| Summary: | "This study evaluated the post-Reconstruction militia in Texas and links trends there to the contemporary roles of the American postbellum militia and National Guard through 1940. This analysis uses the Houston Light Guards as a case study, yet the unit was by no means unique. The study focuses on the Houston Light Guards? involvement in the political, social and economic events of the city and its environs, demonstrates interaction with the community, as well as its role during racial, labor and political crises. Linked with white resurgence in the New South, the militia perpetuated and romanticized the memory of the Confederacy and the Lost Cause. For the most part, membership represented the upper classes of Southern society and insured a smooth transfer of power from the antebellum Old Guard who had redeemed the state and local governments to younger male heirs"--Abstract
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