The Nueces Massacre, also known as the Massacre on the Nueces, was a violent confrontation between Confederate soldiers and Texas Germans[5] on August 10, 1862, in Kinney County, Texas U.S. Many first-generation immigrants from Germany settled in Central Texas in a region known as the Hill Country. They tended to support the United States and were opposed to slavery. Because of these sentiments, the Confederate States of America imposed martial law on Central Texas. A group of Germans, fleeing from the Hill Country to Mexico and onward to U.S.-controlled New Orleans, was confronted by a company of Confederate soldiers on the banks of the Nueces River. The ensuing German defeat represented an end to overt German resistance to Confederate governance in Texas, but it also fueled outrage among the German-Texan population.[6] Disputes over the confrontation and the efficacy of Confederate actions after the battle, according to historian Stanley McGowen, continue to plague the Hill Country into the 21st century.[7]
Germans immigrated to Texas as early as 1836.[8] By 1860, the German population in Texas, predominantly first-generation immigrants, reached an approximate level of 20,000 across the entire state.[9] They settled heavily in an area known as the Hill Country.[8] The exact dimensions of Hill Country are not concrete. Germans settled so heavily in this area that the counties of Gillespie,[10]Kerr, Kendall, Medina, and Bexar comprised a "German Belt".[11]
During the antebellum period, Germans displayed a complex set of opinions on slavery and secession. Several Germans owned slaves, and some eventually supported Texas's secession from the United States.[12] Most Germans, however were apathetic to slavery. A vocal minority of Germans was actively antagonistic to the institution of slavery.[13] These antagonistic Germans included liberal and republican-minded Germans known as Achtundvierziger or Forty-Eighters. Many Forty-Eighters remained loyal to the United States, and several opposed slavery.[14] Most secessionist Anglo-Texans found this to be an affront to their insurrection against the United States. German opposition to slavery led to animosity between the two groups throughout the 1850s. Texas' secession from the United States in March 1861 and the start of the American Civil War on April 12, 1861, magnified these disputes.[15]
Unionists throughout the Confederate States, including Germans, resisted the imposition of conscription in 1862
Upon the commencement of the war, Germans projected an outward appearance of passivity toward the conflict.[16] Nevertheless, Confederate officials saw the German population as an internal threat. The most adamant supporters of the United States were Tejanos and the German Texans, both from Central Texas and the counties of the Texas Hill Country.[17] They had some evidence for that suspicion. During the statewide vote on secession, German-heavy counties represented many of those, along with the abolitionist northeast part of the state, to garner a majority vote against secession.[18] Several reports at the beginning of 1862 even alleged that German communities celebrated U.S. Army victories.[19] The state government also feared German-run local militias.[20]
The Union Loyal League, organized by several Forty-Eighters, was one such militia.[19] The actual purpose of the league is still a debated issue. Historians Robert Shook and Stanley McGowen acknowledge, as German Texans maintained at the time, that the group's expressed purpose was to defend the Hill Country from Indians and outlaws.[19][21] Confederates, they confirm, considered the Union Loyal League the enforcement arm of German-Unionist sentiment.[22][23] Confederate officers even implicated the organization in strategies to free U.S. Army soldiers from Camp Verde.[24]
With a need for more soldiers, the Confederacy established a draft. The Germans did not want to fight against the United States and objected to being drafted. The buildup to this event began in the spring of 1862 with the Confederacy's initiation of conscription of Texans, to which many German Texans voiced their objection.[25] The Confederate Conscription Act of 1862 turned general German objection into open opposition.[26] Because of this opposition, General Hamilton Bee dispatched Captain James Duff to Gillespie County. In late May 1862, Captain Duff imposed martial law.[27] While in Gillespie County, Captain Duff arrested and executed two Germans.[28] The harsh conduct convinced several Germans to leave Texas.[29] Frederick "Fritz" Tegener and his Union Loyal League associates planned a departure. They aimed to enter Mexico and make their way to U.S.-controlled New Orleans.[2]
