THE BOASTED VALOR OF TEXANS
EPILOGUE
WITH THE CONFEDERATES’ WITHDRAWAL FROM NEW MEXICO IN EARLY MAY 1862, THE South’s attempt to capture the Southwest came to an inglorious end. No matter how bravely the rebel officers tried to lift the spirits of their men, it was clear that the enterprise had failed.
There was also the human cost to consider. Of the more than 2,500 men of Sibley’s Brigade who had entered New Mexico, only about 1,800 returned; the rest were dead, captured, missing, or too sick or badly injured to be moved. As the Texans straggled into Fort Bliss over a period of days, many of the bitter, discouraged troops openly argued for Sibley’s court-martial, or worse.
Furthermore, Captain Sherod Hunter, who had been sent ahead to secure Tucson for Baylor’s eventual incursion into California, had abandoned that village on May 4 and was hurrying back to Mesilla in anticipation of the California Column’s eastward thrust. And a skirmish with advance elements of Carleton’s regiment had already taken place at Picacho Pass1 on April 15, with the outcome in the Unionists’ favor. With Franklin and Fort Bliss devoid of sufficient provisions with which to sustain his troops, Sibley had no option other than to prepare to lead his men back to San Antonio where they might rest and be re-outfitted for further service to the Confederacy.2
Before leaving Fort Bliss, Sibley penned a lengthy report—full of self-serving excuses and deceptive phrases—on his ill-fated campaign to C.S.A. headquarters. Backtracking from his initial position regarding the Southwest’s value to the Confederacy, he concluded his report,
[I]t 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 expended in its conquest. As a field of military operations, it possesses not a single element, except in the multiplicity of its defensible positions. The indispensable element, food, cannot be relied on. . . .
As for the results of the campaign, I have only to say that we have beaten the enemy in every encounter and against large odds. . . . But, sir, I cannot speak encouragingly for the future, my troops having manifested a dogged, irreconcilable detestation of the country and the people. They have endured much, suffered much, and cheerfully; but the prevailing discontent, backed up by the distinguished valor displayed on every field, entitles them to marked consideration and indulgence.3
Three weeks later, with diplomatic language couching his extreme disappointment at what he felt was the abandonment of his brigade by Richmond and Texas, Sibley sent a dispatch detailing his army’s sorry condition to Brigadier General Hamilton P. Bee, commanding the Western District of the Department of Texas:
The army is absolutely subsisting on poor meat and bread, with a limited supply. . . . Without a dollar in specie, nothing can be purchased on the Mexican side of the river, and our sick even on this side are suffering for the want of articles which can only be procured with specie. Of sugar and coffee, we have barely a pound; all other small rations are alike deficient; whilst of salt meat we have not an ounce. Our ammunition may be said to be exhausted. For heavy guns we have perhaps 100 rounds. Clothing completely exhausted, with no means of renewing the supply.
My purpose in addressing this communication to you is to inform you distinctly of the resources of this country and New Mexico. Any forces sent to operate in this quarter should not depend upon the productions of the country, except, perhaps, the single article of flour.
I have written briefly and to the point. I have made report after report to the Government, but up to this date have received not a single line of acknowledgment or encouragement, having been left to act entirely upon my own judgment and the pressure which momentarily surrounded me.4
The South, however, was very much aware of Sibley’s plight. On May 31, General Robert E. Lee, writing from Richmond to Brigadier General Paul O. Hébert, in command of the Department of Texas, said, “Communications have been received by the President reporting the very destitute and critical condition of General Sibley’s command. . . . You will also cause to be sent to the western frontier of Texas all the supplies you can for the use of General Sibley’s forces. . . . The very remote and isolated position of General Sibley’s command makes it necessary that you should promptly afford him all the aid you can in men and supplies.”5
On June 7, Jefferson Davis himself wrote to Sibley:
General:
. . . I rejoice in being able to congratulate you on the distinguished successes of your command, and when I consider your field of operations, the superior number and means of supply of the enemy, and the other difficulties under which you have labored, the conduct of yourself and the army under your command is recognized as most praiseworthy. . . .
With best wishes for your continued success, and with the hope that we may hereafter meet to enjoy in peace the independence for which you are struggling, I am, very truly and respectfully yours,
Jefferson Davis6
Lee’s and Davis’s comforting words were too little and too late; Sibley had already begun moving what was left of his command eastward across Texas. The one-year enlistment of many of the troops was about to expire and the men were anxious to return home.
On May 14, 1862, Sibley paid homage to the courage and spirit of his troops, nearly disguising the fact that the mission had fallen short of victory:
Soldiers of the Army of New Mexico:—It is with unfeigned pride and pleasure that I find myself occupying a position which devolves upon me the duty of congratulating the Army of New Mexico upon the successes which have crowned the arms in the many encounters with the enemy during the short but brilliant campaign which has just terminated. Called from your homes almost at a moment’s warning, cheerfully leaving friends, families, and private affairs, in many cases solely dependent upon your presence and personal attention, scarcely prepared for a month’s campaign, in the immediate defense of your own firesides, you have made a march, many of you over a thousand miles, before ever reaching the field of active operations.
The boasted valor of Texans has been fully vindicated. Val Verde, Gloriéta, Albuquerque, Peralta, and last, though not least, your successful and almost unprecedented evacuation, through mountain passes and over a trackless waste of a hundred miles through a famishing country will be duly chronicled, and form one of the brightest pages in the history of the Second American Revolution. That I should be proud of you—that every participant in the campaign should be proud of himself—who can doubt?
During the short period of inaction which you are now enjoying, your General indulges the hope that you will constantly bear in mind that at any moment you may be recalled into activity.
God and an indulgent Providence have guided us in our councils and watched our ways: let us be thankful to Him for our successes, and to Him let us not forget to offer a prayer for our noble dead.
