Description
Book SynopsisTells the story of the antebellum frontier in Texas, from the Red River to El Paso, a raw and primitive country punctuated by chaos, lawlessness, and violence. During this time, the federal government and the State of Texas often worked at cross-purposes, their confused and contradictory policies leaving settlers on their own.
Trade ReviewThe Texas Frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail, 1858–1861 may well be the most fascinating and intelligently written book I have read in decades. Glen Sample Ely offers us an exhaustively researched, compelling story, sumptuously illustrated throughout. This is frontier history at its best." - Jerry D. Thompson, Regents Professor of History, Texas A&M International University, Laredo
"More than a history of the short-lived operations of the Butterfield Overland Mail in Texas, this is, as Glen Sample Ely explains, ‘an American tale’ of the dreams, achievements, failures, and violence of the nineteenth-century American West. The impressive product of a twenty-five year labor of love, it is built upon the author’s personal observations and field research as well as his extraordinary command of private, local, state, and federal records." - Robert Wooster, author of
The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army in the West, 1783–1900"No other book in the modern era matches the scope of Glen Sample Ely’s. His volume will supplant that of Roscoe and Margaret Conkling’s 1947 work on the Butterfield Overland Mail and become the starting point for many other studies." - Richard B. McCaslin, author of
Tainted Breeze: The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas, 1862 and
Fighting Stock: John S. “Rip” Ford of Texas"Glen Sample Ely has written an extraordinarily readable, realistic, and accurate history of the Butterfield Overland Mail route through Texas. His superb narration is enhanced by maps and photographs and bolstered by his exhaustive research in government, state, and museum archives, as well as by interviews with descendants of those who lived and died on the Texas Overland Trail." - Howard R. Lamar, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University
