The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 68, July 1964 - April, 1965 Page: 287

Book Reviews

bound. Its illustrations, drawings by Russell Waterhouse, are
worthy of special note. They are numerous and serve as reminders
of how the early circuit lawyers, judges, and other characters of
the early frontier may have appeared.
Among those lawyers mentioned in the book, the name of John
Wesley Hardin does not appear, so we may conclude that he had
small influence upon legal affairs in the year 1895 when he was
shot and killed in El Paso by Constable John Selman. Mention
is made of Waters Davis, the son of Governor E. J. Davis, whose
State Police Hardin bitterly opposed. Coincidentally, at the time
of Hardin's death, Davis was a successful and prominent El Paso
lawyer.
The documentation of the volume seems to be exhaustive and
complete. The biographical notes contain short accounts of the
lives of some 13o lawyers and judges. These sketches should be
valuable for reference purposes and are worthy of note.
Overall, this work is a valuable contribution to the history of
a most interesting portion of the great State of Texas.
JAMES R. NORVELL
Rebellious Ranger: Rip Ford and the Old Southwest. By W. J.
Hughes. Norman (University of Oklahoma Press), 1964. Pp.
xi+3oo. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $5.95.
When John Salmon Ford died in 1897, the Austin Statesman
called him "the last of the ranger chieftains" whose "name for
nearly a half-century has been a household word in Texas." In
truth, his name was not that well-known at all, though Ford had
participated, in one way or another, in virtually every significant
military and political event in Texas since San Jacinto. In Waco,
for example, citizens for some time had believed that Shapley
Ross had organized and led the Canadian River Expedition in
1858; and those in San Antonio and Brownsville had long given
William Tobin, rather than "Old Rip," credit for winning the
Cortina War. Historians had done no better. For instance, Hubert
Howe Bancroft's highly-regarded History of the North Mexican
States and Texas had Cortina, supported by Federal cavalry from
Brazos Island, capturing Brownsville in 1864, when in reality
Ford's Confederate horsemen had taken it from the Union forces
and held it to the end of the war (Bancroft, by the way, did not

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