CHAPTER SIX

HURRY UP IF YOU WANT A FIGHT

INITIALLY THE CITIZENS OF DENVER WERE PLEASED AND PROUD THAT SO MANY young men were enlisting to defend the territory against the Confederates. In August a group of ladies presented to Slough a handsome American flag made of silk, which they had sewn themselves. To mark the occasion, Governor Gilpin made a patriotic speech and, to show off the banner, Companies A and B marched through town to the lusty huzzahs and cheers of a large and enthusiastic crowd.1

It soon became apparent that a permanent camp to house the fledgling First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers was sorely needed. As the early recruits reported for duty, they were quartered in civilian buildings on Ferry Street in west Denver. When these quarters proved to be less than adequate, the unit moved to the Buffalo House hotel.² Gilpin and Slough then scoured the town’s environs to find an ideal site on which to erect a proper military post. In early September they found it—thirty acres along the eastern bank of the South Platte River, less than two miles south of the center of Denver City. Within a month, construction by the recruits of Camp Weld, named for the territorial secretary, was well underway at a cost of some $40,000—much of which was paid for by Gilpin’s unauthorized drafts.

Denver City and Camp Weld, ca. 1861–1862.

The camp quickly became a symbol of civic pride, and townsfolk were frequently invited inside its walls to observe the new soldiers at drill. Even while the first buildings were going up, Lieutenant Colonel Tappan invited the territorial legislators to tour the site. Chartering wagons, the lawmakers rode out to the unfinished fort and were treated to a parade by the volunteers who, in their motley civilian attire, must have presented a fairly un-military appearance.3

If the construction of Camp Weld and the training of the Colorado volunteers seemed to proceed slowly, the speed at which Sibley was assembling his brigade was positively glacial. He left Richmond on or about July 9 but did not arrive in San Antonio until August 12, whereupon he installed himself and his family in one of the city’s finest hotels. He fully expected recruits to be already lined up, eager to take on the Yankees in the Southwest. The reality of what Sibley found came as a shock. Although, in anticipation of Sibley’s arrival, Texas governor Edward Clark had ordered the state’s militia companies to report for duty with the new brigade, the companies had been disbanded or were woefully understrength.

To aggravate the situation, many of those who did volunteer were more interested in serving with a regiment or battery fighting in the East than in marching to the arid, desolate lands of the West. Furthermore, Earl Van Dorn, the Department of Texas commander who was supposed to have provided Sibley with much of his artillery, wagons, ammunition, and other supplies, was transferred to the main war zone in Virginia shortly after Sibley’s arrival and no one, it seems, had the authority to fill Sibley’s requisitions or even knew anything about him or his brigade. Sibley could not even find a proper saddle for himself in San Antonio.⁴

Unable to locate any officer who would or could issue the needed supplies, Sibley stripped depots of their provisions and equipment and signed the matériel over to himself. Such actions were highly irregular but, unless he were willing to sit in San Antonio until the following spring, waiting and hoping for someone to respond to his needs, Sibley had no other choice. As it turned out, no one upbraided him for his unauthorized actions.⁵

Sibley was exceedingly pleased with the caliber of his three regimental commanders. Sibley and forty-one-year-old William Steele, a native New Yorker, had had similar career paths. Both had graduated from West Point, served with the Second Dragoons, fought in Mexico, and been stationed in New Mexico and elsewhere on the Western frontier. Thomas J. Green, a forty-seven-year-old Virginian raised in Tennessee, had graduated from Princeton, earned a law degree, and fought with distinction against the Mexicans at San Jacinto during the Texas War of Independence in 1836 and again as a captain at the Battle of Monterrey in the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846–1848. He had also earlier earned a reputation as a fearless Indian fighter. Ohio-born James Reily was considered a first-class officer and gentleman, having once served as the American consul in St. Petersburg, Russia. He bore a strong resemblance to Robert E. Lee in both appearance and manner.

Finally, at the end of August, whole companies began responding to Governor Clark’s call and heading to Camp Sibley, established six miles northeast of San Antonio. Over the next three weeks, Reily’s Fourth Texas Cavalry Regiment was brought up to full strength. Two miles from Camp Sibley, at a place named Camp Manassas on Salado Creek, Tom Green’s Fifth Texas Cavalry Regiment began forming. The Fifth was soon followed by Steele’s Seventh Texas Cavalry.

