Thursday, June 17, 2021

The New Mexico Campaign, 1861-1862 Part VI: The Retreat

Canby Strikes Back

Canby, still unaware of the decisive victory at Glorieta Pass, had decided to finally leave the safety of Fort Craig and go after Sibley. He had an army of 1,210 men. Though this was smaller than the Sibley Brigade, he likely expected to link up with the force at Fort Union. The rest of the men at Fort Craig stayed behind under the command of Kit Carson. Canby planned to strike at Albuquerque, but was delayed by the same weather and supply conditions that dogged the Sibley Brigade. Of course he soon learned of what had happened up north and could only have had his confidence in victory raised.[1] For his part Sibley initially planned to continue his strivings for a Confederate empire in the west, only now he would have to assume a defensive posture while waiting for more support from Texas. He took up a position on the Manzano Mountains from which he could launch a future strike. This position was oriented towards the northeast. To him Slough’s Coloradans were the biggest threat. Slough himself was not planning to move further into New Mexico. He had been shaken by his experience at Pigeon’s Ranch. Despite the destruction of the Texan supply train, Slough had been hard-pressed and almost entrapped several times in the battle. Sibley’s movement left Albuquerque and his supply depot exposed from the south. When he learned that Canby was driving north at him, he realized this new danger and rushed south to save his supplies from the Federals.[2]

Louisa Canby

One such base of supply was in Santa Fe. Louisa Canby, wife of Edward Canby, had been left there when the Texans took over. In the aftermath of Glorieta Pass she took pity on the ragged, wounded Texans and took action. She grabbed several wagons, had cots created in them, and sent them towards Glorieta Pass to recover the wounded still stuck there. One Confederate fondly remembered, “Mrs. Canby won the hearts of all our boys through her kindness to our sick and wounded.” She spent hours every day visiting the wounded, “bringing them delicacies and cheering their drooping spirits with kind words.” She even revealed hidden caches of blankets belonging to the US government, an action which aroused some disgust from Santa Fe’s Unionists. Overall, however, she came out of the campaign with a sterling reputation for kindness and charity.[3] Less fortunate were the Texan wounded down south in Socorro. These recovering survivors of Valverde had not received any fresh supplies and were starving to death. With Canby heading north, Kit Carson found himself in charge of the situation. Carson agreed to rescue the Texans at Socorro with food and other supplies if they in turn surrendered themselves on terms of parole. The agreement was finalized and 10 days’ rations were delivered. However, over 30 Texans refused to surrender even for this bountiful gift and struggled north to unite with Sibley.[4]

 

Small Battles

Back north, Canby ordered Paddy Graydon’s Spy Company, with the support of cavalry, to make a demonstration against Albuquerque and determine its defenses. Lieutenant-Colonel “Old Gotch” Hardeman held off the Federal advance, understandably interpreting it as a full assault. One Texan shell wounded cavalry commander Thomas Duncan, knocking him off his horse. Canby declined to make any real assault. He did not want to risk the prospect that his force would be caught between the defenders of Albuquerque and the rest of Sibley’s Brigade from Santa Fe.[5] By April 11 the rest of the Confederate force, having trudged through snowy weather, reached the town.[6] There was little time for rest. The following day the Sibley Brigade left town and marched towards the village of Peralta. Along the way New Mexican partisans, seeing a chance to avenge the invaders’ looting, got their guns and searched for detachments of Texans to harass. One mounted group of Hispanics came upon 10 breakfasting Texans. One of the Rebels raised his hands in surrender. The leader of the Hispanic militia responded by pressing his pistol into his breast and pulling the trigger. This sparked a firefight that drove the Confederates off with two more casualties. The Texans returned later and killed a few Hispanics in retaliation.[7]

The Texans reached Peralta, a town east of the Rio Grande River, in mid-April. Green’s 5th Texas found the time and energy to ransack a nearby landmark, the estate of territorial Governor Henry Connelly. They held a party inside it, with fiddle music emanating from the big house. While these Texans partied, another trial was beginning. One problem was a wagonmaster who was slow in bringing his column up. On the night of the 14th he camped with a large portion of the wagons and also let the mules loose to graze. Sure enough, the next morning saw the wagons and their teams, as well as a howitzer, captured. Coloradan cavalry had spotted them coming and quickly got among them, killing and wounding 9 men and capturing most of the rest.[8]


