The Civil War in the Southwest

The Texan Santa Fe Expedition, The Compromise of 1850, & The Dark Clouds of War

This is the third episode in the series over the Civil War in the American Southwest. This is the final episode that covers the lead up to the actual opening of hostilities between the Rebs and the Yankees.

Empire and Manifest Destiny had been a national mission since colonial days, and now Southerners, employing the instrument of secession, sought to restore the nation to its historic course and to carry forward the standard of empire that the North had abandoned. Southerners, through the Confederacy, would revive the American dream of empire.

Author Donald Frazier from his Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest

In 1841, five years after the creation of the Republic of Texas but before Texas was admitted as a state and before the Mexican-American War, the President of the Republic, Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar, asked Texans to take up arms and amass together for a march onto Santa Fe in New Mexico. President Lamar was a poet, politician, and Georgian who had set his sights on enlarging the new Republic of Texas and adding to Texas’ coffers the wealth of the territory of New Mexico. In Donald Frazier’s Blood and Treasure, he outlines the history of the American Empire’s first forays of expansionism and gives much of its success to Southerners. Especially Texans. He writes quote, Southerners, with proximity to Hispanic domains, naturally became skilled expansionists. Land-hungry agrarians with a talent for things military, they were the principal agents and proponents of an ever-expanding American empire. Southerners gloried in this role and, throughout the first seventy years of American history, could be found in the forefront of national expansion. End quote.

President Bonaparte Lamar was one of these expansionists. So when he heard and saw the growing calls of Texans to be admitted as a new state into the Union, he balked. He would much rather the Republic rival the United States and become a continental power in its own right. So he set his sights on taking the eastern half of New Mexico or all of its territory to the Rio Grande.

To help spurn this call, in 1837, a northern portion of New Mexico, a place called Rio Arriba, the residents there rebelled against the New Mexican government in Santa Fe and sent encouraging messages to Texas. Three years later, in 1840, with those misleading messages in mind, President Lamar sent a letter to the people of Santa Fe asking nicely for them to just go ahead and join this new prosperous Republic of Texas. He promised they would have a voice in the legislature and they would be free of the ill-ran Mexico. Problem was, New Mexicans weren’t really having it. And, Lamar failed to get the Texas Congress to sign off on his grand proposal. That did not stop him though, from raising his own force of volunteers to go and take what he thought was rightfully Texas anyways.

You see, in 1836, when the Tejanos won their independence from Mexico at the battle of San Jacinto, there was an agreement between Santa Ana and Sam Houston that the new border of the Texas Republic would be the Rio Grande River. Naturally, Texas assumed this meant the entire Rio Grande River from the Gulf of Mexico to the San Juans in Southern Colorado. More ambitious Texans, like the second president of the Republic, Lamar, he wanted to finally make that a reality. He wanted to prove the strength of this fledgling nation and he wanted to secure the vast wealth that could be found in New Mexico. 

So, despite not having the backing of the Texas government, Lamar amassed a force of about 321 men to march on Santa Fe and claim it for Texas. The men included merchants, teamsters, a few guests, five companies of infantry, and one company of artillery. Also accompanying them as one of the guests was an Englishman named Thomas Falconer who would, thankfully for us, write a first hand account of the disastrous expedition. I actually quoted from Falconer’s works in the Subscriber only episode over the Llano Estacado, for those interested in hearing that, head on over to Substack and become a subscriber.

At this time, President of Mexico, Santa Ana, really wanted to take Texas back from the Tejanos. In his eyes he felt like the war wasn’t over and that Texas was still a province in rebellion. So when he heard rumors of this expedition, he called on the governor of New Mexico, a certain reoccurring Manuel Armijo to raise a force to repel the invaders. Santa Ana also sent troops up from Chihuahua. Santa Ana would have liked to have accompanied this force himself but he couldn’t leave Mexico City for fear of being ousted as President. Such was the nature of Mexican politics.

Lamar and his forces which would become known as the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, although they called themselves the Santa Fe Pioneers, this group of Texans actually thought that they would be greeted as liberators and met with open arms… but they could not have been more wrong.

Finally, on June 19th, 1841, the volunteers left Austin and headed straight north. They’d pass modern day Waco and then continue to head north until just south of the Red River, today’s boundary with Oklahoma. They thought they were at the red river… but they were actually at the Wichita River. The Pioneers then went through modern day Wichita Falls, Texas before heading due west.

After two months of walking through Texas being led by a Mexican guide who took them to the wrong river, the Mexican guide abandoned them on August 17th. To remedy this, they sent scouts to the north who came back with yes, we are indeed following the wrong river. So they headed northwest towards the real Red River. All the while, they were harassed by Indians. Probably Comanche and Lipan Apache. They also had not carried with them enough provisions and they were severely lacking water. And this was BEFORE they even reached the Llano Estacado. For an in-depth history of that foreboding place, become a Roadrunner subscriber at Substack where you’ll hear a nearly four hour podcast on that historically significant place. As well as a ton of other episodes.

Once at the foot of the towering wall which in some places reaches 1,000 feet, this towering wall that was the base of the Llano Estacado, they realized they couldn’t easily climb the caprock. The leader of the expedition, a Hugh McLeod, waited at the base while sending a scouting party ahead. This scouting party themselves had a lot of trouble crossing multiple canyons and suffered from a want of thirst until they finally came to a Mexican settlement. Feeling like they’d made it, the scouts sent back a guide to lead the rest of the expedition up and across the Llano Estacado to their point.

Meanwhile, New Mexican Governor Armijo had amassed a militia, with a significant portion of Taos Puebloans among them, to intercept this group of Texans before they could reach Santa Fe. I read that the number of New Mexican soldiers could have been as high as 1,500. They were not messing around.

