Henry Eustace McCulloch provides the first comprehensive account of a pivotal nineteenth-century military leader and politician from Texas. In his military career, Henry McCulloch served with his brother Ben in one of the first Texas Ranger companies after the Texas Revolution of 1836, defended settlers during the Great Comanche Raid of 1840, and helped to defeat Mexican forces that reoccupied San Antonio in 1842. He also served as a captain in the United States Army during the Mexican-American War. In the 1850s, voters in Texas elected McCulloch to the state legislature, where he advocated for creating additional Ranger units to defend settlers on the frontier. He was an enslaver who supported secession and commanded a regiment of Rangers that became the first unit sworn in by the Confederacy. McCullough later served as the temporary commander of the Department of Texas, directed regiments defending territory around San Antonio, briefly led the Texas Division, and participated in the attack at Milliken's Bend, Louisiana. After the Civil War, McCulloch remained active in politics, leading a group supporting Richard Coke during the Coke-Davis imbroglio in 1873 and running as the Populist Party's candidate for governor in 1892. David Paul Smith's biography reveals McCulloch's involvement in events that shaped nearly all of nineteenth-century Texas history, restoring his legacy as one of the state's most important military leaders and politicians.
Industry Reviews
"David Paul Smith's biography of Henry Eustace McCulloch is that increasingly rare commodity: a book that genuinely needed to be written, authored by the one person best prepared by experience and previous work to take on the task. A legendary Texas Ranger, Confederate general, and state legislator, Henry McCulloch played a big part in the early history of Texas. But his story will not be a familiar one to modern readers. Smith writes history the way it should be written, with sufficient detail to satisfy scholars while managing to narrate a highly interesting story. Highly recommended." - Edward T. Cotham Jr., author of Rockets, Tanks and Submarines: The Ingenuity of Civil War Texans "This work is long overdue, focused as it is on a prominent but overlooked figure in Texas history. Henry E. McCulloch should be in the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame with his brother Ben. Until this book, he has not had a published biography worthy of his legacy. Based on good research, this lively study of Henry McCulloch and his times will inform and entertain anyone interested in a wide variety of Texas history topics from the Republic era through the Civil War and its aftermath." - Richard B. McCaslin, author of Fighting Stock: John S. "Rip" Ford of Texas "In the fervor of a heated political campaign in 1855, an opponent referred to Henry Eustace McCulloch as a 'ranging, Indian-killing, beef-eating, rough sample of semi-civilization.' In this exhaustively researched biography, historian David Paul Smith refutes this simplified assessment, revealing McCulloch to have been not only, as another contemporary observed, 'a star Indian and Mexican fighter,' but a blend of civilization and savagery, or, as Smith would have it, 'a kind, warm-hearted gentleman, toughened by life on the frontier.' Smith's narrative places McCulloch squarely in the context of the blood-soaked history of Texas from the days of the Republic through the early years of the twentieth century, examining in minute detail the many military and political campaigns in which he played a leading role. The life of Henry McCulloch is a saga of high adventure embedded in a life of personal sadness and frustration." - Thomas W. Cutrer, author of Theater of a Separate War: The Civil War West of the Mississippi River, 1861-1865 and Ben McCulloch and the Frontier Military Tradition
