Posted on 09/06/2003 8:47:58 PM PDT by gd124
AN EXTRAORDINARY 19th- century plot by German nobility to take over Texas and turn it into a German country has been uncovered by a historian looking through old records of some of Germany’s oldest families.
Prince Hans von Sachsen-Altenburg discovered that in the 1840s, when Texas was still a republic, the nobles managed to raise a small fortune from the state of Prussia under cover of an economic club known as the Adelsverein, or Association of Nobility.
The association used the money to send almost 8,000 members to Texas on the pretext they were fleeing political persecution or poverty. But, according to the historian, many were wealthy aristocrats and military officers planning to take control of the republic.
"They used the clichéd image of impoverished immigrants flooding into the New World as cover to send thousands of their nobles, generals, and soldiers to Texas, to put their scheme into action," said Prince Sachsen-Altenburg.
He claims the man who hatched the plan to turn Texas Teutonic was Prince Carl von Solms-Braunfels, a German field marshal - and a blood relation of Queen Victoria - who had been hardened by European wars.
At the time, the bankrupt republic was protected by only a few hundred Texas rangers and had fewer than 40,000 people on its land.
As part of plans to win logistical aid from Britain, Prince Solms-Braunfels courted Victoria’s favour for a new "Germany in the West", claiming British economic interests in California and Mexico were threatened by a westward- moving United States.
According to the historian, the solution was to establish a German state of Texas.
From Europe, the Adelsverein had purchased more than three million acres of Texan land. But the group soon discovered it was unsuitable for farming and was occupied by some 10,000 warring Comanche Indians.
Under Prince Solms-Braunfels’s direction, the Germans established a series of forts such as Nassau, New Braunfels and Carlshafen - cities that still bear their German names.
To complement weaponry brought with them, correspondence sent back to Germany by Prince Solms-Braunfels in 1844 urgently called for more heavy artillery and rifles.
"Arms were sent over labelled only as ‘personal baggage’," said Prince Sachsen-Altenburg. "Hence it was not always documented at the US end."
The prince added that Britain considered sending military equipment overland from California. Messages between Lord Aberdeen, the foreign secretary, and the new German community were handled by William Kennedy, the British consul in Galveston.
"Unfortunately for the venture, it was this course of communication that ultimately proved their undoing and forced the US to speed up its annexation of Texas," the prince said.
"The government messenger was instructed to hand over the correspondence personally to the British consul. But instead of that, he was met by a US spy who drank him under the table and intercepted the information that was then sent to the White House."
Within weeks, James Polk, the US president, sent forces to the Texas border and Congress voted to annex the republic.
While Adelsverein diehards still aspired to establish a colony, financial and logistical support was largely withdrawn and the venture foundered several years later.
The story does fit perfectly though, and there was a large number of Germans in Texas who went on to produce the highest grade of cotton on the American market before the Civil War. Their cotton got a penny more a pound on the market (when a penny had real meaning) and they produeced it solely without the use of slaves.
This caused a lot of grief in Texas before and during the Civil War, and the Germans areas were practically in open revolt against the government of Texas from secession on. There is a famous fairwell speech given a Texan in Congress right before the war that was interrupted by visitors screaming at him from the gallery when he blames the fighting in Texas before Fort Sumter on the slaves and not on the Germans who were responsible it. Germans also played a major role in Missouri in keeping it from turning traitor.
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Three Margaritas at Austin's El Rancho should do it.
German Who Brought Cowboys To the Rhineland Wins Fans in U.S.
yep!
Damn, you beat me to it!
True. At the time, the easiest route to the Texas interior was thru the port of New Orleans, thence up the Mississippi and Red Rivers to Natchitoches, Louisiana.
The Old San Antonio Road, the emigration route from the U.S. used by Moses Austin and his followers, began at Natchitoches and continued thru Nacogdoches, Texas down to San Antonio.
Thus, it was easier to reach East and Central Texas via New Orleans than via the lesser port of Galveston.
Let's not be forgetting Shiner (and its Spoetzl Brewery)...
I doubt this would have been practical.
The Americans would not have allowed Britain to send the military equipment through California. That would have violated the Monroe Doctrine.
Secondly, even if the Americans allowed Britain to send arms overland, the Mexicans would have intercepted them before they got to Texas. Mexico had no interest in seeing a rearmed Texas. Mexico still considered Texas a Mexican province. Mexico would have been opposed to this anglo-saxon scheme.
Cuero.
Which is pronounced "Quero"...
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