With each cavalry regiment comprising about 900 men, Sibley’s brigade, with support troops, numbered approximately 2,700 men. The brigade’s artillery, under Captain Trevanian T. Teel, consisted of three batteries. Two companies of lancers—B and G—with blades and streamers affixed to nine-foot shafts, added a touch of medieval color to the Fifth Regiment. Each mounted soldier was expected to provide his own horse, tack, and weapons, but not every recruit had his own firearm. Sibley rounded up every weapon he could find—muskets, rifles, squirrel guns, shotguns, anything capable of firing.

Uniforms were equally diverse. The troops were mostly attired in the civilian clothes they brought with them when they were mustered into the unit, although some military uniforms from captured Union warehouses and supply depots were issued. John Chivington later commented on the appearance of the Texans: “These have been described as a desperate lot of fellows, many of them half savage and half outlaws. Each man was mounted on a wiry mustang horse. He carried a lasso, and was armed to the teeth, having a rifle, a brace of revolvers, a Bowie knife, and a tomahawk. A broad-brimmed sombrero overtopped his flowing locks and swarthy features.”6 Most of the Texans cared little about what they wore or carried. All they cared about was when and where they would meet the Yankee foe.⁷

Although it would take weeks before Sibley’s men would meet the hated enemy, Baylor’s men were already positioning themselves for a further clash.

In the middle of August 1861, Colonel Canby, at his headquarters at Fort Marcy in Santa Fé, had to decide how best to position his forces for the battle he knew was coming. He decided to place his most trustworthy troops—the regulars and volunteers—at Fort Craig to block the rebels’ likely passage up the Rio Grande, while stationing his least-reliable men—the shaky militia—to guard the department’s supplies at Fort Union.8

Anticipating an eventual Confederate attack on Fort Craig, Canby had ordered his men to also improve Fort Union’s defenses. On September 8, he informed Frémont’s headquarters that improvements were nearly complete but that “the organization of the volunteer force makes very little progress, as only two companies have been added to it since my last report. In the hope of completing it as soon as possible, Governor Connelly will call out the militia of the Territory, and then force the people to do what they seem indisposed to do voluntarily.”⁹

To hold off the expected Confederate invasion, Canby estimated he would require two regiments of infantry (2,092 officers and men) and two regiments of cavalry (1,632 officers and men), along with numerous other mounted volunteer companies. The First Regiment of New Mexico Volunteers, under the famed frontiersman Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson, was the most complete, lacking only about 200 men to bring it to full strength. The Second Regiment of Volunteers, however, commanded by Colonel Miguel E. Pino, was 400 men short. Only one company of cavalry had yet been recruited, leaving that arm in need of 1,000 more troopers.¹⁰

Canby sent two messages, one to Governor Gilpin, requesting that volunteer units be sent to Fort Wise to relieve the regular troops there, and another to the commanding officer at Fort Wise, directing him to send Company C of the Tenth Infantry to New Mexico as soon as the Colorado volunteers arrived.¹¹

As Canby struggled with his limited resources, he was forced to turn his attention to the growing discontent within his department. His regulars had not been paid in over a year, and recruiting efforts were hampered because few volunteers were willing to join the army for free. Further exacerbating Canby’s worries were his persistent concerns regarding the quality of the New Mexico volunteers. He later informed the War Department: “They [the volunteers] are not efficient and, in my judgment, cannot be made so in any reasonable period. They are deficient in self-reliance and military spirit, and their ignorance of the English language and want of capacity for instruction are serious obstacles to rapid improvement.”¹² Canby believed, if confronted by a major Confederate force, his volunteers would simply blow away like tumbleweeds in a chinook. Canby’s one hope was that Governor Gilpin would respond positively to his July 6 request for troops. Yet, as the days passed, no courier rode in from Denver City, bearing a message from Gilpin.

