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CHAPTER 1
The Devil's Horsemen
As the sun dropped below the western horizon on the evening of August 9, 1862, a brilliant array of colors burst over the rugged landscape of Southwest Texas. Spectacular hues of gold, orange, and red erupted across the rocky cedar-clad hills overlooking the headwaters of the Nueces. It was an awe-inspiring scene that twenty-eight-year-old John W. Sansom would never forget. Unrolling his blanket and tossing his saddle on the ground, he probably hoped for nothing more than some peace and rest. But the camp around him was alive with the festive sounds of laughter, song, and revelry. Voices in English and German filled the evening air, as did the smell of venison cooked over a campfire. Sansom covered himself and stared into the stars. It had been a long day on the trail, a difficult fifteen-mile horseback ride over some of the roughest terrain in Texas. His body ached.
Not since Sansom had ridden with James H. Callahan's Rangers seven years earlier had he passed through this harsh country. But it was different then. In 1855 he had been chasing renegade Indian marauders. But on this trip, he was no mere private. This time his Unionist friends and neighbors had elected him captain of their company.
Even so, just as before, he was running for his life. But this time he was not being chased by a thousand determined Mexican federales. Nor was he fleeing Mexico with the flames of Piedras Negras at his back. Instead, he was now riding toward the Rio Grande and the safety of Mexican soil. And the border lay less than two days' ride ahead. Just two more days, his commanding officer assured him, and he and more than sixty of his fellow Unionists would reach freedom. Just two more days and they would stand beyond the reach of the Confederate conscription law and the long arm of the Lone Star State. Since leaving the banks of the Pedernales, Sansom and his friends had forded the Medina and the Frio, and now they were just a couple of hard days on saddle to the Rio Bravo. All that separated them now from the protection promised by the Mexican border was fewer than forty miles of broken prairie. Just two more days and Sansom and his comrades could escape the horrors of the fratricidal war that had divided the nation. Just one more sunset remained, maybe two, and only one more river to cross.
But Sansom must have wondered if this sunset might be his last. Something seemed wrong, terribly wrong, to the young seven-year veteran of the ranging service. Just before sundown he had tried desperately to persuade his commander, Major Gustav "Fritz" Tegener, to push on to the border without delay. Strangers had been reported observing their slow-moving column from a distance. At least two different hunting parties had seen them. Why would Tegener not believe him when he had pleaded that the men should strike camp and move out quickly? Why would the major not believe his own scouts who had told him that they were being followed? Why had Tegener not listened? There was a full moon rising, and it would be the perfect time to press ahead, Sansom had urged Tegener. Danger was following closely behind, he warned. Yet an aloof Tegener remained confident in his plan, and his pace toward the border. The major was a fool, Sansom must have thought to himself when he heard the order to bed down and settle in for the night.
Why was Major Tegener placing only two sentries in the nearby cedar breaks lining the banks of the West Fork of the Nueces? And why did he instruct his men to camp in an open meadow where they could be easily seen in the light of a full moon? It was a perfect spot for an ambush. Could Tegener not see that too? Should they at least douse their campfires, and maintain silence in the dark?
But it was too late to worry about that now. There was nothing left to do but rest. Dawn would come soon enough, and if all went well, in less than forty-eight hours the company of Unionists should reach their sanctuary on the other side of the Rio Grande. Once across, Sansom reassured himself, no one could force him to fight for an unjust cause. He would rather die a free man than raise arms against the United States. He would rather die in defense of freedom, he had explained to his family and friends, than in defense of slavery.
To Sansom and his fellow Union loyalists the German hamlets of Kerrville, Comfort, and Fredericksburg — all nestled in the scenic Texas Hill Country — seemed so far away now, and the promised asylum of Mexico so close they could almost reach out and touch it. It had been eight days since more than sixty young men — most of them German, all members of an organization called the Union Loyal League — had set out from Turtle Creek in southwestern Kerr County. Four days since Captain John Sansom of Kendall County, a Mexican guide named Pablo Díaz, and several Anglo-Texans had joined the flight to the border. To be sure, progress toward their intended destination, the confluence of the Devil's River and the Rio Grande, had been slow and difficult. But as a restless Sansom reclined and closed his eyes, and the campfire beside him flickered faintly, none of that seemed to matter. All the other men had finally hushed their chatter and called off their playful wrestling games. All the patriotic speeches about loyalty to the Union and love of liberty had also subsided.
Now it was quiet, finally. Even the evening breeze seemed to have died down. And when the embers of the campfire at last burned out, one could hardly hear a sound. Only a mournful songbird, a few chattering crickets, the faint trickling of waters running over the rocks that covered the narrow bed of the nearby Nueces. A deathly stillness settled over the scene as Sansom drifted to sleep, both rifle and revolver at his side. It was almost as if he could hear forever, and hear nothing.
