Authors: T.R. Fehrenbach
In the summer of 1862, one group of Germans, who were actually neutralists in sentiment, fled this region for Mexico. They armed themselves, under the command of a Major Tegener, but their purpose was to flee the state rather than fight the Confederacy. Tegener rode south with some 65 men and boys. When Duff learned he had gone, he dispatched a force under a Lieutenant McRae in pursuit.
The refugees camped on the Nueces River, about two hundred miles from where they started. They did not expect close pursuit. On the night of August 9, under a full moon, Tegener and the group held a lively discussion about the meaning of "Fatherland," "citizenship," "Civil War," and Mexico. According to the statements of John William Sansom, who was there, most of the German farmers were deeply confused as to what the war was all about.
McRae rode down upon the camp while the Germans lay sleeping. He
surrounded it and opened fire indiscriminately. The result was massacre. Nineteen Germans were killed by gunfire, and six more trampled to death by McRae's cavalry. Nine surrendered. McRae ordered them shot, and they were executed on the spot. In his report to Duff, the Lieutenant stated he met "determined resistance, hence I have no prisoners to report."
News of the Nueces massacre touched off rioting and violence in San Antonio and the towns above the Balcones Scarp. It was bloodily put down, and a number of men were hanged, despite General James W. Throckmorton's biting comment that the greatest number of traitors seemed more remarkable for "ignorance about the war" than overt disloyalty.
Many years afterward, a monument to the German dead was raised in Central Texas. Under the inscription
Treu Der Union
(True to the Union) it listed, as "murdered," the names of the men killed on the Nueces. Many of the men who later honored them, such as Maury Maverick, Jr., were descendants of men who had helped put the Unionists in jail. But throughout the 19th century a certain bitterness, on both sides, did not entirely die.
Although, because of a number of literate European immigrants, the incidents in the San Antonio area received more publicity, the persecution of Unionists was more violent in the north. A so-called Peace Party sprang up in far north Texas; this again was basically a neutralist group, whose main concern was to avoid the draft. It was, however, suspect at once, and accused of murderous plots and treason against the state. Confederate agents infiltrated this group, and troops were sent from farm to farm arresting anyone who openly had denounced the war, including one family which merely suggested it might move to Kansas.
The arrested persons were haled before "People's Courts." These seem to have been constituted under neither Texas civil nor military law; apparently they were community drumhead tribunals, set up on the spur of the moment. One such People's Court convicted forty men at Gainesville, in Cooke County, on wholly hearsay testimony that they had talked against the South. All were promptly hanged.
Five more men were executed in Wise County, and in Grayson, another forty were sentenced to death. Fortunately for these people, Brigadier General Throckmorton heard about the case and rode for Grayson County. In uniform, he intervened with a ringing plea for Anglo-Saxon justice under the law. Throckmorton's courage and decency shamed the People's Court, and the cases were remanded to a special civil court. After a hearing, all but one of the condemned were set free.
Since habeas corpus had been suspended, there could be no real defense of civil right at this time, except where military officers themselves were disgusted and turned accused men loose. This happened. But at the same time, the ignorant, the immigrant, and the lowly were not the only ones to suffer. At Hempstead, Dr. Richard Peebles and four leading citizens protested the current hangings as "lynch law." Peebles and two others were exiled to Mexico by legal action.
Understandably, since many men were unreasonably drafted, desertion in the Southern army reached serious proportions. This was not confined to Texas; desertion was commonplace during the war in both the North and South. By 1863, some thousands of deserters were living on the western fringes of Texas, staying as near to their homes as they could, but escaping into Indian country or into the northern thickets when hunted. Henry McCulloch, the local commander, complained he lacked enough troops to search deserters out or to capture them if he found them. Regular Confederate troops were rarely used for this unpleasant job, and state troops were never effective.