On the night of September 25, an extremely worrisome development took place. A company of New Mexico mounted volunteers, under Captain John H. Minks, fought a skirmish with an advance picket of Baylor’s men at Cañada Alamosa, a small village about forty miles south of Fort Craig. Thirty of Minks’s forty men deserted at the sound of rebel muskets. The captain and his remaining men stood no chance against the 114 mounted Texans arrayed against them, and they were forced to surrender. Another skirmish was reported by Captain Robert M. Morris, Third U.S. Cavalry, when his force of three companies made an unsuccessful attempt to come to Minks’s rescue on September 26. These actions, so close to Fort Craig, convinced Canby that the enemy had him in their sights and that a full-scale assault against the fort was only a matter of time.13

Meanwhile, the fledgling First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers continued to train. In October, Canby received a message from Fort Wise, confirming his worst fears: Gilpin was unable to provide any soldiers to that post. This news delivered a severe blow to Canby’s plans to transfer the regulars from Fort Wise to where they were needed in New Mexico. In a chastening letter to Gilpin, Canby barely disguised his anger and frustration:

The inability of your excellency to supply this force is a very great disappointment, as the regular troops at [Fort Wise] and at Fort Garland were relied upon as a part of the force intended for active operations at the South [i.e., New Mexico]. I am sorry that this determination was not communicated at an earlier period, in order that I might (more seasonably than I now can) have made arrangements to replace the troops at Fort Wise from some other quarter.¹⁴

Gilpin attempted to explain his predicament in his October 23 reply to Canby:

The strong and malignant element within this Territory, added to the destitution of arms and ammunition . . . has rendered absolutely necessary the delay to furnish a garrison for Fort Wise. The population of the Arkansas River [i.e., the area encompassing the fort] is not numerous enough to furnish one company, and to send them from the mining region has been impossible, from want of arms, ammunition, food, clothing, transportation, or money to procure any of these essentials.¹⁵

But Gilpin knew that he could not afford to leave Canby high and dry, for he fully realized that failure to support Canby would likely result in New Mexico’s downfall, thereby putting Colorado in a precarious position. With the raw recruits still stumbling over their feet at Camp Weld, Gilpin sought to provide Canby with soldiers from a place closer to Fort Garland. In August two companies of infantry had been formed in Cañon City, some eighty miles south of Denver. Gilpin dispatched a rider to Cañon City with orders directing Captain James Hobert Ford, the son of Ohio governor Seabury Ford, and Captain Cornelius D. Hendren, a former West Pointer, to prepare to march their men to Fort Garland.16

Camp Weld continued to take shape that autumn and, when it was at last completed late in 1861, it was the finest army post in the Rocky Mountain region. It contained a regimental headquarters building, officers’ quarters, enlisted barracks, hospital, guardhouse, stables, and storage buildings, all constructed around a large parade ground. In the center of the parade ground stood the magazine, a building sixteen feet square with brick walls two feet thick. Ten tons of powder could be stored in the building, which was further protected by lightning rods and a set of heavy double doors.

Along the western perimeter of the camp ran the officers’ quarters and an imposing two-story regimental headquarters building. Each officer had a room that was eighteen by twenty feet. A large mess hall also served the officers, and a chapel was located in the headquarters building for all ranks to use. Along the north and south walls each company had its own barracks building with spacious accommodations. Beyond the west wall, a canal dug from the South Platte River provided running water for laundry (and, presumably, for personal hygiene and sanitation) purposes. Near the hospital also stood a corral and stables large enough for 120 horses.

Camp Weld gave the citizens of Denver City and Colorado a sense that steps were at last being taken to provide security in the event the territory was drawn into the conflict between North and South. Camp Weld became, as a Denver City newspaper pointed out, “one of the finest and best arranged quarters for a regiment to be found West of the Missouri River. . . . In thirty days more, the Colonel [Slough] expects to have the whole of the buildings completed, when we shall have barracks that will do honor to the Territory of Colorado.”¹⁷

On October 24, 1861, Colonel John Baylor, still encamped at Mesilla, the capital of the Confederate Territory of Arizona, sent a worrying note to Sibley. In his note, Baylor expressed his fears that Canby soon would launch an attack with some 2,500 men against his own, much smaller force, and that another Union column, led by Edwin Vose Sumner, was rumored to have landed on the coast of Mexico in the Gulf of California and was marching eastward to bolster Canby’s regiment. He urgently advised Sibley to “hurry up if you want a fight.”¹⁸

Artist’s rendering of Camp Weld, Colorado Territory, in 1862. (Colorado Historical Society)

The rumor of a Union landing on the west coast of Mexico did have a basis in fact, but it was in California, not Mexico. General Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of the Department of the Pacific, had defected to the Confederacy, leaving his successor, Sumner, in charge. Secessionists in southern California had earlier demonstrated for a union with the South, and Lincoln’s administration worried that all of California might fall into the Confederate camp. To preclude this from happening, Sumner dispatched loyal Federal troops southward from Sacramento to disband any rebel groups and take control of Fort Yuma and the vital crossing over the Colorado River that secessionists might use for ingress or egress.

