This thesis explores the impact of home front and battlefield morale on Texas's civilian and military population during the Civil War. It addresses the creation, maintenance, and eventual surrender of Confederate nationalism and identity among Texans from five different counties: Colorado, Dallas, Galveston, Harrison, and Travis. The war divided Texans into three distinct groups: civilians on the home front, soldiers serving in theaters outside of the state, and soldiers serving within Texas's borders. Different environments, experiences, and morale affected the manner in which civilians and soldiers identified with the Confederate war effort. This study relies on contemporary letters, diaries, newspaper reports, and government records to evaluate how morale influenced national dedication and loyalty to the Confederacy among various segments of Texas's population.

The purpose of this paper is to examine, from a local perspective, the reaction of the southern conservative wing of the Democratic party to the liberal changes which occurred in that organization as a result of the transitional decades of the 1930s and 1940s. In particular, the study focuses on the growing sense of alienation and the eventual withdrawal of a handful of Texas Democrats from affiliation with the national body and their subsequent realignment with other dissident Dixie Democrats in the short-lived States' Rights party of 1948. This work is based essentially on the personal recollections of Texans who participated in the States' Rights movement and on those papers of the party's leaders which have survived until today.