A SCOURGE TO REBELLIOUS SPIRITS
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE SCENE AT FORT CRAIG FOLLOWING THE DEFEAT AT VALVERDE WAS ONE OF unmitigated chaos. Built to hold 300 men, the fort now was jammed with nearly 3,000 soldiers—some angry, some frightened, some wounded, some dying—plus their horses, mules, and oxen.
Some 140 wounded officers and men overwhelmed the post’s six-doctor medical staff. Assistant surgeon Dr. Basil Norris reported that the wounded were being treated in five hospitals established in the officers’ and company quarters and that he and his staff had carried out five amputations. He also reported that he was running out of medical supplies, especially ether and chloroform.1
Alonzo Ickis of Dodd’s company wrote that on the morning of February 22, he “visited the dead room to search for one of my friends who was missing and had not been recognized when the dead were brought in. I went in the room where they were piled one upon another. Climb over the dead boddies [sic] turning some over but I could not find John McKee. He was not there. Six weeks after the battle, he was found in the Rio [Grande]; he was shot in the head and had sunk.”2
Many of the survivors were furious about the day’s turn of events and some, like Captain Deus, laid the blame for the debacle with McRae’s battery and, thus, on Canby’s shoulders. In Deus’s opinion,
Canby ordered the infantry, which had been protecting the artillery all day, to fall back, which left the artillery unprotected. . . . The Texans were not slow to notice this move, and charged the artillery, which they captured easily. The Texans now took good advantage of the position. They trained the captured artillery on the United States troops and poured hot shot into [us] until a retreat was ordered back to Fort Craig. Thus the battle of Valverde was lost or given away by Canby.3
Deus, not shy about sharing his view that Canby was sympathetic to Sibley and the South, continued:
What was the feeling of Canby’s men later towards their General can better be imagined than told. The most ignorant in his command said a blind man could easily see that Canby’s sympathies were with the South. Further evidence on the same point might be cited after the army returned to Fort Craig. Some of the soldiers were ordered to begin to tear down the fortifications at Craig. It was rumored that Canby had concluded to surrender to Sibley on the following day. This news caused a commotion among the troops, and rather than surrender to the Texans, lots of them chose to desert.4
Ickis, on the other hand, reserved judgment: “Who is to blame I cannot tell. Time may throw some light on the subject. The padre [Chaplain Lewis Hamilton] last evening told Col Canby he was a traitor.5 Canby had him placed under guard for two hours and then released.”6
In the midst of the turmoil at the fort, Canby and Roberts and the other surviving officers tried to control and calm their men, but with little success. While visiting the wounded in hospital, Canby was assailed by the dying Captain Benjamin Wingate, whose leg had been mangled, shouting, “Leave me! You are but a traitor!” Wingate would cling to life until June 1.7
In the wake of the defeat, there was plenty of blame to go around. In his after-action report to Canby, Colonel Roberts held Major Duncan responsible for the loss at Valverde:
I am undoubting in my conviction that if [Claflin’s] dismounted cavalry and Brotherton’s infantry had vigorously pushed the enemy’s left while Selden was [later] successfully forcing their right wing, their rout would have been complete. I cannot withhold my expression of regret that [Duncan] made no efforts to take and hold this bosque after my reiterated orders had been conveyed to him to do so. . . . Colonel Carson’s regiment and Captain Selden’s command of regulars would then have crossed at the lower ford and thrown upon the Confederates’ left flank with an assurance of victory as certain as the laws of nature.8
But finding fault or placing blame would not change the outcome of what had transpired between eight A.M. and five P.M. on February 21. Striving to put a brave face on his official battle report to Washington, Canby wrote, “[A]lthough defeated, my command is not dispirited. All feel that greater injuries have been inflicted upon the enemy than we have sustained ourselves, and that what we have lost has been without loss of honor.”9
Yet, Canby had an immense challenge before him. He faced the task of reassembling a fighting force from soldiers whose confidence had been shattered, and preparing this force for the battles that he knew still lay ahead. It would not be easy; many of the soldiers who had not deserted or been killed or captured were wounded and would be in no condition to fight again any time soon.
After the battle, Scurry wanted to pursue the Federals back to Fort Craig and finish the fight once and for all, but Green held him in check. It was growing dark and perhaps the Union troops were setting an ambush.
