Discover the untold stories and harsh realities of Texas history in our captivating conversation with John Lundberg, a history professor at Tarrant County College. From a Civil War reenactor to his book on Granbury’s Texas Brigade, John explains what he's learned about plantation life and slavery in Texas in his recent book, The Texas Low Country: Slavery and Freedom on the Gulf Coast 1822 to 1895, and sheds light on this critical yet underexplored aspects of Texas history. Join us for a thought-provoking episode that enriches our understanding of Texas's past.
John R. Lundberg, The Texas Lowcountry: Slavery and Freedom on the Gulf Coast, 1822–1895 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press , 2024) https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781648431753/the-texas-lowcountry/
Also at Amazon: https://a.co/d/j0jo0h1
Discover the untold stories and harsh realities of Texas history in our captivating conversation with John Lundberg, a history professor at Tarrant County College. From a Civil War reenactor to his book on Granbury’s Texas Brigade, John explains what he's learned about plantation life and slavery in Texas in his recent book, The Texas Low Country: Slavery and Freedom on the Gulf Coast 1822 to 1895, and sheds light on this critical yet underexplored aspects of Texas history. Join us for a thought-provoking episode that enriches our understanding of Texas's past.
John R. Lundberg, The Texas Lowcountry: Slavery and Freedom on the Gulf Coast, 1822–1895 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press , 2024) https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781648431753/the-texas-lowcountry/
Also at Amazon: https://a.co/d/j0jo0h1
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas, based upon our professional training and study of the past.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it and, of course, all of us who live it and love it. Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Froyce.
Speaker 1:I'm Scott Sosby, gene. We have somebody with us today that we've known for quite a long time. I don't know how long I've known John A long time. He still is a young man and had lots of hair. I knew him then. He's still a young man. He doesn't have as much hair now as he used to. We're a podcast, not a videocast, so that doesn't matter, but we're here with John Lumber today.
Speaker 2:We're glad to have somebody. We need one of these people we need to have on these things if we're going to talk about texas history, right, absolutely. You know, john, uh, golly, we've been to tons of conferences together and, uh, john, yeah, and that's the problem. You know, a, you find out how many people you need to interview and b, sometimes, and this is, we overlook those who are around all the time, because we talk to them all the time, and so, but, john, has something new and exciting coming up that we want to talk about in this episode. Let's go ahead and get started, john. Why don't you tell people who may not be as fortunate as Scott and I, who know you tell us about yourself, where you're from, where you went to school and what you teach?
Speaker 3:Okay, so I am from the Austin area originally but I've come to call Fort Worth Fort Worth area my home for the last 20 years. For the last 20 years I went to the University of Texas for my undergrad and then went to TCU for my MA and PhD and I teach for Tarrant County College and, yeah, I teach both halves of the US survey and Texas history and African-American history and whatever else they needed to.
Speaker 2:Yes, john, there's something about you, about your background and how you got interested in history that I find very interesting, and I think you probably share this with a lot of people. You and people may or may not know this you were a Civil War reenactor, were you not? I was, yeah, how did you get into that?
Speaker 3:Oh, I had a scoutmaster when I was in the Boy Scouts who was into that and so, you know, got involved in that.
Speaker 2:I didn't know if it was your father, but it was through the Boy Scouts, huh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, huh, yeah, that's good. That's better than some things the Boy Scouts get people involved in. That's a plus, that's true, that's very true.
Speaker 2:How long did you do that?
Speaker 3:Oh, I reenacted for maybe three or four years.
Speaker 2:So did you have all the get-up, all the costuming and whatnot.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, oh yeah. What did you reenact? What did you go to?
Speaker 3:What are some of the things you went and reenacted? Oh, I mean we reenacted the Siege of Vicksburg out near Weatherford one time.
Speaker 1:The Siege of Vicksburg near Weatherford. Well, that had to be interesting. What river did you use? It was the Long Siege. We did, but they had backhoes, dig full-size trenches, so that was interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to see somebody reenact the Battle of the Crater. You know where they blow up the trenches and everything. I want to see that.
Speaker 3:I have no doubt that it's been done.
Speaker 1:It probably has. Hey, there's people around Lubbock who reenacted the Vietnam War. So I mean you know it's all widespread.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, there's big reenactments of the American Civil War, of the Alamo, even overseas, in England and other places. So it's called living history now, right, not reenacting, right right, right. Yeah, I've got family that's been into that for 40 years and you know, they know in many respects more about what they're doing and about the history of the common people than most academic historians know.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. I mean, they know all these things I've never ran into. One Couldn't tell you the ever bit of minutiae about the things that they reenact. As Gene likes to say, they knew every mule, tear and jackass at the Alamo. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So, John, you've got a couple of books out and you've written about the Civil War. Let's talk about some of those a little bit. You've got one on Granbury, the Texas Brigade.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And tell us a little bit about that and what it's about.
