I’ll Die Before I’ll Run
The Story of the Great Feuds of Texas
The decade of Texas blood feuds after the Civil War, recovered by the historian who bothered to look.
C.L. Sonnichsen taught at Texas Western in El Paso and spent decades collecting the oral history of the state’s post-Civil War feuds, the Sutton-Taylor, the Horrell-Higgins, the Salt War, from the descendants of the men who fought them. Published in 1951, it remains the fullest account of a decade in which private violence substituted for a state that had effectively collapsed, and it is the source most later western historians work from.
Recommended by 1 Person
Bryan Burrough
Sonnichsen was a Harvard-trained historian teaching in El Paso who almost single-handedly recovered the stories of the great feuds that wracked Texas for a decade after the Civil War.
As an Amazon Associate, bookstoread.org earns from qualifying purchases. Links to Amazon on this page may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. Spotted an error on this page? Tell us and we will fix it.