One of the Texan scouts, a man who has been probably unfairly described as a traitor, a certain Captain William G Lewis, while he was going on ahead of the expedition, he got himself captured. He was obviously shocked that so many soldiers had come out to defend New Mexico. Again, the Texans thought they would be greeted as liberators, not as a hostile enemy force. Seeing the hopeless predicament and how outnumbered the Texans were, he was allowed to go back to the expedition and advise them to… surrender. The Texans were camped out near present day Tucumcari and if you’ve ever travelled through that area by vehicle… you know what kind of Devil’s desert it is. The Texans had been broken, their morale was sapped, their health was failing, and they were thirsty. The whole expedition had been a disaster and Captain Lewis convinced them that they faced certain death if they put up a fight. So, they surrendered. 

H Bailey Carrol wrote the Texan Santa Fe Expedition article for the Texas State Historical Society and the author describes what happened next, quote, Thus without the firing of a single shot, the entire expedition passed into Mexican hands. The Texans, reduced in number and broken in health and spirit, had been conquered by the arid plains rather than by the force of Mexican arms. The Texas prisoners were marched to Mexico City. They were subjected to many indignities both en route and after their imprisonment in Mexico. The affair became the subject of a heated diplomatic controversy between the United States and Mexico before most of the prisoners were finally released in April 1842. End quote.

The reality of the capture is a bit more harrowing than that. When Armijo showed up he demanded that all the Texans, the over 300 of them be killed right there on the spot. There were some dissenters among his ranks though so they put the motion up for a vote. After debating the matter nearly all night, the vote to spare the Texans won by… a single… vote. But their journey wasn’t over. The Texans were bound and marched 2,000 miles south to Mexico City. All the while they were treated quite harshly. The Texans would not forget this injustice. And the stories of the expedition would strike fear into the hearts of New Mexicans of a future, much more violent invasion by the Texans.

The entire thing was an embarrassing disaster that would lead Texas politicians like Houston and even Bonaparte Lamar himself to rethink the strength of Texas and to begin heeding the call for annexation by the US. The whole affair would fester for years until it would erupt into the Mexican American War. And that conflict would reignite the desire for Texans to cement their boundary as the Rio Grande… from the Gulf of Mexico to Southern Colorado. A desire that would lead to the invasion of New Mexico by Confederate Rebel Forces in 1861.

Only a few years after the failed Texan Santa Fe Expedition, in the year 1846, during the Mexican American War, General Stephen W Kearny took his Army of the West, which included artillery, infantry, the First US Dragoons, or mounted infantry, and the Mormon Battalion, Kearny took his 2,500 men and marched towards Santa Fe in June. Kearny and his Army of the West would end up taking New Mexico from the very same Governor Armijo in a reverse of the previous engagement, and again largely without firing a shot. He would then install a military dictatorship and disband the New Mexican Government. Despite decades of attempt, New Mexico would not become a state until 1912 which greatly irked the residents of that very old Territory. And it would result in the soon to break out hostilities between the territory of New Mexico and the State of Texas as the Civil War approached.

From Santa Fe, Kearny marched through Arizona and all the way to California. It was Manifest Destiny after all, and the nation had to span from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Democrat Warhawk’s dreams were slowly being realized.

In Mississippi, Jefferson Davis resigned his congressional seat and signed up to fight. He was given the rank of Colonel and he lead a volunteer force of Mississippians known as the First Mississippi Rifle Regiment against the enemy. He fought in two major battles, the battles of Monterrey and Buena Vista. At Monterrey he led a charge that took a fort which won him national acclaim as a hero. But he wasn’t done there. During the battle of Buena Vista, despite being shot in the heel, he took a stand against a Mexican force that threatened to collapse the American line thereby helping to win the battle.

President Polk, impressed by the Democrat from Mississippi offered him a Brigadier General position in the Army but Jeff Davis declined. Back in Mississippi he would take a vacant Senate seat and head back to Washington to scheme with the other Democrats. As described in the previous episode.

The aftermath of the Mexican American War saw the US gaining about 525,000 square miles of territory. Our favorite territory. The American Southwest. Warhawks were ecstatic. But some Whigs and National Republicans wanted nothing to do with the new territories. Most of that stemmed from the question of slavery.

After New Mexico was conquered by the Union, actually, before it was even taken, politicians in Washington were discussing wether or not New Mexico, which contained a good portion of Arizona at that time, they were arguing about wether it should be a free or a slave state. Obviously the southerners believed it was their right and it was their constitutional right to expand slavery wherever the Union flag was flown. The north, already flirting with Abolitionism, wanted all new territories to be free. Arguments ensued, secession was threatened by Calhoun, calls of treason were bandied about. The south felt like they spilled just as much blood if not more than their northern neighbors during the conflict so they ought to be able to enjoy the spoils of war just as much as their northern neighbors were.

At the same time that arguments were happening in Washington, the question of the Texas boundary reignited in the Southwest.

By the early 1850s, Texans were contemplating expanding the boundary of Texas yet again. They still held onto the idea that the Rio Grande was the boundary. They wanted Santa Fe and eastern New Mexico and they wanted it to be a slave state. Texas also wanted to create a new state of Arizona from the Rio Grande in New Mexico to the Colorado river on the border of California. This too, the Texans hoped, would be a slave state. Texans even began planning yet another invasion to Santa Fe. This time, they would not surrender to an overwhelming force.

In the Texas legislature, debates were being held about what to do with New Mexico now that it was part of the United States. Judges and representatives were sent from Austin to Santa Fe in the hopes of finalizing the boundary. Texas would even create Santa Fe County, Texas which included most of this disputed territory. But it was really only a county on paper alone. Eventually, the drums of war in Texas began to beat and Texans, newly inducted into the United States, began to talk of secession. Texans threatened this by saying, quote, we entered the union because we wanted to, we will leave it when we want to. And we want to now. End quote. Texan Pioneer and Statesman Benjamin Rush Wallace would write to Sen. Thomas Rusk at this time and state, quote, Jesus could be composed under insult, but the people of Texas are of a different breed: they will not submit to a government that divests them of what they prize higher than they do the Union itself. End quote.

