THE WALKING WHISKEY KEG
CHAPTER TWO
AT SEVEN-THIRTY ON THE EVENING OF GILPIN’S TRIUMPHANT ARRIVAL IN DENVER City, the Tremont House, site of the official reception, was aglow with oil lamps and bubbling with music, animated conversation, flowing champagne, and great trays piled high with hors d’oeuvres. The hotel’s balcony was bedecked with patriotic bunting and in the distance the booming of cannon firing blank charges in salute could be heard. A Denver City newspaper reporter noted, “The windows of the hotel were illuminated, an excellent band of music played patriotic airs, and the Stars and Stripes waved gracefully above them all, making the whole scene not only gay and festive but grand and glorious indeed.” Describing the new governor, the reporter observed, “His appearance is pleasing and dignified, and his manner as a speaker betrays the scholar, the thinker, and the man of calm judgment and deep discrimination.”1
Gilpin was introduced to the various city dignitaries and prominent citizens and their wives. One man who attended the gathering wrote to a friend:
I have just come from a large and enthusiastic meeting in front of the Tremont House to welcome our new Governor, who arrived to-day. There was [sic] 34 guns fired on his arrival and 34 more to-night at the meeting. The Governor gave us a very good speech. He referred to the time eighteen years ago when he was on the same spot where now stands the City of Denver. He crossed the mountains to the Pacific at that time and his allusions to this . . . were very eloquent. His first appearance has given general satisfaction.2
Milo H. Slater, who would serve as a sergeant in the as-yet-nonexistent Colorado regiment, recalled Gilpin as being “possessed of a rare and peculiar intellect, carrying with it a breadth of vision and a keenness of penetration which enabled him to thoroughly grasp certain truths which few other men would perceive at all.”3
Talk naturally included the war, and Gilpin convinced all of his loyalty to the Union, assuring them that he had been “the only man in Missouri to vote for Lincoln” in the 1860 election. Gracious, socially charming, and a marvelous conversationalist, Gilpin soon captivated everyone in the room. No doubt, the new governor also found himself explaining the absence of the territorial secretary, Lewis Ledyard Weld. The governor likely mentioned to the assembled guests that Weld’s absence was strictly for health reasons; he was forced to remain temporarily in Washington because of an attack of sciatica that would have been aggravated by a bouncing stagecoach.4
Any single women present at the reception who may have attempted to catch the governor’s eye would have been unsuccessful, for his heart belonged to another. Until 1856, women seem to have played little part in the life of William Gilpin. But, that winter, while living in Independence and working as editor of the Independence Agrarian, he met and fell madly in love with twenty-one-year-old Julia Pratte, the daughter of General Bernard Pratte Jr. General Pratte was a former member of the Missouri General Assembly, mayor of St. Louis from 1844–1846, and the patriarch of a wealthy St. Louis Creole family. The courtship did not go according to Gilpin’s hopes and dreams. Besides the nineteen-year age difference, William and Julia had many other insurmountable problems: he was a Quaker, she a Roman Catholic; he a Yankee, she a Southerner; he Anglo-Saxon, she French; he antislavery, she in tune with the traditions of the South. Their relationship failed. She married a Captain John H. Dickerson and bore him four children. Nevertheless, she would remain the love of his life—and re-enter it twelve years later.
Mid-nineteenth-century America was known for its oratorical excesses commemorating special occasions, and the night of May 27 was no exception. Various dignitaries stood before the throng and gave one interminable speech after another. One of the speakers was a large, balding lawyer named John Potts Slough, who had migrated west in 1860 from Ohio. Slough (pronounced slow) was born in Cincinnati on February 1, 1829, the son of an early Ohio pioneer. He graduated from Cincinnati Law School; was a member of the Hamilton County Bar; and was involved in politics, having been elected at age twenty-one to Ohio’s state legislature in 1855, where he gained a reputation for belligerency. In February 1857, he physically accosted a fellow lawmaker on the floor of the legislature. A Cleveland newspaper excoriated Slough:
Julia Pratte, date unknown (Colorado Historical Society)
Mr. Slough . . . sees fit to make what he calls an acknowledgment of his conduct in striking Mr. Caldwell of Ashtabula in the face during a recent session. . . . There is no sorrow or regret on his part for the brutal act, but a simple statement that whenever one member sees fit to strike another during session hours, all that is necessary is for him to say he knows it to be out of place. . . . We care not what Mr. Caldwell said to Mr. Slough; it could not justify the action of the latter in the matter.5
Slough was subsequently turned out of office by the voters in his district. Disgraced in his home state, he decided to move westward and start afresh in Colorado.
