belonged to the same poor family, the Shel-
tons. North Carolina’s Confederate gover-
nor, Zebulon Vance, who tried to prevent
any executions from taking place, labeled
the affair “shocking and outrageous in the
extreme.” The colonel was suspended for
six months, and his second in command was
court-martialed and resigned. In a subse-
quent attempt to retake New Bern, North
Carolina, Confederate forces captured 53
members of the 2nd North Carolina (Union)
Volunteers, who were identified as deserters
from the Confederate Army. Twenty-two of
them subsequently were hanged.
A band of Confederate deserters from
Jones and adjacent counties in southern
Mississippi fought several skirmishes with
Confederate forces and temporarily over-
threw Jones’s Confederate government.
These men distributed to local residents
corn collected by the Confederates as a tax-
in-kind. Among the factors motivating the
non-slave-owning farmers and herdsmen
to desert was taxation and anger over the
“Twenty Negro Law,” which exempted
owners of 20 or more slaves from service in
the Confederate Army. Only 12 percent of
Jones’s population consisted of slaves.
Resistance to the slave-owning draft
exemption was also widespread in Texas,
particularly in those areas of north and cen-
tral Texas with large German immigrant
populations. Many Germans had immi-
grated to Texas in the 1850s, following the
failed Revolution of 1848. These Germans
had come to Texas to find personal and
religious freedom, and they were
adamantly opposed to slavery. After the
Civil War started and it became apparent
that the struggle would be a long one,
many Germans protested against the Con-
federate government, particularly after the
Conscription Act was passed in April 1862.
Confederate authorities responded force-
fully, occupying the German town of Fred-
ericksburg on the Pedernales River in Gille-
spie County. The local Confederate
commander, Captain James Duff, threat-
ened to “hang all I suspect of being anti-
Confederate” and stepped up his persecu-
tion of Germans, whom he called “damn
Dutchmen.” Gillespie and several neigh-boring counties were put under martial law.
In the summer of 1862, German Union-
ists in Kerr County organized a militia
company under Major Fritz Tegener and
marched south, intending to avoid the draft
by fleeing to Mexico. As soon as Duff
learned about the movement, he sent a
strong force under Lieutenant C.D. McRae
to catch up with them. On August 9, as the
refugees camped alongside the Nueces
River, McRae’s Confederates surrounded
the camp and poured fire into the sleeping
men. Nineteen Germans were killed by
gunfire, and another six were trampled to
death by McRae’s cavalry. Another nine
surrendered and were summarily hanged.
McRae grimly reported to Duff, “We met
determined resistance, hence I have no pris-
oners to report.”
Shortly after the one-sided Battle of Nue-
ces, what may have been the nation’s great-
est instance of vigilante violence took place
in Gainesville, the county seat of Cooke
County, Texas. Less than 10 percent of the
county’s heads of household owned slaves.
Hostility between the county’s earlier pro-
slavery settlers and recent settlers from free
states and from Germany predated the Civil
War. Outraging slave owners were aboli-
tionist Methodist preachers from Kansas,
one of whom was lynched in another North
Texas county before the war.In October 1862, Colonel William C.
Young, Cooke County’s wealthiest slave
owner, reported that he had received infor-
mation that “a vile and secret organiza-
tion” existed in the county to “overthrow
the government both State and Confeder-
ate, the seizure and destruction of property,
both public and private; the perfecting of
an alliance with the invading armies, both
civilized [Union army] and uncivilized [pro-
Union Indians] now gathering upon our
borders, and the indiscriminate slaughter
of ourselves, our wives and children.” He
said a plan for self-defense was necessary.
Young, a veteran of the Mexican War
and a former lawman, headed the 11th
Texas Cavalry, a unit he had organized and
in which his son also served. Of great con-
cern to Young and others who shared his
views was the fact that Cooke County res-
idents had voted 221 to 137 against seces-
sion. The editor of the Sherman Patriot,a
local Whig newspaper, recently had pro-
posed that North Texas secede from Texas
and become a new free state. Thirty county
residents calling themselves the Peace Party
signed a petition protesting the exemption
from the draft of Cooke County’s largest
slave owners. A strong Union League pres-
ence developed in Cooke, Wise, Denton,
Grayson, and Collin Counties. Members
exchanged secret signs, handshakes, andA mass funeral was held in Comfort, Texas, after the Civil War for 34 pro-Union German Texans killed in
the Nueces Massacre of 1862. Nine were summarily hanged after they surrendered to Confederate
authorities.Q-Spr16 Southerner v Southerner *Ads_Layout 1 1/14/16 12:34 PM Page 17