Murder and Mayhem: The War of Reconstruction in Texas
James Smallwood, Barry Crouch, and Larry Peacock
Texas A&M University Press: 2003
182pp
Larry Peacock writes that he never could learn much family history from his grandfather. But he remained interested and in later years learned his great-great-grandfather was a certain Lewis Peacock, who has been remembered as a Texas outlaw killed after a long feud with "Captain" Robert Lee
The account here, a collaboration between Peacock and two professional historians of the Reconstruction era, based on well-footnoted archival research, tells a rather different story, a story not of a personal feud but of the terrifying lawlessness of the "Second Civil War" in Texas, during which unreconstructed Confederates like Bob Lee sought to subjugate the freemen and to re-establish political control by violence
The story is quite believable, though the text tends towards summation of conclusions: the result is convincing overall; and the actual climate of Texas after the war is probably portrayed rather well; but the approach may leave the reader wondering sometimes whether the story would not have been more illuminating if the old documents (such as letters, news reports, judicial materials, and official reports) had been allowed to speak for themselves more often, through careful excerpts