On the 15th the slumbering Confederates were awakened when Federals fired a volley into their camp. The Union advance guard had overwhelmed and captured their pickets. The aroused Confederates mounted a defense of the town. They enjoyed the protection of adobe walls and irrigation ditches. One of them, William Davidson, went up a cupola with an assistant, Trimble, to observe the enemy. A Federal gun positioned on a mound fired in his direction. Davidson believed that he had been mistaken for a general and was now a prime target (he was actually targeted simply for observing the Federals’ movements). One shell tore out a chunk of the tower beneath him. He and Trimble looked down the tower and then at each other, “Their faces whiter than two sheets put together.” They hastily ran down from the cupola.[9] Another shell with a fuse landed perilously close to a group of men. One tall soldier, Bill Slater, grabbed the shell, threw it into a ditch, and put out the fuse with his hands. Scurry’s men poured in to reinforce the defense. Sibley tried to lead the rest of his brigade over the Rio Grande, but was stopped by enemy pickets. The Confederates were surprised at their lack of killed and wounded as the Federal “round shot and shell fell all around and about us.”[10] A sandstorm obscured the two sides and ended the fighting. A Private Hollister on the Federal side described the fight at Peralta as “the most harmless battle on record. We lay around on the ground in line of battle, asleep.”[11] Though the battles of Albuquerque and Peralta were really light skirmishes, they had a large effect. Sibley realized that his position in Federal held New Mexico Territory was too precarious. He would have to abandon his dreams of a Confederate West.

 

Retreat Through the Mountains

That night the Sibley Brigade withdrew from Peralta and made an overnight crossing of the Rio Grande, putting themselves on the west side. On the east side, the Federal army aped the Confederates’ movements to a tee. “…A novel sight was here presented of two hostile armies marching down a river valley in plain view of each other with only a narrow river between them. Marching together, halting together, one imitating every move of the other, neither seeming anxious to bring on a battle, yet neither trying to avoid it.” One Confederate finally yelled at the Federal force, asking if they were crazy or stupid. They fired a couple shots in his direction and the parallel movements resumed.[12] At this point Sibley’s grasp on his army was starting to loosen. Colonels, captains, majors, and other officers made important decisions without his approval. Sibley only maintained some control over his brigade through a council of officers.[13]

This council realized their men could either keep going and run into an unfavorable battle at Polvadera, a location where the Federals could plant their artillery on a commanding position, or dare a hard, potentially impossible trek through the San Mateo Mountains. One voice, Captain Coopwood, insisted that the mountains were passable. He himself had traveled through them to reach the Sibley Brigade, having earlier been waylaid by smallpox at Mesilla. Many of the lower-ranking officers and rank-and-file agreed, preferring to risk a retreat through inhospitable territory rather than end up in a prisoner-of-war camp.[14] Soon all the officers came to Coopwood’s view. With the help of native scouts, they went on one of the hardest marches of the war. “We left all out most valued articles scattered over the ground in profusion; left the wagons and left our sick men huddled around a fire, with the yellow flag of our hospital waving over them from the corner of the wagon. It was affecting to see the brave companions in arms of these sick men grasping them by the hand and bidding them an affectionate farewell.” The sick men’s campfires gave the illusion of a full Confederate encampment and enabled the healthier Texans to slip away.[15] (see a map of the retreat here)

To deal with scarce resources, the Sibley Brigade divided into various columns, following the same general path. They had to climb up and down many mountains. On April 19 Colonel Green’s column marched through a “dusty, sandy” canyon and came upon a very steep hill. The men had to climb the slopes with ropes and haul up the cannon. Once they had bypassed this obstacle, they came upon a herd of antelope. The always half-starved Confederates unleashed an impromptu scattered volley and gunned down the herd, bagging hundreds of pounds of meat. The Texans were also desperate enough to go after any bears they came across. The Sibley Brigade also found a spring of water. However at this time the mules began to give out. Many collapsed with their heavy packs while others simply refused to go on. Also, the shortest path on their planned route turned out to be a narrow rocky passage, too narrow for the wagons and artillery. The route was diverted through an arroyo towards a forked gulch.[16] As it went on, the army left a trail of thrown out gear and possessions as it sought to lighten its load. The brigade had disintegrated into scattered pockets of men. Some went without water for two days. On April 22-24 they finally escaped the mountains and reached Alamosa River. The sight of the plentiful water had a tremendous effect on men “with lips black and parched, and throats swelled and dry, and breath hot and voice husky.” Each time more Texans arrived and caught sight of it they rushed into the water with crazed exultation.[17]