None of Slough’s past, apparently, was then known to Gilpin. And Slough’s speech, the text of which has been lost to history, must have impressed the governor greatly; Gilpin tucked the name of the orator into his memory as someone to consider for the position of commander of the regiment that was about to be raised.
Finally, it was time for the new governor to be formally introduced, and Judge Hiram P. Bennet, who would soon become the first delegate to Congress from Colorado Territory (and, later, a Gilpin foe), did the honors. “Governor Gilpin,” he began, “we meet you and we greet you where loyal citizens are ever wont to greet their constitutional rulers—under the stars and stripes.”
Glasses were raised and enthusiastic applause greeted Gilpin as he stepped forward to tell of his plans and dreams for the Colorado Territory.6
Lewis Ledyard Weld, secretary of Colorado Territory. (Courtesy, Colorado Historical Society, F-7116 #10028275)
He spoke of his deep commitment to the policy of Manifest Destiny and of the major role he anticipated for Colorado in that destiny. He regaled the audience with tales of his experiences during the Frémont expedition. It is also quite probable that Gilpin went on at length about his service in the war against Mexico in 1846. How he had enlisted as a private in Stephen Watts Kearny’s Army of the West at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and ended up as a major in command of a battalion in Alexander Doniphan’s 800-man First Regiment of Missouri Mounted Volunteers. How they marched 537 miles to Bent’s Fort in southern Colorado, then proceeded another 300 miles, over rugged Ratón Pass and through La Gloriéta Pass, to Santa Fé (then part of Mexico). How the Americans scattered a numerically superior Mexican force at El Brazito (near the present-day town of Mesquite, New Mexico); then marched deeper into Mexico toward their objective, the city of Chihuahua, another 300 miles farther south. How he and the rest of the regiment stormed a high mesa at Sacramento in the face of intense enemy musket and cannon fire and routed an even larger, more well-equipped Mexican force before moving on to capture and occupy Chihuahua, eighteen miles south of Sacramento.
Gilpin may have also recounted the regiment’s agonizing struggle through scorching, Apache-controlled territory on their way from Chihuahua to Brazos Santiago on the Gulf of Mexico and the boat journey to New Orleans and the wild celebrations that greeted Doniphan’s men there and in St. Louis. He may have even spoken of the severe case of malaria that he had contracted and how, despite his weakened condition, he was persuaded by Missouri governor John C. Edwards to command a battalion of troops in a fruitless, year-long campaign in 1847–1848 against bands of hostile Indians before returning home. He may have talked in detail about his desire to enter politics. (In addition to speaking widely on the subjects of Manifest Destiny and a transcontinental railroad, he had also run unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives and governor of Missouri.)
The route of Doniphan’s Missouri Volunteers during the war with Mexico, 1846–1848.
