This study examines the social and economic characteristics of the men who joined the Confederate Fourteenth Texas Infantry Regiment during the Civil War and provides a narrative history of the regiment's wartime service. The men of the Fourteenth Infantry enlisted in 1862 and helped to turn back the Federal Red River Campaign in April 1864. In creating a portrait of these men, the author used traditional historical sources (letters, diaries, medical records, secondary narratives) as well as statistical data from the 1860 United States census, military service records, and state tax rolls. The thesis places the heretofore unknown story of the Fourteenth Texas Infantry within the overall body of Civil War historiography.

In late 1861, the Confederate Texas government commissioned Joseph W. Speight to raise an infantry battalion. Speight's Battalion became the Fifteenth Texas Infantry in April 1862, and saw almost no action for the next year as it marched throughout Texas, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory. In May 1863 the regiment was ordered to Louisiana and for the next seven months took an active role against Federal troops in the bayou country. From March to May 1864 the unit helped turn away the Union Red River Campaign. The regiment remained in the trans-Mississippi region until it disbanded in May 1865. The final chapter quantifies age, family status, wealthholdings, and casualties among the regiment's members.

Document accompanying a transcription for solo euphonium and large brass ensemble of three arias, "Ecco ridente in cielo," "Largo al factotum," and "A un dottor della mia sorte," from Gioacchino Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville. Includes overviews of the arias' texts and contexts, orchestrational techniques in the transcriptions, the history and definition of the term "euphonium," and the history of the large brass ensemble in the United States.

Many historians have acknowledged the temptation to portray people as they see themselves and wish to be seen, blending history and ideology. The result is "mythistory." Twentieth century Texas writers and historians, remarking upon the exceptional durability of the Texas mythistory that emerged from the nineteenth century, have questioned its resistance to revision throughout the twentieth century. By placing the writing of Texas history within the context of American and European intellectual climates and history writing generally, from the close of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, it is possible to identify a pattern that provides some insight into the popularity and persistence of Texas mythistory.