In early 1862 the Confederacy determined to mount an expedition from Texas into New Mexico with the objective of seizing that territory and using it as a springboard into Colorado, Arizona, and ultimately, California. Had this campaign succeeded, the Confederates dreamed of taking over Baja California and the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora.
Beginnings
In 1861 the U.S. army maintained forts at various points throughout the west, with the primary purpose of protecting settlers (or invaders, depending on your point of view) against attacks from various Indian tribes. Among these installations were Fort Bliss in the far west of Texas, and, to the north along the valley of the Rio Grande River, Fort Fillmore, near the present-day city of Las Cruces, NM, and Fort Stanton, 150 miles to the northeast of Fillmore.
All federal military property in Texas was surrendered to the Confederacy on February 18, 1861. On July 23, 1861, from a base at old Fort Bliss, a regiment of mounted infantry, totalling between 250 and 400 troopers, under the command of John R. Baylor (1822-1894), entered the New Mexico Territory with the objective of launching a surprise attack on Fort Fillmore, killing the officers (Baylor was not a professional soldier), and persuading, it was hoped, the enlisted men to join the Confederacy.
Fort Filmore, NMT, 1856, looking E towards Organ Mntns.
Union defeat at Fort Fillmore.
On the evening of the 24th, the confederate forces had secretly reached a point 600 yards away. The surprise plan was betrayed to the Union by two deserters. With the cat out of the bag, Baylor, a violent and unstable individual, marched into nearby town of
Mesilla, NM, where, on July 25, 1861 he was attacked by 380 Union troops from the Fort Fillmore garrison under Major Issac Lynde in what became known as the First Battle of Mesilla. Lynde's force then returned to Fort Fillmore, where Lynde panicked and decided to evacuate the fort, believing it to be undefendable.
On July 27, 1861, at 1:00 am, the federals left Fort Fillmore, headed across the mountains on the retreat to Fort Stanton. The union troops were a substantial force for the locality, 500 to 600 men fully drilled regular soldiers, divided into 11 companies, with 2 artillery pieces, as well as 200 horses and mules, wagons, ammunition, and supplies. Their retreat, marked by a large cloud of dust, was detected at dawn by the Confederates, and in the blazing waterless heat, the men were falling out of the ranks alongside the road. The Confederates caught up to the column rather easily, and contrary to the advice of his officers, Lynde surrendered the entire force. In addition to all the equipment and supplies, the cash-short Confederates captured $17,000 in U.S. government negotiable instruments, the equivalent of cash, enough to meet the payroll of 500 soldiers for three months.
Lynde's surrender (he never held another command) was a catastrophe for the federal position in the New Mexico Territory. In addition to the loss of Lynde's command, the Union was forced to evacuate Fort Stanton after first attempting to burn all the non-readily transportable supplies.
Confederate Territory of Arizona declared.
On August 1, Baylor declared that all of the New Mexico Territory south of the 34th parallel would henceforth be the Confederate territory of Arizona, with himself as military governor. (A small force of Confederates would later reach Tuscon, where they were hailed by the local Confederate sympathizers.)
Over on the Union side, the territorial military commander, Col. Edward R.S. Canby (1817-1873), a competent commander, was struggling to organize the defense of the territory. Beginning in August he encouraged the raising of militia forces in New Mexico and as well as the movement into New Mexico of newly -raised units of the Colorado militia. In this he was handicapped by lack of funds -- the War Department had idiotically left the regular troops unpaid for over a year -- as well as the department's policy of transferring regular troops from the western frontier to other theaters of war.
Another threat to Canby were the numerous Indian tribes in New Mexico Territory, such as the Apache and the Navaho, who had been fighting the blue coats and the settlers for a number of years, and who were more than happy to see the Union soldiers evacuated from certain forts to meet the Confederate threat.
Harry Hopkins Sibley aka "The Walking
Whisky Barrel"
Invasion preparations
Canby's former subordinate,
Henry Hopkins Sibley (1816-1886) had been commissioned by Jefferson Davis to conquer the New Mexico Territory and incorporate it into the Confederacy. Sibley was an 1838 graduate of West Point, who in 1856 had invented the
Sibley tent, a genuine patented military innovation based on the teepee. Sibley knew the western states, having been deployed with the U.S. army in Kansas, Utah and New Mexico from 1855 to May, 1861,when he resigned his commission to join the Confederacy.
By the fall of 1861, Sibley had gathered about 3,500 men, thousands of horses and mules, and hundreds of wagons, all formed into 3 regiments of mounted infantry, armed with any sort of weapon that could be scrounged up in east Texas. One detachment was even armed with long spears, called "lances", useless for combat. Following a grand review in San Antonio, Sibley's command departed, one regiment at a time, for the long overland march to Fort Bliss. Because the waterholes along the dry route refilled only slowly, it was necessary to stagger out the departure of the regiments, with each one leaving at about two week intervals.