Canby was surprised both by how the Sibley Brigade slipped away and how it had traversed the mountains and was already on its way into Confederate Arizona. He made no move to cut them off again. He reasoned that if he tried to pursue them, his army, also feeling the effects of low resources, would break down. Chivington and some of the Coloradans were irate, as they had actually been positioned at the Alamosa River prior to Sibley’s arrival, but had been recalled.[18] Colonel Benjamin Roberts reported on the effects of the Texan retreat. “They have abandoned their sick and wounded everywhere on their line of retreat, and are leaving in a state of demoralization and suffering that has few examples in any war. The long line of their retreat over Jornada and waters of country, without water and that furnish no supplies will render their march extremely difficult and aggravate the ordinary sufferings of a disorganized army under defeat.”[19]

The Texans could expect only temporary relief in Confederate Arizona. The territory was already unraveling as the Apaches continued their horse-stealing raids. Worse, many of the soldiers were starting to lose it and discipline broke down. A high-ranking officer of the 7th Texas Mounted Volunteers, Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur P. Bagby, chose to drink rather than do his job and tried to pull a pistol on another officer. Worse news came. The Californians were coming from the west.[20]

 

The California Column

The Californians’ objectives were “the recapture of all our forts in Arizona and New Mexico, driving the rebel forces out of that country or capturing them, and opening the southern mail route.”[21] The 1st California was primarily made up of miners from across the 31st state. It was originally to have left Los Angeles in January, getting to New Mexico as soon as possible to repulse Sibley. However, Los Angeles was beset by a heavy downpour and subsequent flooding. The California Column thus left six weeks behind schedule.[22] Carleton’s men made contact with the Pima and Maricopa Indians. These Indians’ “alliance” with the Confederacy had been purposefully noncommittal, enabling them to trade with and aid the Californians without any sense of shame.[23]

James H. Carleton

On March 15 Carleton’s men finally reached Confederate Arizona. Their first target was Tucson. Tucson was under the control of Sherod Hunter and 74 men. In late February they had entered the town and kicked out the known Unionists, not without first confiscating their property of course. This small force was currently in a bad situation. They were already surrounded by thousands of hostile Apaches and now over 2,000 Federals were headed their way. Hunter’s men captured a scouting detachment from the California Column. Learning of Carleton’s route, Hunter sent out a mounted group. This group rode to depots where they burned hay that had been reserved for Carleton’s horses. At one of these, Stanwix Station, they happened upon some of the Californians. A brief skirmish ensued in which one Californian was wounded. The Rebels were chased off. This was the furthest west confrontation of the war. Carleton reacted to the destruction of the hay stockpiles by halting for two weeks. In the meantime another skirmish broke out at Picacho Peak, a rock spire outside of Tucson. Here, on April 15, the same day that Canby and Sibley’s forces had their clash at Peralta, 272 Californians under Lieutenant James Barrett ran into a detachment of Arizona Rangers. One man pointed a gun at Barrett and demanded his surrender. Barrett refused and the Ranger shot him. The Confederates fired some more, hitting six Federals, and rushed to their horses to escape. Three of them were unable to get to their mounts and became prisoners. The Federals withdrew to join the rest of Carleton’s force. In turn Carleton withdrew his column a full 100 miles. When they finally resumed their campaign and marched into Tucson, they found that Hunter’s Arizona rangers and militia had left. Carleton named himself governor and sent his men in detachments east towards the Rio Grande to help out Canby.[24]

 

A lovely photo of Picacho Peak, site of the furthest-west listed battle of the Civil War.
By the way, Google Translate says Picacho is Spanish for Peak, so this is Peak Peak!

