Hi, I'm the History Guy, I have a degree in history, I love history, if you love history
too - this is the channel for you. Today I'm going to put on my Civil War hat
and talk about the least known and discussed theater of that war the war in the Far West
or that crazy time when Colorado and Texas fought the Civil War in New Mexico, and it
is an interesting story, with a cast of colorful characters and a good lesson about how chance
can affect history. The story starts with this fellow, Henry Hopkins
Sibley, he was a West Point graduate, a veteran of the Mexican War and many other small campaigns,
and most known for inventing this military tent, called the Sibley Tent. He was a curly-haired,
whiskey swilling veteran, known as a competent officer and an inveterate drunkard, and when
the Civil War started, he was stationed at Fort Union in New Mexico. Being Louisiana
born, he had Confederate sympathies, and so he immediately resigned his commission, joined
the Confederacy, and rode off to Virginia to talk to Confederate President, Jefferson
Davis, about a daring plan to capture the American West for the Confederacy.
Sibley's plan was to go to Texas, raise an army, march the army up through New Mexico
to Colorado, turn left, march across Utah and Nevada, all the way to California, thus
allowing the Confederacy to claim the gold and silver reserves of the West, the terminus
of the Transcontinental Railroad and West Coast ports that were free from a Union blockade.
It was an ambitious plan made even more ambitious by the fact that he assumed that they would
be able to feed themselves off the land, assuming that there was a lot of Confederate sympathy
in the West, and the people would help to feed his army. It seems crazy but Davis liked
the plan, he believed there was a lot of Confederate sympathy in the West, and it didn't really
cost him anything, and so he made Sibley a Brigadier General, and sent him off to Texas
to raise and equip the Confederate Army of New Mexico.
By February of 1862, Sibley had managed to raise an army of about 2,500 troops, 15 artillery
pieces of baggage train and some cattle, had secured some fortresses in southern New Mexico
that had been abandoned to the Confederacy, and was ready to march off to face his first
obstacle, the Union's Fort Craig near Socorro New Mexico. Fort Craig was at the time the
largest Union fort in New Mexico and Sibley didn't think he had enough artillery to take
on a fort that size, his one hope was to draw out the fort's defenders in an open battle
which he managed to do by maneuvering around Fort Craig and tried to cut off their route
north. That led to a battle at a river ford called the Battle of Valverde.
The Battle of Valverde was interesting for three different reasons, one was the close
relationship between the commanders, Sibley and the Union commander Edward Canby knew
each other, and knew each other well, they'd gone to West Point together, they'd served
together on many different fronts, and when Sibley was married, Canby was the best man
at his wedding. That sort of thing was common in the Civil War, dear friends ended up on
opposite sides of the battlefield. The second reason this was interesting is because it
included this fellow here, well-known frontiersman Kit Carson, who was leading a group of New
Mexico volunteers for the Union, and the third reason was because of the Fifth Texas Cavalry,
in all the Civil War, the only unit of cavalry Lancers. Lancers are cavalry men who use a
long spear and charge into combat, it was a popular thing to do in the Napoleonic era
of 50 years before, but by the Civil War, was thought to be more or less suicide.
Here's the short version of the Battle of Valverde. Sibley was drunk, the Lancer thing
didn't work out very well, and the Union was forced to retire after some of their artillery
was overrun, but managed to retreat back to Fort Craig. So while the Confederates won
the battlefield, the Union still held Fort Craig and Sibley was forced into a difficult
choice. Short on supplies and unable to take Fort
Craig, Sibley had two choices, he could try retreating south back to southern New Mexico,
or he could go forward in the hopes of being able to capture more supply. So he took a
swig of whiskey and opted for the latter. But it didn't work out very well, when they
got to Albuquerque and then to Santa Fe they found out that the Union had burned all their
stores, and there was very little food, and to Sibley's disappointment, there was no uprising
of a Confederate population. The population didn't help them at all and they were lucky
to beg borrow and steal enough for a couple of weeks' food, for their army. Now their
only hope lay in Fort Union which was about 40 miles west of Santa Fe, Sibley thought
if he could take Fort Union and its supplies, then he would have a good base from which
he could attack Colorado, and remember simply had served at Fort Union and thought he knew
the fort's weaknesses, and so he moved forward. What Sibley didn't know is that Fort Union
had been reinforced, Colorado territorial Governor Louis Weld had sent a thousand volunteers
to reinforce the Fort under the command of Colonel John Slough. Slough thought he had
enough force to go take on Sibley and so he was marching Sibley's direction, even as Sibley
was coming towards him, and that would set up the decisive battle for the fate of New
Mexico. A skirmish between advanced elements alerted
both commanders to the situation and that set up the battle. Sibley elected to send
ahead a fast force under the command of Lieutenant Colonel William Scurry to attack the Federals
as soon as they could. Slough, thinking that he knew the Confederate position, took a risk
with his 1200 man force, splitting that force and sending about 500 with this man, Major
John Chivington, a fire-and-brimstone Methodist minister who had refused a commission as a
chaplain so he could take a fighting command, in the hope that Chivington could move around
the Confederate flank. Sloughs gamble turned out to be a mistake,
the Confederates moved to much more quickly than he thought they could and so he had sent
Chivington far too far behind the lines, when the two armies ran into each other at a place
called Glorieta Pass, Chivington was far away and not able to support Slough. That was a
problem because it meant that Scurry outnumbered Slough and the Confederates were able to continually
flank the Union, forcing slow up the pass. And then fate intervened. Chivington, in the
middle of nowhere and not able to participate in the battle, was in a perfect position when
his Scout saw a supply train moving up the valley, in front of him was Sibley's entire
supply. It was short work for Chivington's force to drive off the guards, destroy the
wagons, burn the supply and kill or chase off all the horses and mules. Without their
supply the Confederates could not move forward, and the battle ended.
Scurry had no choice but to withdraw from the engagement and move back towards Sibley
in Albuquerque. With no hope of supply Sibley had to take the entire command back to Texas,
they had to take a long route to avoid Fort Craig, and by the time they made it back through
the desert, the command had disintegrated. The few that made it back to Fort Bliss were
disbanded and while there was a small campaign a year later, where troops from California
drove out the few remaining Confederates in Arizona and New Mexico fortifications, the
Confederacy was never again a risk to the western states.
And so Sibley's dream of Confederate West turned into nothing, and in retrospect it
looks like it was never realistic, there simply wasn't enough supply in New Mexico to keep
an army in the field, and there wasn't this great thrall of Confederate sympathizers that
he thought would support him. But it didn't have to work out that way. The Confederates
actually came very close to Fort Union and had they taken Fort Union and its supply,
at very least they would have distracted far more federal troops who would have to come
out and defend Colorado. The interesting thing about the Battle of Glorieta Pass is that
it turned really on chance. Chivington just happened to be in the right place, and in
a very small skirmish to take that supply train, the entire campaign collapsed, and
that's the biggest lesson from it all. Sometimes large events of history turn on just the smallest
chance. If you're ever in New Mexico, Fort Craig,
Fort Union and most of the Glorieta Pass battlefield are all historical sites that you can visit.
I'm the history guy. I hope you enjoyed this edition of my channel, 5 minutes of history,
short snippets of forgotten history, five to ten minutes long. If you enjoyed this five
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