The Lost War for Texas
The Lost War for Texas
James Aalan Bernsen is a native of Castroville, Texas and graduated with bachelor’s degrees in journalism and German from Texas A&M University and a master’s degree in history from Texas State University.
After working as a newspaper reporter, he moved into public relations and public policy. As a communications professional, he has appeared in over 250 television interviews on local, state and national news outlets.
After 9/11, Bernsen joined the United States Navy as an intelligence officer. He has been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and South Korea. He is a graduate with distinction of the U.S. Naval War College.
A lifelong interest in Texas history led him to use his G.I. Bill to obtain a master’s degree in Texas and American History from Texas State University in 2016. His thesis, Origins and Motivations of the Gutiérrez-Magee Filibusters, broke new ground in exploring one of Texas’ most important, but least-understood historical events.
He has been published in the Handbook of Texas, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Texas Books in Review, and East Texas Historical Journal. He writes a blog at
He currently lives on his family farm near Quihi, Texas.
The first Texas revolution of 1811-13 is a conflict forgotten by all but a few historians, but was larger and bloodier than the second revolution of 1836. The conflict consists of three phases: The Casas and Zambrano revolts of January-March 1811, the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition of August 1812-April 1813, and the climactic Battle of Medina of August 1813.
The origins of the filibuster have long confounded historians due to the limitations of the sources. Bernsen dug deeper into archival sources than any writer before and used his experience as military intelligence officer in Iraq and Afghanistan to study the expedition from a counter-insurgency perspective. This creative approach allowed him to discover new details, solve long-debated mysteries and uncover the startling truth behind the expedition - that it was organized and led by elements of the 1806 Aaron Burr Conspiracy.
The Lost War for Texas tells the dramatic story of this forgotten conflict and reinterprets it through the important findings of its origins - and its crucial relationship to later Texas history. This compelling story recalls a crucial, but long-lost moment in time when the history of the entire Southwest hung in the balance, and will reshape how we think of the history of Mexican, Texan and American history.
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