H. H. Sibley, Brig. Gen. Commanding7
Although they had reached friendly territory in the western tip of Texas, the Sibley Brigade’s ordeal was far from over. The 700-mile return march to San Antonio lay ahead, over the same route that the brigade had used to invade New Mexico. That earlier march had been conducted during the more temperate Texas winter; the return trip was made during the height of the scorching Texas summer. During one part of the march, the weary soldiers were plagued by clouds of gnats. At another, hostile Mescalero Apaches had polluted with sheep carcasses some of the wells that the men were counting on to sustain life.8 And all during the march, each man “ate the dust” kicked up by the trudging feet of the man or animal in front of him. One exhausted soldier barely found the strength to write:
Hot! Hot! and no shade, vine or cloud to hide the sun or break its parching rays from us. Here it was that we were again made to suffer, such sufferings, too, that many of us, myself for one, never before had to experience, and God grant that we may never again. Many there were who gave completely out, and threw themselves down by the side of the road to die. Many kept on forward with their tongues so swollen that they could not articulate a word; more crazed than rational, they looked like frantic mad men.9
The unit—or what was left of it—eventually straggled into San Antonio. One resident who had seen the brigade’s high-spirited departure the previous November recorded his impressions upon its return: “I saw that gallant force march away, with drums beating and flags flying, and every man from the General downwards, confident of victory. I saw the first detachment of the remnant come straggling back on foot, broken, disorganized, and in an altogether deplorable condition.”10
As might be expected, once the brigade returned and the men began talking of their experiences, blame for the debacle soon centered around Sibley. Rumors circulated that he would be charged with drunkenness, dereliction of duty, cowardice, mistreatment of sick and wounded soldiers, and misappropriation of confiscated goods. Traveling to Richmond in November, Sibley prepared to defend himself, but President Davis intervened and dismissed all charges.
In October, the brigade re-formed at Hempstead, Texas, with Colonel James Reily—not Sibley—in command, then traveled to Houston to await deployment. The unit would fight at Galveston, the Bayou Teche region, Camp Bisland, and Franklin—sometimes under Reily, sometimes under Sibley, and sometimes under Green—before the war ended.11
For the majority of the Colorado soldiers, the departure of Sibley’s Brigade from New Mexico did not mean an end to their war. As the vast distances of the West made infantry troops impractical, the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers was reorganized in November 1862 as the First Colorado Cavalry Volunteers under Colonel John M. Chivington.
A full second regiment was clearly needed. In February 1863, Colonel Jesse H. Leavenworth, the son of the officer for whom Fort Leavenworth was named, was authorized to raise six companies of volunteers. Forming the core of this new regiment were Ford’s and Dodd’s independent companies. Leavenworth was appointed commander of the unit—the Second Colorado Infantry Volunteers—with Dodd his second in command. In the summer of 1863, the Second Regiment was ordered to proceed to Fort Scott, Kansas. Along the way, on July 1, at Cabin Creek the regiment encountered and defeated a Confederate force commanded by the Cherokee Indian and Confederate Colonel Stand Watie.12
Upon arrival at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, Leavenworth’s regiment was attached to a force commanded by Major General James G. Blunt, who was preparing to engage an invading rebel brigade under Brigadier General Douglas H. Cooper, encamped at Honey Springs. With a force of some 3,000 whites, blacks (the First Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment), and Indians, Blunt turned back Cooper’s force on July 17.13 In August, Blunt’s men, including Dodd’s detachment, again clashed with the Confederates, this time under William Steele, now a brigadier general, at Perryville, about sixty miles south of Fort Gibson. Once again, the Union forces prevailed.14
The men of the First Colorado Cavalry, meanwhile, longed to see action against the Confederates, but the immediate concern in the territory was the Indians. In late 1862, following Governor John Evans’s request for additional help to combat the growing Indian problem, the War Department authorized the formation of the Third Colorado Infantry Volunteers, but recruitment was slow. In July 1863, Major Ned Wynkoop led a force of four companies from Colorado to Fort Bridger, Wyoming, to “chastise any Indians who may have committed depredations on either the ranches or emigrants.” The continued unrest of the Indians kept the regiment constantly in the saddle for the rest of the year, and a number of skirmishes were fought on Colorado’s eastern plains.15
In October 1863, the five companies of the Third were consolidated into the Second Colorado Infantry Volunteers and redesignated the Second Colorado Cavalry Volunteers; Colonel Ford was placed in charge, with Lieutenant Colonel Dodd his second in command. Ford’s regiment then was assigned to fight the Confederate guerrilla bands in central Missouri, including those of “Bloody Bill” Anderson and George Todd. It was a dirty and dangerous business. As one of the officers wrote, “Words cannot do justice to the horrors of such warfare; nor can the tragedies which cruelty, violence, rapine and the worst passions of civil war evoked in partisan warfare ever be fully known.”16
Back in the territory, relations between white Coloradans and the Indians continued to deteriorate, and Governor Evans repeatedly asked the War Department for the return of the Second Colorado Cavalry. But his appeals were denied, as the situation in Missouri remained critical. In mid-September 1864, Major General Sterling Price, Gilpin’s onetime fellow officer in Doniphan’s Missouri Volunteers during the Mexican-American War, invaded Missouri with an army of some 18,000 mounted Confederates. Price first attempted to take St. Louis but was checked at Pilot Knob (Fort Davidson) by Union forces under Brigadier General Thomas Ewing. An attempt to take Jefferson City ended in a similar result.
