Civil War Today

In 1861 the Territory of New Mexico stretched from Texas to California and from Old Mexico to Colorado and Utah on the north. It was a massive chunk of land with small, hard population of Indians, Mexicans and Anglos augmented with 85 Blacks, some slave some freemeen. The population was split between loyalists and separatists and the decision to stay with the Union or leave was in doubt from the moment the question of succession arose.

Texas decided early to join the rebellion and at the firing on Fort Sumter began to enlist a column of volunteers to invade the New Mexico Territory and size the land for the Confederacy. If they could control the Santa Fe Trail they could control the gold shipments from California something the Confederate Treasury could have greatly used. Also, very good ports in the little villages of San Diego and Los Angles were to far from the east for the Union to blockade.

The Union blockade of the Confederate ports took more ships than the Union Navy possessed. Accordingly, the North pressed and converted all manner of commercial ships for blockade duty. While many of these ships were sea worthy, many more were only good for plugging up a river mouth or patrolling an inland waterway. The Navy ships were needed for hauling troops and conducting joint operations with the army. All of this means that Confederate control of Southern California ports would have open a vital supply line for the beleaguered south.

This was not a farfetched idea, as I said much of the population of the western frontier was pro Confederacy and wanted to succeed. Miners in Tucson for example were already making plans to send a delegate to send to the Confederate Congress before the fighting started. The town of Messilla on the Rio Grande was openly flew a Confederate flag. California alone, the most pro Union of all the western states, contained some 100,000 plus Confederate sympathizers.

When the war first broke out a very high percentage of the officers in the west resigned and joined the Southern Army. Most of the rest of the pro Union officers were recalled to Washington to form a nucleus around which the army could mold the thousands of volunteers that were pouring in. Smaller western forts were abandoned as the few remaining federal troops were consolidated in places like Fort Craig and Fort Fillmore. This left the west practically undefended from a Confederate attack.

Lieutenant Colonel Edward Canby had been left in New Mexico by Washington to take charge of the western Union forces and pull together some kind of a defense strategy. He didn’t have a lot to work with. Part of Canby’s problem was that many of the troops he would have to depend upon were new volunteers to state militias, men without any formal military training or discipline and he was short of officers and ncos to train them.

The disaster at Fort Fillmore is a good example of Canby’s problem. One of Canby’s few experienced officers was Major Isaac Lynde the commander of Fort Fillmore. Lynde had a force of 700 men under his command in a ramshackle collection of adobe buildings surrounded by higher ground. A column of 258 Texans under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John Baylor moved against the fort, crossing into New Mexico on July 23, 1861.

Baylor’s plan for a surprise attack on the fort was ruined when one of his pickets deserted to the fort and tipped off Lynde to the Confederates presence. Baylor made the sensible decision to call off his attack and marched his troops to Mesilla where they received a hero’s welcome. Lynde launched an attack on Mesilla but was driven off losing three men for his trouble.

For some reason, unclear to the rest of the world, Lynde panicked and decided to abandon Fort Fillmore and ordered a retreat to Fort Stanton 140 miles to the northeast. Lynde marched out of Fort Fillmore just after midnight on July 27^th; unfortunately during the confusion of the withdrawal some of the troopers broke into the medical supplies and filled their canteens with whiskey.

The name of the game in the desert is water, not whiskey. Things were fine while it was still dark but as soon as the sun came up the men with canteens full of whiskey were in trouble. Thirst soon over powered their senses, already dulled by the whiskey, and Lynde’s column began to fall apart.

Baylor had discovered that the fort had been abandoned and set off after Lynde following a line of discarded equipment and dying soldiers who threw down their weapons and pleaded for water at the sight of them. Baylor caught up to Lynde at San Agustin Springs where the remnants of the Union column had gathered. Now outnumbered, Lynde had no choice but to surrender.

With the fall of Fort Fillmore and the loss of so many troops only Fort Craig and Fort Yuma remained as Union territory below the 34^th parallel. Yuma was in no position to effect the Conferedate adavance one way or another, only Fort Craig remained in front of the Texans. Baylor marched back to Mesilla and on August 1, 1861 declared all of the New Mexico Territory below the 34^th parallel as the Confederate State of Arizona, with Mesilla as the capital, which made sense because they already had the flag.

The Confederacy in the far west was off to a good start: They had destroyed one of the largest Union field armies in the territory; the remaining Union troops bottled up in Fort Craig; they had captured a huge chunk of land, strategically located on the Santa Fe Trail; many if not most of the people in the new state supported their cause, and the Union had no troop available to send Canby to stave off disaster.

In this regard, the Confederate had another ace up their sleeve, back in Texas a former army officer, now supporting the South, had begun too raise a new column of troops to support Governor  Baylor and the State of Arizona, his name was Brig. Gen. Henry Sibley CSA. Sibley carried orders from Jeff Davis, the President of the Confederacy to drive the remaining Union forces out of New Mexico altogether, and out of California and Nevada if possible.

In one of those weird Civil War coincidences Canby and Sibley knew each other, quite well actually. They had been classmates at West Point, but most of the offices of both armies had been classmates at West Point, or instructors; but Canby and Sibley were related by marriage; Canby had been Sibley’s best man when he got married. The two men were serving together when the war broke out and Sibley commented on his way out the gate of Fort Craig that he would be back.

With Sibley back, making good on his promise, the North responded by sending out urgent appeals to New Mexico, Colorado and California for state militia to come to the aid of Canby and Fort Craig. Colorado rushed a column of volunteers to Fort Craig who got their in time to join Canby’s regulars manning the walls. A second Colorado column setout on a forced march but were too far away to help and while California began forming a relief column of it’s own it would be a long while before it was ready and never did get to the fort, so Canby prepared to make due with what he had at hand.

In January of 1862 Sibley joined forces with Baylor at the abandoned Fort Thorn. Sibley who assumed over all command of the Confederate operations sent a company of Baylor’s men under the command of Captain Sharod Hunter to Tucson to watch for the rumored California column that was suppose to be headed their way. Hunter arrived in Tucson on February 28^th and was given a hero’s welcome.

While Hunter was traveling to Tucson, Sibley moved his main force up the Rio Grand to attack Fort Craig. Sibley had 2515 troops and 15 artillery pieces with which to mount his assault. They also had a large supply train and a herd of beef cattle to sustain themselves. Canby had 3810 men under his command but only about 900 of them were regulars. The rest of Canby’s force was made up of Colorado and New Mexico volunteers. Many of the New Mexico volunteers spoke only Spanish and the Colorado volunteers refused to fight along side them.

The future of the Confederate State of Arizona looked very bright there early 1862.