The Devil’s Triangle

James M. Smallwood, Kenneth W. Howell and Carol C. Taylor
In Texas, as in the rest of the Confederacy, the Reconstruction era (1865-1877) saw little more than a continuation of the Civil War in a new guise. The Union won the first phase of the war that pitted professional armies against each other (1861-1865), but the South won the second phase that turned into guerrilla warfare. In Texas, terrorist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, operated in at least seventy-seven counties. Returning Confederate veterans also organized outlaw gangs that functioned much like the terrorist groups. This study of Benjamin Bickerstaff and other North East Texans provides a micro-history of the larger whole. Bickerstaff founded terrorist groups in at least two North East Texas counties, and led a gang of raiders who, at times, numbered up to 500 men.

War in East Texas: Regulators vs. Moderators

Bill O'Neal
From 1840 through 1844 East Texas was wracked by murderous violence between Regulator and Moderator factions, a fight that resulted in anarchy and violence, an action that did not end until Republic of Texas President Sam Houston sent 600 troops to Shelby County. The Regulator-Moderator War was the first and largest--in numbers of participants and fatalities--of the many blood feuds of Texas. No other nineteenth century feud anywhere in the United States--from the Hatfields and McCoys to the Johnson County War of Wyoming--produced as many casualties as the Regulators and Moderators. But the Regulator-Moderator War never captured the public imagination as did these more famous episodes of violence, so it is time to examine this dramatic period of pioneer East Texas.