Beyond Redemption: Texas Democrats after Reconstruction (Volume 1)

Red River Valley Books, sponsored by Texas A&M University-Texarkana

by Patrick G. Williams

At the end of Reconstruction, the old order reasserted itself, to varying degrees, throughout the former Confederate states. This period—Redemption, as it was called—was crucial in establishing the structures and alliances that dominated the Solid South until at least the mid-twentieth century.

Texas shared in this, but because of its distinctive antebellum history, its western position within the region, and the large influx of new residents that poured across its borders, it followed its own path toward Redemption.

Now, historian Patrick G. Williams provides a dual study of the issues facing Texas Democrats as they rebuilt their party and of the policies they pursued once they were back in power. Treating Texas as a southern but also a western and a borderlands state, Williams has crafted a work with a richly textured awareness unlike any previous single study. Students of regional and political history will benefit from Williams’ comprehensive view of this often overlooked, yet definitive era in Texas history.

248 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Patrick Williams received his B.A. from the University of Texas and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He edits the Arkansas Historical Quarterly and is the author of Beyond Redemption: Texas Democrats after Reconstruction (2007). He has published articles in the Journal of Southern History and the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and co-edited A Whole Country in Commotion: The Louisiana Purchase and the American Southwest (2005) with S. Charles Bolton and Jeannie Whayne. Williams has won Fulbright College‘s Master Teacher Award and in 2009 he was inducted in the University of Arkansas Teaching Academy. He also produces the History Department Newsletter each year.