In 1862, settlers died for their loyalty to Old Glory
Updated 9:13 pm, Sunday, August 5, 2012
A little known battle and massacre happened in the Texas Hill Country during the Civil War 150 years ago. The date was Aug. 10, 1862. On or around Aug. 1, 68 mostly German immigrants gathered at Turtle Creek near Kerrville and began what they thought was going to be a straight-forward trail to Mexico, where they could join the ranks of the Union army just across the Rio Grande. As fate would have it, they were intersected by Confederate troops on the banks of the Nueces River in Kinney County.
Just after midnight on Aug. 10,, a short, fierce battle ensued and by dawn the Confederates had overpowered the German loyalists. It was later that afternoon that the history of the battle became bathed in infamy. The German survivors were summarily executed and, to make matters worse, were not given the traditional courtesy of burial. Their bodies were stacked and left to decompose in the Texas heat.
But what led to this gruesome footnote in Texas History? German settlers, by the thousands, came to the new state of Texas beginning in the 1840s. They were leaving an oppressive society in Germany for the openness and freedoms offered in America. When here, they quickly adapted and became ardent Americans. Years later when Texas began its path to secede and join the Confederacy, the Hill Country counties overwhelmingly voted against secession. When the Federal army left after secession became law, these same counties were marked as troublemakers, and when they would not submit to the Confederacy, they were called traitors.
These were dark times in the towns of Fredericksburg, San Antonio, Kerrville, Sisterdale and Comfort. The Germans formed loyalist leagues. The Confederates responded by sending masked bands of nightriders who terrorized the surrounding farms and ranches as they began a campaign of ruthless hangings of known loyalists. They became know as the “Hangebund” or in English the Hanging bunch. Desperate and knowing they could not fight in their own towns and unwilling to compromise and join the Confederate army, they reluctantly left their farms and families and headed south to their doom.
Over the years this great American story has faded into the dusty vaults of time. Though the Alamo is the great Texas story of courage, these Union loyalists also gave their lives for the sake of the country they believed in.
In Comfort, only 45 miles west of San Antonio on I-10 stands a monument dedicated to those who died. It is one of only a few monuments dedicated to Union dead in all of the Confederate states.
This Friday, Aug. 10, a commemoration will be held to honor those who gave all the blood they had in the war to save the Union. Some 18 died on Aug. 10, eight more were attacked and killed on the banks of the Rio Grande Oct. 25 of the same year, and nine more were found scattered and then murdered in subsequent days.
Richard Jacome, who moved to Comfort in July 2003, has written a historical novel, “The River of Bones,” about the battle and its aftermath. He also wrote a folk opera based on the same events, called “The Blues and the Grays, which will be performed at 8 p.m. in Comfort at the monument site, 300 High Street on Friday. It is free to the public. Check http://greatercomfortchamber.com for more activities related to the memorial.