Flight and battle
Between August 1, and August 3, 1862, sixty-one German Texans, led by Fritz Tegener, departed from Turtle Creek and headed southwest for the Mexican border.[2] Informed of their intentions, Captain Duff dispatched Lieutenant Colin McRae with approximately 96 men in pursuit on August 3, 1862.[1] After six days, Lieutenant McRae and his men spied the German Texans in a small prairie along the Nueces River on August 9.[1] Lieutenant McRae then formulated an attack plan to commence later in the evening. He divided his force into two companies to surround the camp. At approximately 1:00a.m. on August 10, 1862, the Confederates closed into the camp.[30] At first, however, even surprise and planning did not favor the Confederates. Two Germans wandering from the camp encountered the force.[3] The Confederates fired on these two Germans, which alerted the camp to the assault. Thus alerted, the Germans beat back the first Confederate charge.[31] Several Germans were disheartened by the Confederate presence and fled the field. Numbers vary, but Stanley McGowen estimates that twenty-three to twenty-eight Germans fled throughout the early morning hours.[32] This reduced the German contingent by over a third. A second charge closer to dawn routed the Germans and led to the flight (at least five Germans fled near the end of the battle, including Tegener), serious incapacitation, or death of all German combatants.[33]
Casualties and aftermath
Out of the 96-man force, the Confederate losses counted two soldiers dead and eighteen wounded, including Lieutenant McRae.[3] Reports on the casualties of the vanquished Germans were sparse and inconclusive.[34] In 1962, historian Robert Shook tallied the German casualties at thirty killed and twenty wounded.[3] A more recent conclusion in 2003, made by historian Randolph Campbell, is that 19 Germans died outright in the assaults on the camp.[4] That was not the final tally for the German Texans' losses. Following the battle, Confederate soldiers killed nine badly-wounded Germans outright; cavalrymen pursued nine more to the Rio Grande, where they likewise killed the fleeing Germans.[4] The complete German casualty report then comes to approximately thirty-seven killed and unknown totals for wounded among those who fled and survived.
Several Germans did survive the engagement and ensuing search. These combatants hid in Texas, fled to Mexico and California, or eventually joined U.S. forces in New Orleans as members of the 1st Texas Cavalry Regiment.[35] More critical, however, was how the incident affected the German community in Texas for the rest of the war. Though Confederate actions met with some ire and loud objections from other German Texans, the incident marked the general end to overt German Unionist resistance in Texas for the remainder of the war.[36]
Legacy
1866 story and illustration of Texan-German Unionists' funeral after the end of the American Civil War.
After the cessation of hostilities in 1865, Germans emerged as some of the most exuberant supporters of the United States' victory.[37] The German-language Treue der Union Monument (loyalty to the Union), in Comfort, Texas, was dedicated on August 10, 1866, to commemorate those who died at the 1862 Nueces massacre. Except for those drowned in the Rio Grande, the remains of the deceased are buried at the monument's site.[38] It was the only Unionist monument dedicated by locals in the territory formerly controlled by the Confederacy.[37]
Battle or massacre?
One title for the incident, the "Battle of Nueces" or the "Nueces Massacre", has been a contested issue since the engagement. Recently, historian Stanley McGowen has addressed both sides of the debate. He recognizes that the Germans were well-armed, judging by their ability to repulse a superior force. The initial engagement, he affirms, can be called the Battle of the Nueces.[39] But the execution of Germans following the battle, he states, lends credence to the title Nueces Massacre. No name has garnered definitive support, and McGowen admits the debate on Confederate and German actions continues among descendants on both sides of the incident.[7]
Jordan, Terry G. "Hill Country". Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 9 April 2013.
Kamphoefner, Walter D. (April 1999). "New Perspectives on Texas Germans and the Confederacy". The Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 102 (4): 440–455. JSTOR30242540.
