Whitlock - Distant bugles, distant drums: the Union response to the Confederate invasion of New Mexico

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THE UNION RESPONSE TO THE
CONFEDERATE INVASION OF NEW MEXICO

FLINT WHITLOCK

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO

2006 by the University Press of Colorado

Published by the University Press of Colorado
5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C
Boulder, Colorado 80303

All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College, Metropolitan State College of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Whitlock, Flint.
Distant bugles, distant drums : the Union response to the Confederate invasion of New
Mexico / Flint Whitlock.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-87081-835-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-87081-835-X (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. New Mexico Campaign, 1862. 2. New
MexicoHistoryCivil War, 18611865Campaigns. 3. United StatesHistoryCivil War,
18611865Campaigns. I. Title.
E473.4.W595 2006
973.731dc22
2006003527

Design by Daniel Pratt

15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To those selfless soldiers
and civilians who, so many years ago,
sacrificed themselves to preserve the Union.

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

FOREWORD

THE CIVIL WAR SPANNED THE EXPANSE OF AMERICA. FROM THE COASTS OF CANADA to the canyons of Colorado it raged, and from Accomac to Arizona. Its major campaigns in the Eastern Theater are well known: from Bull Run through Antietam and Chancellorsville and Gettysburg to Spotsylvania and Cedar Creek and Petersburg and on to Appomattox. So too are its operations in the Western Theater, including Shiloh, Vicksburg, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Nashville, and the March to the Sea. Even battles just west of the Mississippi have attracted attention: from Wilsons Creek and Pea Ridge to Sabine Cross Roads and Westport.

Yet a line from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Fort Brown at Brownsville, Texas, does not mark the western limits of the Civil War. More than 800 miles northwest of Brownsville, along the upper reaches of the Rio Grande, consequential campaigns culminated in climactic combat. Indeed, some of the most active operations anywhere in America during the ten months from July 1861 to April 1862 flared in the New Mexico Territory.

These operations were a marked mix of local concerns and national consequences. Texans rode to reassert the Lone Star States historical claims to the entire left bank of the Rio Grande. Confederates campaigned to reach the rich goldfields of Coloradoand possibly extend their frontier all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Coloradans and Californians contested these threatsand all the better to do so in New Mexico and Arizona before the danger reached their own homes. A thin line of United States Regulars already posted in New Mexico formed the front line in resisting the invasion. That regions Hispanic residents again found an outside war raging around them. With nearby Texas a more conspicuous enemy than the distant Federal government in Washington, D.C., they turned out in volunteer and militia units on behalf of the Union cause but with only limited commitment to the war effort. And the other residents of that territory, the great hostile tribes of Navajos and Apaches, always lurked on the horizona threat to soldiers in blue and gray alike.

Cumulatively, the campaign found the Federals on the strategic defensive, the Butternuts on the strategic offensive. It was one of the few times during the Civil War when that role reversal occurred. And it was the only operation during the entire war in which the Secessionists tried to conquer unquestionably Union territoryas opposed to simply liberating supposedly pro-Southern citizens of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri.

Such considerations endue the New Mexico Campaign with significance far beyond its size and setting. Important in its own right, it gains increased prominence from its potential impact on the course of the Civil War if the graycoats had succeeded in gaining the goldfields of the West.

Distant Bugles, Distant Drums describes these operations, delineates the personalities of the opposing leaders, and delves into actual and possible consequences of the campaign. Beyond even those important contributions, what really sets this book apart is that it places the operations in broader context. Not just the context of 1861 and 1862, not even the context of the Civil War, but also the broad sweep of American history in the mid-nineteenth century are interwoven into this narrative, as its principal characters, along with their continuing connections with the region, are traced through the decades leading up to the days when they clashed for control of the American Southwest.

Those characters stand out in this narrative. There was William Gilpinadventuresome explorer, visionary author, passionate advocate of Manifest Destiny, veteran of an earlier campaign along the upper Rio Grande during the 18461848 war with Mexico, and in 18611862 the first territorial governor of Colorado. Even more colorful was the Confederate commander, Henry Hopkins Sibley: professional soldier, cantankerous inventor, and hard-drinking regular, whose campaign plans ranged somewhere between strategic vision and besotted reverie. Sibleys counterpart in blue and former superior before the outbreak of the War Between the States, Colonel Edward R.S. Canby, was anything but colorful. Canby, however, was solid, and his professional career over the course of a quarter century prepared him well to meet the challenge of Southern invasion. Yet he, like all senior officers, had to rely on subordinates. His key subordinates included a fiery preacher, an ambitious Ohio politician recently removed to Colorado, an illiterate mountain man, and two regulars, one testy and literalistic, the other controversial and contentious. Following all these figures through the years and finally finding them together in this campaign is one of the books real strengths.

So too is its considerable research into printed and manuscript first-person accounts, such as letters, diaries, memoirs, official documents, and newspaper reports. An exceptional strength is its vivid writing, which carries the reader along with the flow of events. The reader rides with the Texans up the arid Rio Grande valley, marches with the desperate Coloradans over the snowy Ratn Pass, and battles with the armies in the sand hills of Valverde and the confines of Apache Canyon and Glorita Pass. Such writingwith its flair for the narrative style, its empathy for the American fighting man in battle, and its insights into the exercise of commandis the hallmark of the author.