The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970 Page: 121

Book Reviews

JIM B. PEARSON, Editor
Ten Texans in Gray. Edited by W. C. Nunn. (Hillsboro, Texas: Hill
Junior College Press, 1968. Pp. xii+229. Illustrations, bibliog-
raphy, index. $6.oo.)
Ten Texans in Gray is in several ways quite a remarkable book.
It is not often that graduate seminar papers are collected, edited,
and published. It is even rarer when they contribute to an under-
standing and an appreciation of the past. These ten sketches of ap-
proximately twenty pages each, carefully edited by Dr. W. C. Nunn
of Texas Christian University, focus on the Confederate careers of
men well known to their contemporaries, although several have been
neglected by historians.
On the military front, there are perceptive accounts of the gallant
John Bell Hood and the almost incredible service of the Texas
Brigade; "Prince John" Bankhead Magruder and the brilliant and
heartening victory at Galveston; John Robert Baylor and the con-
troversial extermination order; and, of course, Dick Dowling and
the spectacular success at Sabine Pass. On the home front, there are
the less dramatic frustrations of the governors: Edward Clark, who
eagerly took the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy which had
been spurned by Sam Houston; Francis Richard Lubbock, whose
bitter differences with the Confederate government were never re-
solved; and Pendleton Murrah, whose personal tragedies were as
hopeless as the cause of the dying Confederacy. Finally, there are the
representatives of the state in Richmond, the steadfast and inde-
fatigable William S. Oldham, and the vociferous and flamboyant
Louis T. Wigfall in the Confederate Senate; and the tireless and
resourceful John H. Reagan in the Cabinet as postmaster general.
This volume is also remarkable in that repetition is minimal,
attesting, no doubt, to the authors' restraints and the editor's skill;
the sketches provide personality and character evaluations that are
both critical and penetrating. The eulogistic praise often accorded
these figures in contemporary newspapers and speeches has been re-
placed by insights into their less glamorous and more human attitudes