Texas Terror: The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1860 and the Secession of the Lower South (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War)
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
Published: December 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 237
ISBN-13: 9780807132838
Subjects: United States - Antebellum Era; United States - Civil War; United States - State & Local - South; Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - General; United States - State & Local - General; History; History - Military / War; History - U.S.; 19th century; Antislavery movements; Panic; Slave insurrections; Social aspects; Texas; History: American
Description: "On July 8, 1860, fire destroyed the entire business section of Dallas, Texas. At about the same time, two other fires damaged towns near Dallas. Early reports indicated that spontaneous combustion was the cause of the blazes, but four days later, Charles Pryor, editor of the Dallas Herald, wrote letters to editors of pro-Democratic newspapers, alleging that the fires were the result of a vast abolitionist conspiracy, the purpose of which was to devastate northern Texas and free the region's slaves. White preachers from the North, he asserted, had recruited local slaves to set the fires, murder the white men of their region, and rape their wives and daughters. These sensational allegations set off an unprecedented panic that extended throughout the Lone Star State and beyond. In Texas Terror, Donald E. Reynolds offers a deft analysis of these events and illuminates the ways in which this fictionalized conspiracy determined the course of southern secession immediately before the Civil War." "Reynolds demonstrates that secessionists throughout the Lower South created public panic for a purpose: preparing a traditionally nationalistic region for withdrawal from the Union. Their exploitation of the "Texas Troubles," Reynolds asserts, was a critical and possibly decisive factor in the Lower South's decision to leave the Union of their fathers and form the Confederacy."--book jacket.