Anne J. Bailey

Texas was a land of change in the nineteenth century. Different flags flew in Texas skies during this period, but horse racing remained the most popular sport under each banner. Settlers from the United States started jockey clubs and Thoroughbred horse races in the cities, while sprint racing for a quarter mile with horses of dubious ancestry reigned in the small towns and rural areas. Whether a man enjoyed short distance sprints or the longer heats of Thoroughbreds, it was clear that Texans preferred racing above all other pastimes. As Stephen F. Austin brought his first colonists to Texas, race tracks drew huge crowds back east with crowds larger than 60,000 gathering at places like the Union Course on Long Island, New York. As settlers moved west, they took their love of the track with them. This book looks at the two types of racing popular in Texas from the arrival of American settlers to the beginning of the twentieth century—Thoroughbreds and quarter running horses. The new immigrants formalized racing to fit the mold practiced at the established tracks found in the eastern states. In 1903 gambling on horse racing became illegal across Texas and eventually much of the nation. The Golden Age of organized racing ended. Texans, and their love of horses, though, remains. Anne Bailey’s Texas Turf recalls that bygone era when the most popular sport in in the state was betting on the ponies, and explores an often overlooked aspect of the Lone Star story.

Most Southerners who fought in the Civil War were native born, white, and Confederate. However, thousands with other ethnic backgrounds also took a stand—and not always for the South. Invisible Southerners recounts the wartime experiences of the region's German Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans. As Anne J. Bailey looks at how such outsiders responded to demands on their loyalties, she recaptures the atmosphere of suspicion and prosecession, proslavery sentiment in which they strove to understand, and be understood by, their neighbors. Divisions within groups complicated circumstances even after members had cast their lot with the Union or Confederacy. Europe's slavery-free legacy swayed many German Americans against the South. Even so, one pro-Union German soldier could still look askance at another, because he was perhaps from a different province in the Old Country or of a different religious sect. Creeks and Cherokees faced wartime questions made thornier by tribal rifts based on wealth, racial mixture, and bitter memories of their forced transport to the Indian Territory decades earlier. The decision was easiest for former slaves, says Bailey, but the consequences more dire. They joined the Union Army in search of freedom and a new life—often to be persecuted by Yankee soldiers and, if captured, punished severely by Rebels.

Texas Rangers had patrolled on horseback since the early days of the Republic. Texas military heritage, born in a revolution from Mexico in the 1830s and maturing in the Mexican-American War of the 1840s, shaped all who lived there. Now, years later, a handful of these veterans and a generation raised in this heritage would make a colorful and heroic contribution to the Civil War as unique and independent "horse soldiers." This is the picturesque story of their battles and skirmishes where the often outnumbered cavalry, through bravado or sheer madness, frequently helped turn the tide of battle . . . from Colonel Parsons' assault on the Federal Navy during the Red River Campaign of 1864 to Terry's Texas Rangers with General Wheeler's horsemen tirelessly badgering Sherman on his "March to the Sea," it's all here. A lively and picturesque narration by a respected historian.

-- Series, 1995 Award of Merit, American Association for State and Local History