The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 71, July 1967 - April, 1968 Page: 139
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Book Reviews
tempers his description in order to protect his innocent lover from
the distress which would occur if she could see through his eyes the
ravages of war. As the letters continue, neighbors, friends, and fellow
countrymen are wounded or die. Each additional name of a war
casualty must bring forth the tears and grief at home.
With the letters, woven deep into the pattern of the prose, one also
sees the remorseless, plodding movement of troops and equipment
from battle to battle. It soon becomes as clear to the reader as it must
have been to Douglas, that victory and defeat are so close to each other
that neither in time becomes any more interesting than the other.
Whenever men fight, the dead and wounded remain fixed in the
memory. Sensitive men remember the death or wounding of a comrade
or friend and not the fact that the experience was part of a victory or
defeat.
The Douglas letters, in addition to the miscellaneous diary entries
included in this volume, will be worthwhile reading for East Texans,
Tylerites, Civil War buffs, and students of Texas history. Philatelists
will find an extremely valuable and unique description of the vagaries
of civil war postal services within the Confederacy. More important,
however, is the value that these letters will have for those who are
interested in the lonely task of a young Civil War diarist from Tyler
who, in spite of the carnage and hate which became his daily business,
could not forget the young woman with whom he hoped to build a
better life at the end of a grim, lonely war.
United States Senate RALPH YARBOROUGH
King Fisher: His Life and Times. By O. C. Fisher with J. C. Dykes.
Norman (University of Oklahoma Press), 1966. Pp. xvii+153.
Bibliography. $2.00.
Few gunslingers were more notorious than the monarch of the
Nueces country in the 1870o's, John King Fisher. There have been
hundreds of accounts of this border ruffian's activities. Since most of
these offer little more than conflicting opinion, O. C. Fisher, a second
cousin of the outlaw-turned-lawman, has sallied forth to end the
discord.
King Fisher, born in Texas in 1854, was not unlike other mischiev-
ous boys, but one scrape with the law-for housebreaking-cost him
four months in the Huntsville penitentiary. Shortly after his release139
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 71, July 1967 - April, 1968, periodical, 1968; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117145/m1/157/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.