Wagon Trains from Tennessee and Alabama entered Texas after the Civil War. Early day Blueridge settlers were looking for a fresh start, and Texas seemed to be the best place to find it.

1874 Red River view. Early immigrants make their way in an overcrowded boat down the swollen Texas river. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/

Kiowa and Cheyenne leaders pose in the White House conservatory with Mary Todd Lincoln (standing far right) on March 27, 1863, during meetings with President Abraham Lincoln, who hoped to prevent their lending aid to Confederate forces. The two Cheyenne chiefs seated at the left front, War Bonnet and Standing In the Water, would be killed the next year in the Sand Creek Massacre.

Southern Plains Indian tribes during the Red River War and location of

reservations. Map courtesy of the Texas Historical Commission.

The threat of Indian raids was a constant source of anxiety for settlers on the Texas frontier, particularly after U.S. troops left Texas during the Civil War years. Painting by Nola Davis, courtesy of Fort Richardson SHS, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

U.S. Army columns of the Red River War. Courtesy of the Texas Historical Commission.

A Kiowa ledger drawing possibly depicting the Buffalo Wallow battle in 1874, one of several clashes between Southern Plains Indians and the U.S. Army during the Red River War.

Rath & Wright's buffalo hide yard, showing 40,000 buffalo hides baled for shipment. Dodge City, Kansas, 1878.

Kiowa brave. Tow-An-Kee, son of Lone Wolf. Killed in Texas in 1873. Photo, ca. 1867-1874, courtesy of the Center for American History, Caldwell Collection (#03962), The University of Texas at Austin.

Kiowa camp, ca. 1867-1874. Kiowa camp, ca. 1867-1874. Photograph courtesy of the Photograph courtesy of the Center for American History, Center for American History, Frank Caldwell Collection Frank Caldwell Collection (#10187), The University of (#10187), The University of Texas at Austin. Texas at Austin.

Topin Tone-oneo, daughter of Kicking Bird. The only one of the great Kiowa chief's children to survive him, she was with the first group sent to Carlisle Indian School in 1879. Source: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/indians.html

Indians at Fort Marion. Indians of various tribes who were captured in the Texas Red River Wars and other Indian battles of the late 19th century were imprisoned at this Florida military fort. Photo ca. 1860s-1930s, courtesy the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution (Lot 90-1 INV 09854500). Source: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/indians.html

Pupils at Carlisle Indian school, Pennsylvania. Established in 1879 by Richard Pratt, the school attempted to assimilate Indian children into the "white man's world" through education and financial support. Among its students were four of Comanche chief Quanah Parker's children and those of others involved in the Texas Indian Wars. Source: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/forts/indians.html

Texas Cattle Trails

Before the Civil War, the Shawnee Trail (far right) led Texas cattlemen to markets in Kansas City and St. Louis. Following the war, increased settlement closed that route, and in 1866 Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving blazed a trail west to the New Mexico and Colorado markets, called the Goodnight-Loving Trail (far left). Soon, however, railheads in Kansas led cowboys up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, and up the Western Trail to Dodge City and points north.

Roundup on Roundup on Texas RanchTexas Ranch

Cover of The Beef Bonanza: How to Get Rich on the Plains, by Gen. James. S. Brisbin, one of the books that helped fuel the cattle boom of the early 1880's.

(Courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.)

Bucking Broncos

Cowboys branding mavericks in the 1880's

"Second Guard." A cowboy camp at night in the 1880's, with some cowboys bedding down while others prepare to head out for night duty watching over the herd. Photograph by F. M. Steele.

Cowboys branding "mavericks" in the 1880's. This cowboy name Cowboys branding "mavericks" in the 1880's. This cowboy name for cattle without a brand can be traced to Texas rancher Samuel for cattle without a brand can be traced to Texas rancher Samuel Maverick, whose habit of neglecting to brand his herd led his Maverick, whose habit of neglecting to brand his herd led his neighbors to call an unbranded steer "one of Maverick's." neighbors to call an unbranded steer "one of Maverick's." Photograph by F. M. Steele.Photograph by F. M. Steele.

Cowboys eating dinner on the range. A typical chuckwagon, like the one shown here, carried potatoes, beans, bacon, dried fruit, cornmeal, coffee and canned goods.

