THE MEN ARE BRIMFULL OF FIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
AS SIBLEY AND HIS BRIGADE PREPARED TO ENTICE THE FEDERAL TROOPS OUT OF their stronghold at Fort Craig, in far-off Denver City the sniping between Colonel John P. Slough and his officers reached epic proportions. Ample evidence of their internecine battle exists because it was carried on openly in the local newspapers.
Captain Jacob Downing, the officer commanding Company D, was especially aggravated. From his quarters at Camp Weld, to which he had been confined by Slough, Downing fired off another letter to the Rocky Mountain News in early February in which he alluded to a petition signed by all but one of the regiment’s junior officers1:
The light in which the officers of the First Regiment viewed the matter was that, in a short time, the privates in every company, feeling disgusted at the inaction of their officers, would desert and no power on earth could hold them. They wished to strike a blow for the cause in which they were engaged, and unless that opportunity was soon given them, all would be lost.
I am a prisoner, it is true, and as a prisoner I will remain until honorably acquitted, though under the circumstances, with a full knowledge of my arrest and defenseless proposition, is it fair, is it honorable, or is it just to make so unfounded an attack on me?2
Dispatches from New Mexico telling of the rebels’ unchecked advance continued to reach Denver City on a regular basis, each one more alarming than the last, and it became clear to everyone that the First Colorado could not be held in reserve much longer. After conferring with Weld on the possibility of the regiment at last marching off to New Mexico, Colonel Slough on February 13 alerted Tappan, still at Fort Wise with three companies, to a possible deployment.3
Then, on February 19 the dispatch for which everyone had been waiting months finally arrived. Major General David Hunter, commanding the Department of Kansas at Fort Leavenworth, requested that Weld immediately dispatch the First to New Mexico to reinforce Canby.4
Hunter’s letter was greeted with much enthusiasm and relief by the men at Camp Weld, who had despaired of ever seeing battle. On the same day it was received, a Denver City newspaper editorialized:
A hard task is before [the regiment], but we earnestly and sincerely hope that it will be accomplished without loss or accident. Since the beginning of the present war, no command of the United States army, either great or small, has undertaken so gigantic or hazardous a march as now lies before the Colorado First. Their road is across the unsheltered, timberless plains for over six hundred miles; now covered with snow . . . and over the great Snowy Range of the Sangre de Christo [sic] mountains, by a pass always difficult, and at times in winter absolutely impassable. . . . We have the satisfaction of knowing, however, that while no other body of troops have been called upon to perform so severe and laborious a service, there is no other that is more capable of doing it. . . . That the Colorado First will render a good account of itself when it meets the enemy, nobody doubts. The men are brimfull of fight and very impatient for action. Where the fortunes of war may lead them before the war is closed can only be a matter of conjecture. . . . The good wishes of thousands in Colorado will go with them, wherever their country may call; and when the warfare is ended, we will welcome them again to the flowery fields and golden mines of Colorado.5
While the First prepared to depart, Jacob Downing, still under house arrest, once again accused Slough and Weld of cowardice in a bitter, scathing letter:
At Camp Weld, before leaving Denver, the officers of the First Regiment asked, prayed, to be led to battle, that they might save their Territory from the despoiling hand of the traitor.
To their prayers, entreaties, and demands, no heed was given, though the enemy, in overwhelming numbers, were known to be marching on our brothers in New Mexico, and had sworn to subjugate, and . . . desolate our own bright and promising Territory. The knowledge was possessed by Col. John P. Slough and acting Governor Weld, to whom all these entreaties, prayers, and demands were made, and by whom they were unheeded, though the duty devolved upon them of protecting the happy homes and bright firesides of the people of Colorado Territory.
