In the summer of 1861, more than 1,800 miles from the Confederate capital in Richmond, a 61-year-old frontier scout tore a shredded American flag from the hands of Southern sympathizers in the sunbaked plaza of Taos, New Mexico. With the help of townspeople, Christopher “Kit” Carson nailed the flag to a cottonwood pole and demanded that the U. S. flag be raised again.
The territory, he insisted, had been part of the Union since 1848 and would remain so. This was the far western edge of the American Civil War, a theater often overshadowed by the great battles of Virginia and Tennessee. While more than 10,000 military engagements occurred during the conflict, the fighting west of the Mississippi is frequently reduced to a handful of famous clashes. Yet in New Mexico, Kansas, Missouri, and Minnesota, the war took on a brutal, deeply personal character that shaped the nation’s future as surely as any Eastern battle.
Confederate leaders coveted the far West from the start. They believed gold and silver from Western mines would finance the Southern war effort, allow the purchase of weapons from Europe, and open the possibility of Confederate flags flying over California ports. The vast, sparsely populated region also offered room for the expansion of slavery, which Southerners believed would strengthen their new nation. Washington understood the stakes just as clearly.
President Lincoln needed Nevada silver and California gold to fund the war, and he could not allow the West to fall under the political and economic control of the slave system. Volunteers like Kit Carson were called upon to defend the territory. New Mexico Territory, with a population of roughly 93,500 white residents in 1861, was sparsely defended and deeply divided in its loyalties. The territorial legislature had passed a slave code in 1859, and Confederate sympathizers were active from Mesilla to Tucson.
Many U. S. Army departments in the West were led by Southern-born officers who resigned their commissions and headed east to serve the Confederacy, leaving frontier posts abandoned or thinly guarded. One of the most significant surrenders came in Texas, where 71-year-old Brevet Major General David E.
Twiggs, a Georgia native commanding U. S. forces in the state, yielded all federal positions and military stores to a Confederate force of 1,000 men. Twiggs later said that even an old woman with a broom and full authority from Texas could have taken the property from him.
Meanwhile, Confederate Colonel John R. Baylor advanced into New Mexico with 258 men, crossing the border on July 23, 1861, and moving north along the Rio Grande toward Fort Fillmore. His planned dawn attack was foiled when a deserter warned the federal garrison. After a brief skirmish at Mesilla, the Union commander, Major Isaac Lynde, made a disastrous decision: he abandoned Fort Fillmore and retreated 140 miles across the desert toward Fort Stanton.
The retreat became a nightmare of thirst and heat under the blazing sun. Baylor pursued, and at San Augustine Springs the exhausted federal force surrendered without firing a shot. The Confederate victory effectively cleared southern New Mexico of any Union presence. Baylor declared the establishment of the Confederate Territory of Arizona, naming Mesilla its capital and himself its governor.
Help was on the way in the form of Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley, the inventor of the Sibley tent and stove. Sibley received orders to raise a force in Texas, clear New Mexico of federal troops, and, according to his orders, use his own judgment in expanding the campaign into Colorado, Nevada, and California. Over the summer and fall of 1861, Sibley recruited about 3,500 cavalrymen in San Antonio. They left in October and marched 700 miles across West Texas, arriving at Fort Thorn in early 1862 near the Rio Grande.
Sibley faced Union Colonel Edward R. S. Canby, who commanded 3,810 soldiers, mostly New Mexico volunteers plus a company of Colorado volunteers. Sibley, with 2,515 men and 15 guns, decided Fort Craig was too strong to attack directly.
He crossed the Rio Grande, bypassed the fort, and planned to re-cross the river six miles north at a place called Valverde. The two forces shadowed each other along opposite banks of the river. On February 21, 1862, the first major engagement of the war in the Southwest erupted at Valverde. The battle swayed back and forth for hours.
