A01=Glen Sample Ely
A01=James Bailey Blackshear
american military history
Author_Glen Sample Ely
Author_James Bailey Blackshear
Borderland history
borderlands studies
businessman
Category=JKV
Category=NHB
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
Category=NHW
Category=NHWF
Category=NHWR3
cattle trade
Comanches
Confederate Army
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
forthcoming
Frontier Military History
merchants
New Mexico
Santa Fe
Santa Fe Trail
Southwest Borderlands
Texas
Union Army
westward expansion
Product details
- ISBN 9780806197449
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 13 Oct 2026
- Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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A vast and desolate region, the Texas–New Mexico borderlands have long been an ideal setting for intrigue and illegal dealings—never more so than in the lawless early days of cattle trafficking and trade among the Plains tribes and Comancheros. This book takes us to the borderlands in the 1860s and 1870s for an in-depth look at Union-Confederate skullduggery amid the infamous Comanche-Comanchero trade in stolen Texas livestock.
In 1862, the Confederates abandoned New Mexico Territory and Texas west of the Pecos River, fully expecting to return someday. Meanwhile, administered by Union troops under martial law, the region became a hotbed of Rebel exiles and spies, who gathered intelligence, disrupted federal supply lines, and plotted to retake the Southwest. Using a treasure trove of previously unexplored documents, authors James Bailey Blackshear and Glen Sample Ely trace the complicated network of relationships that drew both Texas cattlemen and Comancheros into these borderlands, revealing the urban elite who were heavily involved in both the legal and illegal transactions that fueled the region’s economy.
Confederates and Comancheros deftly weaves a complex tale of Texan overreach and New Mexican resistance, explores cattle drives and cattle rustling, and details shady government contracts and bloody frontier justice. Peopled with Rebels and bluecoats, Comanches and Comancheros, Texas cattlemen and New Mexican merchants, opportunistic Indian agents and Anglo arms dealers, this book illustrates how central these contested borderlands were to the history of the American West.
In 1862, the Confederates abandoned New Mexico Territory and Texas west of the Pecos River, fully expecting to return someday. Meanwhile, administered by Union troops under martial law, the region became a hotbed of Rebel exiles and spies, who gathered intelligence, disrupted federal supply lines, and plotted to retake the Southwest. Using a treasure trove of previously unexplored documents, authors James Bailey Blackshear and Glen Sample Ely trace the complicated network of relationships that drew both Texas cattlemen and Comancheros into these borderlands, revealing the urban elite who were heavily involved in both the legal and illegal transactions that fueled the region’s economy.
Confederates and Comancheros deftly weaves a complex tale of Texan overreach and New Mexican resistance, explores cattle drives and cattle rustling, and details shady government contracts and bloody frontier justice. Peopled with Rebels and bluecoats, Comanches and Comancheros, Texas cattlemen and New Mexican merchants, opportunistic Indian agents and Anglo arms dealers, this book illustrates how central these contested borderlands were to the history of the American West.
James Bailey Blackshear is an adjunct professor of history at the University of North Texas at Dallas, and the author of Honor and Defiance: A History of the Las Vegas Land Grant in New Mexico and Fort Bascom: Soldiers, Comancheros, and Indians in the Canadian River Valley.
Glen Sample Ely is the award-winning author of The Texas Frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail, 1858–1861 and Murder in Montague: Frontier Justice and Retribution in Texas.