Because he was deeply interested in establishing new communities, he must have told the assembled throng of his efforts to promote Gilpinville, a new town near Independence, Missouri, that he had founded and platted. And no doubt he told his audience stirring stories of his brief service as one of Lincoln’s bodyguards while the president-elect traveled from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington, D.C. To say that he won over the locals and calmed whatever fears they may have had about his commitment to Colorado, the West, and the Union would be an understatement. His final, rousing words of the evening were captured by a reporter:
Hail to America, land of our birth. Hail to her magnificent continental dominion. Hail to her liberty-loving sons, and her matrons and maidens. Hail to her as she is. May she never become divided or her glory less dim!7
Gilpin’s ringing tribute brought sustained applause and was followed by three huzzahs for the Union, followed by three more for Colorado. In the distance, howitzers boomed another salute, then the band struck up a stirring rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner. At the conclusion of the evening, the entire group repaired to a theater to take in a play given as a benefit for the city’s poor.8
Even as the gaslights twinkled and bands played and the happy throngs of well-wishers and party-goers gaily celebrated the arrival of their new territorial governor, forty-five-year-old Major Henry Hopkins Sibley, now commander of the lonely Federal garrison at Fort Union, New Mexico Territory, was anxiously awaiting word from Washington regarding his letter of resignation from the U.S. Army so he could join the Confederate side.9
Of course, Sibley, a Louisianan, could have done as so many other Southern-born officers had already done: simply abandon his post and report to the nearest Confederate garrison for duty. Upon learning of the start of the hostilities between North and South, a number of Southern officers posted to New Mexico—officers such as James Longstreet, Joseph Wheeler, Dabney Herndon Maury, George Bibb Crittenden, and many more—had traded their blue uniforms for gray. But a surprising, ineffable sense of duty compelled Sibley to wait until he was officially relieved of his responsibilities before switching allegiances.10
To be sure, Sibley had a long list of reasons for wanting to change sides. For one thing, he was a true Southerner, born and raised in Louisiana. For another, ever since receiving his commission in 1838, the volatile Sibley frequently had locked horns with his superiors and with the War Department, including its various Secretaries of War. He believed that he had been brusquely treated by his superiors on numerous occasions despite nearly bankrupting himself in trying to run the recruiting offices to which he had been assigned again and again. His young son had even died during one of the many transfers the army had required of him. He must have questioned whether he should remain loyal to the nation that had, in his opinion, treated him so shabbily.
The War Between the States would give him a fresh start, a shining new opportunity to achieve greatness. No doubt he thought, as part of this new army made up of Southern gentleman like himself, that he would finally get the respect and consideration that his lifelong devotion to duty deserved. While posted in the dusty, desolate Southwest on the very edge of white civilization, Sibley had come to know this wind-blown, rattlesnake-infested country intimately; he knew its pitfalls and its promises, its vulnerabilities and opportunities. He knew of the hundreds of gold and silver mines, that the local Hispanic militiamen were poor soldiers, and that the army posts were vulnerable and insufficiently manned. He hoped to put this wealth of knowledge to work for the benefit of his beloved South.
Sibley’s fertile brain envisioned a grand scheme that he was certain would guarantee the Confederacy’s survival and success in a protracted and expensive war—a plan for a campaign that would forge a route from Texas to the southern California seaports while seizing the entire Southwest region and capturing the Colorado gold and silver mines for the Confederacy. He could scarcely wait to present his daring ideas to President Jefferson Davis.
Sibley was well acquainted with the Southwest. As a veteran of the wars against both Mexico and the Indians, Sibley knew firsthand the hardships and difficulties of marching an army through vast, arid spaces. He firmly believed, however, that the native people of the Southwest had no stomach for battle. He had been at the head of Winfield Scott’s American Army that had swept Santa Anna’s numerically superior forces from the battlefield. He had no doubt that a well-led army of dedicated, determined Southerners could quickly rout whatever poorly trained militia or under-strength Federal forces could be mustered against it. And, if Jefferson Davis thought him the right man to lead such a campaign, he would be proud to accept the assignment.11
Convinced that his newly chosen course was the right one, and while waiting for Washington to release him from his oath of office, he reached for the one, true friend on whom he could always count: John Barleycorn. In stressful times like these, such as when he had fought the Seminoles in Florida, Santa Anna’s men in Mexico, and the Navajos in the Southwest, he knew a stiff drink, or two or three, would help get him through. Indeed, Sibley’s heavy drinking was already legendary in an army not known for temperance, and behind his back he was known as “the walking whiskey keg.” Even fellow Southern officer John Robert Baylor would later call Sibley “an infamous coward and a disgrace to the Confederate States.”12
It had not always been so. Born May 25, 1816, at the imposing Sibley plantation on the Red River at Grand Ecore, a few miles northeast of Natchitoches, Louisiana, Henry was the youngest of four children of Samuel Hopkins Sibley and Margaret McDonald. A pampered child, he had begun life in prosperous circumstances, with a household full of slaves available to attend to his every whim. His grandfather and the family’s patriarch, Dr. John Sibley, besides being a successful physician and the former U.S. government’s Indian agent for the area, was one of the most influential men in the state.
