On July 8, 1860, fire destroyed the entire business section of Dallas,   Texas. At about the same time, two other fires damaged towns near Dallas.    Early reports indicated that spontaneous combustion was the cause of the   blazes, but four days later, Charles Pryor, editor of the Dallas   Herald, wrote letters to editors of pro-Democratic newspapers,   alleging that the fires were the result of a vast abolitionist conspiracy,   the purpose of which was to devastate northern Texas and free the region's   slaves. White preachers from the North, he asserted, had recruited local   slaves to set the fires, murder the white men of their region, and rape   their wives and daughters.  These sensational allegations set off a panic   of unprecedented proportions that extended throughout the Lone Star State   and beyond.  In Texas Terror, Donald E. Reynolds offers a deft   analysis of these events and illuminates the ways in which this   fictionalized conspiracy determined the course of southern secession   immediately before the Civil War. As Reynolds explains, all three fires   probably resulted from a combination of extreme heat and the presence of   new, and highly volatile, phosphorous matches in local stores.  But from   July until mid-September, vigilantes from the Red River to the Gulf of   Mexico charged numerous whites and blacks with involvement in the alleged   conspiracy and summarily hanged many of them. Lurid stories of the alleged   abolitionist plot in Texas were reprinted in most southern newspapers, and   a spate of similar panics occurred in other states.  States-rights   Democrats asserted that the Republican Party had given tacit approval, if   not active support, to the abolitionist scheme, and they repeatedly cited   the "Texas Troubles" as an example of what would happen throughout the   South if Lincoln were elected President.  After Lincoln's election,   secessionists charged that all who opposed immediate secession were   inviting abolitionists to commit unspeakable depredations. This argument,   as Reynolds clearly shows, was used with great effectiveness, particularly   where there was significant opposition to immediate secession. Mining a   rich vein of primary sources, Reynolds shows how secessionists throughout   the Lower South created public panic for a purpose: preparing a region that   traditionally had been nationalistic for withdrawal from the Union.  Their   exploitation of the "Texas Troubles," Reynolds asserts, was a critical and   possibly decisive factor in the Lower South's decision to leave the Union   of their fathers and form the Confederacy. 272 pages, 6 Halftones, 1   Map, 6 x 9

Texas Terror: The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1860 and the Secession of the Lower South (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War) PDF

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