Another Retreat Through Hell

The arrival of the Californians sparked another desperate and hard retreat for the Sibley Brigade. Sibley further drew his men’s ire. While his men struggled and straggled over a 50 mile line, he rode up ahead in a wagon with several women. Some sources list these women as the wives and daughters of pro-Confederate New Mexicans, though one soldier groused inaccurately that they were in fact “Mexican whores.” The larger issue was that the commanding general and a bunch of civilians got to ride in relative comfort while the fighting men wore themselves out on foot. Sibley offered little in the way of direction, with Green, Scurry, and others providing the true leadership.[25] One notable aspect of the retreat was the absence of the Mescalero Apaches who had relentlessly raided the Texans on their last trek through this country. One soldier joked that this was because Sibley’s heavy drinking had left no whiskey for the Indians, who were historically susceptible to alcohol. The only Federals to make contact with the long line of suffering Texans were Paddy Graydon and his Spy Company, who kept a safe distance to observe the movements of the retreat. They collected abandoned articles as war booty, as well as the occasional seriously wounded Texan who had been left behind.[26]

The Texans stopped at and near the town of Franklin and spent May there.  They learned they were to march further into Texas across the desert, just when the weather was getting warm. After a pleasant march through El Paso, the soldiers went into the blazing desert. The Texans could use more horses, so Steele, Baylor’s right hand man, kickstarted the last Union-Confederate battle in Arizona. On May 18, he sent 100 men under Captain Thomas Moody on a horse-stealing raid against Paraje. Paraje was defended by 45 Federals from the 3rd U.S. Cavalry. The raid quickly became a series of blunders and disasters. First the Rebels drank from a contaminated pond, which disabled many of the men including Moody. His successor, Lieutenant Isaac Bowman, made the mistake of demanding the Federals’ surrender instead of surprise-attacking them. This gave the cavalrymen a chance to prepare themselves and repel the Confederates. The defeated raiders were scattered and, on exhausted mounts, undertook a hard retreat in which they desperately searched for water while avoiding hostile Indians. They got back to base at May 24, having lost the last battle in Arizona. Further east Chiricahua Apaches attack and routed another Confederate force. The trek through the desert would be very difficult indeed.[27]

Exposed to the heat and low on horses, the men had to march 28 miles without water to get to Eagle Springs. Once there they were horrified to learn that the Apache had contaminated the water by filling it with ox carcasses. The next well at Van Horn’s was similarly sabotaged with wolf carcasses. The men trudged on. “Tired and weary we limped along, the road lined with broken down wagons and carcasses of dead horses, and oxen that had starved for water.” The weather was hot as well. The sun blazed down on the parched and weary soldiers. Then one night “heaven’s artillery” thundered and the men were caught in a rainstorm. This gave the men the water they needed to get them to the springs at Ojo del Muerto, and then days later to San Antonio.[28]

Throughout all this Baylor and Steele tried to keep a foothold in Confederate Arizona. However they now had only 300 men to protect remaining Confederate outposts. They could not protect the miners at Pino Altos, and did not have enough resources to even bribe the Apaches to halt their raids. Despite their title of “mounted rifles,” many of these remaining Confederates were forced to stay on foot unless they found a useable stray mule or horse. Every now and then a straggling survivor of Sibley’s campaign would appear. The writing was on the wall. These last Confederates prepared to evacuate, but not before a last round of violence. The Hispanics, fed up with the conquerors’ foraging, and also sensing their weakness, resisted attempts to impress their animals and other goods. The residents at Socorro refused to provide transportation for the departing Rebels. The Confederates reacted by bombarding the town and killing and wounding many Hispanics. A couple weeks later a smaller band of Confederates returned to seize more supplies. This time the civilians overwhelmed and drove them off, killing one man and capturing and imprisoning five. Similar violence occurred at Mesilla.[29] Still latching onto his dreams, Baylor planned to reconquer New Mexico in the future. If there was any chance he would receive support for such a venture, it was lost when word got out of his plan to lure the Apaches with a peace conference and then massacre them. President Davis and others were outraged by this duplicitous and murderous scheme and lost all confidence in Baylor.[30]

