page_title: Nueces massacre
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Nueces massacre / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Unionists throughout the Confederate States, including Germans, resisted the imposition of conscription in 1862. Title: Southern "volunteers" Summary: The print may have appeared soon after the Confederate Congress passed a national conscription act on April 16, 1862, to strengthen its dwindling army of volunteers. The artist characterizes regular Confederate troops as unsavory, criminal types. Two of them (in uniform, left and center) have a well-dressed young gentleman in tow. The leader pulls on a rope around the reluctant recruit's neck, saying, "Come along you rascal! and fight for our King Cotton." The man protests, "Let me go, I tell you I'm a Union Man, and don't believe in your Southern Confederacy." He is prodded by the bayonet of a second soldier, gin flask protruding from his pocket, who urges, "Blast your Union! Them as won't go in for the war must be made to do it. Go ahead, or we'll hang you on the next tree." A second group follows. Two men in wide-brimmed hats have seized another gentleman, and urge him at bayonet point toward the left. One of the men, barefoot and ragged, with a knife and pistol in his belt, resembles a Mexican bandit. Atop a nearby hill two soldiers drag a third civilian along the ground by a rope around his neck. The print is comparable in both style and political sympathy to contemporary prints by Currier &amp; Ives, such as "Re-Union on the Secesh-Democratic Plan" (no. 1862-10).
context_page_description: The Nueces Massacre, also known as the Massacre on the Nueces, was a violent confrontation between Confederate soldiers and German Texans on August 10, 1862, in Kinney County, Texas. Many first-generation immigrants from Germany settled in Central Texas in a region known as the Hill Country. They tended to support the Union and were opposed to the institution of 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 after that to Union-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. 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.
context_section_description: Germans immigrated to Texas as early as 1836. By 1860, the German population in Texas, predominantly first-generation immigrants, reached an approximate level of 20,000 across the entire state.   They settled heavily in an area known as the Hill Country. The exact dimensions of Hill Country are not concrete.  Germans settled so heavily in this area, that the counties of Gillespie, Kerr, Kendall, Medina, and Bexar comprised a "German Belt".
  During the antebellum period, Germans displayed a complex set of opinions on slavery and secession.  There were several Germans who owned slaves, and some eventually supported Texas secession from the United States.  Most Germans, however were apathetic to slavery. A vocal minority of Germans was actively antagonistic to the institution of slavery. 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.  Most secessionist Anglo-Texans found this to be an affront to their insurrection against the US. German opposition to slavery led to an animosity between the two groups throughout the 1850s.  These disputes were magnified by Texas' secession from the United States in March 1861, and the start of the American Civil War on April 12, 1861.
  Upon the commencement of the war, Germans projected an outward appearance of passivity toward the conflict.  Confederate officials, however, saw the German population as an internal threat. The most adamant supporters of the Union were Tejanos and the German Texans both from Central Texas and the counties of the Texas Hill Country. 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.  Several reports in the beginning of 1862 even alleged that German communities celebrated Union victories.  The state government also feared German-run local militias.
  The Union Loyal League, organized by several Forty-Eighters, was one such militia.  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.  Confederates, they confirm, considered the Union Loyal League the enforcement arm of German-Unionist sentiment.  Confederate officers even implicated the organization in strategies to free Union soldiers from Camp Verde.
  With a need for more soldiers, the Confederacy established a draft. The Germans did not want to fight against the Union and objected to being drafted. Buildup to this event began in the spring of 1862 with the initiation of a Confederate conscription for Texans, to which many German Texans voiced their objection. The Confederate Conscription Act of 1862 turned general German objection into open opposition.  Because of this opposition, General Hamilton Bee dispatched Captain James Duff to Gillespie County.  In late May 1862, Captain Duff imposed martial law.  While in Gillespie County, Captain Duff arrested and executed two Germans.  The harsh conduct convinced several Germans to leave Texas. Frederick "Fritz" Tegener and his Union Loyal League associates planned a departure.  Their goal was to enter Mexico, and then to make their way to Union-controlled New Orleans.
caption: Unionists throughout the Confederate States, including Germans, resisted the imposition of conscription in 1862
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