Speaker 3:Well, that was the topic of my dissertation at TCU and Granbury's Texas Brigade was a combat unit in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. Combat unit in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. You know, veterans of Granbury's Brigade came back and founded the towns of Granbury and Cleburne after the Civil War, so it left an impression on Texas history. You know it was military history. I was trained in graduate school by a Civil War military historian and that's when I came to focus on grad school, and so you know, it's a good book.
Speaker 3:I don't certainly think it was maybe my best effort, Hopefully. I think we try to get better with every.
Speaker 1:Our first efforts are never the best efforts.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you an academic question, since this was an academic exercise. What is your thesis statement?
Speaker 3:The thesis statement for Granbury Sexist Brigade yeah that they were the best combat unit in the Rebel Army of Tennessee.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Really, how come? Well, they encountered a lot of hardships earlier in the war and there was quite a bit of desertion and other attrition in their ranks, and so what it left? The guys that were left were really pretty hardcore, devoted to the Confederate cause and, as a result, ended up, I think, being harder fighters.
Speaker 1:What was the makeup of most of the people in Granbury's brigade? I mean, what was their background? Where'd they come from? Who were they?
Speaker 3:A lot of them were former. They were dismounted cavalry. They had dismounted the cavalry and taken their horses away and turned them into infantry. But you know, they there were quite a few of them that were enslavers, but probably no more than your average Confederate unit.
Speaker 2:So you wrote another book on Vicksburg and the Vicksburg campaign and that's a big topic. Tell us about that.
Speaker 3:Well, so I wrote an article in an anthology about the Vicksburg campaign and I wrote about the actions of General Joseph E Johnston in that campaign, who, of course, completely destroyed any Confederate ability to win that campaign, and just analyzed his actions and movements and why he did what he did.
Speaker 1:So why was Johnson so bad of a commander?
Speaker 3:He was. He was hesitant, he was more interested in keeping his army together than he was in using it. Um, there are a number of reasons he was there, but he was the Confederate McClellan. He was the Confederate McClellan. Yeah, in a lot of ways, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:He was pretty. I mean, he was fairly, I mean well trained, right, he was highly highly trained, right he was highly, highly regarded.
Speaker 3:He was highly regarded. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely fact he was a.
Speaker 1:As someone who studies military history, you know and you know civil war were. You know we really got the first of these real professionally trained officers, you know when they were in the field and things like this. But a lot of those very professionally trained officers didn't turn out to be real great commanders. So why would John Lumberg, the civil war scholar, why would he say that was the case? You?
Speaker 3:know that's a good question and I don't know that I have a good answer. It all depended on the personality and the situation they were placed in.
Speaker 1:Some of them responded you don't have to have a good answer. Act like me, just make some.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, most of them had seen action in Mexico during the US-Mexican War, but you know a lot of that was just not enough combat experience to create good general officers, maybe field line officers, but not general officers, not commanders at that level.
Speaker 1:Was it I heard. I don't even remember who it was. One time it was some Civil War historian. You know, I'm trying to think who it was and I it was some Civil War historian. I'm trying to think who it was and I just can't remember. He one time said that one of the problems was that many of these officers were fighting the last war and by the last strategies and essentially Civil War was the first modern war and they didn't know how to fight. They were bad tactics.
Speaker 3:Is it as simple as that it's not quite as simple as that? I don't think. But you're right, A lot of them did not adapt their tactics to the new weaponry.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, that was part of the whole problem with the junior officers is that you had people like Winfield Scott, who was a Mexican war general who was running things, phil Scott, who was a Mexican war general, who was running things. And you know it's as Scott was saying, as you were just saying. You know a lot of them had not caught up and it. You know. It's really an interesting study because I think in every major war, right, you've got new technology, but then it's getting the people in the field to adapt that new technology. Sometimes they're behind the curve.
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Hey, let's talk about your transition to a new book, and you know, I remember when you were working on this, because you came out to the Richmond Rosenberg area and you were working on a new book we had barbecue together and it just came out recently. Right, it's called the Texas Low Country Slavery and Freedom on the Gulf Coast. Tell us about this book and what got you interested in it you interested in it.