Kohout, Martin Donell. "Gillespie County". Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 9 April 2013.
Marten, James (1990). Texas Divided: Loyalty and Dissent in the Lone Star State, 1856-1874. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky.
McGowen, Stanley S. (July 2000). "Battle or Massacre? The Incident on the Nueces, August 10, 1862". The Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 104 (1): 64–86. JSTOR30241669.
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which had been formed by states that had seceded from the Union. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction.
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or the South, was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confederacy comprised eleven U.S. states that declared secession and warred against the United States during the American Civil War. The states are South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Kerr County is a county located on the Edwards Plateau in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 52,598. Its county seat is Kerrville. The county was named by Joshua D. Brown for his fellow Kentucky native, James Kerr, a congressman of the Republic of Texas. The Kerrville, TX Micropolitan Statistical Area includes all of Kerr County.
Kendall County is a county located on the Edwards Plateau in the U.S. state of Texas. In 2020 census, its population was 44,279. Its county seat is Boerne. The county is named for George Wilkins Kendall, a journalist and Mexican–American War correspondent.
Gillespie County is a county located on the Edwards Plateau in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 26,725. The county seat is Fredericksburg. It is located in the heart of the rural Texas Hill Country in Central Texas. Gillespie is named for Robert Addison Gillespie, a soldier in the Mexican–American War.
The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting against the United States forces to win the independence of the Southern states and uphold and expand the institution of slavery. On February 28, 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. Davis was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War. He had also been a United States senator from Mississippi and U.S. Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the Confederate government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at Charleston, South Carolina, where South Carolina state militia besieged Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, held by a small U.S. Army garrison. By March 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress expanded the provisional forces and established a more permanent Confederate States Army.
In the context of the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states were slave states that did not secede from the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union, and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.
Arizona Territory, colloquially referred to as Confederate Arizona, was an organized incorporated territory of the Confederate States of America that existed from August 1, 1861, to May 26, 1865, when the Confederate States Army Trans-Mississippi Department, commanded by General Edmund Kirby Smith, surrendered at Shreveport, Louisiana. However, after the Battle of Glorieta Pass, the Confederates had to retreat from the territory, and by July 1862, effective Confederate control of the territory had ended. Delegates to the secession convention had voted in March 1861 to secede from the New Mexico Territory and the Union, and seek to join the Confederacy. It consisted of the portion of the New Mexico Territory south of the 34th parallel, including parts of the modern states of New Mexico and Arizona. The capital was Mesilla, along the southern border. The breakaway region overlapped Arizona Territory, established by the Union government in February 1863.
During the American Civil War, Missouri was a hotly contested border state populated by both Union and Confederate sympathizers. It sent armies, generals, and supplies to both sides, maintained dual governments, and endured a bloody neighbor-against-neighbor intrastate war within the larger national war.
Mississippi was the second southern state to declare its secession from the United States, doing so on January 9, 1861. It joined with six other southern states to form the Confederacy on February 4, 1861. Mississippi's location along the lengthy Mississippi River made it strategically important to both the Union and the Confederacy; dozens of battles were fought in the state as armies repeatedly clashed near key towns and transportation nodes.
Texas declared its secession from the Union on February 1, 1861, and joined the Confederate States on March 2, 1861, after it had replaced its governor, Sam Houston, who had refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. As with those of other states, the Declaration of Secession was not recognized by the US government at Washington, DC. Some Texan military units fought in the Civil War east of the Mississippi River, but Texas was more useful for supplying soldiers and horses for the Confederate Army. Texas' supply role lasted until mid-1863, when Union gunboats started to control the Mississippi River, which prevented large transfers of men, horses, or cattle. Some cotton was sold in Mexico, but most of the crop became useless because of the Union's naval blockade of Galveston, Houston, and other ports.