That evening, a group of Canby’s officers, carrying a white flag, returned to the battlefield in the lowering gloom. The bluecoats requested a two-day truce in order for both sides to collect their wounded and bury their dead, a request that Sibley thought disingenuous:
A flag of truce . . . had for its object the burying of the dead and removal of their wounded; and I regret to state here, for the sake of old associations, that, under this flag and another sent the next day, the enemy, availing himself of our generosity and confidence in his honor, not only loaded his wagons with arms picked up on the battle-field, but sent a force up and actually succeeded in recovering from the river one 24-pounder which had been left in our hands. Even a guidon and a flag, taken in the same way . . . were boastingly pointed to . . . as trophies of the fight.10
Valverde had been a stunning victory for the Texans. Immensely proud of what his men had accomplished, Sibley noted for Richmond’s benefit, “For the first time, perhaps, on record, batteries were charged and taken at the muzzle of double-barreled shot-guns, thus illustrating the spirit, valor, and invincible determination of Texas troops. Nobly have they emulated the fame of their San Jacinto ancestors.”11
An elated Scurry commented, “Night closed in on the hard-won field of Valverde. This brilliant victory, which, next to Heaven, we owe to the heroic endurance and unfaltering courage of our volunteer soldiers, was not won without loss.”12
On February 22, Scurry, leading a small party under a white flag of truce, advanced toward Fort Craig. He carried with him a letter from Sibley to Canby—a demand for surrender, which Canby summarily rejected.13 But what to do now? That was the decision that confronted the Union colonel. He saw that he had three courses of action: (1) remain at Fort Craig while awaiting reinforcements and intercept any rebel reinforcements that might be following Sibley; (2) abandon the fort, try to outflank the rebels, and set up a blocking position somewhere to the north—a course Canby admitted “would involve the loss of the supplies on hand, the abandonment of an important strategic point and of the sick and wounded who could not be transported”; or (3) strike out from the post in the hope of immediately engaging and defeating the enemy in battle. Canby decided to make the cautious choice and remain at Fort Craig and wait for reinforcements.
Commenting on his disappointment in the “less-than-worthless” New Mexico militia, Canby noted,
I have disembarassed myself of the militia by sending them away and have arranged with the officers of that force to impede the operations of the enemy, obstruct his movements if he should attempt to advance, and cut off his supplies, by removing from his route the cattle, grain, and other supplies in private hands that would aid him in sustaining his force. . . . I am now organizing a partisan force from the volunteers for the purpose of operating on the flanks of the enemy. This force will be composed of picked men, and I anticipate some good results from their action.14
Although the day’s battle had ended in a Southern victory, Sibley had paid dearly for it. He reported that 40 men had been killed and at least 100 were wounded, and he had lost a number of horses and mules—men and animals he could ill afford to lose.15 Come the dawn, the horseless cavalrymen of the Scurry’s Fourth Regiment would be reorganized into a regiment of infantry.16 Most worrisome to Sibley was the fact that Canby had not been totally defeated. Instead of being pushed northward, where the Confederates could continue to pressure them as they advanced, the Union troops were left in their rear, where they would pose a grave danger for the remainder of the campaign. Furthermore, with the forced abandonment of a sizable portion of his wagons and supplies, Sibley faced enormous logistical problems. He had earlier assumed that once Canby had been defeated, the Federal supplies at Fort Craig would be his for the taking; now those were denied him.17
Around the Confederate campfire that night, Sibley could be immensely satisfied that he had driven the Union troops from the field and that the road to Albuquerque, Santa Fé, Fort Union, and the territory of Colorado was wide open with nothing and no one—save for the small garrison at Fort Union—to stand in his way. But Sibley was unaware that, even as his men prepared to continue the march northward, another Union force, this one a fractious, untested regiment in Denver City, was champing at the bit, eager to march against him.
On February 22—an overcast, terribly cold day in Denver City and the same day Alonzo Ickis searched for his missing friend in the morgue at Fort Craig—the main body of Colonel John P. Slough’s First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers made their final preparations to depart Camp Weld.
Since receiving permission for the movement from Acting Governor Weld, the men had spent several days loading dozens of flimsy wagons with everything they thought they would need for war: ammunition, bayonets, tents, cookstoves, bags of flour, barrels of salt pork, crates of hardtack, lanterns, tents, extra boots and clothing, farrier’s equipment (including an anvil and portable forge), rolled bandages, the crude surgical instruments of the time, and, of course, bottles of popskull. Inside and outside of Camp Weld’s walls, the horses, mules, and oxen of the regiment stood implacably in their traces, some snorting, some pawing the ground, almost as though they, like the men, were anxious to get the march underway and head off to war.