An officer in the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers concluded . . . that the blame might fall where it justly belonged—upon the heads of the above-named worthies when there appeared in the Rocky Mountain News an article signed “Union” which immediately created a terrible row—the editor of the News was threatened with imprisonment—the supposed writer, Captain J. Downing, was placed under arrest and confined to his quarters and every indignity heaped upon him by these political hucksters and pettifoggers, branding him in the Rocky Mountain Herald before the world as a traitor. . . . If they could not keep the regiment in Colorado, and elect the drunkard Weld to Congress, they would try to obtain political capital by sending the brave boys to battle.6
But Slough and Weld, along with the men of the First Colorado, were elated to receive their marching orders, and Canby was also greatly relieved. Weld, after receiving General Hunter’s directive, penned a letter to Canby, informing him that the regiment was about to depart and come to his aid: “You will find this regiment, I hope, a most efficient one and of great support to you. It has had, of course, no experience in the field, but I trust that their enthusiasm and patriotic bravery will make amends, and more than that, for their lack of active service in the past.”7
As Canby read these lines, he was no doubt grateful. But he also knew that if Sibley and the Texans hastened to Fort Union, it would be impossible for the Colorado troops to arrive in time to save the situation.
Under a waning moon in the predawn hours of February 21, Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin S. Roberts and his advance force of mounted militiamen left Fort Craig and headed up the Camino Real, looping around the dark, western flank of Mesa del Contadero, anxious to reach the fording place above the mesa before the Confederates could do so. Roberts’s force consisted of about 850 cavalrymen, infantrymen, and artillerymen. With the cannon and foot soldiers slowing down the column, Roberts sent Major Thomas Duncan racing ahead with two cavalry units, commanded by Captains Charles Deus (Company I, First New Mexico Volunteers) and Rafael Chacón (Company K), along with five companies of the Third U.S. Cavalry under Captain Robert Morris, one company of the First U.S. Cavalry, and three companies of mounted soldiers from the Third New Mexico Volunteers led by Lieutenant Colonel José Valdez.8
Operations near Fort Craig, New Mexico, and the Battle of Valverde, February 1862.
Realizing that the coming fight would be, without doubt, the crucial engagement in the battle for New Mexico, Canby was busy back at Fort Craig, preparing to send reinforcements to Roberts at the ford. These reinforcements were two sections of Captain Alexander McRae’s battery, two 24-pounder howitzers from Lieutenant Robert H. Hall’s battery, Captain Charles Ingraham’s Company H from the Seventh, and two companies of selected volunteers—Captain William Mortimore’s Company A of the Third New Mexico Volunteers and Captain James “Santiago” Hubbell’s Company A of the Fifth New Mexico Volunteers. Further, Canby directed Graydon’s Independent Spy Company and 500 mounted militia, under Colonel Robert H. Stapleton (First New Mexico Militia) and Colonel Nicholás Pino (Second New Mexico Militia), to shadow the Texans along the eastern bank of the Rio Grande in order to, in Canby’s words, “watch the movements of the enemy, threaten his flanks and rear, and impede his movements as much as possible.”9
Canby also recalled Dodd’s company of Colorado Volunteers, eight companies of regular infantry, and Captain Henry R. Selden’s battalion from the eastern bank and sent them up the Camino Real to reinforce Roberts. These troops were followed immediately by 460 of Kit Carson’s men, who had been employed, along with Selden’s battalion, observing the rebel camp across the river. Leaving only a token force to safeguard the post, Canby ordered Colonel Miguel Pino’s Second New Mexico Volunteer Regiment, a company of volunteers from Carson’s command, and the remaining section of McRae’s battery to join Roberts. The looming battle, Canby believed, would be the one that would determine whether the Union or the Confederacy would control New Mexico and the entire Southwest.10
The four companies that made up the Confederate advance element (originally known as Baylor’s Babies but now dubbed Pyron’s Rangers) headed for the Valverde ford before dawn. The companies followed the trail along the mesa’s eastern flank, descended a steep slope about three quarters of a mile north of the mesa, and reached the seemingly unguarded upper ford as the sun, obscured by an overcast sky, gradually lightened the eastern horizon but offered no promise of warmth.