In the Denton area, north of Dallas, so many deserters congregated that they dominated the countryside and were able to control both the authorities and the populace. Significantly, however, while these men would fight if pursued, they rarely abused either the people or private property. By early 1865, bush soldiers, as they were called, actually from both armies, had turned parts of north Texas over to anarchy.
Lubbock, faced with increasing problems in 1863, chose not to stand for reelection. Jefferson Davis immediately appointed him to a post on the Presidential staff. Pendleton Murrah, a strict Constitutionalist Democrat, defeated T. J. Chambers on a platform of stronger support for the war. But Murrah, in office, immediately became embroiled with the Richmond government.
The Confederacy was structured with strong powers reserved to the states, and Murrah intended that these should not be usurped, war or not. Murrah charged that both the rights of the people and the rights of the state were being infringed in the name of the war effort. The Governor was correct; at this time both the Union and the Confederacy were tending to ride roughshod over Constitutional states' rights. Lincoln was putting unconstitutional pressures on the neutral border states and justifying this in the overriding cause of the Union. The Confederacy, desperately staving off defeat and oblivion, showed an equal disregard for legality. Murrah's frequent messages to his legislature reveal an increasing dismay at "national encroachment" upon Texas. He felt it availed Texans little to be free from Washington City, if they were to be ruled from Richmond.
The two real disagreements centered around life and property, the draft and the cotton trade.
The Confederacy was now trying to incorporate the Texas militia and state frontier troops into its armies. The Confederate Constitution, following the U.S. model, made frontier defense a federal responsibility—but it was one the C.S.A. never tried to fulfill. Late in the war, the Comanches and Kiowas were savagely harassing the western regions of Texas. The minutemen were not effective against this kind of guerrilla campaign, and the state had sent its own state troops to the frontier to assist these local posses. Theoretically, these state forces were supposed to be reserved for the use of the Confederacy on call, through the Military District commander. By 1863, none were available.
Further, in 1863, Texas enacted a frontier defense act, which exempted all men serving in western local defense units from regular conscription.
This was a classic case of state-federal juxtaposition; Texas interposed its own military laws between its citizens and Confederate law. Murrah defended the Texas position stubbornly. His case was simple: Richmond could not require Texas to enforce laws at variance with its own needs or the desires of its own citizens. Murrah was a strict constitutionalist and never wavered. He caused vast annoyance in Richmond, where Davis, beset with problems, had no brief for constitutional niceties.
In 1864, General Kirby-Smith was in desperate need of men to fight Union movements in Louisiana. Kirby-Smith demanded the dispatch of Texas state forces. Murrah ordered the state units not to cross the Sabine. He quibbled on technicalities until the crisis passed; the Texas forces never did reach the front. A bitter showdown, and possible Confederate military action against the government of the state of Texas, were averted only by a shift in Northern strategy. General U. S. Grant, who had been pounding Kirby-Smith unmercifully in the Southwest, was suddenly transferred to command on the Potomac in March. With Grant, the principal theater of the war moved East. For the rest of the war, the Southwestern Confederacy was a sort of backwash area; bloody actions were fought, but Kirby-Smith's Department was able to stave off disaster.
The second great irritant was still the cotton trade. While the motives of the various officers who tried to regulate this under Confederate laws stand inspection, their results do not. What happened after 1863 was simple: Confederate edicts played into the hands of speculators. Honest and patriotic merchants and cotton agents, trying to fulfill the law, were hamstrung. The trade was carried on by men perfectly willing to profit exorbitantly and to break the law doing it. The Confederacy received even less benefit.
The tightening of the Federal blockade—runners were unable to get through by late 1863—led to renewed interest in the Texas border. A new law was enacted by the Confederate Congress, organizing a Cotton Bureau at Shreveport, Louisiana. The Bureau was empowered to impress cotton. Bales were to be hauled to Mexico under government supervision, and there sold only for war matériel. The planters objected to impressment; a compromise was made by which they were paid in worthless certificates or bonds for one-half their cotton, while the remainder was certified from impressment.