As a bugle blew and the troops fell into ranks for their final assembly and parade, Company D stood fast, refusing to budge unless their captain was released from house arrest. Sergeant Eldridge Brown Sopris, son of the commanding officer of Company A, recalled that Downing’s company “refused to turn out for dress parade until forced out by two other companies . . . by order of Slough.”18
Finally, a soldier hurried to Downing’s quarters with the news that he was to report to Colonel Slough. “Did you write the article signed ‘Union’?” Slough demanded of Downing when the captain reached the formation. After Downing disingenuously replied that he did not, Slough ordered him to take command of his company. Five minutes later, the regiment commenced its march.19
A Denver newspaper reporter captured the scene: “On Saturday evening at three o’clock, the drum beat for parade in Camp Weld, to assemble the . . . companies of the First Regiment for their march to New Mexico. Colonel Slough addressed the soldiers and [Acting] Governor Weld made a short, patriotic farewell speech, which was received with three hearty cheers for the governor.”20
With banners snapping in the biting wind and with martial music and the cheers of the citizenry filling the air, the First Colorado left Camp Weld. There were officers on horseback, waving solemnly to the crowd; soldiers in blue marching steadfastly with their odd assortment of weapons on their shoulders; even Captain Sanborn’s colorfully outfitted company of Zouaves. The wives and sweethearts of many of the men dabbed at their eyes with lace handkerchiefs as they watched their men go and feared for their return. Among the crowd bundled against the cold were more than a few of the “soiled doves” from the McGaa Street cribs, waving with undeniable sadness at the departure of some of their best customers.
Although the regiment appeared to be in fine fettle, a somewhat disillusioned soldier reported that the regiment was less prepared for the journey than the citizens might have imagined:
Poorly clothed, and such we did have was of the cheapest kind, with a scanty allowance of bedding, and not tents enough to accommodate one third of the detachment, and worse than all this, not transportation for what little baggage we did have. Our wagons, instead of being government wagons, were miserable little rickety concerns, unfit for hard service, and without half the capacity of a government wagon; and the stock furnished was in a much worse condition than the wagons—more like kittens than mules or horses, and too badly used up to stand the journey at a common pace, with a light load, much less with the expedition we wished to travel, and the loads that were put upon them.21
As the troops went off, with drums beating and fifes piping a marching tune, the foreboding sky began to spit flakes of snow, just a few at first, and then more and more until the soldiers’ view of the camp that had been their home for five months was completely obliterated. As New Mexico drew closer with every step, many of the officers and men could not help but wonder if their departure was too late. Some, no doubt, also wondered if Slough was leading Gilpin’s Pet Lambs to the slaughter. Word of Canby’s defeat at Valverde had not yet reached Denver City; no one knew that the rebels, encamped just north of Mesa del Contadero, were preparing to move, un-checked, up the Rio Grande. But the Lambs knew that the situation was serious, perhaps even grave. And even if they, by some miracle, managed to cross the wintry mountains ahead, could their pitifully small force turn back the Texas tide?
Yet, fervor for the cause was running high. One of the local newspapers, puffed with patriotic pride, commemorated the departure of the boys with a stirring editorial:
Our volunteers are composed of the hearty pioneers of the Rocky Mountains, inured to hardship and frontier life, and therefore better adapted to the present emergency than perhaps any other regiment in the United States Army. We shall hope to receive an account of their heroic conduct which will [resound] to their everlasting honor. The day of their departure—the anniversary of the birthday of the Father of our country—will inspire the soldiers with a feeling of patriotism which shall elevate them to regard it a favorable omen to a victorious campaign; and our hope is that their toils may shortly cease in a victory to freedom and a scourge to rebellious spirits.22
As the regiment followed the eastern bank of the South Platte River by way of the stagecoach road, the falling flakes increased. Soon the snowfall turned into a full-scale blizzard, preventing the men from gaining their bearings in the white-out conditions. Six miles south of town, their boots soaked and their feet freezing, the soldiers tented as best they could for the evening, calling their temporary encampment Camp Chivington. No doubt more than one thought “Camp Shiverington” would have been more appropriate. Even Chivington himself was less than pleased with the situation: “It was intensely cold, the snow was very deep, and we only made six miles to Camp Chivington. Most of the officers, the colonel included, returned to Denver City for the night, and also quite a large number of the troops.”23
It was not an auspicious beginning to the great crusade.
