One of the chapters in Texas history was written, not with the ink and pen, but with the lead of the Winchester rifle and the slugs of a double-barreled shotgun. As a result, that particular period, the decade of the 1870s, might well be termed the
bloody years.
Thus C.L. Douglas begins the introduction to his now-classic
Famous Texas Feuds , first published in 1936. In this piece, Douglas graphically tells the blood-stained story of the most important of the violent feuds that ravaged a number of Texas counties during the nineteenth century. Included in the book are the East Texas Conflict between the old settlers and the new settlers, otherwise known as the Regulators and the Moderators; the Taylor-Sutton controversy, which began in the early 1870s as a family quarrel over cattle and then fanned out until it included every family in DeWitt County; and the Elizario Salt War of West Texas. Also covered in the work are the Horrell-Higgins Affair of Lampasas County, the Mason County War, and the Jaybirds and the Woodpeckers clash in Richmond County.
The New York Times
stated of an earlier edition of
Famous Texas Feuds
that
Mr. Douglas tells all these tales in admirable style. He has good literary taste, a sense of drama and that skill in narration that makes due use of restraint but brings out the inherent human interest of the tale. And he gives enduring historical value to his book by his exposition of the psychological, racial, social, economic and other causes, deeply embedded in human nature, that were the most important of the forces precipitating these bloody feuds.