Robert Zapp, German Texan politician

Abstract

By examining in a local context the life and work of a German Texan political leader, Robert Zapp, during the Civil War and Reconstruction period, this paper presents a picture of immigrant attitudes toward nativism, secession, the war, the violence and difficult conditions which followed, the attempts at solving the immediate postwar problems, and redemption. Family letters and records, along with newspapers of the period and state and local records, provide a framework for analyzing the attitudes and reactions of German Texans in Fayette County to all these issues. This thesis argues that the same factors, party factionalism, racism and violence, and Democratic propaganda, which destroyed the Republican party on the state level, similarly doomed the efforts of the Republican party to failure on the local level in Fayette County. Although Zapp represented the proportionately small group of immigrants known as "Forty-Eighters," this group, in large part, furnished the leadership to the German community during this period. The German Texans' support of Congressional Reconstruction was certainly not unanimous, but they, along with the black population, made up the overwhelming magnitude of Republican support in Fayette County and furnished a disproportionate share of the leadership on both the local and state level in Texas.