As Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain dramatizes, dissenters from the Confederacy lived in mortal danger throughout the South. In scattered pockets from the Carolinas to the frontier in Texas, these dissenters, or
brush men,
often died at the hands of their own neighbors as a result of their belief in the Union or an unwillingness to preserve the slaveholding Confederacy. Brush Men and Vigilantes tells the story of how dissent, fear, and economics developed into mob violence in the Sulphur Forks river valley northeast of Dallas. Authors David Pickering and Judy Falls have combed through court records, newspapers, letters, and other primary sources and have collected extended-family lore to relate the details of how vigilantes captured and killed more than a dozen men. Betrayed by links to a well-known Union guerrilla, many dissenters were captured, tried in mock courts, and hanged. Still others met their death by sniper fire or private execution. Their story begins before the Civil War, as the authors describe the particular social and economic conditions that gave rise to such tension and violence. Four more chapters follow, each detailing the horror and hysteria that characterized post-Civil War Texas.