Booknotes: Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance

New Arrival:
• Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance: Other Sides of Civil War Texas edited by Jesús F. de la Teja (Univ of Okla Pr, 2016).

You can't throw a rock in a Civil War research library (and I don't recommend you try) without hitting someone studying internal dissent in the Confederate states. The upcoming release of the movie adaptation of The Free State of Jones will probably bring even more attention to the subject. This volume of essays (which has a contribution from Jones author Victoria Bynum) investigates a wide array of Texas topics related to the inner war, including Confederate memory in the state, wartime slave flight, slaves brought into the state during the war for (presumed) safekeeping, East Texas Unionism, German Unionists, Tejano Unionism, Confederate violence against Unionists, racial violence during Reconstruction, Juneteenth, and a profile of Texas Unionist and U.S. volunteer general Edmund Davis.

"Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance reveals how friends and neighbors became enemies and how the resulting violence, often at the hands of secessionists, crossed racial and ethnic lines. The chapters also show how ex-Confederates and their descendants, as well as former slaves, sought to give historical meaning to their experiences and find their place as citizens of the newly re-formed nation."