The U.S. Army and the Texas Frontier Economy, 1845-1900.

The U.S. Army and the Texas Frontier Economy, 1845-1900. By Thomas T. Smith. Texas A&M University Military Series, No. 65. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, c. 1999. Pp. xii, 307. $34.95, ISBN 0-89096-882-9.)

Texas has provided a signal number of military officers and enlisted men over the course of its history, including war heroes such as Audie Murphy and Macario Garcia, but, according to this tightly written and reasoned treatise, the state has gotten as good as it gave in the form of economic largess from the U.S. government. Thomas T. Smith, an army officer on active duty at Fort Bliss, successfully develops two themes in The U.S. Army and the Texas Frontier Economy, 1845-1900: first, that the military's spending yielded civilian rewards far beyond the boundaries of a few garrison towns; and, second, that Texas's political leaders aligned themselves with the War Department to produce revenues of at least $70 million over the fifty-five-year period under study. The author implicitly refutes the legend of rugged individualism espoused by professional Texans and demonstrates a continuity of policy with implications for scholarship in the areas of Reconstruction and Bourbon Democracy. Each of the two major themes enhances previous contributions, the former building upon local and regional studies, and the latter supporting theses advanced by historian Robert Wooster.

Rather than a "military-industrial complex," a term that has carried negative connotations ever since President Eisenhower's farewell address four decades ago, Smith instead refers to the "military-commercial" cooperative in Texas (p. 174). He views this earlier arrangement between the government and small-scale industry in essentially favorable terms. Contracts ordinarily went to a variety of small vendors, rather than to selective giants, and the contracting parties received fair value in services. Washington introduced or augmented technological advances in construction, transportation, and communication as promptly as was feasible. Federal expenditures of up to 30 percent of the army's budget benefited Texas merchants and consumers alike.

Most military expenditures emanated from four War Department bureaus: the Paymaster's Department, the Bureau of Engineers, the Commissary of Subsistence Department, and the Quartermaster's Department. The first headed the list in quantity, with soldiers' pay and post employment exceeding $38 million by the turn of the century. Among other duties, the Quartermaster's Department leased, bought, or constructed forts in a state originally containing not an inch of federal land. Specie payments, required by law until 1870, deposited hard money into an economy weakened by the Civil War, overshadowing much-vaunted cotton and cattle production as a financial restorative. The other bureaus matched the paymasters' influence over the period. The Corps of Engineers established military routes, which presaged the state's modern transportation system, and converted Galveston into a deepwater port. The later arriving Signal Corps extended the telegraph system and anticipated the activities of the U.S. Weather Bureau.

Students of Texas, military, or economic history will appreciate Smith's extensive research, as will readers interested in the big picture or specific data. Those who do not know a carreta from a cabbage will find the answers to their questions here.

GARNA L. CHRISTIAN University of Houston-Downtown