Other southern states, like Jefferson Davis’ Mississippi, even promised troops to help invade New Mexico. Actually, every southern state promised troops. Father Stanley wrote, quote, in every southern state voluntary companies drilled in preparation for the march to Texas. End quote.

Meanwhile, in Washington, free soil abolitionists, the lawmakers who wanted all new territory to be free states, they were conceiving a plan to separate Texas into two states! They would make one a free state, the state to the west, and the state to the east they would make a slave state. All the while, the free soil abolitionists ardently maintained that New Mexico, California, and Oregon, were to remain free states.

New Mexico, as listeners know, has a very long and complicated relationship with slavery. The Puebloans knew slavery well but by another name. Encomienda. They held onto those memories of the Spaniards… and Apaches… and possibly even the Chacoan Anasazians… but the Puebloans detested slavery and wanted nothing to do with it in New Mexico. Mexico, when it briefly held New Mexico, constitutionally forbade slavery. Yet the south swore that slavery would be well in the state and it would help bolster the economy of the South and by extension, the Union. Not to mention, southerners argued, wherever the American flag flew, slavery must follow.

Of course, native New Mexicans who had stayed after the Mexican American war, they wanted statehood. They feared a repeat of the Texas invasion all throughout the late 1840s and 1850s and they did not want slavery. Again, they wanted statehood and to be citizens of the united states of America. A goal they would not capture until 1912.  

In 1850 many prominent New Mexicans wrote up a constitution and were preparing to give it to President Zachary Taylor who was himself a free soil state man. He was also a Mexican American War hero and the president after Polk. After this constitution that was written up by the New Mexicans, they were certain that New Mexico would join the union as a free state. Southerns though, they got wind of this new constitution and complained when they found out the constitution that was written by these New Mexicans did not mention slavery. Some Southern Democrat Warhawks even threatened the president with secession and war.

Congressmen and famous Texan Sam Houston threatened to leave Washington to head to Texas to personally march troops into Santa Fe. In response, President Taylor threatened to send Fedral troops to the territory to repel any Texan invasion. Author Father Stanley wrote in his The Civil War in New Mexico that had Taylor survived and not died only 18 months into office, the civil war may very well have started on the borders of Texas and New Mexico instead of on the east coast. War was brewing long before Fort Sumter, truthfully. And shortly after this 1850 kerfuffle, I won’t get into them but, Bloody Kansas and the battles in Missouri begin and they too threatened to throw the Union into war.

After Taylor’s death in July of 1850, his successor, President Millard Fillmore, actually did send Federal Troops to Santa Fe and he gave them explicit orders to resist any and all Texans who invaded. Everyone was waiting for the first shot to be fired. It was all a big possibly violent and bloody mess. A mess that the congress should have taken care of years prior. Instead, in typical fashion, they were too leery of making any lasting decisions.

Eventually, though, the Congress did come through when they passed the Compromise of 1850. I’ll actually let Roger Griffin of the Texas State Historical Society sum up this compromise and how it stopped the impending war.

Quote: Finally, Senator James A. Pierce of Maryland introduced a bill that offered Texas $10 million in exchange for ceding to the national government all land north and west of a boundary beginning at the 100th meridian where it intersects the parallel of 36°30', then running west along that parallel to the 103d meridian, south to the 32d parallel, and from that point west to the Rio Grande. The bill had the support of the Texas delegation and of moderate leaders in both the North and South. Holders of bonds representing the debt of the Republic of Texas lobbied hard for the bill, for it specified that part of the financial settlement be used to pay those obligations. The measure passed both houses of Congress in the late summer of 1850 and was signed by President Fillmore. End quote.

One of the reasons Texas was threatening so hard to invade was because they were broke and they owed the federal government boucoup money which they thought they could take and earn in New Mexico. This compromise then, alleviated the debt and most… everyone, would heave a sigh of relief. But many Texans were secretly biding their time.

All of this is the backdrop for the Civil war. The Compromise of 1820 had sealed the southern border a the Mason Dixon Line and had stated that no states north of the line could become slave states. Now with the compromise of 1850, the line of expanding slavery was drawn at the western edge of Texas. The south felt trapped. Expansion could now only come by going south… into the Caribbean. And into Mexico. More on that in a moment.

This compromise of 1850 also smoldered in the hearts of Texans and would eventually result in the future invasion of New Mexico by Texas Confederates. They would get their Santa Fe County and New Mexican territory or they would die trying.

After the compromise, New Mexico wrote in their constitution that they would never be a slave state. But that didn’t stop southerners from flooding the territory and filling every political position they could with pro slavery southerners throughout the next ten years. The only reason these pro-slavery southerners were even able to gain a foothold in the territory was on account of the Hispanics that had been in the land for a long time, sometimes centuries, and who had used… Indian workers and laborers in their fields and homes. Megan Kate Nelson, in her book over the civil war in the southwest titled The Three Cornered War wrote this about these New Mexicans, quote, Hispanos in New Mexico had long embraced a forced labor system that enslaved Apaches and Navajos. End quote. These recent southern immigrants and these New Mexicans would eventually pass their own slave code in the territorial legislature in 1859. By the time the war broke out, there would be hundreds of known slaves in the territory. Mostly Indian, and many of them working on the rapidly growing vineyards. I didn’t know this but during the 1850s, the territory was the wine capitol of the United States. And it would remain so until California eventually took the mantle.

