Conscription and Conflict on the Texas Frontier, 1863-1865 David P. Smith The state-rights thesis once expounded by the disciples of historian Frank Owsley and later in its modified form by David Donald has rightly come under ardent scrutiny by modern-day critics. The most current extended look came in a recent, controversial book that included a historiographical survey of Confederate failure, and provided insightful new perceptions which, if not always convincing, were always intriguing.1 The present work will consider only one facet of the Owsley thesis, that dealing with a single state's posture on conscription, in an attempt to shed further light on the long-enduring question of whether or not the Confederacy "Died of State Rights." The example of Texas, while similar in many regards to the other Confederate states, encompassed a unique situation: the complete abrogation of the Confederate conscription laws for the last eighteen months of the war over a region of Texas the size of the state of North Carolina—the state's frontier counties with an 1860 population of nearly fifty thousand. That such a circumstance could exist can be comprehended only by an understanding of the state government's determination to protect its Indian frontier at all hazards. In 1861 it was natural for the state to look to the Confederate government for protection of its Indian frontier, but recalling the difficulties of the United States Army in the same task since the Mexican War, Texans saw little to convince them that Confederate responsibility could solve the problem. Part of the problem, indeed, lay in the belief by most non-Texan Confederate authorities that the Indian menace simply did not require the military might or expenditure that Texans demanded. Confederate Secretary of War Leroy P. Walker in 1861 echoed United States authorities of the 1850s when he called the Indian threat "merely predatory" and believed that one regiment of cavalry should suffice on 1 Richard E. Beringer, et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens, Ga., 1986). Civil War History, Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, ° 1990 by the Kent State University Press CONSCRIPTION AND CONFLICT251 the frontier.2 This same attitude existed on the part of the Confederate government throughout the war. In one sense they were correct; if damage done to life and property was the sole standard upon which to base the degree of military force required, then one regiment should have been sufficient. One estimate gives a total of approximately eight hundred Texans killed by Indians from the summer of 1862 to 1868, which would result in approximately four hundred Texans killed, wounded, and made captive for the four years of the Civil War.3 These losses scarcely compare with the total of Confederate casualties suffered in even a single mediumsized battle of the war, but what those back east failed to appreciate was the nature of the warfare waged on the Texas frontier. The Texans who witnessed the results of countless Indian raids throughout the 1850s and 1860s could scarcely imagine more savage and inhumane conduct than that practiced by their old adversaries, a war in which so often the victims were old men, women, and children. Especially infuriating was the brutal manner in which the Plains Indians ravaged, killed, and mutilated women and children—actions made even more galling when one considers that most of those kidnapped had almost no chance of safe return. It is the image of this type of warfare, one that easterners could scarcely comprehend, that drove Texans to persist in their efforts to guard the Indian frontier and exterminate hostile Indians found in their midst. No quarter was asked and none was given.4 When it was rumored that the Confederate cavalry regiment stationed on the frontier in 1861 would be withdrawn in early 1862, the legislature created the state-supported Frontier Regiment, a unit of Rangers, to take its place. Commanded by Texans familiar with the frontier, the legislature sought to muster it into Confederate service, with the proviso that it not be withdrawn by Confederate authorities from the frontier. This would have been the culmination of what Texans had wanted from a national government since the early...