Price had more luck to the west, capturing the towns of Boonville, Glasgow, and Sedalia. On October 22, 1864, the rebels met Blunt’s men along the Big Blue River and pushed the Unionists back almost to Westport. In the meantime, Union Major General Alfred Pleasonton drove the Confederates out of Missouri. The West was now truly saved for the Union.17
In Colorado, the Indian situation now took center stage. Outraged at the gruesome massacre of the Hungate family by a band of renegade Indians just thirty miles southeast of Denver City, the citizens demanded that the natives be dealt such a severe blow that they would forever be dissuaded from attacking white settlements. To deal with the Indians, a new Third Regiment was formed. But rather than trained, disciplined soldiers, the Third Colorado Cavalry Regiment was a ragtag outfit of civilians, many of whom had lost friends and relatives to the Indians and were out for revenge.
The plan backfired. In November 1864, Colonel John Chivington led the Third Regiment into infamy as they attacked a peaceable encampment of Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians at a place called Big Sandy Creek, north of Fort Lyon. Major Edward Wynkoop, the previous commander of the Fort Lyon garrison, had already effected a peaceful detente with the local tribes—a detente that Chivington, following Governor Evans’s order, chose to violate.
The surprise attack at dawn, which came to be known as the Sand Creek Massacre, outraged and unified many of the tribes and plunged the West into two decades of savage warfare between whites and Native Americans. To their credit, the majority of troops from Fort Lyon (under Major Scott Anthony), whom Chivington had ordered to accompany him and the Third Regiment, sat on their horses and refused to take part in the slaughter. Many of the these troopers later testified against Chivington to congressional investigators. Although many Denverites at the time celebrated Chivington’s “victory” and praised him for “saving” their community from Indian depredations, many others were horrified at the butchery of the “soldiers.” Soon a congressional investigation was launched. Chivington, the Hero of Gloriéta, became the Butcher of Sand Creek. Inexplicably, he was never punished for leading this massacre.18
The cast of characters mentioned in this book who survived the battles in the Southwest and went on to achieve fame or infamy, or returned home to lead very ordinary lives are detailed below.
After Gloriéta, Captain Scott J. Anthony, commander of Company E, was promoted to major and in 1864 commanded Fort Lyon. He unwillingly led troops under Chivington’s command during the Sand Creek Massacre but, along with many of his troops, refused to fire on the Indian encampment. Following his retirement from the Army, he served as a contractor and civil engineer on the Union Pacific railroad. He died in Denver in 1903.19
William R. Beatty, a private in Company F, became Denver’s first city auditor. He died in 1922, the last survivor of Colorado’s Civil War veterans.20
The life and military career of Colonel (later Major General) Edward R.S. Canby came to a violent end. In May 1862, he was ordered East, where he was appointed Brigadier General of Volunteers and was later put in charge of the military garrison of New York City. In 1864, he won promotion to major general and commanded the Military Division of West Mississippi.21 In August 1864, Canby served with distinction in the campaign to capture strategic Mobile, Alabama, and its forts. Assembling a force of some 2,000 men, Canby’s amphibious assault took its outer objectives at the mouth of Mobile Bay while Rear Admiral David Farragut’s powerful fleet pummeled the enemy from the water. (This was the engagement in which Farragut uttered the immortal words: “Damn the torpedoes—full speed ahead!”) Mobile fell to the Union in April 1865.22
On June 2, 1865, nearly two months after Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, General E. Kirby Smith surrendered what was left of the Trans-Mississippi forces to Canby. Promoted to the permanent grade of brigadier general at the end of the war, Canby served in Washington, D.C., and in the occupied Southern states until posted to the Northwest to command the Department of Columbia and the Division of the Pacific in the 1870s. In April 1873, while trying to negotiate a peace treaty with the Modoc Indians, he was attacked and killed by a Modoc known as Captain Jack. Fort Canby, Washington, formerly an important post near the mouth of the Columbia River, and the city of Canby, Oregon, are named in his memory. He is buried in the Crown Hill Cemetery of Indianapolis.23
The legendary Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson remained in the Army. In May 1862, Canby reorganized all New Mexico volunteer regiments into one unit—designated the First Regiment of New Mexico Volunteers—with Carson as its commander. With Indians more of a threat in the territory than Confederates, Canby detailed the new unit as an Indian-fighting outfit. Believing that resettlement was the key to suppressing the hostile Indians, Canby had barely begun to implement his plans when he was ordered East for duty. Colonel James Carleton, leader of the California Column and now a brigadier general, was named to take his place. Virulently anti-Indian, Carleton was determined to protect the Santa Fé Trail from depredations and ordered Carson to prepare his regiment for a merciless war against the Mescalero Apaches. The expected battle did not take place; Paddy Graydon and his company had already met with the chiefs and persuaded them to surrender to Carson upon his arrival. In November, Carson learned that Carleton had ordered the Mescaleros to leave their homeland and move to the Bosque Redondo on the Pecos River, southeast of the Gloriéta battleground, where a new military post, Fort Sumner, had been built.
Despite Carson’s familiarity with the Native Americans, his command was a troubled one. Many of his men and officers were undisciplined, and the Navajos, who first seemed ready to peacefully cooperate with the soldiers, were turned against the whites by a series of crimes committed by Carson’s subordinates. As one of his biographers wrote, “Having no written language, the Navajos were inclined to be very creative and dramatic in dealing with their past. Their tribal memory of the events of 1863 and 1864 transformed Carson into a symbol of evil, the cause as well as the agent of the sufferings they endured before, during, and after the Long Walk to the Bosque. . . . He was not the cause. . . . [H]e carried out his orders with as much humaneness as the circumstances would allow, and . . . he was not present during the exodus of the Navajos from their tribal lands.” In 1863, a disgusted Carson attempted to resign from the Army, but Carleton would not approve his request.24
A group of Navajo chiefs met with Carleton in early 1863 to discuss peace terms, but, instead of talking peace, Carleton ordered them and their people to join the growing reservation at the Bosque Redondo. The Indians refused and Carleton, in turn, ordered an unwilling Carson to lead an expedition against the Navajos—a campaign that went badly. That November, however, Carson’s outnumbered force was successful against a combined army of Kiowas, Comanches, and Kiowa-Apaches at the Battle of Adobe Walls in Texas.
