Marauding outlaws, or violent rebels still bent on fighting the Civil War?
For decades, the so-called "Taylor-Sutton feud" has been seen as
a bloody vendetta between two opposing gangs of Texas gunfighters.
However, historian James M. Smallwood here shows that what
seemed to be random lawlessness can be interpreted as a pattern of
rebellion by a loose confederation of desperadoes who found
common cause in their hatred of the Reconstruction government in
Texas.
Between the 1850s and 1880, almost 200 men rode at one time or
another with Creed Taylor and his family through a forty-five-county
area of Texas, stealing and killing almost at will, despite heated and
often violent opposition from pro-Union law enforcement officials,
often led by William Sutton. From 1871 until his eventual arrest,
notorious outlaw John Wesley Hardin served as enforcer for the
Taylors. In 1874 in the streets of Comanche, Texas, on his twenty-
first birthday, Hardin and two other members of the Taylor ring
gunned down Brown County Deputy Charlie Webb. This cold-
blooded killing—one among many—marked the beginning of the
end for the Taylor ring, and Hardin eventually went to the
penitentiary as a result.
The Feud That Wasn't reinforces the interpretation that
Reconstruction was actually just a continuation of the Civil War in
another guise, a thesis Smallwood has advanced in other books and
articles. He chronicles in vivid detail the cattle rustling, horse
thieving, killing sprees, and attacks on law officials perpetrated by the
loosely knit Taylor ring, drawing a composite picture of a group of
anti-Reconstruction hoodlums who at various times banded together
for criminal purposes. Western historians and those interested in
gunfighters and lawmen will heartily enjoy this colorful and
meticulously researched narrative.
_________________________________________________________
JAMES M. SMALLWOOD is an emeritus professor of history at
Oklahoma State University. He coauthored Murder and Mayhem:
The War of Reconstruction in Texas, published by Texas A&M
University Press. Smallwood's The Indian Texans was part of a
five-book series that won the 2006 Texas Reference Source Award
from the Texas Library Association Reference Round Table. He lives
in Gainesville, Texas.
Number Fifteen: Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life, sponsored by
Texas A&M University–Commerce
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