
Davis, author Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of
David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis
Author Stephen L. Hardin was recently interviewed by Ed Blackburn of
Texana Review. Listen to the twenty minute interview at:
http://texanareview.typepad.com/posts/.
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