German-Americans were the largest ethnic contingent to fight for the Union in the American Civil War. More than 200,000 native-born Germans, along with another 250,000 1st-generation German-Americans, served in the Union Army, notably from New York, Wisconsin, and Ohio. Several thousand also fought for the Confederacy. Most German born residents of the Confederacy lived in Louisiana and Texas. Many others were 3rd- and 4th-generation Germans whose ancestors migrated to Virginia and the Carolinas in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Louisiana was a dominant population center in the southwest of the Confederate States of America, controlling the wealthy trade center of New Orleans, and contributing the French Creole and Cajun populations to the demographic composition of a predominantly Anglo-American country. In the antebellum period, Louisiana was a slave state, where enslaved African Americans had comprised the majority of the population during the eighteenth-century French and Spanish dominations. By the time the United States acquired the territory (1803) and Louisiana became a state (1812), the institution of slavery was entrenched. By 1860, 47% of the state's population were enslaved, though the state also had one of the largest free black populations in the United States. Much of the white population, particularly in the cities, supported slavery, while pockets of support for the U.S. and its government existed in the more rural areas.
Edward Degener was a German-born American politician. He was a Republican U.S. Representative from Texas during the Reconstruction era.
Sisterdale is an unincorporated farming and ranching community established in 1847 and located 13 miles (21 km) north of Boerne in Kendall County, in the U.S. state of Texas. The community is located in the valley of Sister Creek. The elevation is 1,280 feet (390 m).
Grapetown is an unincorporated farming and ranching community 9.5 miles (15.3 km) south of Fredericksburg, situated on South Grape Creek in Gillespie County, in the U.S. state of Texas. It is located on the old Pinta Trail. Grapetown is noted for being the site of the first annual Gillespie County Bundes Schützenfest. The school was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1984, Marker number 10048.
Jacob Kuechler (1823–1893) was surveyor, conscientious objector during the Civil War, and commissioner of the Texas General Land Office. Kuechler pioneered the science of dendrochronology to date natural events.
The German-American Treue der Union Monument, is located in the Kendall County community of Comfort in the U.S. state of Texas. It was dedicated on August 10, 1866 to commemorate the German-Texans who died at the 1862 Nueces massacre. Thirty-four were killed, some executed after being taken prisoner, for refusing to sign loyalty oaths to the Confederacy. With the exception of those drowned in the Rio Grande, the remains of the murdered are buried at the site of the monument. This monument was the first authorized to fly the Star-Spangled Banner at half-mast in perpetuity. It was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
The Great Hanging at Gainesville was the execution by hanging of 41 suspected Unionists in Gainesville, Texas, in October 1862 during the American Civil War. Confederate troops shot two additional suspects trying to escape. Confederate troops captured and arrested some 150–200 men in and near Cooke County at a time when numerous North Texas citizens opposed the new law on conscription. Many suspects were tried by a "Citizens' Court" organized by a Confederate military officer. It made up its own rules for conviction and had no status under state law. Although only 11% of county households enslaved people, seven of the 12 men on the jury were enslavers.
The 33rd Texas Cavalry Regiment was a unit of mounted volunteers from Texas that fought in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. San Antonio merchant James Duff organized the 14th Texas Cavalry Battalion. In summer 1862, the Texas government ordered the battalion to suppress the Union Loyal League, which was composed of German Texans who opposed secession. When a group of Germans fled toward Mexico, Duff led a contingent of soldiers in a pursuit that ended in the so-called Battle of the Nueces in August 1862. Most of the Germans were killed in what some named a massacre. The 14th Battalion was subsequently expanded into the 33rd Texas Cavalry Regiment by the addition of some Mexican-American companies raised by Santos Benavides. Benavides became a major before leaving the regiment to form his own unit in November 1863. At first, the new regiment was assigned to patrol the Rio Grande, and later its duties included defending both the Rio Grande and Corpus Christi, Texas. In April 1864, the regiment transferred to Bonham in north Texas. The unit never engaged regular Federal troops and disbanded in May 1865.
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Confederate States of America 
