Like many "stories" related to the Civil War and especially partisan or irregular warfare, you have to be very careful about sources and absolute statements regarding the character, purpose or deeds of any of the participants. I would suggest you research Duff's Partisans and the 33rd Texas Cavalry yourself and arrive at your own conclusions. As an example of a different view of your ancestor's unit, the battle of the Nueces and the conduct of Captain James W. Duff, please read the following:
From the West Kerr Current
http://wkcurrent.com/myth-fate-clash-around-tegeners-role-in-unionist-movement-p1616-71.htm
Myth, fate clash around Tegener’s role in Unionist movement
Comfort resident Fritz Tegener, who owned a sawmill in Hunt, came to Kerr County from Prussia with his brothers, Gustave and William in the 1850s. Rejecting slavery, they became involved in the Union Loyalist League. Gustave was hanged by State troops, while Fritz survived the Battle of the Nueces in 1862. He also served as Kerr County treasurer, and after divorcing his first wife, Susan Benson, remarried Augusta Strunk.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This is the 138th of a series of articles marking Kerr County’s sesquicentennial.
By Irene Van Winkle
West Kerr Current
The white obelisk-shaped “Treue der Union” monument in downtown Comfort lists the names of several dozen men killed at the 1862 Battle of the Nueces and soon afterward. Loyal to the Union cause, they died fighting Confederate troops as the Civil War raged.
The incident still raises the hackles of many locals whose ancestors’ bones lay buried there. About 60 Germans participated in the battle, of whom 19 were killed in the fighting, including the wounded. Nine more were said to have been executed later. Eight more names are of men who died in a different skirmish on the Rio Grande River. The monument was dedicated in 1866, after the bones of the 19 dead men were returned to Comfort.
“ ‘The Blackest Crime in Texas Warfare’ is a good example of the strong emotion raised when anyone reads or talks about the Nueces Battle of August 10, 1862, and the execution of Union insurgents shortly thereafter.”
So wrote William “Paul” Burrier who, based on his findings after 14 years of research, said he can dispel a number of myths about the battle and other details that have circulated for nearly 150 years. He put his evidence in a 300-plus page book, “A Perfect Reign of Terror, Insurgency in the Texas Hill Country 1861-1862”.
Paul said that he is neither revisionist nor anti-Union, but that many accounts by eyewitnesses, historians and family members “have it wrong.”
“Their biases are from the Germans’ point of view, and some of them had their own agendas,” he added.
The Confederate troops who were in the pursuit force were in Capt. John Donelson’s task force. They included five officers: 1st Lieutenant Collin McCrae was the commander; 1st Lt. Holmsley; 2nd Lt. William T. Harbour, 1st Lt. Bingham, and Edwin Lilly, a junior 2nd Lieutenant. The much-maligned provost marshal, Captain James Duff himself was not there, Paul said, but in Fredericksburg at Fort Martin Scott.
Englishman Robert H. Williams, a junior officer at the battle who later wrote “With the Border Ruffians,” called Lilly a “whitewashed Yankee,” who had changed sides. Paul said that Williams’ account is tainted, “because of his own ambitions.”
Paul, who lives in Leakey, grew up out on the Divide. He said that because of family ties, he became interested in the events and people surrounding the Battle of the Nueces. After researching the Battle of the Nueces, the Union Loyalist League and other history, he said he thinks he has come closer to the truth.
“I also believe that those Germans who refused to sign up to fight for the Confederacy died as heroes. There were heroes on both sides — it just depends whose side you were on as to who you regarded to be the heroes,” Paul said.
During the time of the loyalists’ protests, there were militant groups called hanging bands, or “Hangebund” — Confederates and sympathizers who terrorized German Freethinkers and “48-ers,” and were charged with numerous atrocities. The two latter groups were loosely tied, but did not necessarily share all the same beliefs. However, they were both hunted for their Unionists leanings.
Singled out as the most brutal Confederate commander in the Hill Country, Duff was called “The Butcher of Fredericksburg,” but Paul is skeptical that Duff deserved such widespread vilification.
“Captain James Duff was one of the most hated men from that era, but I have not found evidence that he killed or hanged anyone,” Paul said.
Paul’s link to this chapter in Texas history is that his great-grand-aunt was Susan Benson. In 1858, she married Fritz Tegener, one of three brothers from Comfort who ran a sawmill near Hunt. Tegner (sic) Creek, which flows into the Guadalupe River, sits between Ox Hollow and the south fork of the Guadalupe.
