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Texas Cart War

outbreak of violence in 1857

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ54871333
Source-derived summary

The Texas Cart War was an outbreak of violence in 1857. Most of the violence occurred when American ox cart drivers attacked and hanged 70 Mexican ox cart drivers. The 'war' consisted of five attacks, three in July, one in September, and the last in November 1857. This attack involved Jose Huerta and Adalberto Davila. All of the attacks were on roads from San Antonio to Lavaca, Texas.

Background

In the early-to mid 19th century Mexican cart drivers would charge rates that were lower than their white competitors to ship items from San Antonio, Texas, to the coast. Anglo shippers resented the competition. An attempted attack on Mexican cart drivers occurred in 1855, and there had been several other sporadic attacks by 1857.

Attacks

Sustained violence began on July 3, 1857, when a group of disguised men attacked six carts, and wounded six drivers in Goliad County, Texas. In the second attack, on July 14, around 20 Americans attacked carts near Goliad.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Texas Cart War” as outbreak of violence in 1857. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Texas, Cart and outbreak.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1857, 1855—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Texas, Cart and outbreak providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Texas Cart War”, the useful work is to connect “outbreak of violence in 1857” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q54871333. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1857 and 1855.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Texas Cart War”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Texas Cart War primary sources, Texas Cart War archive and Texas research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Texas Cart War” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.