Pyron and his men carefully scanned the terrain ahead, looking for any sign that the Yankees might be lying in ambush for them. Convinced that his men had won the race, Pyron let his men water their parched horses and fill their canteens from the cold river. He then sent a courier back to the main body, informing Lieutenant Colonel Scurry that no Union troops were in sight. What Pyron didn’t know was that shortly before his men reached the river, somewhere between 7:00 and 7:30 A.M., the Yankees had arrived at the area of the lower ford—closer to the mesa—quietly and unannounced. But he quickly found out.11
Deus in his memoirs asserted that his company and Captain Chacón’s12 “had crossed the river and were about to enter a strip of timber into the hollow beyond,” when their scouts shouted in Spanish, “ ‘There are the Texans—look out!’ The warning from the scouts was not understood by the Texans but it put the [New] Mexican troops on their guard and as soon as the Texans came in sight . . . they were attacked.”13 Deus’s and Chacón’s companies engaged the rebels in a lively firefight, the latter officer recalling that the rebels “received us with a substantial discharge from their carbines, which lasted about an hour.”14
The two companies held their positions until they were, according to Deus, “joined by Major Duncan with four companies, who were about a mile in the rear. The firing hurried Duncan up to take a hand himself.” Upon reaching the river and seeing the situation for himself, Duncan had Deus send a man to ride back and inform Roberts that they had met the enemy and that he should hurry with reinforcements.15
Then, while waiting for the rest of Roberts’s command to arrive, Duncan employed the troops that had accompanied him, dismounting the rest of his cavalry and sending the soldiers into concealed positions in a wooded area near the water.16
When he reached the woods, Pyron spotted the Union troops and reported that he “followed until reaching the bank . . . when I found myself in front of a large force of all arms. Immediately my men were formed along the bank, when the action commenced.”17
Pulling his men back about 700 yards to the former bank of the river and into the cover and concealment of a bosqué (a heavily wooded area) Pyron and his men returned the Yankee fire at long range. Pyron then dispatched an officer to Colonel Scurry with an urgent message that the battle had been joined. The message finally reached Scurry around 8:30 A.M., about an hour after the first shots rang out. The colonel, leading a long column heading north, ordered Major Henry W. Raguet’s 310-man battalion, plus the Fourth Regiment’s artillery under Lieutenant John Reily, to hasten to Pyron’s aid.
Before Scurry’s arrival, in the confusion following the opening shots of the battle and with visibility limited by the profusion of cottonwoods along the river, Pyron assumed that his force was greatly outnumbered. Actually, at least in the opening minutes of the contest, he held a 180-to-100-man advantage. “For over one hour,” he wrote, “by the courage and determination of the men, I was enabled to maintain the position in the unequal struggle,” while he hoped Scurry was coming on the double with reinforcements.18
The advance of Scurry and his men to the ford was no mean feat, given the soft sand that caused foot, hoof, and wheel to sink. Scurry had with him 400 men of the Seventh Regiment, led by Lieutenant Colonel John S. Sutton, and the four pieces of artillery from Teel’s battery. Once he and his men at last reached Pyron at the river, Scurry and his men “formed on [Pyron’s] right and joined in the conflict.”19
Receiving reports that the Confederates were reinforcing their position, Colonel Roberts, meanwhile, did everything in his power to deny the crossing to the Texans. Lieutenant Ira Claflin’s dismounted Company G, First U.S. Cavalry, kept up a lively fusillade from the wooded area to discourage the enemy from approaching the river. Captain Alexander McRae’s battery then arrived, swiftly unlimbered, loaded, and sent shells sizzling into the Texans’ positions, further preventing Pyron’s men from attempting a crossing or outflanking the two Union companies. Roberts was convinced that if Claflin’s and Captain David Brotherton’s (Company K, Fifth U.S. Infantry) skirmishers, along with McRae’s guns, could keep the enemy at bay, as soon as sufficient numbers of reinforcements arrived they could charge across the river to engage and rout the rebels.
