The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 102, July 1998 - April, 1999 Page: 487
559 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Cover: Aug. zo, 1862, at the Nueces, by C. H. Clauss, 1888. Oil on board,
14 x 20o inches. From the UT Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio, No.
68-702, courtesy Comfort Historical Society.
This folk art painting illustrates the battle of the Nueces, sometimes
known as the Nueces Massacre. Clauss reportedly based the painting on
remembrances told to him by people in the Comfort, Texas area. The
TSHA's New Handbook of Texas notes that "the Civil War skirmish known
as the Battle of the Nueces took place on the morning of August io,
1862, when a cadre force of Hill Country Unionists, encamped en route
to Mexico on the west bank of the Nueces River, were attacked by
mounted Confederate soldiers. The Unionists, mostly German intellec-
tuals led by Maj. Fritz Tegener, had camped without choosing a defen-
sive position or posting a strong guard. The ninety-four Confederates,
led by Lt. C. D. McRae, came upon the camp on the afternoon of August
9. Firing began an hour before sunlight the next morning; nineteen of
the sixty-one to sixty-eight Unionists were killed, and nine were wound-
ed. The nine wounded were executed a few hours after the battle. Two
Confederates were killed and eighteen wounded, including McRae. Of
the Unionists who escaped from the battle, eight were killed by Confed-
erates on October 18, 1862, while trying to cross into Mexico, eleven
reached home, and most of the others escaped temporarily to Mexico or
to California. Some of the survivors, who included John W. Sansom and
German members of the Union League from the area around Comfort,
a militia organized to protect parts of Kendall, Gillespie, and Kerr coun-
ties from Indian raids and Confederate actions, eventually joined
Unionist forces headquartered in New Orleans." This incident, and the
long-standing controversies about the nature and extent of German Tex-
an support for secession and slavery, are touched on in several of the ar-
ticles in this issue of the Quarterly, which focuses on the German Texan
experience. Among the articles is a never-before-published first-person
account of the battle of the Nueces by a German Texan participant, Au-
gust Hoffmann, whose memoir begins on page 487.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 102, July 1998 - April, 1999, periodical, 1999; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101219/m1/487/: accessed April 20, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.