National Affairs: Red River War

Texas and Oklahoma are not independent Balkan powers. If they were, they would have been at war last week, with a frontier bridge across the sluggish Red River as causa belli. As it was, Oklahoma's bewhiskered Governor William Henry ("Alfalfa Bill") Murray† declared martial law and called out guardsmen on his side of the river. Half a mile away on the other side, Texas' corpulent Governor Ross Shaw Sterling posted a detachment of his Rangers for military duty. The real fighting, however, was done in the columns of the Press.

For years across the...