“My anxiety to gain this position was extreme,” Roberts reported, “and three times I sent orders to Major Duncan to take [the ford] and hold it at all hazards.” But Roberts neither heard nor saw any sign that Duncan had received the messages or was acting on them. Roberts had also planned to move McRae’s battery across the river but was reluctant to do so until Brotherton’s company had advanced and cleared the bosque of the enemy. Again, orders went unheeded; again, the Union troops did not advance. The opportunity to deliver the enemy a terrific blow and possibly turn back the Confederate advance vanished. According to Roberts: “The disorder of the Confederates was very great at this time. Their re-enforcements were swarming down from the mesa in confusion, and the effect of our guns from this commanding point I had hoped to gain would have forced them back on the mesa and kept them from the river. . . . It is to be regretted that Major Duncan conceived that his small force justified a non-compliance with my order.”20
In his own defense, Duncan responded,
As the enemy was greatly superior in numbers, had the advantage of a thick cover of timber, and by this time had brought up a piece of artillery and had put it in position at close range to my front and right, I saw that it would be folly to move forward and attack him. I therefore dismounted my command, had the horses and horse-holders concealed as well as possible behind a low sand ridge, about 80 yards from and parallel to the river, and deployed the remainder of the men behind some small sand hills, logs, and a few scatter[ed] trees, about 100 yards in advance of the horses, determined, if possible, to hold the position and keep the enemy back from the ford until our artillery and infantry could arrive and cross. . . . The accurate aim of our sharpshooters . . . prevented [the enemy] from getting near enough to ascertain my real weakness.21
General Sibley reached the scene of the growing battle around 10:30 that morning. Concerned that his left flank was in danger of collapse from the constant pounding it was receiving from the Union artillery and Duncan’s riflemen, he couriered a message back to Tom Green to ask for reinforcements. When he suspected that Canby was also reinforcing his lines, Sibley ordered Green’s regiment and Teel’s battery to the front.22 Dispatching Sutton’s battalion of the Seventh Regiment, along with Companies C and H of the Fifth, Green then led the eight remaining companies of the Fifth and Lieutenant William Wood’s battery of two 12-pounder mountain howitzers to the front. Once there, after briefly conferring with Sibley, Green positioned the bulk of his men in the center of the line between Pyron and Raguet.23
Duncan’s failure to make any more than a shallow penetration of the Confederate side of the river during the early hours of the battle enabled the Texans to put their artillery—Teel’s four-gun battery of short-range 6-pounder field guns and one of John Reily’s 24-pounders—into action. Teel then positioned Lieutenant James Bradford’s battery in the center of Scurry’s regiment, where it commenced firing upon the Union battery and line. Teel reported that he “lost 1 man killed and 2 wounded, which left but 5 cannoneers to man the two pieces.”24
Sergeant Alfred Peticolas of the Fourth Texas, who had been taking cover from Union rifle and musket fire before Teel’s guns arrived, soon found himself in a precarious position:
[The] guns of Teel’s battery, with Capt. Teel himself, came thundering down and in a moment had taken position directly in front of us and upon the level of the bottom and commenced firing directly at the infantry and artillery across the river. . . . In a moment, the enemy had changed their battery and it began to play with its whole force upon Teel’s battery, and then we began to feel convinced that we were in a hot place indeed. Shell and round shot and minié bullets came whistling in showers over our heads, bombs burst just behind and before, and trees were shattered and limbs began to fall, a horse or two shot, and presently they brought back one of Teel’s artillery men severely wounded.25
