"A Little Standing Army in Himself": N. A. Jennings Tells of the Texas Rangers, 1875

Abstract: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 brought an enormous chunk of Mexico to the United States. This added to the territory obtained by the annexation of Texas in 1845, but more than just territory was added. More than 75,000 Spanish-speaking residents became U.S. citizens, but the struggle to achieve that citizenship was long and often unsuccessful. Mexican-Americans lost political power and civil liberties quickly in Texas. Justice was hard to secure and the ranching country of South Texas became a landless borderland for Anglo and Hispano alike. Cattle thieves were rampant. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans also had to endure a terror campaign by the Texas Rangers, the state's leading law enforcement officers. One of those Rangers, N. A. Jennys described a complex pattern of ethnic conflict along the border in 1875 in his A Texas Ranger. The Rangers were founded in 1835 to fight Indians, formed a special corps in the Mexican War, and were re-established after the Civil War.

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