Gracious, What A Blunt Comment!

Earlier in the summer, I read Ovando J. Hollister’s book Colorado Volunteers In New Mexico: 1862 first published (under a different title) in 1863. Hollister’s account is straightforward and does not shy away from discussing some of the more unsavory elements of soldier’s life. Included in the book is one of the most negative comments about Texans that I have ever seen. Of course, one must bear in mind and take into account that Hollister was a Union soldier. He is writing of the battle of Glorieta in the following:

“On turning a short bend we entered the canon proper and came full on two howitzers, less than two hundred yards off. These were attended by a company of mounted men, displaying a saucy little red flag emblazoned with the emblem of which Texas has small reason to be proud. San Jacinto expresses all the glory of that arrogant, impotent State, while language is inadequate to describe the narrowness and insolence of her public policy or the moral and intellectual degradation of her outcast society” (p. 98-99).