Happy Belated Texas Independence Day (March 2nd)!

It’s time for our March blog post, so I have crawled out of the dark recesses of the archives to bring you a selection of books on Texas Independence to commemorate Texas Independence Day which was on March 2nd!   Several of our collections have a nice swath of different books and materials on Texas history—especially about the Alamo, to no one’s surprise.  While I didn’t pull out any of those, (how can I pick between “The Alamo” and “The Fall of the Alamo”?) I did find a few firsthand accounts of Texas at the time of its revolution which, if you’re anything like me, you will find more engaging than ten books about the battle at San Jacinto.

But first, since this is about independence, we cannot forget to mention the document asserting such a concept.  The Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence is a thorough series of biographies for each man who signed the declaration back in 1836.  If you’re looking to go a little beyond Sam Houston, you might like to take a look at this book.  Also of interest might be The Men Who Made Texas Free, an older book on the same subject.

If you’d like to read about the whole thing from beginning to end, but not out of a textbook, then I would suggest checking out our signed copy of Texas Independence by Andrew Jackson Houston, the son of the famous Sam Houston.  Obviously a biased report on the subject, but a rare and interesting version to peruse.

Now, I know I promised firsthand accounts, so here they are.  First, I have two books from men who traveled from Austria and Germany to Texas and found themselves fighting in the revolution.  The first is Memoirs of George B. Erath.  Erath recounts how his draft-dodging in Austria and thirst for something new and far away led him to Texas, and how his job surveying land led him to fighting Comanches and then in the Battle at San Jacinto, and even past that to the time of the Civil War.  Often I believe we forget that not all of the men in Texas were originally American or Mexican.  The other, With Milam and Fannin, tells a similar tale of the German Harman Ehrenberg, who joined the Greys, a volunteer militia from New Orleans who fought alongside the Texans.  These firsthand accounts of the fighting provide a more human look into what it was like to be among those fighting for independence.



If you’re looking for someone a little more famous, then we do have a copy of The Life of Colonel David Crockett, an autobiography/diary which follows Davy Crockett from his youth all the way up to just before his death at the Alamo, tied up by an epilogue of sorts from the editor.  Unfortunately, I could find no official record of his supposed quote “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas,” but it is an interesting read all the same.

As before, I like to save my favorite find for last, so here’s a little something I pulled off the shelf on accident and knew I had to include.  It’s titled The General’s Tight Pants and no, it’s not a romance novel about Sam Houston, though for a brief moment I had to wonder.  It is two letters sent from Edward Warren, a man from Maine who was on a trip in Texas in the winter of 1836, right before the signing of the declaration.  His letters include a description of Sam Houston, whom he met, and explain that his pants were much too wet and too small—which I find to be a strange detail to include in a letter to your father, and yet, I know I would have said the same.  The most fascinating bit about these letters, besides the idea that a man from Maine would up and decide to just check Texas out for no clear reason, is that he very nearly avoided being in San Antonio at the Battle at the Alamo.  Had his party not changed routes at the last minute, he may well have been killed there by the Mexican forces.  It’s the sort of thing that makes you think, what if?

Of course, we have a lot more about the Texan Revolution (so many books about the Alamo! So many!) in our Beretta and Beretta-Nicholson collections, so if you’d like to check any of them out, come on by Special Collections any weekday during the school year between 1:15 and 5pm.  We hope to see you here!

--Darcie Marquardt, Class of 2016

Eighteen Negro Ministers Protest Selma Violence, March 10, 1965

This 1965 newspaper clipping from one of Reverend Black's carefully assembled scrapbooks is a powerful one.  From the March 10, 1965 edition of the San Antonio Light newspaper, it reveals how the power of place can be used to magnify an important message -- here, kneeling in prayer in front of the Alamo, eighteen ministers express solidarity with the peaceful voting rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama. On March 7th of the same week, televisions across the nation showed Alabama policemen attacking the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers, in what would later be called "Bloody Sunday" by President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

In Reverend Black's own words:

"We come to this place because we recognize it to be a symbol of freedom."