Replies

Handbook of Texas Online

DOUAI, CARL DANIEL ADOLPH (1819-1888). Adolph Douai, educational reformer, abolitionist, newspaper editor, and labor leader, was born in Altenburg, Thuringia, on February 22, 1819, to Carl Eduard and Eleanora Douai. He attended elementary school and gymnasium in Altenburg and subsequently studied philology and history at the University of Leipzig. After receiving his doctorate in 1841 he embarked on an extended trip that eventually took him to Russia, where he worked as a private tutor. On September 26, 1843, in Königsberg, East Prussia, he married the baroness von Beust, with whom he eventually had ten children.

In 1846 Douai returned to Altenburg and founded an experimental private secondary school that emphasized the natural sciences and modern languages instead of the traditional classical curriculum. He participated in the uprisings of 1848 and wrote articles for various newspapers supporting revolutionary aims. For his role in the revolt Douai was arrested and eventually tried on five different occasions for high treason. Although acquitted of the more serious charges, he was convicted of several lesser offences and imprisoned for a year.

After his release he immigrated to America; he arrived in Texas in May 1852 and settled first in New Braunfels, where he founded a school. He moved the following year to San Antonio to serve as the editor of the newly founded San Antonio Zeitung.^qv The Zeitung at first was educational and literary in tone, but within a short time Douai began to use it as a platform for abolitionist views. In a series of editorials he attacked the institution of slavery^qv as an evil incompatible with democratic government and called for a nation of "free tillers of their own soil." Douai's protest elicited a storm of controversy and fueled the growth of the American (Know-Nothing) party^qv in Texas. Sentiment against Douai and the newspaper reached such a pitch that members of the local German turnverein (see TURNVEREIN MOVEMENT) volunteered to protect his offices against proslavery mobs. After the Texas State Convention of Germans in 1854, however, Douai's support within the German community began to erode. Several German towns passed resolutions condemning the paper's abolitionism, and many local German merchants withdrew their advertisements. The stockholders of the Zeitung decided to sell the newspaper, which Douai, with the help of northern abolitionists including Frederick Law Olmsted,^qv purchased. Despite repeated threats, he continued to agitate for abolition and in the February 9, 1855, issue of the Zeitung called for a separate free state in western Texas. But in 1856, as revenues declined and ill-feeling grew, Douai was forced to sell his interest in the paper to Gustav Schleicher^qv and leave the state.

He moved his family to Boston, where he established a kindergarten in 1859, reputedly the first in the United States, under the auspices of a German workingmen's association that he had organized. But controversy still followed him. Because of his public avowal of atheism he again met with opposition and left Boston in 1860. He moved first to Hoboken, New Jersey, where he became the director of a local German school and served as editor of the New York Democrat. In 1866 he moved to New York, where he continued to pioneer the kindergarten movement. He founded several schools and wrote a kindergarten manual and other education textbooks. From 1868 to 1870 he worked as the editor of a labor journal, the New York Arbeiter-Union, and from 1878 until his death he was the editor of the Neu Yorker Volkszeitung. In addition to his work as teacher and journalist, Douai was also a gifted musician and wrote over sixty compositions. Late in his life he wrote his autobiography, in which he described his years in Texas. He died in Brooklyn, New York, on January 21, 1888, and his body was cremated. See also GERMAN ATTITUDE TOWARD THE CIVIL WAR.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Rudolph L. Biesele, The History of the German Settlements in Texas, 1831-1861 (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1930; rpt. 1964). Adolf Douai Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. New Haven Workmen's Advocate, January 28, 1887. S. V. Pfeuffer, Scrapbook, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Laura Wood Roper, "Frederick Law Olmsted and the West Texas Free-Soil Movement," American Historical Review 56 (October 1950). Marilyn M. Sibley, Lone Stars and State Gazettes: Texas Newspapers before the Civil War (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1983). Moritz Tiling, History of the German Element in Texas (Houston: Rein and Sons, 1913). Carl Wittke, Refugees of Revolution: The German Forty-Eighters in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952).

Marilyn M. Sibley

Socialist Party of Texas

The Untimely Death of German Socialism in Texas:
A Review and Brief History
by Steve Rossignol

Death On The Nueces, by Rodman L. Underwood, Eakin Press, PO Drawer 90159, Austin, TX, 78709, 2000, $22.95

The "spectre" that was "haunting Europe" in 1848 when Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto probably never had a ghost of a chance in the arid political climate of Texas, but wisps of its ether did materialize on Texas soil for a brief flurry of years.