At San Antonio the citizens, having learned of the desperate condition of their fellow Texans, greeted them with water and food. Sibley gave his men a well-deserved sixty days’ furlough.[31] William Davidson reflected on the change months of hard campaigning had wrought on the Sibley Brigade:

 

“We left San Antonio eight months earlier with near three thousand men finely dressed, splendidly mounted and elegantly equipped… And now in rags and tatters, foot-sire and weary, we again march, if a reel and stagger can be called a march, along the streets of San Antonio with fourteen hundred men. You furnish a list of four hundred and thirty-seven dead, but where are the other sixteen hundred men? You ask me.”[32]

 

The Civil War Leaves the Far West

In his official report, Sibley claimed, “we beat the enemy whenever we encountered them. The famished Country beat us.” His final report was a far cry from his initial optimism. In it he wrote: “In concluding this report, already extended beyond my anticipations, it is proper that I should express the conviction, determined by some experience, that, except for its political geographical position, the Territory of New Mexico is not worth a quarter of the blood and treasure”[33] The Confederates would never mount another serious invasion of the Far West. There were far more pressing matters on the eastern side of Texas.

With the Confederates gone, the Federals turned their attention to Indian enemies, foremost the Chiricahua Apaches. They handily defeated them at the Battle of Apache Pass, where Mangas Coloradas himself was wounded. He recovered, only to be tortured and murdered by Federal troops the following year at what was supposed to be a peace meeting. The Apache Wars would continue long after the Civil War ended.[34] With the Texans routed, Canby’s force split up, some to garrison duty, some to other fields of the main war, and others to battle the Indians. The New Mexican militia and volunteers would fight the Indians and guard Federal bases, seeing as how these assignments were within their territory. The Coloradans went back north, to later serve in other parts the Trans-Mississippi Theater.[35]

Displaced Navajo People pose for a photo. James Carleton, Kit Carson, and other Federal veterans of the battles against Baylor and Sibley turned their attention towards defiant and resistant Indian peoples. The Navajo were forced off their lands and onto one of the first major Indian Reservations in the infamous Long Walk. The Civil War did not halt the conquest of the West, but may have actually expedited it.

The Confederates also shifted their priorities. Sibley considered the Indian threat on Texas’ western frontier and proposed briefly that the Apaches and Navajo be hunted down and enslaved. Sibley’s Brigade instead moved east to other battlefields. The brigade literally fell apart. Everyone was so exhausted from their ordeals that, without official orders, they went to their home towns to rest for most of the remaining year. Just as incredibly, they all got back together, just in time to liberate Galveston from Federal occupation at the start of 1863. While Sibley’s reputation had suffered, he would still have command, albeit often nominal, over his brigade into 1863. By contrast the major officers under him all received promotions thanks to their exemplary leadership in combat conditions. Ironically, Thomas Green initially did not receive any award. He had led the men to victory at Valverde and helped keep them together through several rough patches, yet he found himself attacked in the press and ignored, if not censured, by the national Confederate government. Rumors had gotten out that he had become Sibley’s drinking partner. While Green had spent many uneventful days in Albuquerque drinking with his superior officer, he never led or ignored his men through while under the influence. He would eventually restore his rightful reputation and earn a promotion to brigadier-general. He would also have a high win-loss ratio, a rarity among the Confederacy’s Trans-Mississippi commanders. One positive from the New Mexico Campaign was the guns captured at Valverde. Even when traversing the rough mountains and blazing deserts, the Texans had tenaciously hung onto them and later formed them into the Valverde battery.[36]

Baylor eventually managed to restore his reputation in the eyes of the Confederate national government. Astonishingly, in the last months of the war, he received permission to once again invade New Mexico and Arizona. It should be noted that at this point the Confederacy was grasping at straws to continue the war, having also undertaken the unthinkable policy of creating black units.[37] While Baylor’s 1861 and 1862 conquests were nullified by Carleton’s California Column, the Arizona name would not fade away. The U.S. Government split New Mexico Territory in two and named the western half Arizona. In early 1863 Arizona Territory would go into effect.[38] Southern slavery would never thrive in New Mexico. The natives’ forms of involuntary labor, primarily debt peonage, were not affected by the Emancipation Proclamation, which only concerned slavery in rebellious territories. However, the existence of debt peonage was an embarrassment, to some an outrage, in a society that had just bled heavily to end slavery. In 1866 only “voluntary” peonage could be legal. It was ended altogether in 1867.[39]

Next: A brief overview of the campaign’s historiography and remembrance, including spaghetti westerns and Playmobil toys.