In 1865, Carson was promoted to brevet brigadier general, became commandant of both Fort Garland and Fort Union, and served briefly as an Indian superintendent.25 But his health was failing. On May 23, 1868, while at the home of the camp surgeon at Fort Lyon, the fifty-nine-year-old Carson died of an aortic aneurysm. Carson is buried in Taos, New Mexico.26
Few persons have ever gone from hero to villain faster than Colonel John M. Chivington, who, to this day, remains a controversial figure in the West. After the slaughter of peaceable Indians at Big Sandy Creek in November 1864, he left Colorado and then returned to Denver in 1883. He later was a candidate for Congress but withdrew from the race; he then served as undersheriff and coroner of Arapahoe (today Denver) County. He died in October 1894 at the age of seventy-three and is buried in Denver’s Fairmount Cemetery. His name remains reviled in Colorado by those familiar with his November 1864 deeds.27
Theodore H. Dodd, Company A, Second Colorado, was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1862. After the war, he became a U.S. Government Indian agent for the Navajos. Dodd died on January 6, 1866, after being shot by a Navajo.28
Jacob Downing, the rebellious captain of Company D, who fought Colonel Slough nearly as hard as he fought the Confederates, in 1864 commanded Fort Larned, Kansas, and was made Inspector of Frontier Posts in 1865. He later became a judge in Denver as well as a major land developer and breeder of thoroughbred horses. He is also credited with introducing alfalfa to Colorado. He died on December 1, 1907. A street in Denver is named for him.29
James H. Ford, commander of Company B of the Second Colorado, was promoted to major on November 1, 1862, and colonel a year later. He became a brevet brigadier general in December 1864 and commanded the Fourth District of Central Missouri. He died on January 12, 1867.30
After being ousted from office in 1862 following the scandal of the Treasury drafts, William Gilpin ran unsuccessfully against Hiram Bennet for a seat in Congress. In spite of his earlier passion for a transcontinental railroad (which was, by the end of the war, well along in its planning stages), he turned his attention to land speculation, buying huge tracts of land near Fort Garland in southern Colorado. Believing that the nearby Sangre de Cristo mountains held vast mineral wealth and that the flat valley would be ideal for agricultural purposes, Gilpin was certain he could make a fortune by selling off parcels of his holdings. With a number of partners (some of whom turned out to be swindlers), Gilpin tried to attract potential buyers from the East. The venture failed, and Gilpin returned to Denver. He still retained title to much of the land, as well as the mineral rights, which would eventually make him wealthy when gold was discovered in the area. He did play one minor role connected with railroading. On May 18, 1868, he took part in the ground-breaking ceremonies for the Denver Pacific Railway—a line that connected Denver with the Union Pacific tracks at Cheyenne, Wyoming, and thus with the rest of the nation.
While residing in Denver, Gilpin wrote a number of books, renewed his courtship with his old flame Julia Pratte Dickerson, and married her in 1874—two years after her husband died and left her with four small children. The Gilpins had three children of their own: twins Mary and William Jr., born in 1875, and another son, Louis, born two years later. Son William was killed in a rock-climbing accident.
The Gilpins’ marriage did not last; they had a bitter divorce in December 1887 after Gilpin forcibly removed the children from their home. He died a wealthy but lonely man on January 19, 1894, from injuries suffered when he was run over by a horse and buggy. He is buried beneath a magnificent catalpa tree in Denver’s Mount Olivet Cemetery—a Catholic cemetery—under the simplest of tombstones, next to his son William and his estranged wife, Julia.
Of Gilpin, Denver historian Jerome Smiley wrote, “He was a man of no ordinary type, brave, generous, enthusiastic. . . . The deaths of few men have caused deeper, more sincere regret than that of Governor Gilpin.” Strangely, no marker or monument gives the slightest hint of his governorship and his importance to early Colorado and the West. A Colorado county and a Denver street are named for him, but he is, for the most part, totally forgotten.31
James “Paddy” Graydon, commander of the Independent Spy Company that performed valuable service during the Battle of Valverde and helped “escort” Sibley out of New Mexico, was retained as a company commander when Canby reorganized the New Mexico Volunteers. He was, like the rest of the New Mexico Volunteers, ordered into action by Carleton against the Indians. In October 1862, Graydon and a few of his men were on patrol north of Fort Stanton when they were approached by a small party headed by a Mescalero Apache chief. A gunfight ensued in which eleven Indians died. While the Army investigated the matter, the fiery Graydon, at Fort Stanton in November 1862, got into a heated argument with an Army surgeon who accused Graydon of cold-blooded murder of the Indians. Gunfire broke out; the doctor was killed and Graydon mortally wounded. Graydon is buried in the National Cemetery at Santa Fé.32
Ovando J. Hollister, the private in Company F who wrote the eyewitness history of the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers, became prominent in Colorado mining circles; authored several books on mining; and in 1862 became co-editor of a mining journal in Black Hawk. He died in 1892 at age fifty-eight; his imposing but crumbling sandstone mausoleum stands in Denver’s Riverside Cemetery on a bluff overlooking the South Platte River and the former route of the stagecoach line from Julesburg.33
Charles Kerber, commander of Company I, First Colorado, was born Friedrick Sperfechter in Germany. He immigrated to America, enlisted in the Army in Philadelphia in 1855, and was assigned to Fort Fillmore. For unknown reasons, he left the Army, changed his name, and moved to Denver in 1861. After the battle of Pigeon’s Ranch, Kerber was promoted to captain and posted to Fort Garland, which he commanded from June 1864 to November 1865. He was wounded in a battle with the Indians but recovered, finally leaving the Army in November 1865. He moved to Ysleta, Texas, and eventually became sheriff of El Paso County, Texas. In 1877, he became embroiled in a deadly dispute over a salt mine, which turned into a regional war and raged all the way to Socorro before troops quelled it. After hostilities ended, Kerber served as county tax collector, a real estate entrepreneur, mayor of Ysleta, and judge. He died in 1909.34
The Gilpin family plot at Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Denver. The governor’s grave is at left, his wife’s at right, and the grave of their son, William Jr., is in the center. (Photo by author)