Young Henry came by his interest in things military at an early age. Located near the plantation was Fort Selden, home to a regiment of dragoons. He saw them drilling in their precise formations and watched them ride by, their shiny brass hilts and dragoon helmets gleaming in the sun, and heard their muskets rattle and the cannons roar. He dreamed he would some day be a part of it.
The good times on the Sibley plantation did not last. First, in 1815, Dr. Sibley lost his position as Indian agent and later was beset by economic difficulties. In 1823, when Henry was only seven, his father died. The debts began accumulating and in 1826 the plantation was auctioned off to satisfy creditors. The family found itself virtually penniless and homeless. In April 1828, Margaret moved to St. Charles, Missouri; two years later, she had managed to scrape together enough money to pack Henry off to a private school in Ohio. Here Henry proved to be a bright and capable student, and he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy.
As Gilpin had also experienced, life for cadets at the academy was difficult and, in the 1830s, it was especially harsh and spartan. There was drill from sun up to sun down. Instant, unquestioning obedience to orders was demanded, high academic achievement was expected, and unending harassment by upper classmen was the norm. Henry struggled with the core curriculum of French and mathematics and was required to repeat his second year, failing to graduate in 1837 with such classmates as Jubal Early (who would one day command rebel armies), Braxton Bragg (who would lead the Army of Tennessee from one defeat to another), and others who would make names for themselves—both good and bad—in the upcoming civil war. In July 1838, Henry Hopkins Sibley graduated thirty-first in a class of forty-one and was commissioned a second lieutenant.
Upon graduation, he was posted to the Second Regiment of Dragoons—the same regiment in which Lieutenant William Gilpin had served two years earlier—and, like Gilpin, sent to Florida to help put down the Second Seminole Uprising. Under the command of Colonel Zachary Taylor, Sibley and the dragoons saw little action. Most of their time was spent marching through nearly impenetrable forests and alligator-infested swamps in pursuit of the elusive enemy. Few shots were exchanged and Sibley grew bored and restless, just as Gilpin had been.
In 1839, Sibley was withdrawn from Florida and sent northward to Fort Columbus on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor, where he began the first of several stultifying years of recruiting and training replacements for the Second Dragoons. Displeased with these unglamorous assignments, he complained bitterly in writing to the adjutant general, thereby launching a reputation for being difficult, insubordinate, argumentative, and impossible to deal with. The one benefit of his assignment at Fort Columbus was his courtship with Charlotte Kendall, the daughter of a Massachusetts veteran of the War of 1812.
Henry and Charlotte wed in January 1840 and then he was posted, without her, to the Cavalry School at Carlisle Barracks in south central Pennsylvania, a few miles north of a small town named Gettysburg, where he was again assigned to the training of raw recruits. This detail lasted until October, when he was ordered back to Florida to rejoin the Second Dragoons.
In the fall of 1841, Sibley and the dragoons were transferred from the fetid swamps of Florida to Fort Jesup, only a few miles from his old family home at Natchitoches. Fort Jesup, especially when compared to the land of alligators and watersnakes from which he had just come, was considered a good assignment. But although he had returned to the land of his birth, Sibley became disenchanted with army life. Illness among the troops was rampant; the diet monotonous; the work tedious and unrewarding; and desertion an almost daily occurrence. His stay at Jesup lasted only until July 1842, when he was ordered back to New York and the start of almost five more years of recruiting duties. Only the war with Mexico freed him from his administrative straightjacket.