The march to Fort Bliss was difficult enough, and would have been so even under peacetime conditions. The troops could only move as fast as their food supply, which consisted of a herd of beef cattle, called "beeves", driven by Hispanic contractors. Some days the beeves could make 30 miles, some days only ten. Indiscipline was common along the route, and livestock was stolen by local Indians.
There were also at least 50 slaves accompanying the expedition. Along the way to Fort Bliss, as the command passed close to Mexico, one of the officers suffered the unfortunate (for him) loss of horse and property when the officer's slave liberated himself by riding the equine across the southern border to freedom.
Sibley moves north
By December, 1861, all of Sibley's men and supplies, minus the losses through illness, desertion and so forth that had occurred en route, had reached Fort Bliss, which was to become the jump-off point for the invasion. On December 20, 1861, Sibley issued a declaration which reads like something issued by the modern Tea Party. A partial quote:
An army under my command enters New Mexico, to take possession of it in the name and for the benefit of the Conderate States. By geographical position, by similarity of institutions, by commercial interests, and by future destinies New Mexico pertains to the Confederacy.
Upon the peaceful people of New Mexico the Confederate States wage no war. To them, we come as friends, to re-establish a governmental connection agreeable and advantageous to both them and to us; to liberate them from the yoke of a military despotism erected by usurpers upon the ruins of the former free institutions of the United States; to relieve them from the iniquitous taxes and exactions imposed upon them by that usurpation; to insure and revere their religion, and to restore their civil and political liberties.
Sibley and about 2,500 of his men crossed the border, headed north along the Rio Grande towards Union-held
Fort Craig, where Canby had assembled a force of about 1,500 regular troops and 4,000 unreliable New Mexico militia. Canby was still scrounging around for money to pay his troops, whose morale, at least among the volunteers, had gotten so bad that there was a mutiny among some of the volunteer units at other forts. Canby even resorted to issuing, completely without legal authority, purported interest-bearing treasury notes, and then urging the government to pay the notes.
The Confederates reached Fort Craig on February 20, 1862. Finding the fort (which was on the west side of the river along the main trail) too strongly to attack, Sibley decided to bypass the fort to the east side of the river, moving north, then recrossing the river back to the main trail, which would also cut the federal communication and supply route to Fort Craig.
Canby detected what was going on, and took most of his force north along the trail to the ford where he figured the Confederates would have to cross. This resulted in the Battle of Valverde, which the Confederates won after a hard and bloody struggle. Canby was forced to retreat from the ford crossing back to Fort Craig. Sibley claimed to have been "indisposed", spent most of the battle in an ambulance while a subordinate directed the combat. In fact Sibley appears to have been drunk.
A few days later Sibley resumed his march north, leaving Fort Craig behind him in Union hands. Sibley reached Albuquerque on March 2, 1861, and occupied the town without a struggle, as well as capturing federal supplies at nearby points. On March 4, in Santa Fe, the territorial capital, the federal officer in charge, organized the removal by a train of 120 wagon to Fort Union of $250,000 worth of supplies, and the burning of whatever could not be removed. On March 10, Confederate forces entered Santa Fe.
Defeat at Glorieta Pass
With the loss of Santa Fe, the Confederacy was coming very close to control over the entire territory. The only remaining Union troops in the area were the garrison at the now isolated Fort Craig and, far to the north, a small force of regulars at Fort Union. The only nearby possible source of reinforcements was the Union-held Colorado Territory.
The Colorado Territory had a few secessionist agitators but overall it was largely Unionist. In 1861 the national government sent out a territorial governor who began raising a regiment of volunteers to defend the territory should a Confederate threat loom near. Much like Canby in New Mexico, he found himself underfunded, and so resorted to financing operations through issuance of unauthorized notes to be paid, it was hoped, by the treasury, and these were accepted by local commercial interests. In the first part of February, the War Department sent word to Colorado to send as many troops as could be spared to New Mexico.
By forced marches the Colorado volunteers, tough (but undisciplined) miners and frontiersmen, arrived at Fort Union.
At this time, about 1,100 of Sibley's men, not knowing that Fort Union had been reinforced, were advancing east on the fort from Santa Fe along the Santa Fe Trail through Glorieta Pass. Sibley for some reason or other, possibly drunkenness, was not with his men, who were commanded by Col. Wm. R. "Dirty Shirt" Scurry. At the same time, a force of Union soldiers were proceeding west towards Glorieta Pass from Fort Union with the objective of recapturing Santa Fe. These forces met just past the crest of the pass on March 26, 1862. There was a very tough see-saw battle that day and also two days later on March 28.
