Society for Historians of the Early American Republic

Texas Terror: The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1860 and the Secession of the Lower South byDonald E. ReynoldsReview by: Christopher CameronJournal of the Early Republic, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Fall, 2009), pp. 558-560Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the EarlyAmerican RepublicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40541870 .

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558 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2009)

solely in economic terms. McMichael argues that "as long as the Spanish Crown could guarantee easy access to cheap land and relatively stable regime, local residents willingly lived under Spanish rule" (4), while Papas insists that the loyalism of Staten Island was a "logical and self- interested choice" (2). Historians should not discount economic stability and self-interest as elements of loyalty, but other, more important and perhaps even less tangible reasons exist. Beyond the cold exchange of the market, bonds of affection must kindle something that propels peoples to profess and maintain loyalty. One must question McMichaePs contention that the Americans living under Spanish rule were content, if, in less than a generation, that rule could be overthrown and replaced by an American one. These bonds of affection seem a particularly apt way to describe the loyalty of the Loyalists. Economic factors played a role, but historians such as Linda Colley, Eliga Gould, and Brendan McConville have all demonstrated how British affection for their constitutional sys- tem-the pride of British liberty- developed and sustained British patri- otism throughout the eighteenth century.1 That both authors rely only on economic arguments and little else to explain loyalty suggests the need for more work on this important topic.

Aaron N. Coleman is an assistant professor of history at Kentucky Christian University in Grayson, Kentucky, and is currently revising his dissertation "Loyalists in War, Americans in Peace: The Reintegration of the Loyalists, 1774-1800."

Texas Terror: The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1860 and the Secession of the Lower South. By Donald E. Reynolds. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. Pp. 264. Cloth, $45.00.)

Reviewed by Christopher Cameron

Over the past four decades historians have produced a number of excel- lent studies on secessionism within individual states. In Crisis of Fear

1. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, CT, 1992); Eliga H. Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000); Brendan McConville, The King's Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006).

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REVIEWS • 559

(New York, 1970), Stephen A. Channing argues that the hysteria and fear that swept South Carolina in the wake of John Brown's raid were pivotal in pushing that state toward secession. James M. Woods's Rebel- lion and Realignment (Fayetteville, AR, 1987) takes a different approach, examining political parties, leaders, and the effect of interest groups and geography on the politics of secession, while Christopher J. Olsen's Po- litical Culture and Secession in Mississippi (New York, 2000) argues that secession stemmed from the culture of honor that developed on the Mis- sissippi frontier in the thirty years before the Civil War. Donald Reyn- olds's Texas Terror: The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1860 and the Secession of the Lower South differs from these works in the singular impact Reynolds attributes to threats of insurrection within Texas on the secession movement throughout the entire Lower South. While Chan- ning's work does not place the secession movement in South Carolina into the larger context of secessionism, Reynolds begins his work with a broader focus on the South and the increasing fear of servile revolt, and he ends the book with an analysis of how the Texas Troubles influenced the debate over secession in states such as Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Arkansas. When people in these states heard reports of the fires and alleged conspiracies in Texas, and then experienced similar plots closer to home, they were much more likely to distrust all northern- ers and discredit Unionists as traitors to southern principles.

In Texas Terror, Reynolds tells us that from the time of Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion, scarcely a year passed without a slave panic somewhere in the South. The "periodic scares over possible uprisings were about as familiar to most white southerners as grits and redeye gravy," he writes (1). Turner's rebellion, periodic slave panics, the memory of the Haitian Revolution, and finally John Brown's raid of 1859 pushed many white southerners into a siege mentality, whereby they believed northerners were constantly working to undermine cherished southern values and institutions. Add to this equation reports of twelve fires that broke out in the Dallas area on July 8-9, 1860, and you get a much strengthened movement for a separate southern confederacy, according to Reynolds.

Reynolds shows that this movement began locally, with newspapers around Texas stirring up fears of rebellion and invasion from northern "abolitionists." Papers such as the Austin Texas State Gazette, the Hous- ton Weekly Telegraph, and the Marshall Texas Republican argued that so many fires within such a short period of time were no coincidence, but a northern-inspired abolitionist plot to destroy the South. In addition to

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560 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2009)

fire, according to the papers, abolitionists meant to destroy slavery by poisoning wells and inciting slaves to kill their masters and other whites. Texans responded to these fears by creating vigilance committees across the state to guard against possible uprisings. Entrusted with broad pow- ers, the vigilantes dispensed "justice" to would-be conspirators through whippings, banishment, and executions. Reynolds argues that fire-eating editors and politicians in the state, those people pushing for secession, used the fear of servile revolt to strengthen their arguments against the Union, often to great effect. Elsewhere in the South, fire-eaters such as William Lowndes Yancey and Robert Barnwell Rhett similarly used what Reynolds calls the "Texas Troubles" to argue for the creation of a south- ern nation. They claimed that if Lincoln was elected, a situation that began to appear more likely as election day approached, then the entire South awaited a fate similar to that of Texas.

Reynolds does an excellent job of demonstrating the importance of the Texas Troubles to political debates over secession within Texas and elsewhere in the South. He draws evidence from over one hundred newspapers across the nation, as well as letters, diaries, manuscript col- lections, and government records to show effectively the prominence of the alleged conspiracies in Texas to the pro-secession arguments voiced by editors and politicians alike in the months leading up to Lincoln's election. Where his evidence falls short is in explaining the actual process of secession in the various states in the early months of 1861. Reynolds does not examine the calling of secession conventions or any of the de- bates that took place within them. He does look at some of the secession ordinances produced by the state conventions after they decided to leave the Union, but the language these ordinances contain does not indicate that abolitionism in Texas was a reason for secession. Instead, the ordi- nances evince a more general fear of slave insurrections and abolitionism that could just as easily have stemmed from the popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the North or John Brown's raid. Despite this shortcoming, Reynolds's book effectively demonstrates that from July until November 1860 the Texas Troubles were central in heightening the fear and distrust of northerners that was a necessary ingredient in convincing southerners to form the Confederacy.

Christopher Cameron is a graduate student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. His current research interests are slavery, religion, and black abolitionists in Massachusetts from 1630-1830.

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