(Library of Congress)

"Where we shine." Cowboys at the end of an 1897 roundup in Ward County, Texas, pose with their herd of almost 2,000 cattle. By this time, barbed wire had closed down the long cattle trails for nearly two decades. Photographed by F. M. Steele.

1871 Kansas-Transport of Texas Beef on the Kansas-Pacific Railway-Scene at a Cattle-shoot in Abilene, Kansas. This beautiful, hand colored engraving is from the August 19, 1871 issue of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/

1882 Picture of a capture of a Texas Town by cowboys. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/

1882 Texas-Herders Driving Their Sheep, Menaced by a Prairie Fire, To a Place of Safety. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas

Dignitaries and railworkers gather to drive the "golden spike" and join the tracks of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869. The Central Pacific's wood-burning locomotive, Jupiter, stands to the left, the Union Pacific's coal-burning No. 119 to the right.

The starting line for the first Oklahoma Land Rush, April 22, 1889.

Homesteaders photographed in the 1880's by Solomon Butcher in Custer County, Nebraska.

Exodusters waiting for a steamboat to carry them westward in the late 1870's.

(Library of Congress.)

Homesteader Omer Yern and family photographed by Solomon Butcher in Custer Country, Nebraska, 1886. (Courtesy Nebraska State Historical Society.)

David Hilton and family pose for homestead photographer Solomon Butcher, David Hilton and family pose for homestead photographer Solomon Butcher, showing off their prize possession, a pump organ. Butcher noted that Mrs. showing off their prize possession, a pump organ. Butcher noted that Mrs. Hilton insisted on having the organ hauled into the yard, so her family Hilton insisted on having the organ hauled into the yard, so her family portrait would not reveal that the Hilton's still lived in a sod house.portrait would not reveal that the Hilton's still lived in a sod house.

While preserving some traditions of their homeland, settlers on the Texas frontier were transformed by their experiences, becoming "westerners."

Fenced in RanchFenced in Ranch

A winter cattle drive photographed by Charles Belden.

(Library of Congress.)

Theodore Roosevelt on horseback in the Dakota Territory in the 1880's, when he had moved west to live as a cattle rancher.

(Library of Congress.)

“The Land Grant Law of 1876 authorized the granting of sixteen sections of land to railroad companies for every mile of main-line track they completed.” p. 206.

Coming of the Steam Train in 1873 put Reagan, Texas on the Map! The old Reagan Depot stood next to the Train tracks until the 1960's.

This photo shows a "land train," bringing prospective investors to Texas, circa 1915. African-American porters stand on the far right. "Separate but equal" segregation was the law in Texas and other Southern states from the 1880s until segregation was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1950s.. Many jobs were also segregated. The job of porter was considered a black man's job. Prints and Photographs Collection, Texas State Library and Archives.

From 1875 to 1900, lumber led all other freight in tonnage transported by Texas railroads.

The first multi million-dollar firm in Texas was a lumber company owned by John Henry Kirby. John Henry Kirby, the "Prince of the Pines," shown in a 1925 photo. With East Coast investors, Kirby established land companies with vast timber holdings in the Pineywoods. In 1893, he built the Gulf, Beaumont, and Kansas City Railroad and used proceeds from its sale to finance more land purchases. In 1901, he organized the Houston Oil Company of Texas and the Kirby Lumber Company. Although at one point the lumber company controlled more than 300,000 acres of land and operated 13 sawmills, business reversals during the depression forced Kirby into bankruptcy.

In the lumber industry, African-Americans workers comprised about one-third of the labor force.

The attitude of the timber-company owners toward organized labor could best be described as hostile opposition.

The Great Southwest Strike of 1886 was a strike led by the Knights of Labor against Jay Gould’s railroad lines. (See p. 219.)

Throughout the late nineteenth century, the state financed its prison system by leasing out convict labor. (See pages 223-224)

Table 8.1 Dollar Value of Texas Crops (See p. 221)

1870 1880 1890 1900

Wheat $391,886 $2,441,918 $3,589,442 $7,592,852

Corn 10,153,941 11,509,808 34,940,748 39,259,415

Oats 297,439 1,761,609 5,334,496 6,241,192

Cotton 21,212,994 39,458,916 63,263,400 107,510,010

37.641.9

49.7

0

5

10

15

20

25

3035

40

45

50

1880 1890 1900

The Increasing Percentage of Tenant Farming in Texas, 1880-1900

(See page 222)

Public fund had subsidized the railroads, and now that they had fallen short of the promised economic panacea, proponents of the New South and the railroads themselves became politically suspect. See p. 209.