Speaker 3:So, honestly, what sparked my original interest was, if you look at the concentration of enslaved people in Texas in 1860, there's quite a bit over in the Pinewoods, as you know Harrison County, not so much Nacogdoches County as much, but there are some over there. But then if you look at the map, it sticks out like a sore thumb, this huge concentration of enslaved people, greater than anywhere else in the state. And it's these four counties just south of Houston. It's Fort Bend, matagora, wharton and Brazoria counties. And so my question was why? How did it get to be that way? Why was it that way? And that's what sparked my interest in that region. And it turns out that was the heart of Austin's original colony. Stephen F Austin designed that plantation region as much as anyone else did he's the father of that plantation region.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that Brazos River region.
Speaker 1:Tell us something, John, this is a subject that, surprisingly, has been understudied, I would say, in Texas history. We don't have particularly these focused, real, you know, specific accounts of plantation, life and practice in the institution of slavery and the enslaved people that you do when you were working on this, and we always do this. Every time we work on something, we come across something, we go man, I didn't know that. Or something that really surprised us. What was something? Tell our listeners a couple of things something about as you researched this book that really surprised the hell out of you. Something. Tell our listeners a couple of things of something about as you research this book that really surprised the hell out of you um, I think it was.
Speaker 3:What really surprised the hell out of me was the sheer depravity of the system of slavery as it existed down there. That you know. There there are differences in the way systems of slavery were practiced across the state, but the amount of sheer depravity.
Speaker 3:You know, I ran across an account where an enslaver named Ann Thomas had purchased a six-year-old girl named Adeline as a nursemaid. But Adeline didn't work well as a nursemaid so they put her to work in the cotton fields at six and she ran away from the work in the cotton fields and they found her and Ann Thomas' husband gave her a number of severe whippings for just not wanting to work in the cotton fields and I think it was that sort of and there are multiple accounts of children that age being forced to work in the cotton and sugar fields. And so I think it was just the sheer brutality of it, the inhumanity of it, but also the mortality rates, among those who work with sugar especially. We're not talking about a sustainable population of enslaved people. We're talking about a negative year-over-year population growth. The only way to keep it even steady was to import new enslaved people, mostly from New Orleans and elsewhere in the Upper South, but you had maybe a mortality rate of negative 5% per year.
Speaker 1:That's astounding.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, john. What were the size of these plantations? Were these larger? Because you know you look at history and the history of slavery on some of the larger plantations. You know, like Frederick Douglass, all these, they talk about the brutality because you had absentee landlords and you had, you know, various overseers who worked the plantation and you know they had no investment in the slave except making them obey, whereas enslaved people in smaller may have reported sometimes that they had more intimate relations with their enslavers. Were these large plantations? How does that fit into that kind of idea that a lot of people have?
Speaker 3:Let's put it this way the largest enslavers down in that area were Robert and David G Mills, who were also merchants, and they collateralized their businesses with plantations. They had three of them and in 1860, they had between the two of them over 340 enslaved people.
Speaker 1:Really Wow For Texas that's a lot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there was also an enslaver who he passed away in 1863 and they had to auction off his estate and the auction amounted to. This was, in Wharton County, 144 people over the course of two days.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is also astounding. Just you know that there's that much of it going on these are large operations.
Speaker 3:I documented almost 200 plantations in these four counties alone and I defined a plantation as anyone with 20 or more enslaved people. Anything less than 20, I just didn't even count as a plantation. So there were almost 200 such establishments in these four counties alone.
Speaker 2:Area Richmond-Rosenberg area especially unmarked graves, and this was what they have dated back to the convict lease system and in those days they were doing a lot of rice and sugar plantations. What were they doing back then?
Speaker 3:Well convict, leasing was mainly sugar.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, as far as the plantations you were studying in the antebellum period, they were doing made with sugar. Well, I mean, as far as the plantations you were studying in the 18th Antebellum period, they were doing cotton and sugar. So sugar was even profitable way back then.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They started cultivating sugar on a large scale right around 1840. And the sugar crop down there was not as reliable as it is in, say, south Louisiana, because of the hurricanes that hit Texas more than they hit Louisiana, at least at that time, and so they would collateralize their sugar crops with cotton crops. So if one failed, the other would bail them out for they knew John.
Speaker 1:This is in your book coming up. This one thing is we don't. If you look at Virginia and some of the deep south states and things like this, there's a number of these detailed. We're looking at the plantations and studying the plantations and what went on, but Texas is not ever. We don't have a lot of that. We have some large scale studies of the institution but we don't have a whole lot of people that dug down and studied the plantation. That's one reason why your book is going to be so valuable. Why do you think that was? Why did we not? Why did Texas historians not get involved in that?
