The Runaway Scrape was a chaotic episode (in late 1835 and early 1836) during the Texas Revolution. When Santa Anna suspended the Mexican Constitution and declared martial law, Texians rebelled and Santa Anna invaded Texas. The resulting flight of settlers eastward, to escape Santa Anna's relentless pursuit, was one of desperation and life-threatening conditions.
Stories--both funny and serious--from when camels were part of the US Army in early Texas and after camels joined the Confederacy during the Civil War. Plus, a bit about how camels became Texans.
In the first year of the Civil War War, the Confederacy had no navy. This caused President Jefferson Davis to take an unusual strategic step. He licensed private ships (called privateers) to sail the Confederate coastline and capture Union merchant ships and their cargos, distracting the Union's warships from their blockading efforts and disrupting the North's merchant fleet.
It was a swashbuckling time of legal piracy, ocean battles, death trials, and a brilliant, life-saving negotiation by Jefferson Davis.
Find the historic story here.
Topsy, a 100-year-old camel, and the "Red Ghost are true Texas legends.
Roy Bean was a fugitive from the law. Then he became Judge Roy Bean, "The Law West of the Pecos," and practiced his own unique form of justice with saloon patrons as jurors.
An invention that tamed the West, and it all started with a wandering cow.
From ghost stories and Indians to Civil War fugitives, Texas' Big Thicket's history is about more than lumber and oil.
Belle Starr was almost as famous as Billy The Kid. Listen to find out why!
Big Foot Wallace is Captured by Indians and learns an Indian legend.
Forget Scarlet O'Hara--Meet Lucy Pickens!
How the classic six-shooter came to be.
Fifty-six settlers travel 5000 miles to settle in "New Spain," creating Texas' first municipal government.
Historic! A mystical granite monolith and a Texas-sized lump of salt
Santa Anna fled the battlefield and dressed like a peasant. All to no avail.
While many "witch" or drowse for water, one amazing boy could see it underground.
The Battle of San Jacinto Through the Eyes of a Mexican Combatant
Coffee fueled the Union soldiers. The South's coffee supply was cut off by the blockade. Did caffeine make a difference in battle?
Cotton was the Confederacy's lifeblood. Its sale funded arms, critical supplies and paid for the government, but the union blockade kept it from foreign markets. Matamoros, Mexico became the South's "backdoor." Cotton caravans had to cross the dangerous Texas plains--fraught with bandits, Comanche, lack of water, and other deadly challenges--then, sell the cotton in a market teaming with fraudsters and scalawags . . .
Post Civil War, "cowboying" was a tough, demanding job, one which attracted scores of newly freed blacks. Some were especially notable.
Juneteenth is probably an example of "What you know for sure, that ain't so! "