Teel’s guns returned the salvos, and the Yankee cannons were redirected to the left of Peticolas. As the morning wore on, reinforcements for both the Federals and Texans continued to pour into the area north of the mesa. Both sides brought up their artillery, and the barking of the guns at times drowned out the sharp reports of rifles and muskets. With rebel heads being kept down by Union cannonballs, Major Duncan moved his eleven companies across the Rio Grande and took up positions about 180 yards to the east. Advancing any farther seemed suicidal, as the Confederate artillery was bringing a crossfire down on Duncan’s men, who were hugging the sand and taking cover behind trees and logs. Roberts noted that the rebel cannon “replied with well-directed and rapid returns of shot, shell, and grape, making the most desperate efforts to regain the ground from which they had been driven by Major Duncan’s skirmishers. This contest of artillery and rifles was continued for more than two hours with a desperation on the part of the Confederates well worthy of a better cause.”26
In the meantime at Fort Craig, Canby, while keeping a watchful eye on the 800 Texans directly across the river, had been receiving communiqués all morning of the events taking place north of Mesa del Contadero. Once he saw Green’s troops on the east side of the Rio Grande heading north to join the battle there, he knew the fort was no longer in imminent danger and that the rest of his available troops must be committed to the battle. Canby mounted his horse, Old Chas, and headed for the Valverde ford, accompanied by Captain Richard S.C. Lord’s Company D of the First U.S. Cavalry and the two remaining guns from McRae’s battery. The defense of the fort he left to Colonel Gabriel René Paul, Colonel Manuel Armijo, and about 1,000 men, mostly volunteers and militia whose job it was to guard the vital supplies warehoused in the fort.27
The battle was not confined to the fords north of Mesa del Contadero. Shortly before noon, Union pickets at the southeast corner of the mesa spotted a force of about 250 mounted rebels moving westward along a trail. Major Charles Emil Wesche and his small force of 108 militiamen bravely prepared to take the enemy under fire at short range—about 80 yards—when 200 mounted troopers, under the command of Colonel Nicholás Pino and Lieutenant Colonel Jesús M. Baca y Salazar, arrived in the nick of time. Their arrival discouraged the enemy from continuing their advance and the Texans withdrew around the mesa to the northeast. Before the Union militia could pursue them, a courier from Canby arrived, directing Wesche to cross the river and confiscate the Confederates’ supply wagons that had been abandoned after the animals had run off in search of water during the night.28
By noon, the Union troops hammering the Confederate left flank at Valverde ford had forced the Texans farther upriver. Fearing the rebels would continue moving to the area of the upper ford and outflank his position to the north, Roberts knew he would need to send troops en masse across the river to preclude such an event. Captain Henry Selden’s recently arrived battalion of the Seventh U.S. Infantry was perfect for the job. Although Selden’s men (including two columns of the Fifth Infantry, under Captain Benjamin Wingate, along with Companies A and H of the Tenth Infantry and Companies C and F of the Seventh, all under Captain Peter Plympton) had been force-marched many miles, they were immediately thrown into the fray across the river at the middle ford, to the left of Duncan. “I directed Captain Selden with his command to cross the river higher up,” Roberts wrote, “in the direction the enemy had been driven, and engage them with the bayonet.” He also repositioned McRae’s battery to support Selden and ordered Kit Carson’s regiment to proceed northward up the Camino Real to act as a blocking force in the event any Texans should attempt to strike from the north at the left flank of the Union line.29
Battle of Valverde: late morning, February 21, 1862.