Speaker 3:Because of the mythology surrounding Texas history.
Speaker 1:I agree with that, but there's mythology surrounding Alabama history too. But they documented a lot of plantation.
Speaker 2:Was it more the idea that Texas is a western state than a southern state? That's a part of it.
Speaker 3:In Alabama. You don't have the Texas Revolution to fall back on and spend all your attention on. You go back and Alabama. History is just straight slavery, and so you know. I think that Texas historians were rather hesitant and wanted to build a certain image of the state and slavery. In particular, deep South slavery like we're talking about, just didn't have a place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you're right. I think you're right. Well, and then Mike Campbell came along. But even Campbell's study is, he studies the institution, which is great, but he doesn't get down to that plantation level as much.
Speaker 3:He does in some ways in.
Speaker 1:Harrison County but slavery in.
Speaker 3:Harrison County is going to be much more similar to slavery in North Louisiana as opposed to South Louisiana, and what we're looking at here with the Texas Lowcountry is an area that's much more like the Louisiana Sugar Parishes and or the South Carolina Lowcountry. And so that's why I titled it what I did, because I feel it's a mixture of those two societies the Louisiana sugar parishes and the South Carolina oil country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am reading it right now. I haven't finished it yet, so I'm getting into it, but that's something I think if someone else begins to you go much past the period of slavery and the Civil War in the book you go on down and you take it almost to the 20th century. Tell us about that part of it, because I think all that is fascinating, particularly when we get into this how Texas, like other southern states, tried to keep their biracial order in place.
Speaker 3:They did so. Here's the issue In that region in 1865, when freedom comes over, 70% of the voters are black. So what you're going to have are Republican county governments that are entrenched there for the next 20 years, republican county machines, republican County machines, and so reconstruction really doesn't fully end until the last of the black office holders are forced out of office, and they're forced out of office by violent coups the Jaybird-Pecker war was in Fort Bend County.
Speaker 3:But what they did, of course, is they formed the White man Union Associations In Fort Bend County. There was one in Matagorda County, one in Brazoria County, one in Wharton County, and so as they formed these White man Union Associations, then of course it forced these black office holders out, and Nathan Haller, the last black legislator from that area, didn't lead the legislature until 1895. And so to me Reconstruction doesn't fully end down there until 1895.
Speaker 1:Certainly that's a great point. It certainly is. I want to get something else while we're here, because you've been part of it. You're kind of one of these Gene and I are not so much young gun, but you're kind of a younger scholar getting involved in this in Texas history. Some would say that the field of Texas history is at a crossroads. The state of it right now is we're going to figure out how this is going to advance. Is it going to continue in one direction? Is it going to fall back on the old ideas of mythology? But a lot of people like you are forming new paradigms, new interpretations of history. Would you agree? Would you say that? That? What world? What world are we going to? Where are we going with the state of Texas history? Is it going to advance? Are we going to come up with these new interpretations or is that mythology going to always hold us back?
Speaker 3:The mythology will always be there. I don't think the mythology will always hold us back. I don't think the mythology will always hold us back. I think we've reached a tipping point, culturally and socially in Texas, where we are diverse enough. The academy is diverse enough in Texas, where the younger scholars coming up are diverse enough in Texas, that we are tearing down that old regime, that old mythology. And it has to happen.
Speaker 3:It's a new generation of scholars, it's a new generation of historiography and I don't know if the old myths about Texas will ever completely die. I doubt it. But you're going to have an academic world that started in the 80s but really didn't start to push through until the 90s, and now you're seeing it start to take over. And that's what the traditionalists are freaking out about is that these new interpretations are becoming, starting to become more mainstream interpretations where, when you exclude slavery from a discussion of the Texas Revolution, no one takes you seriously anymore. Now we could argue till the cows come home about you know what percentage of the Texas Revolution was caused by slavery, but the point is you have to have it in the discussion.
Speaker 1:That's just one example yeah, and you're right.
Speaker 2:You know, john, one of the other things you know a little bit different and besides, you're young and Scott and I are getting long in the tooth. You do this research and writing, but you're at a two-year institution.
Speaker 3:I am.
Speaker 2:When you're teaching, you know you've got students coming in there. You may not see them go on to get their four-year degree. Some of them aren't there for a four-year degree. So what is it you're trying to communicate? What is it you're trying to do when you teach? Are you looking at skills? Are you looking at content? What do you want the students to walk away with?
