Alexander Watkins Terrell: Civil War Soldier, Texas Lawmaker, American Diplomat.

Alexander Watkins Terrell: Civil War Soldier, Texas Lawmaker, American Diplomat. By Lewis L. Gould. Focus on American History Series. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. Pp. xv, 223. $29.95, ISBN 0-292-70297-3.)

Lewis L. Gould, one of the nation's preeminent political historians, took a brief hiatus from producing the all-encompassing political histories that have given him such acclaim to write a biography of one of Texas's many unrecognized figures--Alexander Watkins Terrell. Gould presents Terrell's manifold contributions to Texas with great clarity and insight. Thanks largely to Don Carleton, director of the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas historians have been encouraged recently to tap into the rich archival material of the century--particularly the voluminous papers of a variety of key Texans who have been overlooked by history. As a result, there has emerged a whole new tier of important Texans, whose contributions to both their state and country sometimes proved as significant and enduring as those of their more legendary counterparts such as Stephen F. Austin or Sam Houston. As Lewis Gould has demonstrated, Alexander Watkins Terrell was one such individual. This fine biography develops a full sense of Terrell's character and personality; but, perhaps more important, through the window of his life--which spanned almost the entire nineteenth-century--can be seen Texas's evolution from a rural and agrarian slave society into one of the fastest growing commercial states in post-Civil War America. Through Terrell's professional and political activities, especially during the Gilded Age, we observe the rise of the corporation via the railroad industry and of the effects of that particular enterprise on political, economic, and social life in Texas.

Gould points out that although the postwar economic development of Texas accelerated significantly, politically the Lone Star State remained tied to its antebellum past, regardless of how hard reformers like Terrell fought for change. Indeed, as Gould concludes, "Like Texas itself during his lifetime, Terrell displayed traits of enlightened, forward-looking thought and the most regressive aspects of a flawed society" (p. 168). In short, Terrell's full, varied, and often controversial life is a story that encompassed some of the most crucial, formative decades in both Texas and United States history. Through this brief but poignant and informative biography, Lewis Gould has once again demonstrated the qualities of interpretation and scholarship that have earned him stature as one of the profession's most recognized historians.

JOHN A. MORETTA

University of Houston