A lot of these slaves were Comanche, Ute, Navajo, and Apache and that was because all throughout the 1850s, they had not ceased their raiding. The Territorial legislature, in 1854, to combat these constant raids, they devised the first inklings of rounding up these tribes, not the puebloans, but these other more nomadic tribes and placing them on reservations. The legislature actually cited the Puebloans. They thought, if those Indians could settle down, why can’t these other Indians? The leader of this legislature in 1854, Jose Guadalupe Gallegos said, quote, It is the wish of our people through the Legislative Assembly that the various barbarous nations that surround us and errantly be required to live within certain prescribed limits, where they will be taught to cultivate the land in order to be self-subsisting, instead of doing what they are now doing in robbing and pillaging and thus little by little they will learn to cultivate the arts, virtue and work, peace and loyalty to their treaties, the Federal Government granting the means to make this possible. End quote.

The Navajos from 1856 to 1860 stole hundreds of thousands of sheep, as well as horses, cattle, goats, and cows from New Mexicans. They killed countless sheepherders, took off with many a slave, burned and raided many a town, and generally made life difficult for New Mexicans. As father Stanley wrote, their depredations were without number. There were… a lot.

Obviously I talked about the Apaches many depredations but the Comanches too would swoop in from the great plains and burn, destroy, rape, pillage, steal, and kill all over the eastern part of New Mexico. The northern part of the territory was invaded by Utes and the western part was attacked by Navajos who would hide in the sandstone playgrounds of southern Utah.

In the late 1850s roving Fedral troops, as well as militias from the various states around New Mexico, like Colorado, and also including New Mexican militias, which were known as Regulars, all these groups were constantly in pursuit of these aforementioned raiding American Indians. And to complicate things, many of these very same tribes would join these militias in fighting the various other tribes. Utes would join to attack the Navajo. Puebloans would join to attack the Utes. Puebloans and Navajos would attack the Apaches with the Fedrals. I talked about some of these battles in the Apache series. But many of the White American leaders of these expeditions would later be important and key figures in the battles that took place in New Mexico during the war. And in fact, as war to the east began to approach, even these fedral and local troops began to align themselves with either the north or the south.

One of those military leaders who went in pursuit of the Navajos was a Lt. Col. E. R. S. Canby. A name you will hear a lot in this series. Canby would spend months in the Navajo territory during the winter of 1860 to 1861 in a, according to Father Stanley, quote, in a sincere effort to negotiate peace rather than in wholesale slaughter. End quote. Canby was mostly unsuccessful in this venture. The Navajos were always two steps ahead and just out of range.

Canby would later fight for the Yankees. Interestingly, the second in command of this winter excursion against the Navajos was Canby’s brother-in-law and future adversary in the field, soon to be Confederate Major H. Sibley.

Actually, a lot of military leaders during the Civil War saw some action in New Mexico between 1850 and the start of the war. Stanley says of this quote, all the great generals, with the possible exception of Lee, that fought for either the north or south, saw service in New Mexico at some time or other during those years. End quote. And for subscribers, you know Lee came very close to New Mexico during his time in Texas where he skirted the southern border of the Llano Estacado in pursuit of renegade Comanches.

In 1853 yet another territorial expansion of the United States excited the expansionist Warhawk Southerners. This was the Gadsden Purchase which saw a Tennessee size chunk of land being bought by the United States from Santa Ana. Initially, Southerners were ecstatic because they assumed this would be a new state, a new slave state. They could also, thought Jefferson Davis, who had overseen the purchase, the South realized, by skirting the New Mexican Territory, they could finally build their railroad to the Pacific! But, as Frazier writes, quote, Instead of becoming a new territory with predictably Southern allegiances, the region was quickly tacked onto New Mexico, neatly avoiding further controversy over the extension of slavery. Southern imperialists had sustained another injury. End quote.

These new Americans that resided in the Gadsden Purchase area were hardened and tough people. I have talked about many of them in the Apache series. Most of the Mangas Coloradas and Cochise episode is about the men who inhabited this area. They would eventually grow weary of the federal government who largely ignored them. They tried to write to congress to declare themselves their own territory. A territory they called Arizona. But the congress ignored them. Later, when the War breaks out, this strip that would become known as Confederate Arizona would send a delegation not to Washington, but to meet with the Confederacy.

The western half of the United States, not just the New Mexican Territory, which looked a lot different than it does today. Just look at the covers for the most recent episodes. The western part of the US, was vital to the war effort to both the North and the South. As mentioned earlier, Davis wanted a railroad that would connect the South proper with the Pacific Ocean. In that way, the South could get around the incoming crippling Union blockade and get their cotton out to Asian countries like Japan and China, but also France. And they could import much needed weapons and supplies.

Besides the hope of a railroad, the south yearned for the vast mineral wealth that lay in the west, especially in California, Nevada, and Arizona. Another name you will hear a lot and a man who will lead the Confederate forces into New Mexico in the next episode, Lt. Col. John R Baylor would say of this area, quote, the vast mineral resources of Arizona, in addition to its affording an outlet to the Pacific, makes its acquisition a matter of some importance to our government. End quote. He meant the Confederate government. As author Ray C Colton in his The Civil War in the Western Territories book, he mentions that at this time, the California gold fields were in their prime and that quote, rich ore veins in Colorado and Nevada were being developed. End quote. The South, in order to win, had to have this mineral wealth. Without it, and without help from France, winning the war would be an insurmountable task.

Also of value to the South were the many military fortifications, weapons, equipment, and supplies that lay scattered across the vast territories. In their march to the Pacific and through the deserts and mountains of the Southwest, they hoped to liberate all of it in tact from the Union.

