The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 87, July 1983 - April, 1984 Page: 102

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Silverthorne is less successful in her treatment of Smith's public ca-
reer. Perhaps the extent of the Smith materials discouraged research
into the thirty or more other manuscript collections at UT's Barker
Texas History Center that make reference to Smith or into several
useful collections at the Texas State Archives. Failure to use those and
to research thoroughly the Houston and Galveston newspapers of the
period doubtless contributed to some gaps in the author's knowledge
about Smith and probably account for several factual errors as well.
For example, on page 190 Silverthorne states, "In the fall of 1875, Tex-
ans were agitated about the new state constitution being drawn up by
the convention elected the previous year." A careful reading of the
Houston Daily Telegraph for July and August, 1875, would have re-
vealed that the election for the convention was held in 1875, not the
previous year, and that Smith was an unsuccessful candidate to be a
delegate to that body. Also, the general reader will wish that Silver-
thorne had given more attention to placing the Smith story in the wider
context of the important movements of the time.
The book could have benefited from more careful editing, especially
with respect to footnote citations. In Chapter One there are three ap-
parent references to letters in the Smith Papers, before a fourth refer-
ence gives the first citation to that collection. In several instances, short-
ened citations to published works precede the first full citation. In spite
of its shortcomings, many readers will find interesting this brief study
of one of the Renaissance persons of nineteenth-century America.
Austin Community College ROGER A. GRIFFIN
The Texas Connection with the American Revolution. By Robert H.
Thonhoff. (Burnett, Tex.: Eakin Press, 1981. Pp. x+ 1o6. Intro-
duction, illustrations, appendix, index. $9.95-)
Herbert Eugene Bolton, the eminent authority on colonial Texas
and the Southwest, and Thomas M. Marshall, a Harvard instructor, in
Colonization of North America, 1492-1783 (1920), attempted to focus
the study of American history within the context of the larger move-
ments shaping our continent. Robert H. Thonhoff's The Texas Con-
nection is an example par excellence of the Bolton approach. Thonhoff
sees the success of the American Revolution from a new perspective,
based on his premise that Texas played an important economic role in
Spain's contribution to the American effort. The cattle industry in
Texas, big business at the time of the Revolution, had originated with

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