The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 40, July 1936 - April, 1937 Page: 338

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

revolution. Certainly he is now possessed of better equipment for
the job than any other historian is likely to acquire.
The reviewer disagrees with Professor Binkley's high appraisal
of some of the revolutionary leaders-David G. Burnet, for ex-
ample. He was courageous, it is true, and self-sacrificing; but he
was also opinionated and stubborn in domestic affairs and in foreign
affairs incomprehensibly stupid. And Professor Binkley is cu-
riously ambiguous, or uncertain, about the battle of San Jacinto,
in which Houston won the independence of Texas; was it fortu-
itous, or planned? The answer seems to be that Houston had no
plan of campaign beyond retreating before the Mexicans and play-
ing for time in the hope of recruiting an adequate army. No
human intelligence could have foreseen that Santa Anna would
thrust himself into the trap in which he found himself on April
21, 1836. Houston simply followed and shut the trapdoor--or
so it seems to me. EUGENE C. BARKER.
Histories and Historians of Hispanic America: A Bibliographical
Essay. By A. Curtis Wilgus. (Washington: The Inter-
American Bibliographical and Library Association, Series
I, Volume 2, 1936. Pages xiii, 113.)
In this book the author, confessing how foolhardy it would be
were he "to lay claim to completeness," has "attempted only .. .
to call attention to some of the leading writers and to some of the
outstanding references which deal with" his subject. The classi-
fication chosen is said to be "chronological by centuries . . . while
the arrangement within these divisions is generally both logical
and chronological."
To be more specific: The subject matter is divided into one
chapter for each of the five centuries under survey-the sixteenth
to the twentieth, inclusive. In turn, each chapter contains three
subheads: I. "Introduction"-no one of which contains more than
two hundred words; II. "General Works"-which relate to His-
panic America as a whole or to more than one political subdivision
of the same; and III. "Special Works"-these being distributed
under the heads of the various political entities of the colonial or
of the national period, as may be the case.
The author mentions many useful works relating to Hispanic
America. But one cannot fail to note inconsistencies in organi-

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