But his better instincts told him the enemy was out there. Somewhere in the darkness they were watching and waiting. Then it happened. Shortly after 3:00 A.M. fellow Unionist Leopold Bauer shook Sansom and motioned for him to remain quiet. Now awake, Sansom scrambled to his feet, grabbed his weapons, and followed Bauer into the cedar breaks. He was unprepared for what happened next. "When we had gone about sixty yards ... [Bauer] in front, and I about twenty feet behind him," without warning a single shot rang out, and Bauer fell dead. Seeing his friend drop to the ground, Sansom instinctively raised his rifle and returned fire.
But it was no use. Dozens of Confederate partisans rose up from the brush, their silhouettes plainly visible in the moonlight as they rushed toward him. Knowing that the gunfire had alerted his comrades, Sansom raced back toward Tegener's camp, and within seconds he found himself exposed in an open plain, stumbling and scrambling toward the safety of the closest timberline. He was caught in the middle of a murderous cross fire between the Confederate irregulars and a furious countercharge and fusillade of fire from the Unionist camp. Not far from Sansom, Ernst Besler, a second German sentry who was posted in the cedar, also fell fatally wounded. Robert Williams, who rode with the Confederate partisans, recalled that the German boys appeared like a "swarm of bees," and "confusion reigned supreme" in his own ranks during the opening moments of the fight. "No one knew what to do," he remembered.
Then came the command to charge, and all hell broke loose. The company of Texas mounted volunteers who had been trailing Tegener's party for nearly a week suddenly hurled themselves headlong toward the enemy camp. From the south and east they surged to within fifty meters of Tegener's position, all the while pouring a steady fire into the startled Unionists. The initial exchange claimed several injured on both sides, among them Major Tegener, who sustained two serious wounds. Williams remembered vividly the terrifying sounds of battle, "The bullets were whistling pretty thickly over our heads." Then when the firing subsided, cries and moans could be heard as the wounded called out for help, but no one dared even to carry water to them for fear of becoming a target himself.
Then a lull in the fighting followed. For more than an hour, and what must have seemed like an eternity, a surreal silence fell over the scene. But the quiet belied the impending danger. With both sides reluctant to advance again into a hail of rifle fire, Sansom crawled through the tall weeds to a place of safety. "It occurred to me at once," he recalled, "that I could do the greatest good ... by making a careful reconnaissance of the Confederate forces, and this I did effectively by creeping around to their rear, and so near to them, as to fully satisfy myself concerning their numbers and their location." Having scouted the strength and disposition of the rebel force, he began to work his way back toward his friends, crouching over and keeping his head low to avoid detection.
Soon after Sansom located the enemy, they almost found him. In making his way back to camp Sansom failed to move far enough to the west to avoid the partisans' pickets. "I walked right up to a squad of Confederates," he recollected, "concealed in a thick standing grove of cedars, some sixty yards southwest of the Unionist camp. Before I knew it I was so close to the party that I could easily have put my hand on one of them. Noticing that they wore no hats but had handkerchiefs tied around their heads, I immediately took off my hat, and carrying it in my hand, backed away." Then he added, "They saw me plainly, but, I reckon supposed me to be a Confederate. At any rate they ... let me go." Now snaking his way on his belly, Sansom inched back toward camp. It had been a close call.
Minutes later, however, Sansom again came face to face with death. Only this time it was his own comrades who first mistook him for the enemy. "When about twenty feet from the camp," he recorded, "I heard the click of the locks of guns about to be aimed at me." Fearing the worst, he ducked his head and called out, "Don't shoot, [it's] Sansom." Hearing nothing, he repeated his cry until Captain Kramer returned, "Come on, come on captain. I came near shooting you."
Little wonder that Sansom urged Kramer and his fellow officers to retreat at once. Outnumbered at least two to one, they were almost surrounded and soon would be cut off from any hope of escape. Their enemy was well positioned, commanding the rugged cliffs that towered some sixty feet above the north bank of the Nueces. The Unionists were also outgunned as their muzzleloaders were no match for the Confederates' breech loaders. Major Tegener lay badly wounded on his pallet, bleeding profusely, yet he still refused to relinquish command, even though his men were stunned and confused. Worse still, the sun would soon come up, leaving them exposed in the tall grasses with nothing but their saddles as cover. They must move out, and move out immediately, Sansom pleaded with Tegener, while some of their horses were tethered together nearby. Otherwise, their mounts would be scattered and they would all be killed.
