My great-great grandfather, Timothy, was a private in Co. K of the Seventh Texas Mounted Volunteers, aka Third Regiment, Sibley's Brigade of Texas Mounted Volunteers. No wonder the Confederacy lost the war, they couldn't even agree about who they were.
Sibley's brigade was formed early in the war when Henry Hopkins Sibley, ultimately regarded among his men as a drunken fool, resigned from the U.S. Army and was commissioned a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army. What Sibley lacked in military prowess, he made up for with chutzpah and an ability to appeal to the Confederacy's megalomania.
Gaining an audience with Jefferson Davis, he asked Davis to allow him to raise an army of volunteer cavalry in order to drive the Union out of New Mexico and Arizona, capture their supplies and whatever other plunder he might stumble upon. Sibley insisted he wouldn't need that much monetary support, as he could live off the land, convinced that he would find sympathetic residents in New Mexico who would feed his men as needed.
What Sibley didn't tell Davis was that he fully expected New Mexicans, weary (he thought) of Union "occupation," to eagerly volunteer to join his army as he pushed northward. He also planned, after capturing Santa Fe and Albuquerque for the Confederacy, to turn his now greatly enhanced army westward to California, where he would capture the gold fields for the Confederacy and become a national hero.
So began one of the earliest, most foolhardy and least known campaigns of the Civil War (although it was loosely depicted as the backdrop for Sergio Leone's "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly)."
Before the war, Timothy was a farmer and "mechanic" in Tarrant County, Texas, having arrived there from Indiana in 1850. I suppose on the frontier a mechanic was someone who fixed wagon wheels or kept the equipment running at the nearby sawmill. He was one of the oldest privates in the Brigade, age 42 when he enlisted.
The brigade set out some 3,000 strong from San Antonio, Texas on October 22, 1861 driving a herd of "beeves," and trailing a wagon train full of supplies, artillery batteries, and wagons with the personal belongings of the officers and men. Sibley's personal belongings were at least 80 proof. A payroll wagon guarded by Co. K. (Timothy's company) would follow the main column, staying days behind and meaning that Timothy's involvement in a combat environment would not occur until late in the campaign.
Each man was armed with a firearm and horse furnished by himself. Timothy's horse cost $86. Many carried civilian shotguns and one company was armed only with lances! Obviously, they had been reading way too much Sir Walter Scott.
Following a trail of frontier forts with nearby water supply, the brigade reached the Rio Grande in the vicinity of Fort Quitman, and followed the River up to Fort Bliss and into New Mexico. It didn't take long for them to learn that the New Mexicans had no intention of joining their army, and in fact resented its presence. They also resented being paid for provisions with Confederate money, worthless in New Mexico.
After several feints with the Union troops at Fort Craig, the brigade first met the enemy in earnest at a place called Valverde, just north of Union Fort Craig and not far south of Socorro. The two sides exchanged artillery fire and made infantry probes, each trying to outflank the other while simultaneously trying to blow each other to bits. Sibley was nowhere to be found on the battlefield. The rumor is that he was too drunk to sit astride a horse.
The fighting was fierce and filled with 19th century ideas of both chivalry and machismo. The company of lancers, though, was soon decimated, survivors quickly abandoning their images of themselves as knights of the round table and picking up what weapons made themselves available on the battlefield. One Confederate's tongue was almost severed when he was shot through the jaw, at which he drew his large knife, sliced off the hanging chad, and asked a companion to give the knife to his brother before being carted off the field.
Another Confederate shot and wounded a Union soldier hiding behind a small tree, and since the Union man kept firing, asked his officer for permission to go out and kill the hapless yankee, or "ab" as the Texans called them, short for "abolitionists." He made his way out and got the drop on the Union soldier, but his fury wilted and he could not shoot him when the man begged for his life. Instead, he gathered up his rifle and ammunition and headed back to his own lines without harming his foe.
The battle swayed to and fro, with the Confederates eventually victorious when they charged and forced the "abs" to flee across the shallow Rio Grande. Some of the Union men had been wounded by shotguns and could not keep up. They begged the Confederates not to shoot them anymore, and their request was granted.
The only other notable battle was at Glorieta Pass, where Sibley would meet his Waterloo. The battle took place for the most part in a narrow canyon and the Confederates were holding their own against a union army freshly reinforced with volunteers from Colorado (including the legendary Kit Carson), when something completely unexpected happened. Major John Chivington (of Sand Creek Massacre fame, and also known as the Chivington Massacre), in seeking to flank the Confederate army, climbed out of the canyon and circled around to the Confederate rear, where much to his surprise, lay the Confederate wagon train, poorly guarded. After routing the guards, he burned the train, thus sealing the fate of the Confederates.
Once they lost the very ability to survive in New Mexico, the Confederates withdrew and began their long retreat back to Texas. Fearing the federals would follow them, and having lost most of their horses in battle, Company K and Timothy, who had finally arrived at the scene of the incident, were placed as the rear guard, because having avoided combat, they were well mounted.
A somewhat amusing (from a federal perspective) incident occurred with Co. K. They were ordered to attack a small federal garrison at a hole in the wall called Paraje, where they were supposed to mount a surprise attack and "liberate" a remuda of fresh Union steeds. Unfortunately, the officer in charge, Captain Thomas Orville Moody, became deathly ill drinking brackish water from a water hole (the rebels were trying to ration what water they carried), and had to be left behind.
Moody had been bent on following his orders, but the lieutenant who took over had other plans. Instead of surprising the federals, he took up position on a nearby hill and sent a representative under a white flag to order the federal commander to surrender. His reply? "I think I'll fight a spell first."
At that the federals unleashed cannon fire on the rebels, none of whom had been in combat before. After experiencing a shell bursting nearby for the first time, the lieutenant said something to the effect of "The jig is up, boys, we have no cannon," and retreated without the horses.
Some of the men, humiliated by their officer's "timidity," returned on their own to the hill and returned fire. Eventually, they too were repelled by the federal firepower and reluctantly withdrew.
With few horses and little water, a now ragtag bunch of defeated rebels had a long journey on foot ahead of them. They had to cross the Jornada del Muerto, or roughly translated, the "journey of death." The name proved apt as harassed by hostile Apaches who poisoned water holes, they left a trail of dead and wounded all the way to Texas.
Somehow, Timothy straggled back to San Antonio sometime in July 1862, sick and almost wasted away. Unfit for duty after his return, he was discharged in September, 1862 for medical reasons. His discharge papers give as the reason, "morbis brightii," an archaic term encompassing any form of kidney disease. Almost certainly his kidneys were close to failure from lack of water by that time.
Timothy returned to Tarrant County and his wife Martha and seven children. Luckily for me, his sperm count was not affected, and my great-grandfather George - Timothy's last gasp at immortality - was born before Timothy expired on May 14, 1864.
So, here I am, somewhat lucky to exist at all, and me a liberal enemy of everything the Confederacy stood for at that. And there lies poor Timothy in his grave the location of which no one knows, (but quite possibly here) almost certainly turning in said grave. I'm really sorry about that for his sake, but unapologetic for mine.
Note: The anecdotal material in this story (except that involving my family in particular) was gleaned from "Rebels on the Rio Grande, The Civil War Journal of A.B. Peticolas," by Don E. Alberts.