Confederate Texans armed with nine-foot lances charged Union positions, and Colorado volunteers nearly panicked until their commander steadied them with the words: “They are Texans. Give them hell. ”
Confederate Colonel Thomas Green rallied his forces despite Sibley’s questionable withdrawal from the field, with some claiming illness, others drunkenness, and others a loss of nerve. Late in the afternoon, Green launched a double assault.
A Confederate charge of 750 dismounted Texans overran a Union artillery battery, and Canby ordered a federal withdrawal to Fort Craig. Losses were nearly even—68 Union dead, 36 Confederate dead—but the battle was considered a Confederate victory. Sibley’s force moved north, seized Albuquerque, and entered Santa Fe on March 10, forcing the territorial government to flee to a small village east of the capital. The conquest of New Mexico seemed nearly complete.
Only Fort Union stood between the Confederates and Colorado. Union reinforcements were already on the way. The First Colorado Volunteers, upon hearing of the defeat at Valverde, marched more than 400 miles in 13 days, covering 30 miles in a single frigid night. Arriving at Fort Union on March 11, they ignored orders to remain behind its walls and instead moved south toward the advancing Confederates.
On March 26, the federal advance guard under Major John Chivington encountered Confederate troops in Apache Canyon at the western end of Glorieta Pass. Chivington’s men gained the heights and drove the Confederates back. It was the first Union victory in the territory, with Confederate losses exceeding 145 while Union losses were only 19. Fighting resumed on March 28.
Confederate Lieutenant Colonel William Scurry, with about 1,300 men, left his supply train guarded at Johnson’s Ranch and moved into the pass. The battle at Glorieta Pass raged for six hours. Six Confederate assaults were repulsed, and Union counterattacks forced the Confederates to pull back. The true turning point came when Chivington’s force, guided by a New Mexican, made a 16-mile mountain detour and descended onto Johnson’s Ranch.
They destroyed all 75 Confederate wagons loaded with ammunition, food, clothing, and medical supplies, and killed 500 horses. The Confederate supply train was completely ruined. The disaster at Glorieta effectively ended the Confederate campaign in New Mexico. Scurry requested a truce the next day, and the Confederates began their retreat toward Santa Fe.
Under harassment at every step, Sibley abandoned his sick and wounded, burned wagons and supplies, and retreated across the brutal West Texas desert back toward San Antonio. Of the approximately 3,500 men who had set out, only 2,000 made it. The other 1,500 perished along the way. New Mexico remained firmly in Union hands for the rest of the war.
Canby was promoted to brigadier general and called east; Kit Carson and his New Mexico volunteers joined the forces of Brigadier General James Henry Carleton. The Confederate dream of a Pacific empire was dead. Far to the east, the border between Kansas and Missouri had been bleeding for years before a single shot was fired at Fort Sumter. The conflict there had deep roots in the 1850s, when pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers clashed violently over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state.
On the night of May 24, 1856, eight anti-slavery men led by the radical abolitionist John Brown moved through the wooded ravines of Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas Territory. Their target was a pro-slavery settlement. At around midnight, they arrived at the cabin of James Doyle, a poor white farmer from Tennessee who had recently moved west. Though he was not politically active, he and his family were marked.
Brown ordered Doyle and his two eldest sons outside. A third son, 16-year-old John, was spared after his mother’s desperate pleas. By morning, three bodies were found. James Doyle had been shot in the forehead and stabbed in the chest.
His sons had their skulls split open. The group moved on to the home of Allen Wilkinson, a member of the pro-slavery legislature, whose mutilated body was also found. Finally, they killed William Sherman, a pro-slavery border ruffian, who was found half-submerged in the creek with a hole in his chest, his left hand severed, and his skull split in two places. This was “Bleeding Kansas,” the violent prelude to the Civil War.
Over the course of a decade, the line between civilian and combatant vanished across Kansas and Missouri. The guerrilla warfare that erupted there is regarded as the worst in American history. Missouri was deeply divided. In 1860, the state held just under 115,000 slaves, ranking eleventh among slaveholding states.
