UNT Press

Texas Cotton and Confederate Finance: Blockade Runners, Border Merchants, and Government Agents

— Vol. 3: of Randolph B. "Mike" Campbell Series

Published: September, 2026  Pages: 464  Features: 34 b&w illus. Map. Notes. Bib. Index.

Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, the commander of the Confederate Department of the Trans-Mississippi, wrote in January 1864 about the Cotton Bureau, “In my judgement it is destined to be one of the most powerful agencies upon which we must rely in the inevitable struggle for supremacy in this Department.” Kirby Smith had taken command of the department in 1863 only to discover that efforts to support the Confederate military in that region with cotton, the primary local resource, were failing. The Trans-Mississippi relied on cotton more than any other Confederate department, and Texas was the main source of cotton for the western Confederacy. Kirby Smith struggled to develop a better way to swap that commodity for military goods. The bureau became his principal supply agency, and it did remarkably well in tandem with other efforts to benefit from cotton. In the end Kirby Smith got far more from Texas cotton than he got from Richmond officials. more... about Texas Cotton and Confederate Finance: Blockade Runners, Border Merchants, and Government Agents

Texas Ranger Captain William L. Wright

Published: September, 2021  Pages: 416  Features: 32 b&w illus. 3 maps. Notes. Bib. Index.

William L. Wright (1868–1942) was born to be a Texas Ranger, and hard work made him a great one. Wright tried working as a cowboy and farmer, but it did not suit him. Instead, he became a deputy sheriff and then a Ranger in 1899, battling a mob in the Laredo Smallpox Riot, policing both sides in the Reese-Townsend Feud, and winning a gunfight at Cotulla. more... about Texas Ranger Captain William L. Wright

Sutherland Springs, Texas: Saratoga on the Cibolo

— Vol. 2: of Texas Local

Published: February, 2017  Pages: 320  Features: 50 b&w illus. Notes. Bib. Index.

In Sutherland Springs, Texas, Richard B. McCaslin explores the rise and fall of this rural community near San Antonio primarily through the lens of its aspirations to become a resort spa town, because of its mineral water springs, around the turn of the twentieth century. Texas real estate developers, initially more interested in oil, brought Sutherland Springs to its peak as a resort in the early twentieth century, but failed to transform the farming settlement into a resort town. The decline in water tables during the late twentieth century reduced the mineral water flows, and the town faded. Sutherland Springs’s history thus provides great insights into the importance of water in shaping settlement. more... about Sutherland Springs, Texas: Saratoga on the Cibolo

This Corner of Canaan: Essays on Texas in Honor of Randolph B. Campbell

Published: February, 2013  Pages: 480  Features: 17 b&w photos. Notes. Bib. Index.

Randolph B. “Mike” Campbell has spent the better part of the last five decades helping Texans rediscover their history, producing a stream of definitive works on the social, political, and economic structures of the Texas past. Through meticulous research and terrific prose, Campbell’s collective work has fundamentally remade how historians understand Texan identity and the state’s southern heritage, as well as our understanding of such contentious issues as slavery, westward expansion, and Reconstruction. Campbell’s pioneering work in local and county records has defined the model for grassroots research and community studies in the field. More than any other scholar, Campbell has shaped our modern understanding of Texas. more... about This Corner of Canaan: Essays on Texas in Honor of Randolph B. Campbell