MURDER AND MAYHEM: The War of Reconstruction in Texas

Authors: James M. Smallwood, Barry A. Crouch, and Larry Peacock.
Publisher: Texas A&M Press, 2003.
Features: 182 pp, foreword, preface, notes, source essay, index, illustrations, photos

Review by: The Man Behind the Mask

To study antebellum Texas is to learn about feuds. Personal fights. Power struggles. Political battles. The reasons varied, but some citizens of the great state of Texas were willing to go to violent ends to stand up for what they believed in.

MURDER AND MAYHEM takes a look at the Lee-Peacock affray, which ran from the end of the Civil War through the mid 1870s. The number of victims is unclear but could range into the hundreds. Scores were settled over and over and over again, leaving much of northeast Texas in a state of turmoil that took decades to overcome.

What’s different about this book is its claim that the fight wasn’t a real feud; it was a continuation of the War, as former rebel guerrillas attempted to tear down the changes of Reconstruction by attacking pro-Unionists, freedmen, federal army soldiers, and more. It’s a theme that has gained popularity in recent Old West research and writing—note some of the books about the James-Younger Gang in Missouri, several of whom had connections to their north Texas counterparts.

Bob Lee (no relation to the Confederate general) was one of the leaders of this second rebellion. He’s often portrayed as a defender of the Southern way of life, a hero who fought against the carpetbaggers, the Northern invaders and blacks who committed atrocities against the white population. This book, however, casts Lee as an outlaw/terrorist who was determined to reverse the results of the Civil War. That’s an understandable perspective, considering that one of the authors is a descendant of Lewis Peacock, the leader of the pro-Unionist side in the conflict.

The book does a pretty good job of backing up that claim, noting that the Lee side included such hardcases as gunmen Cullen Baker, Bill Longley and John Wesley Hardin. Many of the actions taken by these and others—torture, whippings, arson, rape, and murder—were clearly beyond the bounds of law and civilized society.

But it does tend to downplay the very real difficulties that Reconstruction imposed on the South, which tended to push regular citizens of Confederate leanings to support such cutthroats. Like most situations in the Old West, the Lee-Peacock feud/second Civil War was very complex.

Still, this is an extremely well-researched book, as one would expect from an effort that includes noted historian Barry Crouch. The writing is clear and engaging. And it goes a long way to further establishing ties between the Civil War and the outlaw-lawman field of the last half of the 19 th century.

It’s most telling that, at the end of the Lee-Peacock conflict, all of the leaders were dead—usually as a result of violence. Reconstruction succeeded in some aspects, and it failed in others (or at least was delayed for dozens of years). The ultimate question remains: was all the bloodshed of the second Civil War worth it?