The Confederacy actually thought this was going to be an easy territorial coup. New Mexico did border the confederacy, after all. It was technically the only state in the west to border the Confederacy. The south believed that most Fedral troops would either abandon their posts or join the south. They believed after years of fighting the Union that the marauding bands of American Indians would join the Confederacy. They believed, for much the same reason, that after years of battling and fleeing the Union, that the Mormons under Brigham Young would also join the South. In southern California, the confederacy had up to 16,000 Southerners and Confederate sympathizers so they believed California, or at least the southern half, would join their cause. Frazier has a few sentences about this as well in his Blood and Treasure. He writes, quote, Congressional representatives from Washington, Oregon, and Utah openly sided with the South. End quote. And, quote, Members of the California congressional delegation, including Senators Milton S. Latham and William M. Gwin, openly supported the cause of the South. Other congressmen urged the creation of a "Republic of the Pacific" out of the territories along the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas. Partisans defiantly raised the Bear Flag, the symbol of California nationalism during the Mexican War, in communities throughout the southern part of the state. End quote. And lastly, the South believed the Hispanos and Spanish American New Mexicans would be glad to rid themselves of the Union and join the Confederacy. Especially since many of the Spanish Americans were practicing slavery.

Unfortunately for the Confederacy, almost none of that would happen. 

But in the beginning, there was hope.

First of all, although the northern portion of the territory may have had Southern leanings, they were controlled fully by Santa Fe and her ties to the Union. Even though, according to Frazier, quote, since 1851, all five of the territory's governors had been Southerners, as were half the secretaries, judges, and military commanders of the department. End quote. The amount of Fedral troops in the area did not allow New Mexico to fly the Confederate Flag. Although, skipping ahead, after the opening of hostilities in South Carolina, the beautiful town of Taos would raise and fly the South Carolinian Palmetto Flag in sympathy for the rebellion.

Down in southern New Mexico though, in a town called Mesilla on the Rio Grande, north of El Paso and near present day Las Cruces, the residents there decided to throw their lot in with the Confederacy. According to Colton and his Civil War in the Western Territories, quote, a convention was held at Mesilla, in southern New Mexico, on March 16th, 1861, at which those present claimed that they represented the people of Arizona and were acting separately from the government of New Mexico. They repudiated the United States government and attached themselves to the Confederate State of America. End quote. The president of the convention actually wrote that they quote, resolved that we will not recognize the present Black Republican Administration and that we will resist any officers appointed to this territory by said administration its whatever means in our power. End quote.

Meanwhile, over in Tucson a similar convention was held in August in which that city too declared themselves for the Rebellion. They then elected Granville Oury ******, a man I have mentioned many a times in the Apache series, but Tucson elected Oury to be the delegate to the Confederate Congress, and they raised the Rebel Flag over the city.

So southern New Mexico and what we call today, southern Arizona, were essentially declaring themselves the new territory of Confederate Arizona   and they were siding with the Rebels. But the land between Tucson and Mesilla was largely abandoned of Whites. Except at a few key mining camps like… Pinos Altos. A place listeners know well from the Mangas Coloradas episode of the Apache series. And a place I will talk about again.

The North was also very aware of the importance of the American Southwest and the west in general. And largely for the same reasons. Nelson, in her Three Cornered War says of the west, quote, The Lincoln Administration had to retain control of the West in order to win the war. It was an immense region, making up more than 40 percent of the United States Landmass. End quote. But, that realization would come later. For now, the Union wasn’t as focused on the west and its value. Not to mention, Lincoln needed troops in the east.

Which is why, in May of 1861, General Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the US Army at the start of the war, he ordered according to Colton quote, ten companies of infantry, then in Utah, the fifth and seventh infantry regiments serving in New Mexico and four companies of the tenth infantry regiment then in New Mexico and Colorado, a total of approximately 3,400 men, to proceed to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. End quote. The north, was essentially, abandoning the west.

Up in Colorado, which had seen a slew of Southerners move to in the hopes of striking it rich, would have an estimated 7,500 Southern supporters. But ultimately, Colorado in February of 1861 would side with the Union. This would start a slew of fistfights and shootouts that would occur in the streets of Denver over the question of loyalty to either side. Frazier in his Blood and Treasure writes this of Colorado at the outbreak of war, quote, as the news of secession traveled through the mountains, earnest partisans of both the Union and Rebel causes soon turned to gunplay. One duel ended with a Union man shot through the body. To further antagonize Northerners, a Southerner emptied both barrels of a shotgun at the U.S. flag flying above the recruiting office, blasting it to tatters. End quote. But eventually, New Mexico under Canby would ask for Colorado militia volunteers, and the territory would provide plenty.

Over in California, the key to the war in the west, the many gold miners, prospectors, and laborers seemed to have more important things on their minds than the war to the east. The war that was about to rage in the places they had left. There were still plenty of Southern sympathizers though. Frazier states that there were at least 16,000 Southern supports from San Francisco to the Sierra Nevadas and down to San Diego. In San Bernardino, Confederate sympathizers were meeting in secret with the hopes of overthrowing the state government and siding with the Rebellion.

Captain Winfield Scott Hancock would even write to his department headquarters in the Pacific and tell them of the growing threat that was posed by the Southerners who were prompting the hispanic population into rebellion. He wrote, quote, When once a revolution commences the masses of the native population will act. If they act, it will most likely be against the government. End quote.

But one man was going to make sure that didn’t happen. That man’s name is Colonel James Henry Carleton. In 1861, Carleton would be given command of the District of Southern California and he was appointed head of the 1st California Volunteer Infantry Regiment. A group that would become known as the California Column. Carleton had been in the west for nearly twenty years. He had fought in a boundary dispute with Canada, the war against Mexico, and had even battled the Paiutes after the Mountains Meadow Massacre in southwest Utah. You know, that massacre that saw some Mormons, like John D Lee of Lee’s Ferry on the Colorado, that massacre that had Mormons dressing up as Paiute Indians and with the help of some Paiute Indians kill over 30 Arkansas immigrants.

Carleton knew the west and being a man from Maine, he was an ardent Unionist. He was going to make sure California and the western territories stayed within the boundary of the Union. To make that happen, in 1862, Carleton would gather his forces, the California Column, and they would begin their march towards New Mexico. That story is for later on in the series though.

