The Original Lone Star Republic

A forgotten event in American History. Events from the Whiskey Rebellion to the Burr Conspiracy helped to shape the rebellion, which created The First Lone Star Republic, 25 years before the Texicans revolted against Mexico. You will meet heroes and scoundrels whose lives and ideas intertwined to create a free standing republic about which little is written, o r known.

All Americans, not just Texans, remember the Alamo. But the siege and brief battle at that abandoned church in February and March 1836 were just one chapter in a much larger story -- larger even than the seven months of armed struggle that surrounded it. Indeed, three separate revolutionary traditions stretching back nearly a century came together in Texas in the 1830s in one of the great struggles of American history and the last great revolution of the hemisphere. Anglos steeped in 1776 fervor and the American revolution came seeking land, Hispanic and native Americans joined the explosion of republican uprisings in Mexico and Latin America, and the native tejanos seized on a chance for independence. As William C. Davis brilliantly depicts in Lone Star Rising, the result was an epic clash filled not just with heroism but also with ignominy, greed, and petty and grand politics. In Lone Star Rising, Davis deftly combines the latest scholarship on the military battles of the revolution, including research in seldom used Mexican archives, with an absorbing examination of the politics on all sides. His stirring narrative features a rich cast of characters that includes such familiar names as Stephen Austin, Sam Houston, and Antonio Santa Anna, along with tejano leader Juan Seguín and behind-the-scenes players like Andrew Jackson. From the earliest adventures of freebooters, who stirred up trouble for Spain, Mexico, and the United States, to the crucial showdown at the San Jacinto River between Houston and Santa Anna there were massacres, misunderstandings, miscalculations, and many heroic men. The rules of war are rarely stable and they were in danger of complete disintegration at times in Texas. The Mexican army often massacred its Anglo prisoners, and the Anglos retaliated when they had the chance after the battle of San Jacinto. The rules of politics, however, proved remarkably stable: The American soldiers were democrats who had a hard time sustaining campaigns if they didn't agree to them, and their leaders were as given to maneuvering and infighting as they were to the larger struggle. Yet in the end Lone Star Rising is not a myth-destroying history as much as an enlarging one, the full story behind the slogans of the Alamo and of Texas lore, a human drama in which the forces of independence, republicanism, and economics were made manifest in an unforgettable group of men and women.

In examining how the United States gained control over the northern borderlands of Spanish America, this text reassesses the diplomacy of President James Madison. The author also describes how a myriad cast of local leaders, officials and other small players affected the borderlands diplomacy between the United States and Spain.

Award-winning Texas historian Stephen L. Hardin provides an excellent overview of the Republic of Texas. In 1836, when Texas won its independence from Mexico, many expected the Republic of Texas to join the Union immediately. Four American presidents and a decade later, the Texas Lone Star flag was lowered and the Stars and Stripes raised. The annexation resulted in concessions to Texas not made to other states. Diary entries, letters, political speeches, and congressional resolutions give insight into this period of Texas and American history.

The little-known story of the West Florida Revolt: “One rollicking good book.” —Jay Winik When Britain ceded the territory of West Florida—what is now Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida—to Spain in 1783, America was still too young to confidently fight in one of Europe’s endless territorial contests. So it was left to the settlers, bristling at Spanish misrule, to establish a foothold in the area. Enter the Kemper brothers, whose vigilante justice culminated in a small band of American residents drafting a constitution and establishing a new government. By the time President Madison sent troops to occupy the territory, assert US authority under the Louisiana Purchase, and restore order, West Florida’s settlers had already announced their independence, becoming our country’s shortest-lived rogue “republic.” Meticulously researched and populated with some of American history’s most colorful and little-known characters, this is the story of a young country testing its power on the global stage, as well as an examination of how the frontier spirit came to define the nation’s character. The Rogue Republic shows how hardscrabble frontiersmen and gentleman farmers planted the seeds of civil war, marked the dawn of Manifest Destiny, and laid the groundwork for the American empire. “A significant study of an obscure but highly revealing moment in American history . . . Not only does Davis cast a bright light into these murky corners of our national past, he does so with a grace and clarity equal to the best historical writing today.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “A well-documented account of ‘America’s second and smallest rebellion,’ led by a simple storekeeper named Reuben Kemper . . . Davis tells this story with nuance and panache.” —Publishers Weekly

A lively account of the Texas Rangers illuminates their spectacular career on the Western frontier, covering more than acentury of Indian wars, labor strikes, train robbers, cattle thieves, and assorted outlaws.

Follows the history of Texas from the first settlements of Americans on Spanish land in the 1820s to its annexation as an official state in 1845.

The definitive account of the incomparable Lone Star state by the author of Fire & Blood: A History of Mexico. T. R. Fehrenbach is a native Texan, military historian and the author of several important books about the region, but none as significant as this work, arguably the best single volume about Texas ever published. His account of America's most turbulent state offers a view that only an insider could capture. From the native tribes who lived there to the Spanish and French soldiers who wrested the territory for themselves, then to the dramatic ascension of the republic of Texas and the saga of the Civil War years. Fehrenbach describes the changes that disturbed the state as it forged its unique character. Most compelling is the one quality that would remain forever unchanged through centuries of upheaval: the courage of the men and women who struggled to realize their dreams in The Lone Star State.