Gabriel R. Paul enjoyed a splendid military career until it ended tragically. In May 1862, he received his coveted promotion to brigadier general of volunteers in September and commanded a brigade in Joseph Hooker’s Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville. He also led his brigade in heavy fighting north of the Railroad Cut on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg until a rebel ball ripped through his skull and tore out both eyes. Despite his blindness, he was retained on active duty, performing minor administrative duties until the end of the war, when he was placed on the retired list. He died in 1886 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.35
Samuel Robbins, commander of Company K, First Colorado, later served in George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry Regiment. He died of yellow fever in Louisiana in 1905.36
Henry Selden, whose battalion of regulars valiantly tried to hold off the Texans at Valverde, remained in New Mexico and became commanding officer of Fort Union. He died of complications of a cold at the fort on February 2, 1865. A fort in New Mexico was built and named in his honor.39
John P. Slough’s abrupt resignation of command of the First Colorado evidently did no long-lasting damage to his military career. After leaving New Mexico, he was promoted to brigadier general and was assigned to command the Military District of Alexandria, Virginia. He was a member of the court-martial board of General Fitz John Porter, who was charged with disobedience and misconduct in the face of the enemy at the Second Battle of Bull Run. He later returned to New Mexico and became Chief Justice of the Territory but maintained his abrasive, belligerent manner—a manner that finally cost him his life. Slough had used “grossly abusive language” toward Captain William L. Rynerson, an Army officer who had served with Carleton’s California Column and a member of the New Mexico Territorial Senate. On December 15, 1867, a furious Rynerson confronted Slough in a Santa Fé hotel and demanded he retract his insults. When Slough refused, Rynerson shot him in the thigh, a wound that proved fatal. Slough left behind a widow and three children.37 So detested did Slough remain in Colorado that when, in 1899, thirty-two years after his death, an aged Scott Anthony nominated his former regimental commander for a place in the Colorado Hall of Fame, the measure was defeated. He is buried at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.38
Richard Sopris, the original commanding officer of Company C, enjoyed a long and distinguished career in public service. He became a judge and sheriff of Arapahoe and Denver Counties, was appointed deputy U.S. marshal in 1866, and served as mayor of Denver from 1878 to 1881. So proud was he of his military service that for the remainder of his life, he preferred to be called Captain Sopris. He died in 1893 at the age of eighty. A mountain near Glenwood Springs, Colorado, is named in his honor.40
Gilpin’s friend, Edwin Vose Sumner, had a long and distinguished military career, beginning in 1819 and including service in the war against Mexico. Born in Boston in 1797, he commanded II Corps at the battle of Seven Pines, Virginia, in May 1862; led a corps at the Battle of Antietam, Maryland, in September 1862; and commanded the “Right Grand Division” at Fredericksburg, Maryland, in November 1862. When Joe Hooker was selected over him to command the Army of the Potomac, Sumner asked to be relieved. He was preparing to take up a new assignment with the Department of the Missouri when he died suddenly on March 21, 1863. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Syracuse, New York.41
Samuel F. Tappan, Slough’s second-in-command in the First Colorado, unjustly received a dishonorable discharge for “recruiting the Second Colorado Cavalry Battery without authorization.” After Sand Creek, he and Chivington had a bitter feud, for Chivington felt that his being vilified for the massacre was mainly the result of trumped-up allegations made by Tappan, supposedly carrying a grudge after Chivington had been promoted over him to command the First Colorado. After the war, Tappan moved to Washington, D.C., and was later appointed the Indian agent to the Arapahoe tribe. In Washington in 1869, he married Cora Daniels, widow of Nathan W. Daniels, the late commanding officer of the Seventy-fourth Infantry Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops.42
Lewis Ledyard Weld, the Colorado territorial secretary under Gilpin, resigned from office in April 1862, after Gilpin was removed in the Treasury drafts scandal, and was replaced by Samuel H. Elbert, who would later become governor. Following his resignation, Weld served as editor of Denver’s Daily Commonwealth and Republican and continued the newspaper wars with Byers’s Rocky Mountain News. After learning that his brother, Charles Theodore Weld, had died of wounds suffered at the Battle of Chancellorsville, he left Denver in 1863 to join the Union Army. He was appointed a captain in the Seventh Infantry Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops, which saw combat in Florida in the spring and summer of 1864. In August, Weld’s unit was attached to the Army of the James and fought in the battles of Deep Bottom and Russel’s Mills. In October 1864, he was promoted to major with the Forty-First Colored Infantry Regiment and further promoted to lieutenant colonel in December. He contracted a cold, which turned into a fever, and he died on January 10, 1865, at the age of thirty-one. Weld County, Colorado, is named in his honor. He is buried in his home town of Hartford, Connecticut.43
Edward “Ned” Wanshear Wynkoop, captain of Company A and the first sheriff of Arapahoe County, rose to the rank of major with the Colorado Volunteers and, in April 1864, became commandant of Camp Weld/Elbert in Denver. Later in 1864, as commander of Fort Lyon, he did his best to make peace between whites and Indians. An outspoken critic of Chivington’s brutal actions at Sand Creek, he was vilified by the Denver press and the majority of Coloradans who, at that time, approved of the massacre. In 1865, he was appointed the Indian agent for the Arapahoe and Cheyenne tribes. He died on September 11, 1891, in Santa Fé and is buried in the National Cemetery there.44
John Robert Baylor resigned from the South’s army and was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives in 1863. He was persuaded to rejoin the army to lead another invasion of the Southwest—plans that fell through when the Confederacy surrendered. His ferocious temper often involved him in numerous altercations, including several gunfights. In 1872, he lost the election for governor of Texas. He died on February 6, 1894, and is buried at Montell, Texas.45
Thomas Green, Sibley’s second-in-command during the New Mexico campaign and commander of the Fifth Texas Mounted Volunteers, fought in several post–New Mexico battles, including the rebel recapture of Galveston in January 1863. He was promoted to brigadier general in May 1863. On April 12, 1864, while in command of cavalry during the Red River (Louisiana) campaign, he was killed leading an attack against Union gunboats at the battle of Blair’s Landing. He is buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Austin, Texas.46