But most Missourians were white farmers who resented the small slave-owning elite. When the state held a secession convention, Unionists won overwhelmingly, 110,000 votes against secession to 30,000 in favor. Yet the 30,000 included many slaveholders concentrated in the hemp- and tobacco-growing regions. When federal forces secured Missouri after the Union victory at Pea Ridge in March 1862, many pro-slavery families found themselves trapped behind Union lines.
Angry at federal occupation and abolitionist press attacks, they simmered with resentment. Many Missourians felt it was their duty to defend Southern honor, and that resentment fueled guerrilla warfare that had begun five and a half years before Fort Sumter. The first blood had been spilled in December 1855, when an anti-slavery settler was killed. Acts of violence bred revenge, which bred more violence in an endless cycle.
Kansas abolitionists, known as Jayhawkers, launched raids into Missouri, targeting civilians while many men were away fighting. Charles Jennison, a short, rough New York doctor, led a raid on Jackson County, home of the pro-slavery border ruffians. Independence, Kansas City, and Westport were attacked; homes were looted and burned, and civilians terrorized. Senator James Henry Lane led 1,500 men known as Lane’s Brigade, many of them thieves and bandits, into Missouri in late September 1861.
They sacked Osceola, leaving 3,000 people homeless, and stole enslaved people to sell in Kansas. Another raider, James Montgomery, followed John Brown’s tactics. These raids only prompted retaliatory strikes on Kansas settlements. The violence continued to escalate.
In early 1862, Charles Jennison’s unit, which included Daniel Anthony, brother of suffragist Susan B. Anthony, burned 46 of 47 homes in Dayton, Missouri. The following week, Pleasant Hill was hit a third time, with 160 homes set ablaze. Even pro-Union towns suffered.
Jayhawkers attacked Chapel Hill, Missouri, burning 150 homes, and the destruction pushed some Unionists into the Confederate ranks out of self-protection. One of the most notorious Confederate guerrilla leaders was William Clarke Quantrill, an Ohio native who had moved west in 1855. After a disastrous gold-seeking expedition in 1859 where most of his companions froze to death, Quantrill survived and became convinced he was destined for something great. His first raid was on Aubrey, Kansas, in March 1862, where he shot his former employer.
He was nearly captured by federal cavalry during the return, a lesson he never forgot. In July 1862, after a captured Missouri prisoner was executed at Fort Leavenworth, Quantrill executed three anti-slavery prisoners in retaliation and raised the black flag, signaling no quarter. Rather than driving men away, his ruthlessness attracted more recruits. In the summer of 1863, Union Brigadier General Thomas Ewing Jr.
established a series of forts along the Kansas-Missouri border and began relocating the families of known guerrillas. On August 13, 1863, a three-story building in Kansas City where many women were detained collapsed, killing five of them. Something inside Quantrill broke. He saw the deaths of innocent women as an unforgivable act by the federal government and began planning revenge.
On August 19, more than 400 of Quantrill’s men broke camp and moved west toward Kansas. The alarm reached Lawrence, a center of abolitionism with about 3,000 Unionists, home to Jayhawker James Lane and the Red Legs. When Quantrill did not arrive in the expected time frame, the town relaxed. Gettysburg and Vicksburg had been Union victories, and many believed the Confederacy was dying.
At dawn on August 21, 1863, Quantrill’s force of about 400 men entered Lawrence. They targeted unarmed federal recruits in their tents. One young recruit pleaded for his life, crying, “For God’s sake, don’t kill me,” and was answered, “No mercy for you damn federals. ” Men were shot down in the streets.
Poised men were herded into the City Hotel under guard. The town was looted and burned. One citizen carrying an infant was told to put the child down; when he refused, a pistol was placed to his head. After he set the child down, he was killed.
James Lane escaped in his nightshirt and hid in a cornfield for hours. By around 9:00 a. m. , Quantrill’s men left, moving south back toward Missouri.
