Tall Men with Long Rifles. By James T. DeShields. (The Bay-
lor Company, San Antonio, 1935. Pp. xvi, 240, illustra-
tions. $2.00.)

According to his own story, Creed Taylor fought throughout
the Texas Revolution, from the first skirmish at Gonzales to the
battle of San Jacinto. A few years before he died in 1906, at
the age of about a hundred, he dictated to James T. DeShields
his recollections of the Texas War of Independence. The result
is Tall Men with Long Rifles, a book which Mr. DeShields calls
"the only complete personal narrative of the Texas Revolution
that has come down to posterity."

Tall Men with Long Rifles begins with some account of the
nature and origin of the "tall men." Then come accounts of
the rise of the Texans after the arrest of Travis and his com-
rades; of the first scrap at Gonzales on October 2, 1835; of the
skirmishes at Lipantitlan and Concepción; of the half-serious,
half-comic "Grass Fight"; of the taking of the Alamo by the
Texans; of Dr. Grant's disastrous expedition against Matamoros;
and of the "Runaway Scrape."

Reports of the Constitutional Convention, the fall of the
Alamo, and the slaughter at Goliad have been supplied from other
sources, for Taylor, admittedly, was not on hand. This is by far
the weakest part of the book; the chronology is confused and the
narratives are repetitive. The make-up of the book is good, but
the proof-reading was not as careful as might be desired.

Arlin Turner.

How to cite:
"Tall Men with Long Rifles", Volume 39, Number 2, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v039/n2/review_DIVL2127.html
[Accessed Tue Nov 24 2:23:55 CST 2009]