Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, the Struggle for Texas

The Texas Revolution has long been cast as an epic episode in the origins of the American West. As the story goes, larger-than-life figures like Sam Houston, David Crockett, and William Barret Travis fought to free Texas from repressive Mexican rule. In Unsettled Land (Basic, 2022), historian Sam Haynes reveals the reality beneath this powerful creation myth. He shows how the lives of ordinary people-white Americans, Mexicans, Native Americans, and those of African descent-were upended by extraordinary events over twenty-five years. After the battle of San Jacinto, racial lines snapped taut as a new nation, the Lone Star republic, sought to expel Indians, marginalize Mexicans, and tighten its grip on the enslaved.
Sam W. Haynes is a professor in the department of history and the director of the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington. Sam was the Bill & Rita Clements Senior Fellow for the Study of Southwestern America in 2019-2020.
This event was co-sponsored by the SMU Clements Center for Southwest Studies
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