The fixing of rates explains the shippers’ charges of railroad corruption, which only increased in intensity as southern farmers became less prosperous.

Railroads proved a mix blessing as farmers became tied to faraway markets and the vagaries of the wider national and international economy. See page 209.

In 1875, Congress passed the Specie Resumption Act, which returned the nation to the gold standard by 1879. When the country returned to the gold standard, the amount of money in circulation declined precipitously, which caused interest rates to skyrocket. Farmers were particularly hard hit by these developments.

The Greenbacks were an agrarian reform party that emerged in the 1870s and 1880s favoring monetary inflation. They wanted to reverse the Specie Resumption Act. (See pp. 228-229)

Granger Movement, agrarian movement in the United States, initiated shortly after the American Civil War with the aim of improving the social, economic, and political status of farmers. The movement constituted the initial stage in the unrest among farmers in many areas of the U.S. that characterized the latter part of the 19th century. Among the causes of the unrest were the declining prices of farm products, the growing indebtedness of farmers to merchants and banks, the discriminatory freight rates imposed on farmers by the railroads, and the acquisition by the railroads of public lands that formerly had served pioneer farmers as a source of new farmland.

Grangers exercised significant influence over the constitutional convention of 1876.

In 1867, Oliver H. Kelley, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, founded the Patrons of Husbandry, commonly called the Grange. He conceived of the Patrons as a secret fraternal society that would offer social and educational benefits to its membership. (p. 231)

A Farmers’ Alliance Convention.A Farmers’ Alliance Convention.

In the 1880s, the Farmers’ Alliance replaced the In the 1880s, the Farmers’ Alliance replaced the Grange as the largest agrarian reform organization in Grange as the largest agrarian reform organization in Texas.Texas.

The Populist Party advocated government ownership of railroads, abolition of the national banking system, and establishment of the subtreasury system. The Subtreasury Plan would have allowed farmers to store staple crops in government warehouses and receive loans against the market value of these crops in the form of government notes that could circulate as currency. (pp. 236-237)

Historical cartoon of Populist Party as a snake with William Jennings Bryan's head swallowing donkey of the Democratic Party.

Governor Oran M. Roberts and the Fifty Cent Law of 1879. See p. 210.

Texas' First Public Institute for Higher Education(The Agricultural and Mechanical College -- 1876)

A&M's Earliest Campus. In its first year, the campus at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas consisted to just two buildings: Steward's Hall (left) and Old Main. Two wooden barracks were added behind Old Main for the second session (just visible through the front porch of Steward's Hall).

In 1902, Texas voters approved of a poll tax that disenfranchised many poor whites and blacks and further limited the possible third-party challenges to Democratic hegemony. The Texas legislature passed many Jim Crow laws, mandating, for example, segregated railroad facilities. Soon Texas, like many southern states, had erected an elaborate legal code that racially segregated public and private facilities. p. 240.

Guadalupe Salt Lakes

The Salt War (p. 190.)

The Texas Rangers in the post-Civil War period an effective but often violent and lawless fighting force. (pp. 191-192.)

After the death of Edmund J. Davis, the Republican party of Texas was led by the African American Norris Wright Cuney.

1890 Views In Texarkana, Arkansas and Texas. This engraving is from the May 3, 1890 edition of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. It shows scenes of the following: Office of J. Duetschman, Broad Street, residence of W.A. Kelsey, Union Depot, Cosmopolitan Hotel, Texarkana Ice Co., Water Works, Kizer Lumber, Benefield Hotel, O.P. Taylor Real Estate, and Huckins House. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/

1888 Pictures of Dallas, Texas. Hand colored engraved images titled, " Texas.-The City if Dallas, Its Progress and Its Prospects-Views of Its Public Buildings, Streets, Etc., City Hall Buildings, in course of Construction, view on Commerce Street, View on Elm Street, Alliance Exchange Building, Private Residences, Corner of Commerce and Elm Streets, Merchant's Exchange, Bird's Eye View of the Texas State Fair Grounds and Dallas Club House," from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Shows scenes of Dallas, Texas and its landmarks and buildings. Source: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/texas/