The German nobility of the 1840’s, recognizing the growing problems of a radicalized industrial working class, sought in its own version of noblesse oblige to arrange an immigration of German workers and peasants to Texas. In mid 1847, a group of about 40 German communists (the Vierziger) set up their ideological commune on the banks of the Llano River about 18 miles west of Llano. The experiment lasted a little over a year, dissolving after a bad case of "too many chiefs and not enough Indians."

The Vierziger relocated to other German outposts in the Texas Hill Country, including the liberal free-thinking settlements of Boerne, Comfort, and Sisterdale. Among their number were Dr. Ferdinand Von Herff, who wrote a treatise for the immigration of German workers to Texas (see front cover) and Jacob Kuechler, variously described as a "revolutionary" and "socialist". They were joined by political refugees from the Revolution of 1848, including Adolph Douai, later to become the pre-eminent Marxist in the United States , Edourd Degener, Ernst Kapp, and others. They were even visited for several years in their free-thinking settlements by Edgar Von Westphalen, the brother-in-law of Karl Marx, indicating a contact with the Marxists in the Old Country.

The German opposition to slavery did not bode well with pro-slavery Texans. Douai’s newspaper press in San Antonio was destroyed by a pro-slavery mob in 1855, whereupon he left for Boston.. The Civil War also placed abolitionist Germans in a precarious position; by June 1861 they had organized the Union Loyal League to maintain their self-interest, and were threatened with death if they did not take Confederacy loyalty oaths. A special bounty was placed on the head of Jacob Keuchler; he was described as "dangerous" by Confederate authorities,but he always managed to elude capture.

By 1862, the most radical of the Germans had organized themselves into a military unit, and were planning to join the Union Army by way of Mexico. Jacob Kuechler headed a company, and the larger force was commanded by Fritz Tegener. We can probably safely assume that these were the most militant of the German—Underwood describes them collectively as Marxists and communists, mostly from the free-thinking colony of Comfort, where no church was built until 1892.

The Confederates got wind of the plan to go to Mexico, and, after trailing the Germans for several days, ambushed them on August 10, 1862 at the West Prong of the Nueces River in northeastern Kinney County. Nineteen were killed, including wounded members who were summarily dispatched by the Confederates. The Germans scattered, some returning home, some continuing to Mexico, but the radical German political philosophy would also be scattered, never to regroup again.

Underwood’s account provides a compilation of material which has not heretofore been available. One wishes that his writing were a mite more scholarly, as some assertions he makes are not fully documented, but all in all he is one of the few writers on the subject who has categorically made the connection between the German Unionists and the socialist movement. More research needs to be done on this subject. Maybe someday I’ll get around to it.

Not finding much on Goodwin--not sure if he was a Marxist or just mentioned as testifying after Douai. Found an obituary on Thurber; can't tell if he was a Marxist from this either, but here's the info FWIW:

Direct Testimony

"F. B. Thurber Dead," New-York Daily Tribune (June 7, 1907)
"F. B. Thurber Dead," New-York Daily Tribune (June 7, 1907).

Varied Career of Once Wealthy Business Man Closed.

Francis B. Thurber, one of the organizers of the New York Board of Trade and Transportation, died yesterday at his home, No. 49 West 25th street. He was sixty-five years old. Beginning as an office boy at $2 a week, Mr. Thurber gradually advanced until he became one of the principal members of H. K. & F. B. Thurber and Co., and later president of the American Grocery Association. He acquired a fortune, which was swept away in the panic of 1893.

Mr. Thurber never recovered from that loss, and despite heroic efforts to gain some headway, he was forced to sign a petition in bankruptcy in 1901, his total liabilities being more than $250,000. Mr. Thurber, in his prosperous days, was keenly interested in the advancement of American opera, and lost thousands of dollars, it was said, in furthering this enterprise. Prior to and after his failure Mr. Thurber studied law and at the age of fifty-seven, in 1899, was admitted to the bar. He built up some practice, and tried to recoup his lost fortune and pay some of his creditors.

Despite a brief incursion into the independent field, he was a staunch Republican, and was one of the trustees of the East River Bridge under Mayor Strong. He supported Cleveland in 1884, 1888, and 1892 as a leader of the Anti-Monopoly League. Later, however, he changed his views and became a firm protectionist. At the trust conference in Chicago, in 1899, he made a remarkable defence of corporations. Funeral services will be held at the family home on Monday morning. In the Directory of Directors Mr. Thurber's name appears as president and director of the Producers' Export Company and a director of the New York Board of Trade and Transportation.