Behind them, Lawrence burned, its flames visible 30 miles away. More than 150 men and boys were dead, and more than 200 homes and businesses were destroyed, with losses estimated at $2. 5 million. The psychological shock was devastating; some women’s hair reportedly turned white within days.
Federal troops pursued Quantrill, but he escaped with few losses. As always, Missouri would suffer the consequences of his raid. The cycle of vengeance continued with guerrilla fighters like Hiram George, who vowed revenge for the burning of his home and the murder of his father, and Cole Younger, who said his father’s cold-blooded killing filled his heart with a burning desire for revenge. In Minnesota, the war took another form entirely.
On August 18, 1862, a Union recruiting party was ambushed by Sioux warriors. The attack came as a cruel shock to citizens of the state, which had joined the Union in 1858. The next day, Governor Alexander Ramsey reported that more than 350 Minnesota residents had been killed and an unknown number captured. Many in the East believed Confederate agents had instigated the attacks.
They had not. The causes were the same as those that had driven conflicts between European settlers and Native Americans for centuries: the loss of ancestral lands, repeated abuse, and mistreatment by federal agents. By 1851, the U. S.
government had forced the Sioux to cede 24 million acres and confined them to a narrow 20-mile-wide reservation along the Minnesota River. Corrupt white traders had tricked the chiefs into agreements that plunged them into $400,000 of debt. In 1858, a delegation led by Chief Little Crow was intimidated into ceding half the reservation, and most of the promised money went into traders’ pockets. The Confederacy’s military successes convinced many Native Americans that the United States was weak, and decades of anger exploded.
Fort Ridgely was attacked on August 20 and 22 by about 400 warriors. New Ulm was attacked on August 23 and 24; the attacks were repelled, but 36 townspeople were killed, 23 wounded, and 190 homes burned. The conflict spread, and by early September, Governor Ramsey wired Lincoln: “This is not a war. It is a national war.
” Lincoln created the Military Department of the Northwest and placed the recently defeated Major General John Pope in command. By mid-September, the Sioux suffered a serious defeat at the Battle of Wood Lake, and most of Little Crow’s warriors were tired of war. Many dispersed, some as far as Canada. With the Sioux leadership in disarray, Chief Red Iron pushed for negotiations.
Henry Hastings Sibley, a distant relative of the Confederate general of the same name, freed 269 white prisoners and detained about 2,000 Sioux. A military commission of five men sentenced 307 Native Americans and mixed-blood individuals to death by hanging. After review, the list was reduced to 303, and then sent to Lincoln, who was determined to distinguish murderers and rapists from those who had merely participated. He reduced the list to 39, and one more was later pardoned.
On December 26, 1862, the day after Christmas, in Mankato, Minnesota, 38 Sioux men were hanged simultaneously in the largest mass execution in American history. Three of those hanged were later determined to have been executed by mistake. Congress, aware of the desire for more revenge in Minnesota, abolished all treaties with the Santee Sioux in early 1863 and ordered the tribes removed from the state. The bloodshed did not stop.
Federal forces continued to pursue the Sioux, and the fighting and mutual massacres continued through the rest of the Civil War and beyond, lasting on the Great Plains until nearly the end of the century. According to research by E. B. and Barbara Long, of the 18 major military theaters and more than 10,000 engagements during the conflict, six theaters lay entirely or substantially west of the Mississippi.
Those six theaters accounted for 2,751 engagements—roughly 26 percent of all Civil War military activity. Missouri saw 1,162 engagements, the third most of any theater. Arkansas saw 771, the fifth highest. Louisiana saw 566.
The Indian Territory, future Oklahoma, saw 89. California saw 88, most of them against Native Americans. New Mexico Territory saw 75. These Western battles were often smaller in scale than Gettysburg or Vicksburg, but their consequences were no less significant.
The campaigns in New Mexico, the guerrilla warfare along the Kansas-Missouri border, and the deadly conflict in Minnesota all shaped the history of the American West and the nation itself.