
The Salt War of San Elizario - brudgers
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jcs01
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copperx
Is it just me or is this kind of writing extremely hard to comprehend? Reading
such condensed texts on matters of political significance was what put me off
on learning history and politics as an undergrad.

As I read the text, a lot of unanswered questions come up. "Fountain and Mills
became leaders of the opposing factions." Why were there two opposing
factions? Unanswered.

"Fountain, leader of the Anti-Salt Ring, was elected to the Texas Senate in
1869 with the expectation of securing title to the deposits for the people of
the El Paso area". Wait, he was "Anti-Salt" but still wanted to secure title?
What did Anti-Salt mean, then?

"The second stage of the trouble began in 1872, when Charles Howard, a
Missouri lawyer, Democrat, and former Confederate officer, joined with Cardis
to break the Republican machine."

What does the fact that he was a "Confederate officer" have to do with all
this? "Republican machine"? Does that mean the Republican faction? wait, both
factions were Republican. I'm now confused.

I'm not a native English speaker, so that might be the problem. Or more
likely, I'm missing a lot of the historic background to understand this text.

Am I just too ignorant to understand the text or is the writing bad?

~~~
dmckeon
The writing assumes that a lot of context is familiar to the reader, which is
not too surprising given the source: the Texas State Historical Association,
so likely written by Texas historians for a generally Texan audience.

The Wikipedia entry is much more detailed:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Elizario_Salt_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Elizario_Salt_War)
and provides context for the trans-Pecos region, and most of the things you
ask about.

