Civil War Today

Why Glorieta Pass

March 26-28, 1862

General Henry Hopkins Sibley has come into a lot criticism over the years: first from his own men for being a drunk and a coward; second from some Civil War buffs for taking men and material away from the main events, as their called, in the east; and lastly from historians who think that Sibley’s grand plan was to big and too farfetched to carry out. I can’t argue with the cowardly drunk part, by all accounts he was both, the night before a battle he always took sick and retreated to the inside of an ambulance where he drank himself unconscious, but the other two complaints are a different matter.

Gen. Sibley had moved up from Texas with the grandest of grand plans, and as far as I can tell he was the only Confederate with any sort of plan to win the war. Sibley had marched into the New Mexico Territory to secure the newly established Confederate State of Arizona and to take control of Fort Union outside the little New Mexican town of Las Vegas. From Fort Union Sibley planned to move north and occupy the Colorado Territory by exploiting Confederate sympathizes within the mining community.

Once in Colorado Sibley planned to make a treaty with the Mormons in Utah. The Mormons had come to Utah to escape the religious persecution that had plagued them from their foundation. The Mormons were still suspicious of and angry with the outside world which had recently expressed itself in the Mountain Meadow Massacre of 1857. While Sibley couldn’t grant the Mormons the outside acceptance they desired he could offer them statehood in the new Confederacy and the high degree of state autonomy inherent in the Confederate system would appeal to the Mormons who just wanted to be left alone.

Sibley hoped to parlay the acquisition of Colorado and Utah into several new divisions with which he could occupy Nevada and California. Once he had California Sibley planned to build a railroad from Los Angeles to San Antonio. Using California gold and Nevada silver he planned to buy all of the war material the south could use and ship it to Texas by rail, making San Antonio the most important city in the Confederacy.

After completing the railroad Sibley hoped to raise more regiments from California and use his expanded army to conquer northern Mexico and add it to Texas. This last part does seem farfetched but support of the Confederacy ran high throughout the west and if California had succeeded it’s not hard to imagine that Oregon would have as well. Personally, I think that Sibley had the only plan going in the South that might have actually won the war.

The battle fought in Glorieta Pass is often called the Gettysburg of the west, but sometimes I think that Gettysburg should be called the Glorieta Pass of the east. The nature of the conflict between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Virginia was such that neither side could gain any real advantage over the other. Even when Lee crushed his opponent as he did at Chancellorsville, as completely as an army could be crushed, there really wasn’t anyway way he could exploit his victory. The Union soldiers ran back to Washington and Lee lead his army back to Richmond.

The third day of Gettysburg with Gen. Armistead standing on a Union canon, his hat on his sword, is called the high point of the Confederacy, it is suggested by the South’s supporters that it was there that the war was lost. It has further been suggested that Picket’s famous charge that led to Armistead standing on the canon, was a failure; but, I would like to suggest that Picket’s men carried out Lee’s orders to the letter. He ordered them to march across the field and concentrate at the stand of trees; this they did, they climbed over the wall and forced the Union back. Lee had no plans in place to exploit their success. He seemed to think that the Union Army would just run away.

Suppose they had, then what? Lee still would have had a wagon train of wounded 17 miles long. He still would have been out of artillery ammunition and low on everything else. The Army of the Potomac would have run back to Washington and taken positions behind fixed works and Lee would not have attacked. The truth is he would have marched back to Richmond and nothing would have changed.

When Sibley’s men entered Glorieta Pass they did not know a column of Coloradans had entered the pass from the other side. They thought that they would march up to the main gate at Fort Union and the fort would surrender. They did not know that the Coloradans had force marched to Fort Union scooped up the garrison and entered Glorieta Pass from the other side. To add to the suspense the fort was left with only a skeleton force, if the Confederate could get there, the supply depot for the whole of the New Mexico Territory was theirs, and Sibley’s plan was a huge step closer to completion.

The Battle of Gorieta Pass

As was SOP for the Texans in New Mexico, Gen. Sibley took sick the night before his men were to march on Fort Union and he was forced to stay behind in Santa Fe drinking heavily with the women of a well known brothel, while his men went off to fight.

Gen Sibley’s men marched out of town and made camp in Apache Canyon not knowing that a tough army of men made up of Colorado volunteers and career soldiers were camped a few miles away on the other side of the pass, bent on their destruction.  Of course the Union men had no better intelligence concerning the Rebels so both sides were surprised when their scouts reported back the presence of the enemy.

In three days of hard fighting the Texans forced the Coloradans steadily back. The Coloradans fought well and the battle seesawed back and forth but the Texans clearly captured the field and were on their way to Fort Union unopposed. Except for one thing, on the morning of the third day Maj. Chivington led five hundred men up Glorieta Mesa and down the steep sides of Apache Canyon to burn the Confederate supply wagons that had been left there under a light guard.

Sibley’s New Mexico campaign had always been about supplies, having them and capturing them, when Sibley’s men discovered what had happened they had no choice but to retreat, their great victory now a terrible defeat. Out of bullets, beans and everything else they had to abandon not only the pass but Santa Fe as well.