I will now discuss something that not a single source mentioned until I had read the final book for this series, Frazier’s Blood and Treasure. Which turned out to be one of the best books I read for this series. But in that book, Frazier brings up a group known as the The Knights of the Golden Circle, or KGC. This was a group of mostly southern men, although they would have chapters, or castles as far north as New England and as far west as California, but this was a group of men that were organized by a man named George Bickley in 1855. Bickley was a Virginian who truly wanted to expand the American Empire through a total and complete form of militaristic Manifest Destiny. Frazier says of the Knights, quote, this secret military society's goal was securing Mexico and the Caribbean basin as parts of a slave empire. The Knights took their name from their plan for establishing an imperial capital at Havana, Cuba, and extending their realm in a "Golden Circle" through the upper South, along the Gulf of Mexico, the Spanish Main, and across the Caribbean. End quote. Bickley proclaimed that he and his Knights of the Golden Circle would allow American, quote, Railroads and telegraph lines reach from Canada to Patagonia. Let our ships carry our manufactures to the inmost recesses of the continent. Let our cities rise on the Amazon as they have on the Mississippi. End quote. Talk about your dreamers…

This lined up perfectly though with Calhoun and especially Jefferson Davis’ own desires which I talked about last episode. The Knights really took off in Texas where the most enterprising young and violent adventurers could be found in the US. The KGC as Frazier writes, provided the perfect outlet for that restless Warhawk bunch of young men who felt hemmed in by an ever oppressive Federal Government. This spoke to the quote, adventurous men who clamored for imperialism in the 1850s. End quote.

By the end of that decade there would be 32 castles in Texas and even the great statesman himself, Sam Houston, reportedly joined. Houston would actually, before the Civil war, threaten to invade Mexico independently of the United States since the Federal Government was barring any action across the Rio Grande. I’ll quote the great Frazier again, quote, A jingoistic Dallas editor wrote, quote, Let these Texans range on the Mexican Frontier and infuse some of the Anglo-Saxon ideas of progressiveness into the stupid, leaden souls of the people-and then the world will notice a change. End all quotes.

At this time, the desire for Empire was incredibly strong all across the nation, except New England, but it was especially strong in the South. Young Southern men looked at the map and every piece of it had the name territory or state on it. There was seemingly no more west to conquer, in their mind. Of course, they were ignorant of the realities of the west but the desire to continue to grow and expand and to conquer was eventually, in my opinion going to find an outlet if the US had not gone to war with itself. And I think that expansionist war would have resembled the Knight’s desired circle.

The Knights were not some fringe group either. It wasn’t only Sam Houston who was a member but also presidential hopeful and Vice President John Breckinridge, Secretary of War under Buchanan John Floyd, Secretary of the Treasure, senators, congressmen, administration officials… it isn’t confirmed but it is probable that Jefferson Davis himself was a Knight. DC was overrun with these men. So much so that when Lincoln was elected, they planned on kidnapping him and installing Breckinridge. They were going to coup the government and they may have been successful if they hadn’t been discovered.

Quick aside but from what I have read, which may be biased… but Lincoln was deeply unpopular with dang near everyone… he got less than 40 percent of the popular vote. it’s amazing he was ever elected and it’s no wonder the war started.

The KGC ended up moving its headquarters to San Antonio right before the war, where its most important castles would play an important role at the outset of hostilities.

The tea has been thrown overboard, the revolution of 1860 has been initiated. Charleston Mercury, November 7th, 1860. One day after Abraham Lincoln won the election.

A month and a half later, South Carolina would secede from the Union. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana would all follow suit in January of 1861.

And then on February 1st, of that same year, the Ordinance of Succession was made law in the state of Texas, making it the sixth state to formally secede. Texas was officially, no longer part of the United States and soon they would vote to become part of the Confederate States of America. Immediately after the declaration of secession, Texas realized it had a problem. As Frazier puts it, quote, Militarily, Texas and the territories, he means New Mexico and Arizona, faced the most vexing problem of all the seceding parties. Nineteen federal forts, organized in three lines, protected the Texas frontier. Some ten others dotted the New Mexican and Arizona landscapes. Three regiments of federal troops, numbering about fifteen hundred men, secured government property in the state. Not only did this threat have to be removed from Texas, but the frontier would have to be defended once the regulars had gone. End quote.

Slowly throughout the South, Federal Troops were permitted to leave with their belongings peacefully. But Texas was a question mark. At the main federal Fort in Texas, the Alamo, some 160 men led by a Georgian General David E Twiggs were holed up with tons of munitions and supplies. That would be the first target for the Texan Militia which were led by the unfortunate name of the Committee of Public Safety.

This Texan committee was in charge of all things military in the State and in a secret meeting, the 22 men of the committee commissioned four Texans to negotiate surrender with the southern leaning General Twiggs. While the Georgian commander of the Federal Department of Texas may have leaned towards the south, he was more loyal to his men. So although he understood the need for Texas to gain control of the many forts in the state, he was going to wait for secession to pass the Texas legislature on March 2nd. But the Committee couldn’t wait that long. What if the Fedrals replaced him with someone more hardline before the vote? In case negotiations went poorly, as Frazier writes, quote, As a further precaution, however, the committee appointed Texas Ranger Ben McCulloch as a colonel of cavalry to raise a force to back up the commissioners' demands with military muscle. End quote. The McCullochs will play an important role in the coming story.

With the need to act immediately of crucial necessity, on the night of February 15th, Ben McCulloch, with 400 volunteers, rode out to San Antonio to take the Alamo in an almost reverse Remember the Alamo. This time, the Texans would be the ones sieging, although everyone hoped it wouldn’t end in the same way.

Frazier describes what happens next, quote, As McCulloch's men broke camps on Salado Creek, more riders arrived. Six castles of the Knights of the Golden Circle, numbering about 150 men, reinforced the state troops. End quote. And with these Knights was a fellow knight and a man named Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor and his buffalo hunters.

