Adele Briscoe Looscan, Daughter of the Republic

What better way to kick off Women’s History Month than with Adele Briscoe Looscan, the first female president of the Texas State Historical Association! 

A “woman of her time,” she was “a combination of nineteenth-century tradition and twentieth-century progressivism. She flourished in the society of both women and men. She earned the respect of both. She was shaped by circumstance and by her heritage as a daughter of the Republic of Texas and was motivated throughout her life by her dedication to it.”

Adele Briscoe Looscan: Daughter of the Republic by Laura Lyons McLemore - the fourth in our Texas Biography Series - is now available!

Dear Readers

29 June 2015

Fort Worth, TX

Dear Readers,

I hope this letter finds you well. I write more for cathartic means than for any other purpose, and it is my hope that through your reading (and possibly through your writing) you too may find catharsis.

While working as a graduate intern at TCU Press, I was reawakened to a fault in modern correspondence: we have lost letters. Well, we haven’t lost them exactly . . . we no longer write them. (Note: an extended text message does not count as a letter.)

Kassia Waggoner and Adam Nemmers, two doctoral students at Texas Christian University, stumbled upon a collection of Civil War letters in the Mary Couts Burnett Library. The Love family composed these letters that not only grant insight into the lives of soldiers but also reveal intimate details of family life during the Civil War. As Waggoner and Nemmers explain in their book, Yours in Filial Regard: The Civil War Letters of a Texas Family, the Love brothers fighting in the war—Cyrus, Sam, James, John, and Robert—wrote most of the letters, revealing the importance of written correspondence to their psychological health.

After reading Yours in Filial Regards, I believe the Love brothers teach us four main sources of motivation for writing letters:

Calculated Thought

Words penned down are not hurriedly typed and then sent into a digital world. They are thought out, measured, decided upon, and then written. Those whom you love deserve your letters because they deserve your thoughts—your unhurried thoughts.

Absolute Love and Care

If composing a letter requires that you carefully think about the person to whom you are writing, then the act of letter writing proves how much you care about them. Your words testify that you have set aside all other aspects of your daily life to chronicle your deepest sympathies regarding this person.

Commitment

You don’t write a letter to someone in whom you have not invested a significant amount of time and energy—plain and simple. (Even if you write a negative letter, you are still investing a significant amount of energy to pen down your negative emotions.)

Worry

This point may seem strange, but if you read through Waggoner and Nemmer’s collection, I’m certain you will find it more than appropriate. Throughout their letters, the Love brothers express concern for their family’s welfare. But underlying worry seems to permeate the letters—the brothers wonder why they have not received letters back from their family, no doubt questioning how much they are missed by their loved ones.

When we are away from those we love, it’s natural to worry whether they think of us as often as we think of them. Cyrus Love, the eldest Love brother, is no exception, so he writes letters to his family. But then one day, August 20, 1863, he writes his last letter. I doubt he knew that it would be his last, but his words ring ironically into the present day:

My life has again been protected by Providence. . . It has been the Will of the Deity that I should not be killed so far and I hope He will protect my life through the war so that I may be able to return to you. . . The sum of my wishes for some time past is that I may live to get back to you. . . (Letter 74)

Cyrus died in battle on October 7, 1863. He never returned to his family. His last penned words read:

Tell Tenny. Alice. Mary. Lizzy. And John K to be good children and study hard.

Yours in filial regard &c

      C.W. Love

Cyrus may have worried whether his family was thinking about him or whether they knew how much he cared for them. But history has proved that Cyrus need not have worried—his love and care lives on today through his letter.

Letters. They need not go by the wayside. They, perhaps more than any other medium, show how much we love and care for those around us. Cyrus’ final words cause me to wonder: if I had one last letter to write, to whom would I write it and what would it say?

I propose that you ask yourself the same questions and respond below. I realize that I am praising hand-written correspondence through a digital medium, and maybe that’s how you should “write” your letter if you so wish. But I’m going to start this challenge off with a handwritten letter and post the image below. Feel free to do the same.

I, like Cyrus Love, would send my last letter to my parents. Who would you send yours to? What would your letter say?

Happy writing,

Megan

Megan Poole is a graduate student and teaching assistant in the TCU Department of English.

Witness to an Execution

by investigative reporter Kathy Cruz

On the December night that I witnessed the execution of Bobby Wayne Woods, I asked that I be allowed to be in the witness room designated for his family members, rather than in the room reserved for the family of the young girl he had sexually assaulted and brutally murdered. I had been with a couple of other reporters in the office of the prison system's public information officer when the phone rang with word that last minute appeals had been denied, and the execution would be carried out immediately. As we followed briskly behind the PIO to the building that houses the execution chamber, I felt as if I might hyperventilate from the gravity of watching a man being put to death. Though I felt he had earned his fate, I felt sad for the choices he had made, and compassion for his family. It was that compassion that made me want to report on how they were affected by the execution of a man many considered a monster because of what he had done. The other reporters chose the other witness room.

Watching Woods die was a surreal experience, but what happened next was perhaps stranger. To my surprise, I felt fine. In fact, I felt hungry. I wrote a story about the execution on my laptop computer over a patty melt at the Huntsville Denny's. After filing the story and speaking by phone to my editor, I slept fine.

Go figure.

But after Darlie Routier popped into my head one Sunday afternoon in April 2012, I did not sleep well. For whatever reason, the case grabbed me by the throat and only let me go when, two Aprils later, I turned over a rough draft of a book manuscript to TCU Press. While the manuscript was under review, I continued working, adding several more chapters. The following April - three years after my initial random thought about Darlie Routier - the paperback edition of Dateline:Purgatory was in my hands and tears were in my eyes.

Dateline: Purgatory is not a book about the evils of the death penalty, but rather the dark side of our justice system. I am able to sleep just fine when someone who is guilty is held accountable. It's when their guilt is not so clear that I toss and turn.

Praise for Dateline: Purgatory

"Everybody knows the Texas criminal justice system doesn’t work, but few know why and how. Kathy Cruz does, and Dateline: Purgatory proves it. This richly detailed and well-narrated book affords a view of the Texas system rarely seen by the outside world. It shows how ambitious prosecutors, compliant judges, and naïve jurors can make for a lethal combination. It also shows the terrible human cost involved when justice becomes what it is in Texas: a team sport in a rigged game. Anyone who wants to understand the true nature of Texas injustice should read this book. Ms. Cruz has done the world a favor by writing it."

~Jeff Blackburn, founder and chief counsel, 

Innocence Project of Texas

"Dateline: Purgatory will make you feel. Then, it will make you think. And hopefully, after that, you will want to act. I did, because once an execution is carried out, there’s no correcting it."

~Michael Morton, author of Getting Life: 

An Innocent Man’s 25-Year Journey from Prison to Peace