Speaker 3:There are two things I want my students to always walk away with.
Speaker 3:One is always historical facts or historical paradigms that they've never even considered.
Speaker 3:You know that, for instance, the transition, if you're doing US History 1301, the transition from indentured servitude to race-based slavery, right, the fact that race-based slavery didn't just come out of nowhere, that it was a system that was cultivated one court decision at a time, one person at a time over time, right and so I want them to come away with things like that.
Speaker 3:But more than that, I want them to come away with the idea, to the ability to think critically, the ability to think for themselves, to take these facts and to become better informed citizens, because I think that's a lot of what's wrong with the country right now is we have too few people who think through what it is they believe, thoroughly examine themselves and thoroughly examine those beliefs and belief systems. And so if I can get them to do that through the lens of history whatever lens of history it might be if I can get them to see that fascism is not impossible as a takeover here in the United States, it's very possible, and some days I think we're closer than others. But if I can get them to see that, you know, just take into effect or take into account these, use history to try to get them to see the world in ways that they wouldn't necessarily see it before, and use that to enhance their critical thinking skills. That's what I'm looking at.
Speaker 1:Well, are you concerned about the current environment and how it's going to affect yours, mine, gene's, many of ours ability to do just that? I mean, I got an email today, just today, for example, that because we're part of the University of Texas system, sfa is now that we must submit every one of our syllabi and if there's any reference to anything related to DEI, we must take it out. It must be completely cut out of our syllabi and they will tell us what it is and what we will cut out.
Speaker 2:How will they know we don't give detail plans?
Speaker 1:Well, that's a good question, Gene, but they're looking. They're looking for any keywords, anything I'm telling you, anything they think they can see.
Speaker 3:I don't know. I don't know what they're doing. I think. Well, of course it is, but I think that this is a in the short term, yes, I am worried. In the long term, I'm not. I think we're going through something akin to McCarthyism in the 50s and that eventually the tide will change back in the other direction, Hopefully, I mean look, I hope you're right, it is disconcerting and I don't know for sure, but I'd like to think that's what's happening you might be more optimistic than I am.
Speaker 2:I don't really care about political my students, political affiliation. I want them to vote. I'd like for them to vote like I vote, but I don't try to get that across.
Speaker 1:Nobody votes like I vote but here's the thing.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing. As a university professor, I don't like oversight and micromanagement on what I'm teaching in class. I shouldn't be teaching stuff that isn't part of my field of study. I don't care which political party it is or which political ideology it is. When you start doing that and telling professors, you can't teach this you can't teach that.
Speaker 3:That is going to make a lot of us upset.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it has made a lot of us upset.
Speaker 3:Uh, yeah, it has made a lot of us upset and the I don't know what the end game is. I don't know what's going to happen. I'd like to think it's a moment we're living through and not a sea change, but I don't know that for sure.
Speaker 1:I think you're exactly right. It is disconcerting. I guess we will see how this will shake out. It'll be something that this podcast can deal with as we go through Absolutely Well. We've reached that. These things always go so damn fast, I tell you. We act like we've just gotten started and they're over with. But we've learned. We've learned by heart experience. Nobody wants to listen to Gene or I more than 30 minutes, so we keep them at that together. But we've reached that point, John Lumberg, where we always ask the last question and give you your chance to opine on anything you wish to opine on, be it an aphorism, be it a little gem of wisdom. You want to send somebody, or whatever it is. So we ask, Dr John Lumber, what do you know? What I know?
Speaker 3:is that Texas history and the field of Texas history is headed in the right direction.
Speaker 1:Good, for you. That's optimistic, I'm glad.
Speaker 3:Finally starting to break free of the old chains of the old, some of the older organizations that had begun to turn into ancestors to worship, and starting to turn a corner in a in a new and positive direction.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a well. I'm glad you say that. I'm glad to know that it's been great, john Folks. The latest book John has out is the Texas Low Country Slavery and Freedom on the Gulf Coast 1822 to 1895. Go out, buy it, order it. It's Texas A&M Press, correct, john?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Texas A&M Press. They'll sell it to you directly. Go to their website, buy it directly on that. Call Jay Du. I'm telling him that Gene said to give you a discount. See how far that gets you.
Speaker 2:Give him the price discount. That's why they charge you double.
Speaker 1:Probably so. Thanks, john, it's been good, all right, great John.
Speaker 2:Thank you.