The federals got the upper hand when they sent a force (under the command of John M. Chivington later infamous for the Sand Creek Massacre) around the pass over the surrounding mountains and captured and burned the Confederate baggage train of about 80 wagons, which meant complete loss of the Confederate's war and food supply. They also killed or drove off 500 horses and mules held in a corral not far from the wagons. Although the Confederate forces had done well in the actual fighting, loss of the supply train forced the Confederates to withdraw from the pass, and loss of the animals meant the survivors would have to walk rather than ride away from the scene of the battle.
Confederate withdrawal
After the battle, the exhausted Confederates, leaving their 200 wounded men behind at ranch in the vicinity, retreated to Santa Fe. Scurry, astoundingly, claimed to have achieved a victory. For some unknown reason, Canby, still down at Fort Craig, had sent an order to the federal commander which required him not to pursue the Confederates, but rather to withdraw back to Fort Union. This order was grudgingly obeyed, which gave the Confederates enough time in Santa Fe to steal, pilfer or requisition everything of military value, including such basics as blankets, shoes, and clothing.
Sibley's command moved south, entering Albuquerque again on April 8, 1862. Canby had moved north up the trail from Fort Craig, and was then on the outskirts of the city. Canby bombarded the town for 2 days in what became known as the Battle of Albuquerque, hoping that a part of Sibley's force still in Santa Fe, would vacate the capital to reinforce Sibley, this in fact occurred. Canby then moved around to the east where, on April 13, he met up with the Union forces moving south from Fort Union.
The Confederates left Albuquerque for good on April 12, 1862, and moved south back towards Fort Bliss. March order and discipline was poor as the force retreated on both sides of the Rio Grande. Canby gave pursuit, catching up to and clashing briefly with the Confederates at Battle of Peralta, on April 14, 1862, which ended inconclusively as the Confederates continued to retreat.
Sibley was then caught between the Union forces at Fort Craig to his south, and the advancing Union forces coming from Albuquerque. He decided to bypass Fort Craig by marching around the mountains to the west of the fort, a 100 miles journey through mostly trackless and waterless territory. The confederates had to abandon most of their wheeled transport, which meant that as a practical matter, the only supplies (food and military) they could take would be only what could be carried. A year later, Union scouts in the area found abandoned supplies and the occasional white bleached skeleton to mark the line of the retreat.
Sibley reached Fort Bliss in the first week in May, 1862, at a time when his army was spread out on the trail for 50 miles behind him. Somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of the army eventually made it back. The rest were killed, wounded then abandoned, or taken prisoner.
Guerrilla warfare.
Sibley intended that his army "live off the land" in terms of supply. In practice this meant requisitioning provisions under force of arms from the local population, sometimes with the formality of payment with Confederate paper money, sometimes not. As far as the local population was concerned, this was tantamount to robbery, and there was much resistance, resulting in at least one case the use by the Confederates of cannon fire on a village which wouldn't hand over provisions.
The Confederate troops were hostile to Hispanics, whom they were already by that time calling "greasers". The local New Mexico volunteer cavalry were of course largely Hispanic, and they had no love for the Texans, who comprised the vast majority of the confederates, and they engaged in a form of partisan warfare against the Confederate columns, picking off stragglers and isolated smaller groups.
Both Confederate and Union forces engaged in combat with the Native Americans, who were generally members of one of the subgroups of the Apache tribes, but the Navaho were also involved as well, and this was largely a war of smaller actions, typically raids, counter-raids, retaliations, and so forth, all of which was going on while each of the white armies struggled against the other.
Consequences
The New Mexico invasion, while small compared to the number of troops employed, had portended huge consequences. If California could be seized, or the mines of Colorado, the Confederacy would have access to a second ocean, as well as the mineral and other wealth of a vast region. Such a victory might bring recognition by the European powers as well. Defeat at Glorieta, combined with the eviction of the Confederates from Arizona by Union forces moving in from California, permanently ended this possibility.
Sibley managed not to be present at any of the four major battles his forces fought in (although he claimed to have come under fire at Peralta). He earned himself no love from his men, and at least one of them felt he should hanged. Sibley's apparently constant consumption of alcohol eventually led to his becoming known among his troops as "The Walking Whisky Barrel".
Modern memory
The New Mexico expedition is largely remembered today because Sergio Leone chose it as a backdrop to his classic western, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which, within the realm of artistic license, provided a remarkably good idea of what this campaign must have been like.