Early in 1847, the thirty-one-year-old Lieutenant Sibley finally received three things he had hoped for: orders to Texas, a captaincy, and command of a company within the Second Dragoons that was preparing to join a huge amphibious force being assembled to invade Mexico. A massive landing some 500 miles south of the Rio Grande at the ancient, fortified port city of Vera Cruz was planned for early March 1847. Winfield Scott, the nation’s ablest general, would command the operation.
Taking part in the invasion, Sibley soon distinguished himself on the battlefield at the head of his dragoon company. After the fall of Vera Cruz, U.S. troops pushed inland toward Mexico City, delayed by Santa Anna’s attempts to stop them. The Mexican efforts were to no avail as the “Yanquis” overcame one resistance point after another; and Sibley earned high praise for his courage during the fighting at the pivotal battle of Cerro Gordo.
By mid-May, Scott’s army had reached and occupied the city of Puebla. While Doniphan, Gilpin, and the rest of the Missouri volunteers were preparing to return home, the Americans in Puebla remained through the roasting summer, awaiting reinforcements. During that summer, many fell victim to an epidemic of yellow fever that swept through the region like a tornado.13
Winfield Scott’s advance on Mexico City, 1847.
Scott’s demands for a truce were ignored by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and so Scott’s army left Puebla in August and continued its drive toward Mexico City, defeating all enemy formations arrayed to stop it—from Contreras and Churubusco to Molino del Rey, just west of the hilltop fortress of Chapultepec. Sibley’s Second Dragoons were called up and ordered to charge the enemy positions. Braving nearly point-blank fire, Sibley and his men pressed on into the cauldron of battle. Although Sibley had a horse shot out from under him, he led his dragoons into the fray on foot. Despite suffering 750 casualties, the Americans won the field; the surviving Mexicans retreated to the ramparts of Chapultepec, where they continued to blast cannon fire onto the Americans below at Molino del Rey.14 As the U.S. infantry routed the Mexican army from Chapultepec, Sibley and his dragoons chased down and sabered the fleeing survivors.15
With little fight left in the city’s defenders and the U.S. artillery dropping rounds into the streets, the government and virtually all of the Mexican soldiers abandoned the capital, and the city authorities surrendered it to the Yanqui invaders on September 14, 1847.16 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, agreed to by the Mexicans on February 2, 1848, brought the fighting to an end, but the U.S. occupation of the capital continued. It was not until May that the war was officially declared over.17
With Mexico City at last in U.S. hands, Sibley was assigned to be part of General Scott’s bodyguard and escort. During the occupation, and with no fighting to keep him out of trouble, Sibley and the commanding officer of the Second Dragoons, Major Edwin Vose Sumner, got into a heated exchange over a trifling matter and the ever-volatile Sibley was nearly court-martialed for insubordination.18
In June, Sibley left Mexico City and was posted to Baltimore. Charlotte joined him there and in 1849 gave birth to their second child, a son. With the return of peace, Sibley found himself once again saddled with onerous administrative and recruiting duties. Such work had always been deadly dull to him and, after the excitement of combat, it was now even worse. He began drinking more heavily, and his hair-trigger temper frequently embroiled him in disputes with commanding officers and higher headquarters. A seemingly trivial disagreement between him and Brevet Colonel Philip St. George Cooke escalated into an interpersonal squabble that nearly cost Sibley his military career.
Perhaps as a way to get the combative brevet major as far away from the War Department as possible, Sibley was transferred to Texas in November 1850. The increased distance did not lessen Sibley’s correspondence. Quite the contrary, letters full of complaints about his assignments flowed from his quill pen to everyone from his immediate commanders to the Secretary of War. In the early 1850s, Sibley was assigned to godforsaken posts in Texas that were so inhospitable that even his wife and children returned east to avoid the hardships. Hostilities between whites and various Indian tribes also increased, and Sibley and his men seemed to be in constant pursuit of one marauding band after another.