 

Primary Sources


Peticolas, A.B. Rebels on the Rio Grande: The Civil War Journals of A.B. Peticolas. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984.

Pettis, George H. “The Confederate Invasion of New Mexico and Arizona” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War Vol. II. Century Company, 1887.

Thompson, Jerry (ed.). Civil War in the Southwest: Recollections of the Sibley Brigade. Texas A & M University Press, 2001.

United States. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies Vol. IV, IX. Washington D.C. 1894.

Secondary Sources


“Dodd, Theodore.” Accessed May 30, 2021. http://ozarkscivilwar.org/photographs/dodd-theodore/

Frazier, Donald S. Blood & Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest. Texas A & M University Press, 1995.

Frazier, Donald S. Fire in the Cane Field: The Federal Invasion of Louisiana and Texas, January 1861-January 1863. Texas A& M university Press, 2009.

Josephy, Alvin M. The Civil War in the American West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.

Kiser, William S. “A ‘Charming Name for a Species of Slavery’: Political Debate on Debt Peonage in the Southwest, 1840s-1860s.” Western Historical Quarterly Vol. 45, No. 2 (Summer 2014), pp. 169-189.

Hardin, Tom. “The Confederate Retreat.” Accessed June 16, 2021. http://socorro-history.org/HISTORY/PH_History/201203_texan_retreat.pdf

Nelson, Megan Kate. The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West. New York: Scribner, 2020.

Pittman, Walter E. New Mexico and the Civil War, The History Press, 2011.

Thompson, Jerry. Henry Hopkins Sibley: Confederate General of the West. Natchitoches: Northwestern State University Press, 1987.



[1] Pittman, 42.

[2] Thompson, 1996, 293; Frazier, 229/

[3] Thompson, 2001, 99-100; Nelson, 111, 146.

[4] Frazier, 239.

[5] OR IX, 550; Thompson, 2001, 101-102.

[6] Peticolas, 98-99.

[7] Frazier, 241-242

[8] Frazier, 242-244; Thompson, 2001, 110-111; OR IX, 551; Pittman, 43.

[9] Thompson, 2001, 104-105.

[10] Thompson, 2001, 107, 117; Frazier, 246.

[11] Josephy, 88.

[12] Thompson, 2001, 119-120.

[13] Thompson, 1996, 298.

[14] Thompson, 2001, 120-121; Tom Hardin, “The Confederate Retreat,” http://socorro-history.org/HISTORY/PH_History/201203_texan_retreat.pdf, 3

[15] Peticolas, 109; Hardin, 3.

[16] Peticolas, 110-112; Hardin, 4-5.

[17] Peticolas, 115.

[18] Pittman, 46-47.

[19] OR IX, 552.

[20] Frazier, 255-257.

[21] OR IV, 91.

[22] OR IX, 627; Nelson, 125.

[23] Nelson, 130.

[24] Josephy, 90; Frazier, 188; Pittman, 48-49.

[25] Josephy, 89 Peticolas, 118.

[26] Thompson, 1996, 305; Pettis, 111.

[27] Peticolas, 136-137, 141; Frazier, 368-371.

[28] Thompson, 2001, 127-128.

[29] Frazier, 278-281.

[30] Frazier, 294.

[31] Josephy, 91.

[32] Thompson, 2001, 129.

[33] Thompson, 1996, 304; OR IX, 511-512.

[34] Nelson, 142-143.

[36] Donald Frazier, Fire in the Cane Field: The Federal Invasion of Louisiana and Texas, January 1861-January 1863, (Texas A& M university Press, 2009), 145-158; OR IX, 513.

[37] Frazier, 297.

[38] OR IX, 561.

[39] Kiser, 2014, 184-187.

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