A group of Germans, fleeing from the Hill Country to Mexico and onward to U.S.-controlled New Orleans, was confronted by a company of Confederate soldiers on the banks of the Nueces River.

[6] Disputes over the confrontation and the efficacy of Confederate actions after the battle, according to historian Stanley McGowen, continue to plague the Hill Country into the 21st century.

[8] By 1860, the German population in Texas, predominantly first-generation immigrants, reached an approximate level of 20,000 across the entire state.

Texas' secession from the United States in March 1861 and the start of the American Civil War on April 12, 1861, magnified these disputes.

Historians Robert Shook and Stanley McGowen acknowledge, as German Texans maintained at the time, that the group's expressed purpose was to defend the Hill Country from Indians and outlaws.

[19][21] Confederates, they confirm, considered the Union Loyal League the enforcement arm of German-Unionist sentiment.

[22][23] Confederate officers even implicated the organization in strategies to free U.S. Army soldiers from Camp Verde.

[26] Because of this opposition, General Hamilton Bee dispatched Captain James Duff to Gillespie County.

[2] Informed of their intentions, Captain Duff dispatched Lieutenant Colin McRae with approximately 96 men in pursuit on August 3, 1862.

[1] After six days, Lieutenant McRae and his men spied the German Texans in a small prairie along the Nueces River on August 9.

Numbers vary, but Stanley McGowen estimates that twenty-three to twenty-eight Germans fled throughout the early morning hours.

[33] Out of the 96-man force, the Confederate losses counted two soldiers dead and eighteen wounded, including Lieutenant McRae.

[3] A more recent conclusion in 2003, made by historian Randolph Campbell, is that 19 Germans died outright in the assaults on the camp.

[4] The complete German casualty report then comes to approximately thirty-seven killed and unknown totals for wounded among those who fled and survived.

No name has garnered definitive support, and McGowen admits the debate on Confederate and German actions continues among descendants on both sides of the incident.