In 1855, Sibley’s unit was transferred to Fort Belknap, located in an arid wasteland. It was here that his inventive mind developed a new type of tent—dubbed the Sibley tent. Patterned after the conical Comanche teepee, the Sibley tent provided shelter for up to twenty soldiers and allowed a warming fire to be built within, even while a storm raged outside.19
In August 1855, Brevet Major Sibley and six companies of the Second Dragoons were ordered to leave Fort Belknap and begin a nearly 500-mile trek northward to Fort Riley,20 Kansas Territory, not to fight Indians, but to stand guard in case an ugly, ongoing dispute between fellow Americans in Kansas got out of hand.21
At this time, Kansas Territory was in upheaval, a powder keg smoldering with anarchy and revolt, a battleground between pro- and antislavery factions that was touched off a year earlier by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act—a law that repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and gave each new state and territory the right to decide the slavery question for itself. Of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, historian James M. McPherson has written, “[T]his law may have been the most important single event pushing the nation toward civil war.”22
A group of conical Sibley tents visible in the background. Because he joined the Confederacy, Sibley was never paid for his invention by the U.S. government. (National Archives)
Fierce and bloody battles between the two factions had been taking place since 1854. Now, with the question of whether Kansas would be admitted as a slave or free state, the conflict threatened to divide the nation and turn into a wider civil war. Even in the hallowed halls of Congress, Northerners and Southerners sometimes engaged in violence. In Kansas, warfare had become commonplace as militants from the territory’s “official” pro-slavery capital of Lecompton and those from the “unofficial” antislavery capital of Lawrence, just twelve miles apart, continued to raid each other’s settlements with resulting loss of life. The escalating conflict had already caused President Franklin Pierce to remove three Kansas governors from their posts. Trying to maintain order in this powder keg and keep the two sides apart became the job of Sibley’s Second Dragoons and Colonel Edwin Vose Sumner’s First Cavalry Regiment.23
While trying to keep the lid on a boiling pot, Sibley and his dragoons were withdrawn from Kansas and ordered to prepare for a war against the Mormons in Utah, who were threatening to secede from the Union. The Mormons were unhappy over certain conditions being imposed upon them by the Federal government, including the replacement of territorial governor Brigham Young with a man of President James Buchanan’s choosing. A 2,000-man force under the command of Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston had already been ordered to Utah to ensure that the Mormons were not successful. In July 1857, two regiments of infantry (the Fifth and Tenth Regiments) and a battery of artillery departed Fort Leavenworth and headed for Utah; Sibley and the dragoons and the rest of the command, under Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, followed in September.
Eastern Kansas.
The journey was a nightmare. Forage for the animals was scarce; horses and mules died; wagons continually broke down; and howling winds and torrential rains lashed the soldiers and their animals. Each morning’s muster showed that more men had deserted during the night. Sleet and snow soon covered the Nebraska prairie, and the men huddled, shivering beneath frozen blankets atop their ice-caked horses.
Despite the hardships, the column averaged twenty miles a day. West of Fort Laramie, in late October Cooke’s men were approached by one of Colonel Johnston’s dispatch riders with a dire appeal for help. The messenger informed the column that Mormons had attacked and burned two supply wagon trains loaded with provisions for Johnston’s men. Although 700 miles from Johnston, Cooke had his men put the spurs to their mounts and proceed to Utah with all due haste. Through rain, sleet, fearsome blizzards, and sub-zero temperatures, the soldiers rode on, hoping against hope that they would reach Johnston before he and his command starved to death or were slaughtered by the Mormons. Scores of horses and mules died on the trail and many of the men suffered terribly from frostbite, but still the party refused to stop. On November 19, 1857, near Fort Bridger, the frozen, bedraggled Second Dragoons finally made contact with Johnston’s men. Along the way, they had lost 134 of their 278 horses.