Sibley’s Brigade, tenting on the slightly less frigid Valverde battlefield, broke camp early on the morning of February 23; ate a meager breakfast; and headed north, filled with mixed emotions. On one hand, the rebels were elated at having taken most of the Federal artillery and chased Canby’s troops from the field. On the other, they were touched by sorrow at the loss of so many comrades. They also had not captured from Fort Craig the desperately needed ammunition and provisions and were down to only five days’ worth of rations. Furthermore, they were traveling into country with limited forage and only a single source of water, had lost many of their wagons and draft animals, had left 3,000 Union soldiers in their rear, and, according to Colonel Steele, were “in the midst of a population of 80,000 souls possessing no friendly spirit towards us.”24
A further worry for Sibley’s Brigade was Sibley himself. He had “taken ill” at a critical moment in the battle of Valverde, turning over the reins of command to Tom Green and retiring to his ambulance. Many of Sibley’s men felt only disgust and disdain for their commander. Even Captain Teel found fault: “General Sibley was not a good administrative officer. He did not husband his resources and was too prone to let the morrow take care of itself.”25
The most pressing business for the Texans now was finding provisions for themselves and their animals. They could have turned back and attacked Fort Craig, but they did not do so. On a map, the town of Socorro, some thirty miles north, looked large enough to provide many of the needed supplies. But, first, after breaking camp and moving north past the ruins of Valverde, the hungry rebels ransacked a store belonging to Colonel Robert H. Stapleton of the First New Mexico Militia, taking an estimated $3,000 worth of goods, along with some oxen and a large flock of sheep, and providing the men with a dinner and breakfast of mutton.26
On the February 23, advance elements of Green’s Fifth Texas reconnoitered the road to Socorro to see if Union troops were holding it; they were. The previous night, Colonel Nicolás Pino and his Second New Mexico Militia had marched from Fort Craig to defend the town. But when Green’s force attacked, they made a halfhearted attempt before surrendering en masse and leaving a large cache of supplies for the Texans.27
Six miles south of Camp Weld, the Pet Lambs—wet, cold, and miserable—shook the snow off what few tents they possessed, doused their fires, loaded equipment into their wagons, and made another six miles, marching southward with the white, hump-backed shape of Pikes Peak glimmering in the distance before them.
The following day the unit made better time, bedding down along the banks of Plum Creek, some forty-five miles south of Denver City. Three more days of marching, with nightly stops at Camp More, Camp Hope, and Camp Colorado (the latter just north of Colorado City, which today is known as Colorado Springs) in the vicinity of the Garden of the Gods, had taken them nearly seventy miles south of their starting point. Only 320 miles still remained between them and Santa Fé.28
At Camp Colorado, a near-mutiny broke out over a seeming triviality. Company I, composed mostly of German immigrants and feeling aggrieved at having only two wagons while the other companies had three, became undisciplined. According to Chivington, German-born First Lieutenant Charles Kerber (who had replaced Charles Mailie as company commander) and his men “deemed themselves mistreated in consequence of their nationality; and on the morning of the 28th, when the command was ordered to form line preparatory to the march, they refused to break camp and to fall into line; and protested that they would go no further until they were furnished as much transportation as each of the other companies.”
Slough rode back to see what was delaying the departure. When Kerber and the men of Company I refused Slough’s direct order to fall in, Slough ordered Wynkoop’s Company A, which was standing nearby observing this strange event, to load their muskets and disarm Company I. Kerber, in complete defiance of Slough, then ordered his men to load their weapons, declaring that no single company could disarm them or force them to take their place in the line of march.
According to Chivington, Slough then called upon Captain Anthony’s Company E “to load with ball cartridge and to assist Company A in disarming and subduing the lieutenant of Company I. While Company E was loading, the dispute between the colonel and Lieutenant Kerber was renewed, and the colonel drew his revolver on the lieutenant.”29
At the sight of this, Kerber’s men aimed their muskets at the colonel and someone shouted, “You shoot Kerber and we’ll put sixty holes through you!” Slough, quickly realizing that discretion was the better part of valor, scowled at the mutineers, wheeled his horse, and galloped off toward Colorado City to let matters cool. Nothing more was said about the incident; Company I received their third wagon. But tensions between Slough and the Germans would remain high.30
1. Official Record, 9:647.
2. Nolie Mumey, ed., Bloody Trails along the Rio Grande—A Day-by-Day Diary of Alonzo Ferdinand Ickis (Denver: Old West Publishing, 1958), 33–34.
