The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 82, July 1978 - April, 1979 Page: 401
496 p. : ill. (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Secession and the Texas German Community
sted, had to sell his paper to pay his debts. He emigrated from Texas
and left Germans like Lindheimer with the task of convincing Texans
that not all Germans were opposed to the southern way of life, nor
particularly alien and dangerous. Texas Germans also gained national
recognition for their anti-slavery and later their unionist proclivities
through Olmsted's Journey Through Texas, through Olmsted-inspired
articles in the New York Times and Tribune, and in national publica-
tions like Harper's Weekly. Journalists seized upon the undeniable fact
that some German counties on the frontier voted against secession and
opposed the draft." The Battle of Nueces, in which German unionists
were massacred on their way to Mexico, has been especially well pub-
licized.l"
After the war prominent Germans like Flake or Degener joined the
Republican party, thus reinforcing the view that Germans were polit-
ically unorthodox. Perhaps because of the attraction of the unusual and
different, historians and the public have continued to focus more on
unionists and German unionists than on secessionists and Germans in
general. Nativism, party politics, a few prominent individuals or promi-
nent events, a good press, and the attraction of the exotic have kept the
spotlight on those Texas Germans who opposed slavery, secession, and
the Confederacy.o
Lindheimer and Flake, a late convert to the secessionist cause and a
unionist who accepted secession once it had been voted upon, deserve,
however, to be recognized as more representative of German attitudes
toward secession than German unionists on the frontier. No section of
German Texas acted with one voice. On the frontier men like Englebert
Krauskopf or Ernst Altgelt supported the Confederacy. To the east
other Germans remained quietly loyal to the Union throughout the
5SRoper, "Olmsted and the Western Texas Free-Soil Movement," 58-61; Biesele, "The
Texas State Convention of Germans in 1854," 252-261; Hall, "Texas Germans in Politics,"
27-29, 57-59; Olmsted, Journey Through Texas, 327-329, 432-441; Neu Braunfelser Zeitung,
Mar. 8, 1861.
59"German Unionists in Texas," Harper's Weekly, X, Jan. 20o, 1866, p. 39; Ransleben,
A Hundred Years of Comfort, 86-125; Dallas Morning News, May 5, 1929, Feature Section;
Shook, "Battle of the Nueces." The Battle of the Nueces was also the subject of several
Confederate military hearings. Alwyn Barr (ed.), "Records of the Confederate Military
Commission in San Antonio, July 2, October lo, 1862," Southwestern Historical Quarterly,
LXX (July, Oct. 1966, Apr., 1967), 93-109, 289-314, 623-644; ibid., LXXI (Oct., 1967), 247-
277; ibid., LXXIII (July, Oct., 1969), 83-104, 243-274.
GONancy Head Bowen, "A Political Labyrinth: Texas in the Civil War," East Texas
Historical Journal, XI (Fall, 1973), 3-4; Fornell, "Flake"; James A. Baggett, "Birth of the
Texas Republican Party," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, LXXVIII (July, 1974), 1-20;
Tausch, "Southern Sentiment among Germans," 54-106; Hall, "Texas Germans in Politics,"
60-135; Heintzen, "Fredericksburg."401
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 82, July 1978 - April, 1979, periodical, 1978/1979; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101206/m1/463/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.