Henry Hopkins Sibley, shown after his promotion to brigadier general. (Massachusetts Commandery—Military Order of the Loyal Legion and the U.S. Army Military History Institute)
Although the dragoons were in pitiable shape, Sibley was even more appalled by the condition of the soldiers stationed at dismal Fort Bridger. Food had been severely rationed and the soldiers were reduced to slaughtering and eating their own oxen. Sympathetic Indians brought food—including dog meat—to the soldiers, but it was not nearly enough to sustain three starving regiments. With the mountain passes blocked by snow drifts and raging blizzards and the Mormon army lying in wait to the west, Johnston thought it best to keep the Army of Utah in camp—drilling, gambling, and drinking—until spring or reinforcements arrived.
Once at the post, Sibley saw a familiar face—Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Edward Richard Sprigg Canby, commander of the Tenth Infantry Regiment. It is likely that Sibley and Canby were acquaintances, if not actually friends, from their West Point days. Both had attended the school at the same time and, owing to the small size of the academy’s enrollment (around 120 cadets), the two undoubtedly knew one another. From the moment of their reunion at Fort Bridger, the lives and military careers of Sibley and Canby became intertwined in ways no one could have predicted.
In April, with Johnston’s men and animals little more than living skeletons, supply wagons and herds of cattle and fresh horses from Forts Laramie, Kearny, and Leavenworth finally arrived. New uniforms allowed the survivors of the brutal winter to discard their worn-out rags. The soldiers also learned that the Mormons had agreed to the government’s terms; thus, there would be no further hostilities. In order to ensure that Brigham Young and his followers kept their word, Johnston’s army in June 1858 marched out of camp and headed toward Salt Lake City.24
1. Rocky Mountain News, May 28, 1861.
2. Edmund A. Willoughby, letter to A. Avery, May 27, 1861 (Manuscript Collection, RBV 73, Denver Public Library, Western History Department).
3. Dawson scrapbook, #32, p. 31, CHS.
4. Quote from Thomas L. Karnes, William Gilpin—Western Nationalist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), 246. Weld arrived in Denver City a week later. LeRoy R. Hafen, “Lewis Ledyard Weld and Old Camp Weld,” Colorado Magazine 19:6 (November 1942).
5. Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War: Her Statesmen, Generals, and Soldiers (Cincinnati: Robert H. Clarke, 1895), 1:933; Elliot H. Gilkey, The Ohio Hundred Year Book: A Hand-Book of the Public Men and Public Institutions of Ohio, 1787–1901 (Columbus: Fred J. Heer, State Printer, 1901), 305; Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964), 379; Cleveland Leader, January 19, 1857.
6. Rocky Mountain News, May 28, 1861.
7. Ibid.
8. LeRoy R. Hafen, “The Reception of Colorado’s First Governor,” Colorado Magazine 7:6 (November 1930).
9. Sibley was a distant cousin of Henry Hastings Sibley, who was born in Detroit in 1835 and later became a general in the Union army. Warner, Generals in Blue, 445.
10. M. H. Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1960), 29–30; Jerry D. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley: Confederate General of the West. Natchitoches: Northwestern Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 208.
11. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley, 209.
12. Ray C. Colton, The Civil War in the Western Territories (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959), 37.
13. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley, 60–62; Richard F. Pourade, Sign of the Eagle: The Letters of Lieutenant John James Peck (San Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing, 1970), 81–100.
14. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley, 63–65; and Pourade, Sign of the Eagle, 122–125.
15. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley, 65.
16. Pourade, Sign of the Eagle, 134.
17. John S.D. Eisenhower, So Far From God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1846 (New York: Random House, 1989), 367.
18. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley, 65–68.
19. In conjunction with the Sibley tent, Henry also designed a new type of stove, which was similarly shaped and known as the Sibley stove. The same basic stove design was used by the army until World War II.
20. The fort was built in 1853 and named to honor Major General Bennett Riley, a hero of the Mexican-American War.
21. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley, 77–109.
22. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Ballantine, 1988), 121.
23. Ibid., 47–48, 121–126, 145–153.
24. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley, 137–160.