Sterling Price, one of William Gilpin’s fellow officers in the Mexican-American War, became a major general in the Confederate Army, served as commander of the District of Arkansas, and was one of the South’s most prominent commanders, fighting in numerous battles and campaigns. After the war, Price and a number of other Confederate officers of the Trans-Mississippi Department fled to Mexico, where they promised to continue the fight; nothing ever came of their promises. He died in 1867.47
James Reily, who commanded the Fourth Texas Mounted Volunteers until Sibley sent him on the diplomatic mission to Mexico, died in combat on April 14, 1863, during the Battle of Camp Bisland on Bayou Teche, Louisiana.48
William Read Scurry, who assumed command of the Fourth Texas upon Reily’s departure for Mexico, later led a brigade in the Red River campaign. On April 30, 1864, he was killed at the head of his brigade at the battle of Jenkins’ Ferry, Arkansas. He is buried in the Texas State Cemetery at Austin.49
Henry Hopkins Sibley continued to lead a troubled life after the fall of the Confederacy. Although he was due royalties of $100,000 for his tent invention, the U.S. Government refused to pay him, citing his disloyalty to the Union. In 1869, unemployed and financially destitute, Sibley joined a group of former Civil War officers who had entered the service of Ismail, the Khedive of Egypt, who was seeking to modernize the Egyptian Army. Along with former fellow rebel William Wing Loring, Sibley sailed for the land of the pharaohs. Sibley was appointed Inspector General of Artillery and Loring was named Inspector General of the Egyptian Army.
Despite being treated like royalty, Sibley found it hard to adjust to life in Egypt, so different from what he had always known. Especially difficult was the Islamic ban on imbibing alcohol. Sibley could not restrain himself; he broke into an English merchant’s home and consumed the entire private supply of spirits. Sibley also began to outspend his income and soon was deeply in debt. In 1873, the Khedive dismissed him and he returned home. After spending a few months with his wife, Charlotte, in Brooklyn, he moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia, to be close to his socialite, opera-star daughter Helen, upon whom he became dependent. He lectured frequently on his experiences in Egypt but remained out of work and impoverished, existing primarily on Helen’s inheritance from her late husband. Finally resigning himself to the fact that he would never be paid for his tent invention, Sibley worked on several other military inventions and obtained patents, but the Army was not interested in pursuing any of his ideas. He also contributed a number of scholarly articles to various publications, including a treatise on alcoholic hallucinations. As he aged and his health deteriorated, he became a devout Episcopalian but remained addicted to the bottle. The old soldier died on August 23, 1886, and was buried in the Confederate Cemetery in Fredericksburg.50
The grave of Henry Hopkins Sibley in the Confederate Cemetery at Fredericksburg, Virginia. The date of death on the headstone is incorrect. (Photo by author)
William Steele, the New York–born commander of the Seventh Texas Mounted Volunteers, became a brigadier general commanding a division; fought in the 1864 Red River campaign; survived the war; and served as the Adjutant General of Texas in the 1870s. He died in San Antonio on January 12, 1885, and is buried in Austin’s Oakwood Cemetery.51
After being severely damaged by fire in 1864, Camp Weld (which had been renamed Camp Elbert) was demolished in 1865. A historical marker now stands in an industrial area of Denver at Eighth Avenue and Vallejo Streets, denoting the southwest corner of the camp.52
One of the oldest active Army posts in the Southwest, the Fort Bliss of today is in its fifth location. The first location was too close to the Rio Grande and was destroyed by a flood. In the 1880s, the fort was relocated adjacent to Hart’s Mill. This site, too, proved to be unsuitable, and the post was later moved to its present location. A reconstruction of the original fort, which houses the Fort Bliss Museum, was built on post in 1948.53
A reconstruction of Fort Bliss, Texas, located on the army post. (Photo by author)
Fort Craig continued to be an important Southwest post long after the Confederates left New Mexico. In the decade after the Civil War, soldiers stationed here made forays into the surrounding countryside in the ongoing war against the Indians. The post was finally abandoned in 1885, and in 1981 the site was donated to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. The crumbling remnants of a few buildings are under the protection of the National Park Service and are accessible from Interstate 25. One thing that has not changed since this fort’s establishment is the isolation and loneliness of this site, which all who were stationed here must have experienced.54
No trace of the post from which Major Lynde made his unfortunate foray against the Confederates at Mesilla exists today; the site on which it once stood is now private land.55
Fort Garland, where Dodd’s and Ford’s Colorado volunteers paused on their march to New Mexico, was for many years one of the Southwest’s most important military posts. In 1866, Kit Carson and his New Mexico Regiment were posted here. Later, the African American troopers of the Ninth Cavalry (“Buffalo Soldiers”) were stationed at the fort until it was abandoned in 1883 and fell into ruin. Today, the totally restored fort is maintained by the Colorado Historical Society. Its museum and visitors’ center make it one of southern Colorado’s major tourist attractions.56
Fort Craig, New Mexico, with Mesa del Contadero in distance. (Photo by author)
The fort, headquarters of the Department of New Mexico, once stood atop a bluff overlooking Santa Fé but it no longer exists. A small park, devoid of any marker or signage to inform the visitor that an important military post once stood here, now occupies the site.57
Three different Fort Unions have existed at the present site. First established in July 1851, Fort Union stood at the center of a complex network of roads and played a vital role in keeping the Santa Fé Trail open. Troops from the post regularly patrolled the trail, protecting its shipments and travelers from raids by hostile Indians. After the defeat at Valverde, work began on an impressive “star fort,” which became the second Fort Union, complete with earthworks, ditches, and parapets designed to ward off a Confederate attack. The star fort was abandoned and, from 1863 to 1869, the third fort was constructed, consisting of a large military post as well as the Fort Union Quartermaster Depot, which was the principal supply base for all of New Mexico.