In the cold evening, McCulloch and Baylor entered the old city and marched through the streets silently. They were expecting a battle so secrecy had to be the order of the night. Another Knights of the Golden Circle Castle was meeting in San Antonio when the troops entered so they too joined the Rebels. Once near the Alamo and her garrison, the troops fanned out into alleys and streets and onto the rooftops.

Here’s Frazier’s great summation of what occurred next as everyone was readying for bloodshed.

While the volunteers were taking their positions around the facility, civilian delegates approached General Twiggs and requested the surrender of all Federal property in San Antonio to the State. By daybreak, while McCulloch awaited the negotiated surrender of government property within the arsenal, his force had grown substantially. Volunteer companies from neighboring counties had arrived, ready to storm the arsenal if necessary. Armed Texans lined the streets surrounding the arsenal.

But, by midmorning, the surrender had been completed. With no other options except a repeat of the bloody Alamo, Twiggs regretfully surrendered the federal garrison and its plentiful stores of ammo. With the surrender of the Alamo by the Commander of the Department of Texas came the surrendering of the entire state. All US property would be given over to Texas and all the Federal troops were to be marched to the coast where Union ships would take them north. McCulloch, Baylor, and the Knights took the castle that was the Alamo and celebrations were had throughout the city.

Back in Washington, Twiggs was disgraced and fired. He would shortly afterwards join the Confederacy.

Over in New Mexico, as mentioned, many a fort, garrison, and post were also abandoned by the US Army and the men were sent to the east. Some of these soldiers though, stayed in the territory and they were marched by Canby to important forts along the Texas boundary of New Mexico, like Fort Fillmore which was about 40 miles north of El Paso on the Rio Grande River. Canby began to fortify this army instillation as well as Fort Craig which was about 100 miles north of Fillmore also on the Rio Grande. Another important post for the Union was Fort Union. This fort was on the eastern side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains at the edge of the plains. I have talked about Fort Union in many of my series so far. It was and had been and will be quite the important spot for quite some time. In June of 1861, a certain podcast favorite, Kit Carson was made a Lt. Col. for the Union, sent to Fort Union, and then given command of the 1st New Mexico Volunteers, which was a mostly Hispano group of soldiers. More on them in another episode.

Because of all of this movement and fortification, Confederate Texas feared an invasion of Fedrals from New Mexico so they sent two officers with a quote unquote foot artillery of soldiers to Fort Bliss. Fort Bliss is north of El Paso and just south of the New Mexican border. Those two officers were Colonel Ford and Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor. Baylor plays a significant role in the coming episodes for his part in the battles throughout New Mexico.

Baylor is described by Sweeney in his Mangas Coloradas book as quote, a lean, blue-eyed Indian fighter notorious for his hatred and contempt for Indians. End quote. Megan Kate Nelson describes him in The Three Cornered War as being quote, as charismatic as he was physically imposing: six foot three and broad shoulders, with flashing blue eyes, and long, dark hair swept back from a receding hair line. End quote. Frazier describes him as quote, Both quick to anger and prone to violence, he also had endearing qualities as a talented fiddle player, stump orator, and humorous storyteller. End quote. His own brother would say this of Baylor, quote, He could not abide a coward, liar, or thief, and was a terror to evil-doers. Anyone he liked was the best fellow in the world, and anyone he disliked was the damndest rascal living. Such a man always has warm friends and bitter enemies and [he] had his quota of each. End quote.

Baylor was 38 at the time the war broke out and he had become a rancher. He had a wife and ten kids. In Oklahoma at some point, Baylor was a teacher of Indians before he was an Indian agent. At first, he was kind to the Comanche and even lenient towards them as agent. But that led to trouble when Comanche left the reservation and killed and raided on the pretext of hunting Buffalo. He would be fired from that position and his stance on the Indians would change. He had also been a Texas state representative, a lawyer, and eventually, a Comanche and Apache Indian fighter.

As he got older, his hatred of the Indians grew. So much so that he became the co-founder, publisher, and editor of an anti-Indian newspaper in Texas called simply, The White Man. His contempt of the Indians will inform his conduct against the Apache in New Mexico. I have mentioned his stance previously in the Apache series but I will mention it again when the time comes in this series as well.

But in 1861, Baylor, an ardent secessionist and Knight of the Golden Circle, in 1861 he began recruiting Rebel soldiers all throughout Texas. He would travel from San Antonio to El Paso in the hopes of gaining forces to as he put it, quote, hunt buffaloes on the plain. End quote. Buffalos being Indians and by extension, Union Forces. These soldiers, on top of possibly dying for the cause, had to also bring their own horses, saddles, guns, and ammo. But this was par for the course for southern warriors and had been since the beginning of the nation.

Individualism was key for Southern Soldiers. Which made them tough to command but it made them hardy soldiers. Frazier sums up the attitude of the Southern Soldier and their individualism and I will read that for y’all. 

Quote: What resulted, then, was an army of individuals where unity was tenuous and jurisdiction jealously guarded. Discipline, in the classic military sense, would be bad. The young men that answered the call to arms were eager warriors and considered themselves to be talented fighters, but the society that produced them predisposed them to be mediocre soldiers. Only when constant drill hammered away their native individualism would they be of service to their nation. This was to be a bitter lesson.

He continues: Southerners, in a strange contradiction, reserved the right to fight among themselves. They resented, however, having outsiders meddle in their affairs. The threat of emancipation, the rise of the Republican party, and a host of imagined threats all unified these volunteers to the cause of their state, and secondarily to the cause of the South. Power, in their minds, was best expressed as local sovereignty. Men boasted of their hometowns, then their states, and only lastly of their region-the South. These were the warriors who answered the recruiter's call. End quote.

