The Feud That Wasn't: The Taylor Ring, Bill Sutton, John Wesley Hardin, and Violence in Texas » (New Edition)

JAMES M. SMALLWOOD is an emeritus professor of history at Oklahoma State University. He coauthored Murder and Mayhem: The War of Reconstruction in Texas, published by Texas A&M University Press. Smallwood’s The Indian Texans was part of a five-book series that won the 2006 Texas Reference Source Award from the Texas Library Association Reference Round Table. He lives in Gainesville, Texas.

Marauding outlaws, or violent rebels still bent on fighting the Civil War?

For decades, the so-called "Taylor-Sutton feud" has been seen as a bloody vendetta between two opposing gangs of Texas gunfighters. However, historian James M. Smallwood here shows that what seemed to be random lawlessness can be interpreted as a pattern of rebellion by a loose confederation of desperadoes who found common cause in their hatred of the Reconstruction government in Texas.

Between the 1850s and 1880, almost 200 men rode at one time or another with Creed Taylor and his family through a forty-five-county area of Texas, stealing and killing almost at will, despite heated and often violent opposition from pro-Union law enforcement officials, often led by William Sutton. From 1871 until his eventual arrest, notorious outlaw John Wesley Hardin served as enforcer for the Taylors. In 1874 in the streets of Comanche, Texas, on his twenty-first birthday, Hardin and two other members of the Taylor ring gunned down Brown County Deputy Charlie Webb. This cold-blooded killing—one among many—marked the beginning of the end for the Taylor ring, and Hardin eventually went to the penitentiary as a result.

The Feud That Wasn't reinforces the interpretation that Reconstruction was actually just a continuation of the Civil War in another guise, a thesis Smallwood has advanced in other books and articles. He chronicles in vivid detail the cattle rustling, horse thieving, killing sprees, and attacks on law officials perpetrated by the loosely knit Taylor ring, drawing a composite picture of a group of anti-Reconstruction hoodlums who at various times banded together for criminal purposes. Westernhistorians and those interested in gunfighters and lawmen will heartily enjoy this colorful and meticulously researched narrative.

The Journal of American History

"Smallwood offers an impressive reinterpretation of a critical era in Reconstruction Texas and the South."

List of Illustrations and Maps     vii
Series Editor's Foreword     ix
Acknowledgments     xi
Introduction     xv
Founding the Taylors' South Texas Crime Ring     1
Continuing Mayhem     18
Open Warfare     36
More Murder and Mayhem     51
Rampant Lawlessness     65
Lawmen Closing In     82
Enter John Wesley Hardin     101
A Matter of Attrition     116
Lawmen Begin Taking Control     136
Exterminating the Taylor Crime Ring     153
The Collapse of the Taylor Ring     165
Afterword     181
Appendix     183
Notes     185
Note on Sources     215
Index     217