Paul is the great-grandson of Susan’s older brother, William Thomas Benson (1840-1907), who married Nancy Isabellia, the daughter of George and Phoebe Fincher Hollomon, Sr. William T. and Susan were two of six children born to William Henry (ca. 1808-1856) and Mary V. “Polly” Runnels Benson.
William H. and Polly came to Texas from Indiana in 1855, settling near Fredericksburg. They moved into Kerr(s)ville, and lived on Water Street in a home where Windstream telephone company offices sit (behind Francisco’s). William H. died there, likely buried at Mountain View Cemetery, Paul said, adding, “It is believed he was the first white death in the newly organized Kerr County.”
William T. was living with Susan and her husband, Fritz Tegener, and his brother, Gus, according to the 1860 Kerr County census. He married Nancy here in 1866, and had about 12 children.
By the 1850s, the Tegener brothers — Frederick “Fritz,” Gustave “Gus” and William — were among the many Germans who settled in the Texas Hill Country.
They are said to have come from Graeben in Prussia. The Tegeners were at the heart of the Union Loyalist movement during the Civil War, and Fritz was one of their principal local leaders.
Gus was hanged by state troops at Spring Creek and is buried nearby with Sebird Henderson, Hiram Nelson and Frank Scott. Their tombstone reads that they were killed by Duff.
However, Captain John Donelson was actually the troop commander of those men, who were at Camp Pedernales (later the Morris Ranch off Highway 16).
“Donelson sent the pursuit force after those men who died at Spring Creek,” Paul said.
Howard Henderson’s own narrative sent to Capt. John Sansom (who was at the Battle of the Nueces) have become part of the family lore, but which Paul also disputes.
“Because of the date of the event, Howard could not have been captured with them because he linked up with some Germans in Vance (near Camp Wood), and had to have left prior to the time Donelson sent his forces,” Paul said. However, he added, “Every family story has some truth to it.”
Additionally, the deaths of Hermann and Jacob Itz along with those of John, Jacob and Philip Turknett were also attributed to Duff, but, Paul wrote, “All of these deaths took place after James Duff left the Hill Country. It’s just that Duff was the most visible officer at Fort Martin Scott, and he took all the blame.”
The 1860 census listed Fritz as a carpenter, but he also served as Kerr County Treasurer, receiving his certificate in 1860, signed by Sam Houston a year before he died. Although Fritz was badly wounded at the Battle of the Nueces, he survived, came home briefly, and then fled to Mexico.
Ironically, his brother-in-law, William H. Benson, a member of the Haengerbande, was also at the battle, serving with the Frontier Regiment Texas State Troops, where he was wounded. His brother, John, was involved and was also a member of the Haengerbande. He was indicted after the war in the deaths of three men, but it is not known if he was convicted. After his death in 1917, John was buried in the Confederate Cemetery in Lampasas County.
Fritz married Susan when she was just 14 years old, and had one daughter, Mary Augusta Texana. Once he returned from Mexico, Fritz discovered that Susan had had a child named Emelie Mexico seven months after he had left, but he refused to claim her as his daughter.
Thinking her husband had died after leaving, Susan married Fritz Schladoer in 1863, and later, William Warford. Fritz and Susan had a contentious divorce, and some details are known. In 1866, he charged her with adultery, child abandonment and neglect. Schladoer and Warford were also charged and Fritz claimed that her marriages to both men were pretenses.
Interestingly, some of those documents at the office of District Clerk Linda Uecker show that Charles A. Schreiner was the clerk then.
Related to the divorce, Susan’s attorney filed a motion to quash the indictment because there was something wrong with it.
“Her motion was granted,” Uecker said. In the end, Susan was finally vindicated, and a jury found her not guilty.
An immigrant from Perthshire, Scotland, Duff (1827-1900) rose quickly in the military ranks of the Confederacy. In 1849, before the Civil War, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Infantry.
Duff prospered as a rancher, and then a merchant in San Antonio, but when the Civil War began, he joined The Alamo Rifles, and quickly rose in the ranks. He joined the Partisan Rangers and eventually became provost marshal, based in Fredericksburg.
Numerous books have been written about these incidents and individuals, including “100 Years in Comfort,” by Guido E. Ransleben, and others who wrote their own first-hand accounts. Paul, however, has picked apart some of those long-standing theories.
