Barbs, Bullets, and Blood : The 1880s Texas Barbed Wire Wars

Fence cutting usually occurred at night and responsibility for stopping it fell on local lawmen, who often failed. The Texas state government lacked statutory authority and financial means to stop it, so Governor John Ireland called the Texas legislature to Austin for a special session to write new laws and appropriate funds to cope with this revolution. After successful passage, Pinkerton and Ferrell’s commercial detectives and the Texas Rangers stepped in to assist. A war of barbs, bullets, and blood followed. Soon detectives fled the state, a Ranger was assassinated, and another Ranger wounded. In a midnight shootout with Rangers, two fence cutters were killed, one of them the neighboring community’s justice of the peace.

Texas’s fence-cutting incidents are found scattered in earlier writings, but Barbs, Bullets, and Blood is the first comprehensive coverage of one of the state’s most violent and costly episodes.