In the early morning hours of October 1, 1862, state militia arrested more than two hundred alleged Unionists from five northern Texas counties and brought them to Gainesville. In the ensuing days, at least forty-four prisoners were hanged and several others were lynched in neighboring communities. In the first systematic treatment of this grisly climax to a heritage of violence and vigilantism in North Texas, Richard B. McCaslin provides a unique opportunity to study the tensions produced in southern society by the Civil War, the nature of disaffection in the Confederacy, and the American vigilante tradition.