2 A Personal Civil War: The Murder of Wilhelm Warenskj old by Clair Hines FOREWORD Johan Matheus Christian Wilhelm Warenskjold was born in Fredrickshaid, Norway, in 1822. He was the only son of a professional soldier, the family surname having been ennobled by the King of Denmark-Norway in 1697.1 At age twenty-five, Wilhelm said farewell to his mother and two younger sisters and emigrated to Texas, where he married a woman seven years older than himself . Together they built a home and began raising a family of three boys. Elise Amelie Tvede, born in Dypvâg parsonage, Kristiansand Diocese, near the port of Tvedestrand in southern Norway, in 1815, was the only child of a Lutheran minister and his wife, both of Danish birth.2 When she was twenty-four Elise married S vend Foyn, an ambitious sea captain who later became an economic giant in the whaling industry and something of a national hero. But three years later they separated, Elise taking a job, first as a teacher, later as a newspaper editor in Oslo. Influenced by Johan Reierson, a champion of emigration, she sailed on the same boat with Wilhelm Warenskjold to Texas where they married a year later. Much too soon, however, the growing family and their fellow Norwegian countrymen found themselves caught up in the internal struggles that shaped the tumultuous history of Texas during the Civil War. 37 38 Clair Hirtes Did that war and the subsequent bitter in-fighting during Reconstruction play a part in the murder ofWilhelm Warenskjold by neighboring farmer N.T. Dickerson? And what events led up to the fatal stabbing in the Prairieville post office on November 17, 1866? Here are the substantiated facts thus far uncovered. Map of East Texas. A Personal Civil War 39 Elise Tvede Warenskj old, painted by Clair Hines. Wilhelm Warenskj old, painted by Clair Hines. When a determined band of rebels, under the leadership of General Sam Houston, won the Battle of San Jacinto against Santa Anna's superior Mexican forces in 1836, a new nation, the Republic of Texas, was born. Then, after only ten short years of independence , Texas became the twenty-eighth state of the Union, and both the Lone Star Flag and its battle cry, "Remember the Alamo," took their place in the history of the United States. This new frontier beckoned to second-generation Americans seeking the same opportunities their fathers had found back in Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, and the Deep South. Flocking westward they felt that Texas and its wide open spaces rightfully belonged to them. However, the new land had already attracted others in 1847 when a group of immigrants sailing from Norway joined their leader, Johan Reierson, in East Texas for a new beginning. Among them were Wilhelm Warenskjold and Elise Tvede, who married and helped establish the Four Mile Prairie settlement and its Lutheran church in Van Zandt county, a stones throw east of Reiersen's new town of Prairieville just over the Kaufman county Hne. A collection of Elises letters, The Lady with the Pen , has documented their lives well.3 Clinging to their Norwegian heritage, its native language 40 Clair Hiñes and Lutheran faith, the Four Milers found the Americans, for the most part, self-sufficient loners, suspicious of foreigners. Their noisy ideas of worship were very strange indeed. After attending a county-wide camp meeting lasting for days, Elise describes their long and vehement prayers: "They kneel at first, become more excited. . . soon one and then another begins to scream and cry out . . . claps his hands . . . throws himself on the ground . . . like one possessed by the devil. Apparently they believe that they cannot get into Heaven unless they take it by storm."4 But little by little, through time and familiarity, the barriers between the two groups were lowered and they lived peacefully together until bitter lines were drawn in the immense American tragedy called the Civil War. Elise, in particular, was appalled at the idea of a war to preserve the institution of slavery, as she wrote to her young sons in her Confession of Faith: "I believe that slavery is absolutely contrary to the law of...