Ruins of the third Fort Union, New Mexico. (Photo by author)
Fort Union served as a base of operations against the warring tribes until 1875, when hostilities ceased. The supply depot maintained its role for four more years until the Santa Fé Trail was made obsolete by the coming of the railroad; the post was finally closed in May 1891. Today, the skeleton of the large, lonely post still sits in the middle of a wide, grassy plain, the wheel ruts of countless wagons that traveled around it still visible. A visitors’ center and small museum have been built by the U.S. Department of the Interior, and thousands of visitors stop annually at the post, designated a national monument.58
Construction of Fort Wise commenced on land close to the Arkansas River about a mile west of Bent’s New Fort on August 31, 1860. Because Fort Wise had been named for the governor of a Confederate state, the name was changed to honor Nathaniel Lyon, the first Union general killed in battle (at Wilson’s Creek, Missouri, August 1861).59 Located in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from any sizable settlement, Fort Lyon was regarded by many as “the dreariest post in the West.” Ten officers who would see duty during the Civil War were stationed at Fort Wise during its first few months, including the famed Confederate cavalry leader, J.E.B. Stuart.60 In 1867, the Army abandoned the original site and relocated the post twenty-two miles upstream, near the town of Las Animas.61
It is virtually impossible to find any trace of the original Fort Wise/Lyon today, as the area where it once stood is now fenced-off farmland about ten miles west of Lamar, Colorado, near the small hamlet of Prowers. The new Fort Lyon operated as a military post until December 26, 1889, when the government closed it. It reopened as a Veterans Administration hospital in 1922. The hospital at Fort Lyon was closed in early 2001 and the facility converted into a state prison hospital.62
The author at Pigeon’s Ranch. (Photo by Tom Hames)
Johnson’s Ranch. Except for a view of Gloriéta Mesa, down which Chivington’s troops descended, there is little to be seen at this location, which is private property. The original ranch house fell into disrepair and was demolished in the 1980s to make way for Interstate 25.
Kozlowski’s Ranch. The ranch was later owned by actress Greer Garson and her husband, Buddy Folgeson. Today the property is used as offices by the National Park Service Police.
Pigeon’s Ranch. A part of one building, a water well, and remnants of the corral’s stone wall still exist but are vacant and in disrepair.
Unlike most Civil War sites in the United States, the Valverde battlefield is virtually inaccessible to visitors. About two miles west of the actual battle site, a granite monument, placed by the Daughters of the Confederacy in the 1930s to honor the Texas Mounted Volunteers, is located near the San Marcial exit (Exit 12) of Interstate 25, south of Socorro. As a result of the Rio Grande’s flooding over the years, the actual ground on which the battle took place is about fifteen feet below current ground level. It is as abandoned and forgotten as the men who so long ago fought here for control of the West. The bugles and drums that once distantly echoed in this remote part of the country, however, can still be faintly heard, if one chooses to listen.63
1. The Battle of Picacho Pass was the westernmost land battle of the Civil War.
2. Official Record, 9:510–512.
3. Ibid., 506–512.
4. Ibid., 714–716.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 717–721.
7. Theophilus Noel, A Campaign from Santa Fe to the Mississippi; Being a History of the Old Sibley Brigade (Shreveport, LA: Shreveport News, 1865), 39–39.
8. Martin H. Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1960), 210–211.
9. Martin H. Hall, The Confederate Army of New Mexico (Austin: Presidial Press, 1978), 38.
10. Jerry D. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley: Confederate General of the West (Natchitoches: Northwestern Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 305.
11. Ibid., 305–330; Theophilus Noel, A Campaign from Santa Fe to the Mississippi, xiii–xxvii, 61–144.
12. Jay Wertz and Edwin C. Bearss, Smithsonian’s Great Battles and Battlefields of the Civil War (New York: William Morrow, 1997), 470–471.
13. Ibid., 471.
14. Frank Hall, History of the State of Colorado, 4 vols. (Chicago: Blakely, 1889–1895), 1:300; John H. Nankivell, History of the Military Organizations of the State of Colorado, 1860–1935 (Denver: Kistler, 1935), 20–27.
15. F. Hall, History of the State of Colorado, 1:299; Nankivell, History of the Military Organizations, 14.
16. Nankivell, History of the Military Organizations, 22.
17. Wertz and Bearss, Smithsonian’s Great Battles and Battlefields, 411–412; James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Ballantine, 1988), 668; Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964), 373–374.
18. Wilber F. Stone, ed., History of Colorado, 1 (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing, 1918), 87–97.
19. Denver Post, October 3, 1903.
20. Dawson scrapbook, #32, p. 33.
21. Ludwell H. Johnson, “A Campaign That Failed,” in The Image of War: 1861–1865, 5 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), 346–377.
22. Charles R. Haberlein Jr., “Damn the Torpedoes!” in The Image of War: 1861–1865, The End of an Era (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), 6:86–121.