But Sansom's appeals again went unheeded. What Sansom and the others had no way of knowing at that time was just how determined and even brutal an enemy they were up against. The Confederate raiders who had been following them — numbering as many as a hundred heavily armed horse men — comprised two companies attached to the Second Texas Mounted Rifles and one company of state partisans under the command of Captain James Duff, the same volatile and irascible Scotsman who had recently declared martial law in the Texas Hill Country and conducted a sweep of several German communities known to be enclaves for Union loyalists. Recognized widely as a man whose antipathy for abolitionists and German immigrants equaled his enmity for Mexican "greasers" loyal to the Union, this freighter and teamster turned militia commander possessed more prejudices than martial prowess or political acumen. Like the men he led, Duff had no compunction about ransacking and burning the cabins of German Unionists, destroying their crops in the field, stealing their horses, and shooting their livestock. Neither did his "Partisan Rangers," as they were called. Duff had no intention of bringing in prisoners for interrogation. Neither did his young "Rangers."
When daylight broke over the battlefield, the Confederate force under the immediate command of Lieutenant Colin McRae moved toward the Unionist camp again. This time they formed a single file and moved in a "steady and slow advance," as McRae reported, approaching to within thirty paces as they poured round after round into a demoralized enemy. Although faced with the shock effect of such a close-quarters barrage, Tegener's command returned fire, but many soon broke and ran into the thickets. As August Hoffman recalled of that bloody Sunday morning, their cumbersome muzzle-loaders were no match for the revolvers and breech-loading rifles of Duff's Rangers and the boys of the Second Texas Mounted. McRae matter-of-factly reported of the Unionists' retreat, "From the many signs of blood I infer many of those escaping were seriously wounded."
Following the fight, a heavy smell of gunpowder hung in the air. So did the stench of death. As the sun rose over the South Texas landscape and Duff's Partisan Rangers surveyed the scene of carnage, which Williams described as a "ghastly one," many could not help but be sickened by the sight. At least thirty-two German Unionists lay dead, their corpses littering the field alongside the carcasses of some of their horses. In the confusion of Tegener's hurried retreat, the Unionist militia had also left at least seventeen seriously wounded men to the mercy of their captors. As for the Confederate force, which included not only Duff's partisans but also one detachment from Captain John Donelson's Rangers and another assigned from Captain Clay Davis's state troops, at least two volunteers had been shot dead during the pitched battle, and eighteen others wounded.
In the aftermath, Lieutenant McCrae tried to take charge of the situation, despite being confined to a litter with a serious gunshot wound. Described by Williams as a "brave and kindly man," McCrae ordered his troops to remove the enemy wounded and place them in the shade of a nearby grove of trees. Then he instructed them to begin the grim task of burying their own dead and dispatching couriers to arrange for ambulances to transport their injured. The sun burned overhead as the bloated and bloodied bodies of the German dead were left where they fell, their swollen corpses mere food for the buzzards and coyotes that scavenged this rocky brush country. The stifling humidity rose that morning, as did the cries of the wounded, who pleaded for cool water from the nearby Nueces. Meanwhile, some of the Confederate officers directed their irregulars to round up nearly two hundred horses that the fleeing Germans had abandoned. As for the wounded animals, at least those that had sustained serious injuries, The Texan partisans put them out of their misery with well-placed pistol shots. By midafternoon, therefore, the smell of human remains and horse flesh filled the nostrils of every survivor.
But the worst was yet to come. Duff may not have even been on the scene that Sunday afternoon when the unthinkable command was given, though it mattered little. His men understood well his standing order that no quarter would be given to German "abolitionists" and "bushwhackers." Despite his awareness of that dreaded directive, Robert Williams never actually believed that his comrades were capable of carrying out such a horrific deed as a mass execution. But he would never forget his astonishment upon first hearing the chilling sounds of pistol reports piercing the afternoon stillness. He soon learned that the gunshots coming from a nearby thicket were not those of a military honor guard saluting the dead, nor the announcement of another attack, but something far more terrible. Williams vividly remembered grabbing his rifle and running toward the gunfire, then being stopped by one of his fellow Rangers. "You needn't be in a hurry," the Texan announced, reaching out to grab his comrade, "it's all done; they've shot the poor devils and finished them off." Stopping in his tracks, a stunned private Williams shuddered, then shook his head in disbelief. "Oh yes, they're all dead, sure enough," the soldier repeated to him, "and a good job too."
Williams recalled his deep sense of outrage and shame upon realizing that every last German prisoner had been executed, shot in the head at point-blank range. He recorded in his memoir that the senseless massacre of unarmed wounded men was the work of a "Lieutenant Luck," whom he described as a "remorseless, treacherous villain." And he left little doubt that the atrocity committed along the banks of the Nueces was but the worst in a series of wrongs that state volunteers committed against German Unionists during the Civil War. As for Lieutenant McRae, he simply recounted to his superiors that the enemy "offered determined resistance and fought with desperation, asking no quarter whatever." Then the remorseless McRae added one last haunting sentence: "Hence I have no prisoners to report."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Crooked River"
by .
Copyright © 2018 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University.
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