| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.2

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Murder and Mayhem: The War of Reconstruction in Texas. By James M. Smallwood, Barry A. Crouch, and Larry Peacock. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003. xv + 182 pp. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliographic essay, index. $24.95.)

James Smallwood, the late Barry Crouch, and Larry Peacock chronicle the violent history during Reconstruction in northern Texas, the "Corners" area where Grayson, Fannin, Collin, and Hunt counties converge. The book is far more than "a different interpretation" of the mislabeled "Lee-Peacock Feud" (pp. xii, 3). Lewis Peacock, the most prominent Unionist in the Corners, courageously aided the overreached Freedmen's Bureau agents, federal soldiers, and local authorities in protecting former slaves and white Republicans from persecution coordinated by Robert Jehu "Bob" Lee. As an ex-Confederate diehard and one of Texas's most notorious "nigger killers," Lee regularly took refuge, along with his fellow ruffians and cutthroats, in the region's dense thickets (p. 43). The authors express justifiable annoyance at traditional racist accounts that for generations celebrated Lee's atrocities. The degree to which they document present-day persistence of these older myths in their epilogue is an inspiration for all who want the history of the Lone Star State to be told factually and truthfully.

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