23. Max L. Heyman, Prudent Soldier: A Biography of Major General Edward R.S. Canby (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1959), 188–380.
24. Thelma S. Guild and Harvey L. Carter, Kit Carson: A Pattern for Heroes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 249.
25. Chris Emmett, Fort Union and the Winning of the Southwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), 412; Guild and Carter, Kit Carson, 222–255; Alvin M. Josephy Jr., The Civil War in the American West (New York: Knopf, 1991), 289–291.
26. Dr. H. R. Tilton, letter to John Abbott describing the death of Kit Carson at Fort Lyon, January 6, 1874, Mss Box 982, CHS.
27. Denver Times, October 5, 1894.
28. Nolie Mumey, ed., Bloody Trails along the Rio Grande—A Day-by-Day Diary of Alonzo Ferdinand Ickis (Denver: Old West Publishing, 1958), 54n.
29. Rocky Mountain News, January 2, 1867; August 31, 1867; January 26, 1882; April 5, 1874; Denver Post, December 2, 1907.
30. Mumey, ed., Bloody Trails along the Rio Grande, 54n.
31. Jerome C. Smiley, History of Denver (Denver: Times-Sun Publishing, 1901), 490; Virginia M. Simmons, The San Luis Valley: Land of the Six-Armed Cross (Boulder, CO: Pruett Publishing, 1979), 80–105; Elmer O. Davis, The First Five Years of the Railroad Era in Colorado (Golden, CO: Sage Books, 1948), 17–18; Eugene Parsons, “William Gilpin: Colorado’s First Governor,” The Mining American 74:1823 (January 27, 1917): 8.
32. Jerry D. Thompson, Desert Tiger: Captain Paddy Graydon and the Civil War in the Far Southwest (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1992), 49–56.
33. W. B. Vickers, History of the City of Denver, Arapahoe County, and Colorado (Chicago: O. L. Baskin, 1880), 26.
34. Paul Cool, “El Paso’s Charles Kerber: Salt War Sheriff,” www.outlawlawman.com/salt-war.htm (June 30, 2003).
35. Francis Stanley, The Civil War in New Mexico (Denver: World Press, 1960), 185; Don E. Alberts, The Battle of Glorieta: Union Victory in the West (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998), 172; Warner, Generals in Blue, 363–364.
36. Denver Post, July 30, 1905.
37. Rocky Mountain News, May 18, 1890; Stanley, The Civil War in New Mexico, 185; Warner, Generals in Blue, 379.
38. L. J. Davidson, “Colorado’s Hall of Fame,” Colorado Magazine 27:1 (January 1950): 27; Warner, Generals in Blue, 454.
39. Stanley, The Civil War in New Mexico, 265.
40. Vickers, History of the City of Denver, 572; Denver Post, March 6, 1921.
41. Wertz and Bearss, Smithsonian’s Great Battles and Battlefields, 337, 705; Warner, Generals in Blue, 489–490.
42. J. Lee, letter dated May 20, 1959, Box 982, Folder 24, CHS; C. P. Weaver, ed., Thank God My Regiment an African One: The Civil War Diary of Col. Nathan W. Daniels (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998), xxi.
43. Cass Ledyard Ruxton Shaw, The Ledyard Family in America (West Kennebunk, ME: privately published, 1993), 99; LeRoy R. Hafen, “Lewis Ledyard Weld and Old Camp Weld,” Colorado Magazine 19:6 (November 1942).
44. Thomas D. Isern, “The Controversial Career of Edward W. Wynkoop,” Colorado Magazine 56:1–2 (Winter 1979): 1–18.
45. Stanley, The Civil War in New Mexico, 150, 228; Jon L. Wakelyn, Biographical Dictionary of the Confederacy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), 93–94; Bruce S. Allardice, More Generals in Gray (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), 33.
46. Wakelyn, Biographical Dictionary of the Confederacy, 210–211; Richard Owen and James Owen, Generals at Rest: The Grave Sites of the 425 Official Confederate Generals (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing, 1997), 246.
47. Wertz and Bearss, Smithsonian’s Great Battles and Battlefields, 296–297, 299, 309, 311, 312, 613.
48. Stanley, The Civil War in New Mexico, 154.
49. Ibid., 185; Owen and Owen, Generals at Rest, 243.
50. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley, 337–369.
51. Stanley, The Civil War in New Mexico, 155; Owen and Owen, Generals at Rest, 247.
52. Albert B. Sanford, “Camp Weld, Colorado,” Colorado Magazine 11:2 (March 1934): 48.
53. Correspondence, letter to author from James R. Rogers, museum director, Fort Bliss, Texas, January 23, 2001.
54. “Fort Craig,” U.S. Department of the Interior pamphlet (Washington, DC: GPO, 1989).
55. Personal reconnaissance by author, 2003.
56. Denver Post, April 28, 1998; September 8, 1999.
57. Personal reconnaissance by author, 2003.
58. Robert M. Utley, Fort Union and the Santa Fe Trail (El Paso: Texas Western Press/University of Texas at El Paso, 1989), 15–17; Emmett, Fort Union and the Winning of the Southwest, 409; “Fort Union,” U.S. Department of the Interior pamphlet (Washington, DC: GPO, 1997).
59. Jerome C. Smiley, Semi-Centennial History of the State of Colorado, 4 vols. (Chicago: Lewis Publishing, 1913), 1:379.
60. Le Roy Boyd, Fort Lyon: One Hundred Years of Service (Colorado Springs: H&H Printing, 1967), 4.
61. Inventory of Papers of Fort Lyon, Colorado, CHS; personal reconnaissance by author, 2002.
62. Maxine Benson, 1001 Colorado Place Names (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994), 73; Inventory of Papers of Fort Lyon, Colorado, CHS.
63. Personal reconnaissance by author, 2003.