Brigadier General Sibley, who had earlier fought against the Navajos with his brother-in-law Canby, Sibley was personally selected by Jeff Davis on July 8th, 1861 to lead the war effort in New Mexico. He had only just returned from that very same territory and he knew the land. Sibley was, at this time in the capitol of Richmond, Virginia but he was happy to follow orders. He was informed that once he made it to Texas, that he was to form two regiments of cavalry and one battery of howitzers and he was to march directly into New Mexico to secure it for the Confederacy. 

Both Baylor and Sibley spent a lot of time and effort in 1861 during their campaigns of recruiting and they were finding it frustratingly difficult. This was partly due to the fact that many Texans would have preferred to go east and join the fighting there. But also, the Texas government was somewhat unprepared to raise a force sufficient enough to overwhelm the Fedrals in neighboring New Mexico. Baylor and Sibley were also very low on arms since most of them again went east. Some of these arms went to the battlefields across the Mississippi while others were sent to the Texas coast to defend against a possible Union invasion by sea.

But they were still met with some success. The men they gathered all came from various parts of Texas with various backgrounds and they all had various reasons for being their as Frazier points out. Quote, some hated Yankees; others hated Indians; yet most joined for adventure. End quote.

The Confederacy had hoped that the Mexican state of Sonora would sell them weapons and food but that wasn’t the case. A colonel for Sibley in the New Mexican Campaign said this of the importance of the northern Mexican states, quote, We must have Sonora and Chihuahua. With Sonora and Chihuahua we gain Southern California, and by a railroad to Guaymas render our State of Texas the great highway of nations. End quote. The entire south was hoping for the northern states of Mexico, in reality. Frazier quotes that Charleston paper I quoted earlier when he wrote, quote, When the South quoting the paper, shook itself free of the Puritans and the Devil," an anonymous writer for the Charleston Mercury asserted, Chihuahua and all the "Gulf country" would be added to the Confederacy. The Macon Daily Telegraph predicted similar glory. Quote, Then will the proudest nations of the earth come to woo and worship at the shrine of our imperial Confederacy. End quote. 

Unfortunately for the Confederate States of America, the opposite would occur and the Sonorensans would instead end up suppling the Fedrals and they would bar access to Confederates who wanted to move through their territory. This caused a small problem since the soldiers in New Mexico and Arizona had hoped secessionist Californians would escape the Union officers in California and join their brethren in Arizona. Some escaped, sure, but not as many as the South had hoped.

On March 23rd, 1861, W W Loring took command of the Department of New Mexico for the Union. And when he did, he inherited a volatile situation. He got word in Santa Fe that the Albuquerquians wanted to raid the government armory in that city, the Apache were attacking in the south, and the Comanche were planning raids in the east. Loring would resign his post a mere two months later and join the Confederacy. At that point, Lt. Col. Canby would replace him. 

Edward Richard Sprigg Canby was from Kentucky, but he was a Unionist through and through. And he too knew the West. Canby had served and fought in Florida against the Seminoles, he had fought in the Mexican American War, he had been stationed in California, he fought in the Utah War, and as I mentioned earlier, he had unsuccessfully hunted Navajo in New Mexico.

Once he took command of the Department of New Mexico he had the same problems as Loring… and then some. The men stationed at the various bases were all threatening to join the south if they weren’t paid. They were by this time, owed six months of back pay. They hadn’t received any recent news on the war to the east, in the main theater, yet they were supposed to protect this enchanting and harsh land? On top of that, a recent drought had made it very difficult to supply horses so these so called mounted troops weren’t really mounted. And New Mexicans weren’t willing to sell their horses to the soldiers on account of the threat of famine. Morale in New Mexico amongst the Fedrals was quite low. A fact the South was well aware of.

The head of the department of Texas for the confederacy was a man named Col Henry E McCulloch, that would indeed be the brother of Ben McCulloch… the McCulloch name is one I am very familiar with and fond of because I married a McCulloch but her family’s from Wisconsin so… they would have been Yankees. Unfortunately. And to make matters worse, my wife’s mother’s side of the family are… English. My mother in law was even born there. Then again, I’m sure her parents are mortified every time they are reminded of my love of my Southern Rebel heritage.

Once at Fort Bliss near El Paso, Baylor’s men found themselves 700 miles from any Texan Commander to the east. This left Baylor, filled with the hopes and dreams of all Texans and Rebels alike from Virginia to California as the agent of Empire for the Confederate States of America.

Col McCulloch, in his reports to Baylor, told him that the forts in the northern part of New Mexico, like Fort Union, were being furnished daily with supplies and the longer Baylor waited to invade, the harder it will be to take the territory. So, instead of being overwhelmed, Lt. Col. Baylor, on July 1st, 1861, took his men of the 2nd Texas Mounted Rifles from Fort Bliss near El Paso, and marched towards New Mexico.

Nelson finishes the prologue to her book the Three Cornered War with an interesting couple of paragraphs about the coming war in the American Southwest which I will quote for y’all.

In the New Mexico Territory, quote, in 1861, a comet appeared overhead, burning through the desert sky. Astronomers speculated about its origins. It could be the Great Comet of 1264, the huge and brilliant orb that had presaged the death of the pope. Or it might be the comet of 1556, whose tail resembled a wind-whipped torch, and whose splendor had convinced Charles the fifth that a dire calamity awaited him. In either case, the editors of the Santa Fe gazette found the appearance of this quote unquote “new and unexpected stranger” in the skies to be ominous.

Now quoting the Gazette, Inasmuch as bloody conflicts were the order of the day in those times, their report read, it is easy to see that each comet was the harbinger of a fearful and devastating war. End all quotes.

While the war in New Mexico wouldn’t be devastating, it would certainly be full of tragedies, fear, adventure, and bloodshed.

In the next episode, the Civil War will find its way to the American Southwest as the Southern Rebels battle the Northern Yankees in the Land of Enchantment.