The South was also concerned that the North was meddling in its affairs in Mexico. In May, the Confederacy had sent Colonel John Pickett to Mexico as its minister to that country. Upon his arrival, Pickett began fomenting an independence movement within the northern Mexican states. When U.S. Secretary of State William Seward learned of Pickett’s actions, he threatened Mexican president Benito Juaréz with the occupation of Sonora by Union troops if Juaréz did not seize control of the situation. In August, Sumner was alerted to ready 5,000 men for an amphibious landing at Guaymas in the Gulf of California and then march them overland into Texas.

No doubt fearing the Confederacy might use the war as a pretext to spill across her borders, Mexico, over the vehement objections of Pickett, passed a bill allowing U.S. troops to use the port at Guaymas and cross northern Mexico to attack the Confederates. Although the Guaymas landings never took place, the possibility continued to worry Southern commanders.19

Baylor’s understandable reluctance to take on Canby’s larger force before Sibley’s arrival began to aggravate some of Mesilla’s pro-South citizens. Robert P. Kelley, the editor of the Mesilla Times, was especially critical of Baylor’s inaction. Incensed, the temperamental Baylor confronted Kelley on a Mesilla street and an argument ensued, followed by gunfire. Baylor mortally wounded Kelley, an act for which he was tried and acquitted.20

By early November Sibley felt that his brigade was as well trained and equipped for battle as time and circumstances would permit, and so he made ready for the first of his three regiments—Reily’s Fourth—to depart Texas for New Mexico. On November 7, 1861, Reily’s regiment rode into the main square of San Antonio near the ruins of the Alamo, where throngs of well-wishers had gathered to say farewell to the brave boys. Sitting atop his horse, Sibley spoke briefly. After three cheers for Sibley, the lead element of the brigade began marching for New Mexico, over 600 miles to the west.²¹ But would glory or disaster accompany the enterprise?

NOTES

1. Rocky Mountain News, August 23, 1861.

2. Ovando J. Hollister, Boldly They Rode (Lakewood, CO: Golden Press, 1949 [first published in 1863 as History of the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers]), 3–4.

3. LeRoy R. Hafen, “Colorado’s First Legislative Assembly,” Colorado Magazine, 20:2 (March 1943).

4. Martin H. Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1960), 34; Jerry D. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley: Confederate General of the West (Natchitoches: Northwestern Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 225.

5. Official Record, 4:142–143.

6. John M. Chivington, “The Pet Lambs” (Chivington papers, CHS); Denver Republican, April 20, 1890.

7. M. H. Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign, 33–38; Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley, 222–223.

8. Official Record, 4:63–65.

9. Ibid., 69.

10. Ibid., 70.

11. Ibid., 74.

12. Ibid., 70, 75, 78.

13. Ibid., 27–29.

14. Ibid., 72.

15. Ibid., 73.

16. Smiley, Jerome C. History of Denver. Denver: Times-Sun Publishing, 1901), 379; Nolie Mumey, ed., Bloody Trails along the Rio Grande—A Day-by-Day Diary of Alonzo Ferdinand Ickis (Denver: Old West Publishing, 1958), 47.

17. Colorado Republican and Rocky Mountain Herald, October 19, 1861.

18. Official Record, 4:121, 127–128.

19. Oscar Lewis, The War in the Far West: 1861–1865 (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 24–30.

20. L. Boyd Finch, Confederate Pathway to the Pacific: Major Sherod Hunter and Arizona Territory, C.S.A. (Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1996), 99–102.

21. Theophilus Noel, A Campaign from Santa Fe to the Mississippi; Being a History of the Old Sibley Brigade (Shreveport, LA: Shreveport News, 1865), 16.