In the aftermath of the Battle of the Nueces, it was alleged that several men who were held prisoner by the Confederates were killed in cold blood. A newspaper story titled “The Blackest Crime in History,” written in 1938 by Helen Raley, said ... “this slaughter of unarmed and wounded prisoners .... was by command of a Scotchman named Duff (a man she said who had been ‘drummed out of the United States regular army’ in disgrace) and a Yankee renegade who was his lieutenant.”
Paul said that Duff had once gone AWOL briefly while in the U.S. Army. He was sentenced to pay fines, do hard labor and was to be kicked out. However, Paul found out that several months later, Duff’s sentence was remitted and he returned to duty. After serving five years and promoted to sergeant, he was discharged.
John Sansom, who later rose up the ranks and became a captain with the Texas Rangers, was with the group of Germans. Although he fought for a while, he and several others left the scene of the battle. He later said it was because they saw they were outnumbered and outgunned.
The surviving Germans later reported they had been betrayed by the Anglos. In other incidents, there were several Germans who were branded as traitors to the cause.
Burrier believes that another man, August Siemering, who founded the San Antonio Express, had good reason to withhold what he knew for decades.
Judge Siemering’s 1876 version of the events, titled “The Germans in Texas During the Civil War” were printed as a series of articles in May/June, 1923 in the Freie Presse fur Texas” newspaper (later translated by Eddie Dietert’s wife, Helen). Burrier said that the publication of the series was “delayed by the wrath and influence of Fritz Tegener ... because he was angered by the content, ‘errors’ he termed them,” Burrier said.
Siemering said that the town of Sisterdale (named for its Twin Sisters, two steep hills that sit side by side) was at the core of the local movement, a prime example of what was known as a “Latin” community, along with Comfort and Fredericksburg. A Latin community was one where its residents consider themselves the elite intelligentia, steeped in education and the arts.
“Not only was their cultured life evident in public gatherings, it was also practiced in the homes despite the hard labor of everyday life. Every farm had a library of some sort,” Siemerling wrote. He said most German residents were abolitionists who “went so far as to set in motion agitation against slavery,” declaring it “an evil” at a German convention in 1854. However, “an uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty started creeping on all who opposed slavery; like the feeling preceding a thunderstorm of the worst kind.”
Jacob Kuchler, mayor of Fredericksburg, was a key individual in the movement. Siemerling, who knew many prominent leaders, said he saw then-Texas governor Sam Houston, speak against secession in 1860, saying he was “a Union man but was probably too old to withstand the brewing storm energetically.”
Houston, who protested weakly, was forced by a petition to call in the state legislature and the secessionists won out. Siemerling, however, said that due to the small number of delegates attending (Gillespie, Kerr and Kendall counties never sent any, since they had not held elections for any delegates), “there is no doubt that the convention was not representative of the People of Texas. ... it was a revolutionary gathering, not called by any legal authority. Besides that, hardly one fourth of the people had taken part in the election of delegates.”
Freethinkers and the ’48ers (named for those who rebelled in 1848 during the war in Germany) were also in the mix on the Union Loyalist side. Kerr County was divided over the secession question in 1860, narrowly voting in favor of secession, 76-57. In Precinct 2, by a margin of 53-34, voters had cast their ballots opposing secession from the Union. The convention then ousted Houston, replacing him with his lieutenant governor, a secessionist sympathizer.
Bitterness on both sides dragged on for decades, with numerous atrocities committed during the Bushwhack Wars, Burrier said, when Unionists took their revenge.
“Uncle Bill Walton always carried a gun afterward because he was afraid of retribution,” Paul said.
The Treue der Union on High Street was rededicated in 1996, on the 130th anniversary of its completion, and is the only monument to the Union outside of the National Cemeteries on Confederate territory. It is one of only six such sites allowed to fly the United States flag at half-mast in perpetuity.
It was only after the shooting death of pro-Confederate Oscar Splittgerber at Toyah in 1889, by Comfort Unionist Frederick Schultz, that the killing ended, 27 years later.
Paul said he has presented his findings to numerous groups, including historical societies in Comfort and other Hill Country towns. Although old ideas die hard, he said, “Some of them are starting to come around. Many of them were receptive to the information I told them and are very interested.”
Good luck with your family research.
Jim Martin
Webmaster