3. Daniel B. Castello, “Life of Capt. [Richard Charles] Deus,” unpublished manuscript (interview of Captain Deus), undated (Mss Box 205, FF 25 and 26, CHS).
4. Ibid.
5. Over the years, much speculation has centered on the relationship, if any, between Canby and Sibley, particularly regarding the possibility that the two men were somehow related by marriage. Much of this speculation evidently stems from William Whitford’s strange assertion that “the suspicion was entertained that, since . . . [Canby] was a brother-in-law to General Sibley.” William C. Whitford, Colorado Volunteers in the Civil War: The New Mexico Campaign in 1862 (Glorieta, NM: Rio Grande Press, [1906] 1971), 131. Martin H. Hall further relates that Canby had been Sibley’s “classmate at West Point, his best man at his wedding, and the husband of his [Sibley’s] wife’s cousin.” Martin H. Hall, The Confederate Army of New Mexico (Austin: Presidial Press, 1978), 25. The contention that Canby was Sibley’s best man seems spurious at best. As pointed out in Chapter 2, Sibley married Charlotte Kendall, daughter of William Kendall of Massachusetts, on January 8, 1840, at Fort Hamilton, New York. At that time, Canby was stationed in Florida and was the only officer, other than the captain, in his company. It seems beyond the realm of possibility that Canby, then just a second lieutenant stationed in an active war zone, would have been given several weeks leave to attend a wedding hundreds of miles away. It should also be remembered that Canby sat on the board of Sibley’s court-martial in Utah in July 1858. If Canby were related by marriage to Sibley, participating in the court-martial would have been a conflict of interest, and Canby’s ethical standards were too high for him to have allowed such a relationship to go unmentioned. Further, in his biography of Sibley, Jerry D. Thompson states: “Sibley and Canby had come to know one another quite well during the Utah Expedition. Canby had served on Henry’s court-martial and had later commanded Fort Bridger.” Jerry D. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley: Confederate General of the West (Natchitoches: Northwestern Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 178. This is hardly the kind of statement a careful biographer would make if Sibley and Canby had been related by marriage for some eighteen years. Other than official orders while Sibley was serving under Canby at Fort Bridger and in New Mexico, there appears to be no existing correspondence between the two men—odd if the two were somehow related. Perhaps Max L. Heyman in his biography of Canby will finally put the matter to rest: “The present author [i.e., Heyman] has found no evidence to support this assertion of their relationship, which Whitford leaves unsubstantiated. The only way they could have been related is for Sibley to have been married to one of Canby’s sisters, about whom little is known. It is usually claimed, however, that Mrs. Canby was Sibley’s sister, which, of course, she was not.” Max L. Heyman, Prudent Soldier: A Biography of Major General Edward R.S. Canby (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1959), 178n.
6. Mumey, ed., Bloody Trails along the Rio Grande, 82.
7. J. D. Meketa, ed., Legacy of Honor: The Life of Rafael Chacón (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), 174.
8. Official Record, 9:494.
9. Ibid., 492.
10. Ibid., 508.
11. Ibid., 506.
12. Ibid., 515.
13. Ibid., 632.
14. Ibid., 633–634, 636.
15. Ibid., 506.
16. Don E. Alberts, ed., Rebels on the Rio Grande: The Civil War Journal of A. B. Peticolas (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 55.
17. Official Record, 9:506–508.
18. Thomas Dawson, interview of E. B. Sopris, April 11, 1923, transcript in Mss Box XV, 7a, cc, CHS.
19. Rocky Mountain News, June 7, 1862.
20. Colorado Republican and Rocky Mountain Herald, February 27, 1862.
21. Ibid., March 6, 1862.
22. Ibid., February 27, 1862.
23. John M. Chivington, “The Pet Lambs,” Chivington papers, CHS, 2.
24. Alberts, ed., Rebels on the Rio Grande, 52; Official Record, 2:792–793.
25. Clarence C. Buel and Robert U. Johnson, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 vols. (New York: Century Company, 1888), 2:700.
26. Alberts, ed., Rebels on the Rio Grande, 52–53.
27. M. H. Hall, The Confederate Army of New Mexico, 29.
28. Colorado Republican and Rocky Mountain Herald, March 6, 1862.
29. Chivington, “Pet Lambs,” 3.
30. Ibid.