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Lone Star: A History Of Texas And The Texans by T.R. Fehrenbach
Book Summary InformationAuthor: T.R. Fehrenbach Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2000-04 ISBN: 0306809427 Number of pages: 792 Publisher: Da Capo Press
Book Reviews of Lone Star: A History Of Texas And The TexansBook Review: Unflinching snapshot of the building of a state Summary: 5 Stars
I put off reading "Lone Star" as long as I could... it's a forbidding book, over 700 pages and packed with factual information which would seem to preclude zipping through it like your average bloated Stephen King novel. Well, once I finally got my teeth into it I couldn't concentrate on any other subject until I finished, and yes, it still took me three weeks.
But don't let my lackadaisical efforts put you off from reading "Lone Star", probably the meatiest piece of historical non-fiction I've ever run across. I think it helps that it was first published in 1968, but even then if it hadn't come from the speak-your-mind state of Texas we'd still be dealing with a different animal here. Fehrenbach has an epic scope of history that precludes the notion of political correctness: the way he seems to figure it, all races change so much that they're nearly unrecognizable to their old selves from one century to the next, so it would seem narrow minded in the extreme that someone might take offense at his objective analysis of past cultures and events. It would be somewhat akin to an Anglo-Saxon of today taking offense that men of white skin in general were called out for their racial animosity a hundred years ago. No more so should the Mexican or American Indian expect to come off any more unblemished given the sobering advantage of hindsight. Nor would anyone who disagrees with that approach have much to complain of, as all races and cultures are equally celebrated and castigated as their actions demand. For instance, some time is spent chronicling the injustices that the Native Americans of East Texas faced from the Anglo-Saxons, but Fehrenbach puts things into perspective by explaining the difficulties many of the Anglos had in differentiating the Amerinds, often confusing the more peaceful tribes with the ruthless Comanches on the western fringes of the state. He does this without excusing the xenophobia and bigotry that these confusions imply, yet steadfastly asserting that it is important to judge these men not by our own standards, but by the values and ethics of their time. Similarly, Fehrenbach examines the issue of the perennial broken treaties between the US and the Amerinds, deploring Washington for instigating these treaties which they had no intention of upholding while at the same time realizing it was just as absurd for the Amerinds to agree to these terms as well, when the very loose nature of their tribal coalitions made it impossible for them to exercise the type of control over their braves which would allow them to uphold their own (admittedly less consequential) end of the treaties.
Splendid work is also made of the history of the Texas Rangers. Fehrenbach makes no apologies for the cold and almost inhumanly efficient nature of these frontier hardasses, but, given the disclaimer on their psychological make up, he lauds them for their monumental efforts in clearing the state of lawlessness and peril toward the westward-marching frontier farmer. Though the author himself doesn't make the comparison, it would seem by his description that the Rangers were much the same as some people nowadays consider the Mafia -- at least the Mafia as chronicled in works like "The Godfather" and "The Sopranos", even if those are not indicative of the real life Cosa Nostra -- in other words, men who work outside of the law but nonetheless uphold their own rigid, mainly virtuous system of values, a sort of frontier code that is not only more difficult to maintain than the loose Catholic values of the semi-pious masses, but - most impressively - more OFTEN maintained in spite of this difficulty.
Fehrenbach's candor and objectivity is also of the utmost value when it comes to his biographical sketches. In this day and age it's not uncommon for historical scholars to deconstruct the achievements of great men based on unimportant character foibles (ie. Ben Franklin, in the modern era, is frequently admonished for his womanizing, often in a tone that implies such a sin largely negates his legacy, an absurd notion that would seek to make saints only of the most hardened Buddhists). In speaking of men like Stephen F. Austin, Sam Houston and even Santa Anna, praise is given where due although each individual man's shortcomings are given full account. Of these, Austin probably comes off the most untarnished, and there's no reason this shouldn't be so: he had no inclination toward separating from the Mexican nation until the suspicions of the ruling party resulted in his unjust imprisonment just before the revolution. Austin was probably the last chance the Mexicans had to work something out peaceably, and when they detained him incommunicado they lost the last mouthpiece they had for bloodless resolulion. When he was finally released, it was too late to foment the fires that burned in the souls of independence-minded Anglos, nor did Austin any longer have reason to resist such "disloyalties" himself.
Sam Houston was of the opposite temperament: here was a man who not only had no interest in amicably resolving the differences with Mexico, but furthermore would not rest until Texas had joined the United States, a feat his old friend Andrew Jackson was not able to pull off during his Presidential tenure. Houston's command of his troops between the fall of the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto is also objectively analyzed: though some may incline that Houston knew what he was doing all along in fleeing the Mexican army, Fehrenbach holds that - while the former may be true - it's more likely that Houston was merely waiting for either a mistake on the part of the Mexicans or an auspicious battleground that favored his troops. Either way, he found both at San Jacinto, and it's to the credit of Fehrenbach's objective eye that the result of this battle was equally credited to the bravery and skill of the Texan army as to the arrogance and incompetence of Santa Anna in securing his forces. At any rate, it was not luck that led the Texans to victory, but without the good fortune of Santa Anna's underestimation of his opponent the assurance of success on that day was far from certain.
Compared to the adventures of those early years of settling the land, gaining independence, facing Civil War less than a generation later and finally clearing the state of all Native Americans by brute force, the later chapters dealing with the economic and political development of the state following Reconstruction may seem a little dry and academic, but that is the fault of history and not Fehrenbach's writing. "Lone Star" is as good an account of the story of Texas and the people who founded it as any we'll ever get -- Fehrenbach's assessments are lucid and unbiased, either toward the Anglocentric attitude that the whites settling Texas did what they had to do and never exceeded the stark demands of necessity, nor the bias of the politically correct, who would hold that those same whites were nothing more than opportunists who took advantage of the Mexican and the Indian at every chance he got. The truth, of course, is somewhere between the two extremes, and Fehrenback never misses a chance to nail it right on the head.
Summary of Lone Star: A History Of Texas And The TexansHere is an up-to-the-moment history of the Lone Star State, together with an insider's look at the people, politics, and events that have shaped Texas from the beginning right up to our days. Never before has the story been told with more vitality and immediacy. Fehrenbach re-creates the Texas saga from prehistory to the Spanish and French invasions to the heyday of the cotton and cattle empires. He dramatically describes the emergence of Texas as a republic, the vote for secession before the Civil War, and the state's readmission to the Union after the War. In the twentieth century oil would emerge as an important economic resource and social change would come. But Texas would remain unmistakably Texas, because Texans "have been made different by the crucible of history; they think and act in different ways, according to the history that shaped their hearts and minds."
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