The flaws of this system were obvious, even if the Texas Military Board, an agency responsible for war procurement for the state government, had not begun a devastating form of competition. Texas also bought up one-half the production of individual planters for state bonds—but under the "state plan" invented by Pendleton Murrah, the Board transported all of the contracting planter's cotton to Matamoros. Here the planter, or other holder, could do with his half as he pleased, selling it for gold or for trade goods. The planter or speculator could make enormous profits, at no risk. The "state plan" soon virtually drove the Confederate Cotton Bureau out of business.
Unable to control Murrah in any other way, the Confederate Congress on February 6, 1864, prohibited the export of all cotton and tobacco except under the express direction of Jefferson Davis. Needless to state, Pendleton Murrah and most Texas cotton men were scandalized at this new invasion of states' rights. The Texas governor held a conference with Kirby-Smith in July, and apparently the General finally impressed upon Murrah that the Congress was determined upon state control. From July 1864, until the end of the war the Texas government cooperated fully with General Kirby-Smith in most things, but it was now far too late for the export of cotton materially to affect the war.
Texans were intransigent in defending states' rights against the Confederacy; they were strikingly not a problem-oriented breed, who would willingly sacrifice individual freedoms in furtherance of a common goal. This was perhaps the most dominant frontier characteristic in America. But Texas was even more stubborn in defending its own soil. No Federal forces ever penetrated deeply into the state. In fact, Texans carried their own war to the
West.
In 1861, Col. John R. Baylor was entrusted with the defense of the frontier that ran roughly from Fort Worth to the Nueces south of San Antonio and faced Mexico along the Rio Grande. Baylor's soldiers occupied the old U.S. Army posts west of the 98th meridian, the Comanche frontier, and manned the other posts that guarded the route of communications from San Antonio to El Paso. But Baylor was not content to sit out the war fighting Indians. He planned to march west.
On August 1, 1861, Colonel Baylor issued a proclamation establishing the Confederate Territory of Arizona, comprising the former U.S. Territory of New Mexico south of the 43rd parallel. He was declared governor.
To make the proclamation stick, Baylor's regiment rode west. They reached Tucson; the Federal forces were in disorder and fell back. Baylor established a constitutional government in which all posts were held by Texans. There is no evidence that the native Mexican and Indian residents of Arizona paid much attention.
The East–West Butterfield stage route was now firmly in Texan hands from San Antonio to Arizona, but there were strong Federal forces in northern New Mexico. Three regiments of Texas troops, under General H. H. Sibley, moved against these. Sibley scored an early victory at Valverde on February 2, 1862. Now, the Stars and Bars fluttered over Albuquerque and Sante Fe.
The old dream of expanding Texas westward to the limits of the Rio Grande had come true at last.
But Sibley faced the same problems the Texas expedition of 1841 had faced; he was separated from his Texas bases by more than a thousand miles of desert and Indian country. His troops were low on supply. Meanwhile, the Federals mounted a strong effort out of California. Sibley gallantly now presided over a series of Texan disasters, in which the Confederate forces were seriously mauled. Sibley was pushed south, until in the spring of 1862 he had vacated the Confederate Territory of Arizona. As he fell back, the officers of the provisional government packed and departed with him.
The long march back to San Antonio was a horror. Only remnants of the three regiments arrived. In this way died the last Texan dream of driving to the western sea.
The Baylor-Sibley expedition had long-term disastrous results. The Federal forces, now firmly gripping Arizona and New Mexico, made no attempt to invade Texas from the west. But the regiments originally planned to hold the Indian frontier were uselessly dissipated. McCord's State Frontier Regiment was neither disciplined nor effective, and the local county militia or posses were almost useless in the far west.
In the next two years, the Anglo-American frontier recoiled eastward two hundred miles. In 1864, Comanche-Kiowa raiding bands rode as far east as Young County, driving settlers back by the thousands from the 1860 frontier.