The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 100, July 1996 - April, 1997 Page: 111
551 p. : ill. (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
wintery prairie, armed to the teeth and menaced by Sioux and Kiowa; in 1853
when he served as artist-naturalist to Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple's railroad survey
through the West along the 35th parallel through rugged canyon country; then,
of course, his adventure with Lt. Ives.
Having married von Humboldt's daughter, Mollhausen then decided he should
stay at home. He became librarian to the king of Prussia and wrote over forty nov-
els and short stories about the American West, including two travel books recount-
ing his adventures with the Whipple and Ives expeditions, the latter of which has
been translated for the first time by David Miller as part of this project.
Mllhausen's two "Reisens" or travel accounts are among the great works in
the literature of the West, especially since they include his "getting there" pic-
tures in the "grand" Humboldtean tradition. So steeped in the West was M611-
hausen that he frequently dressed in his explorer buckskins and strode through
Potsdam as people pointed him out as "Der Alte Trapper."
Huseman's book, however, includes more than "Der Alte Trapper's" wonder-
ful story. He carefully traces Mollhausen's development as a painter and pro-
vides an insightful discussion of his context in the German and Humboldtean
Romantic tradition. This is a splendid, many-sided book.
University of Texas at Austzn WILLIAM H. GOETZMANN
Texas and Texans zn the Civil War. By Ralph A. Wooster. (Austin: Eakin Press,
1995. Pp. vii+3o8. Illustrations, maps, preface, notes, bibliography, index.
ISBN 0-57168-042-X.)
For many students of the Civil War, it is difficult to fathom why the Lone Star
State has gone neglected for so long as a subject clearly worthy of a sweeping
scholarly survey. Although specific aspects of Texas's formidable role in the
struggle have received attention, no historian has embraced the entire story.
Ralph A. Wooster has done just that. His depth of knowledge about Texas,
Southern, and Civil War history, in combination with a perfectionism rare to re-
search of any kind, are fortunately complemented by an ability to synthesize a
wide array of complex topics and sources. The result is a rich, precise, straight-
forward narrative pleasant in style and utterly authoritative in statements of fact
and interpretation, the proof of which comes in an eighty-five-page section of
tightly packed scholarly endnotes and a voluminous bibliography, together rep-
resenting more than one quarter of the entire text.
Wooster presents seven chapters, beginning with the presidential election of
186o and the frenzied secession crisis, events punctuated by aging Governor
Sam Houston's feisty stand against the overwhelming demands of proslavery rad-
icals. Emphasizing that most of Texas's Confederate volunteers served in cavalry
units-a logical phenomenon given a frontier tradition of prowess on horse-
back--and that the great majority of all Texas soldiers remained west of the Mis-
sissippi, Wooster deftly describes the exciting but tragic campaigns in New
Mexico by Henry H. Sibley and in Missouri and Arkansas under Gen. Ben Mc-
Culloch. The war for possession of the Texas coast receives special attention,1996
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 100, July 1996 - April, 1997, periodical, 1997; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101218/m1/139/?rotate=90: accessed April 20, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.