Looking toward the Valverde battlefield from the west in 1957. The large, flat-topped feature is Mesa del Contadero. (Colorado Historical Society)
Holding their weapons and leather cartridge boxes above their heads to keep their powder dry, Selden’s battalion waded in water up to their armpits. Emerging on the east bank, every man was thoroughly soaked and chilled to the bone, a condition not alleviated by the snowflakes that began falling from the leaden sky. Discomfort was quickly forgotten as the regulars began to receive long-range fire from the enemy in the bosque above them and Selden formed his men into ranks in preparation for an attack against the rebel positions.30
The battle claimed the lives of many soldiers, and even the Confederates’ animals suffered casualties. Alfred Peticolas noted: “As we were in the act of dismounting, [B. A.] Jones’ horse was shot in the thigh, [Sergeant Charles A.] Woodapple’s was crippled, and a ball tore a small peel of skin from my right thumb, which bled profusely. . . . We could see the enemy in strength just before us about 600 yards and advancing rapidly as if to force our lines in. . . . About this time, their bullets began to play havoc with our horses.”31
The assault by Selden’s battalion ran out of steam as the bluecoats tried climbing the soft, sandy approaches to the Confederate positions above them. Peticolas observed,
Although our balls were not as numerous as theirs, they went with more deadly intent, and our fire soon became extremely galling. . . . The men shot right down at them, and after the fight had been kept up about half an hour, they retreated precipitately towards the river, and in a few moments two of our small howitzers opened upon their retiring column with killing effect, and they broke lines and ran back out of range.32
Although the Yankees were unable to oust the rebels from their positions on the high ground, the battle claimed Peticolas’s mule, along with about half of the mules and horses in Companies C and I, turning many mounted Texas volunteers into infantrymen.33
In the confusion of combat, it is not uncommon for men on opposite sides to hold differing views of a battle’s progress or outcome. On the Union side, Roberts reported a decidedly different result than the one provided by Peticolas: “Captain Selden promptly formed [his company] after fording the river, and in the most gallant manner attacked the large forces that had been driven from their first positions and taken a still stronger one higher up the river. He drove them with great slaughter from the bosque they had then seized . . . and was master of the field.”34
If the Unionists were indeed masters of the field, they would not remain so for long.
1. The one officer who declined, for unknown reasons, to sign the anti-Slough petition was Captain Samuel M. Robbins, commanding officer of Company K.
2. Rocky Mountain News, February 12, 1862.
3. Letter, Slough to Tappan, February 13, 1862 (Manuscript collection, Box 617, CHS).
4. Colorado Republican and Rocky Mountain Herald, February 20, 1862; William C. Whitford, Colorado Volunteers in the Civil War: The New Mexico Campaign in 1862 (Glorieta, NM: Rio Grande Press, 1971), 75.
5. Rocky Mountain News, February 19, 1862.
6. Ibid., June 7, 1862.
7. Official Record, 9:632.
8. John M. Taylor, Bloody Valverde: A Civil War Battle on the Rio Grande, February 21, 1862 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 46.
9. Official Record, 9:489.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 512–513; Daniel B. Castello, “Life of Capt. [Richard Charles] Deus,” unpublished manuscript (interview of Captain Deus), undated (Mss Box 205, FF 25 and 26, CHS).
12. In his memoirs, Deus recalled the other captain was Valdez; official records show that it was Chacón.
13. Castello, “Life of Capt. Deus.”
14. Jerry D. Thompson, Desert Tiger: Captain Paddy Graydon and the Civil War in the Far Southwest (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1992), 37.
15. Castello, “Life of Capt. Deus.”
16. Official Record, 9:497–498.
17. Ibid., 512.
18. Ibid., 512–513.
19. Ibid., 514.
20. Ibid., 494–495. After the battle, the disagreement between Roberts and Duncan was aired, with Roberts insisting he had ordered Duncan three times to press forward and Duncan insisting he had received no such orders. Ibid., 494–495, 499–501.
21. Official Record, 9:497.
22. Ibid., 508, 519, 523.
23. Ibid., 519.
24. Ibid., 524.
25. Don E. Alberts, ed., Rebels on the Rio Grande: The Civil War Journal of A. B. Peticolas (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 42–43.
26. Official Record, 9:495.
27. Ibid., 489–490.
28. Ibid., 603–606.
29. Ibid., 495.
30. Ibid., 139–140.
31. Alberts, ed., Rebels on the Rio Grande, 43.
32. Ibid., 44.
33. Ibid., 43–45.
34. Official Record, 9:494–495.
