[DL] Glorietta Pass

[phadris <phadris@mciworld.com>]

Howdy -

A recurring question that keeps cropping up on the list is "how big were
army forts in the Old West?"  And to skew the question further, we can
ponder "how big would they have been, had the Civil War moved out to the Old
West?"  The problem is, there just isn't a whole lot of data to draw from.

I just finished reading a book called "The Battle of Glorietta Pass" by
Thomas S. Edrington and John Taylor, an account of the western-most battle
of the American Civil War.  It's hard to draw any conclusions (or more
importantly for us, any generalizations) from one battle, but doggone it, it
's the only source we got.  I thought I'd recount what I learned here, if
anyone is interested.

The political climate of the area was odd.  New Mexico Territory, at the
time, included all of what we now know as New Mexico and Arizona.  In 1860,
the territory voted to divide in half, into New Mexico Territory and Arizona
Territory.  But the border ran from east to west, with New Mexico on the
north and Arizona on the south.  U.S. Congress never acknowledged this
division.  But when the newly claimed territory of Arizona voted to side
with the Confederacy, the C.S. Congress certainly obliged.

When Texas ceded from the United States, Federal troops peacefully pulled
out and left.  Not so in the New Mexico territory, however.  No matter who
claimed the area, the Confederates were faced with approximately 1500
Federal troops on their flank.  In 1861, the Confederates began to draw up
troops to remove this Federal threat.

CSA General Sibley gathered 2600 Texans for his expedition into New Mexico.
His orders were to drive Federal troops from the territory.  Later
biographers have described that Sibley might have planned to carry on, and
seize the gold fields of California or Colorado.  Similar conquests had been
made with fewer resources in the past, but it seems the ambitions of Sibley
may have grown in the telling.

Federal troops were centered in two key forts.  USA Colonel Canby commanded

the troops at Fort Craig, south of Albuquerque and Santa Fe.  At the outset
of the war, he raised troops from local volunteers, and commanded a total of
3800 men.  Of these, 1200 were local militiamen with limited training.  Fort
Craig had been rebuilt, from a log structure into an earthen star-shaped
fort.

To the north, USA Colonel Paul commanded Fort Union.  The fort fielded 550
men, including 250 New Mexican volunteers.  Now . I get the impression that
this size fort was more typical.  Forts were centerpoints for supply and
garrisons for troops normally responsible for Indian control (Apaches in
this area).  The New Mexican volunteers were folks drummed up to increase
garrison size after war had broken out, and would not have been part of a
"normal" fort's troops.

There were other forts in the New Mexico Territory, but they apparently had
been abandoned in the face of such a large Confederate force.

The first conflict happened at Valverde Ford, north of Fort Craig, on
February 21, 1862.  The Confederates hoped to lure Union troops away from
their fort to fight in the open, and succeeded in calling them out by
cutting off this ford.  Not all the 3800 Union troops were called to field -
a sizeable number were left to defend the fort.  The Union were defeated on
the field, and retreated back into Fort Craig.  This proved vital - Sibley's
Texans depended on what supplies they could gather during their campaign,
and to not be able to seize the fort denied them food and equipment they
were dependent upon.  In the long term, this battle proved key - the
Confederates had won the battle but already lost the war, as it were.

USA Colonel Colby decided that his highest priority was to hold the fort,
and perhaps harass the Confederates.  His first foray was to send 280 men
against Silbey.  They were engaged more completely than planned, and were
quickly cut off and captured.  After this, Colby stayed in his fort and
waited for an opportunity to unite with the troops in Fort Union.

After the battle of Valverde, Fort Union called to Colorado for any help
they could lend. Denver City had already gathered a sizable volunteer army
(supporting the Northern cause), and sent Colonel Slough and his brigade
(sorry, I can't find exact numbers of how many men there were - at least 418
men).  USA Colonel Slough was in Walsenburg when he got the message on March
5, 1862, roughly midway between Denver City and Fort Union.  The peril that
Fort Union was suffering was exaggerated a bit, and the Coloradans
force-marched through some bitter cold weather to arrive at a fort that was
running business as usual.  The Coloradans arrived on March 10, 1862.

CSA General Sibley marched on to Albuquerque looking for supplies.  The
Union garrison there was ordered to burn anything they couldn't carry,
before evacuating the town.  Unfortunately, they set fire to everything at
almost the last minute, when the Confederates were spotted about twenty
miles away.  The locals watched them leave, put out the fires, and salvaged
what they could for themselves.  Confederate troops came in and merely had
to claim from the civilians what the civilians had taken from the Federals.

Sibley took Santa Fe by strolling in, too.  There were 200 Union troops that
evacuated the town and headed for Fort Union.  Again, Sibley supplied his
troops, and he dawdled while doing so.

The most famous fight was the three-day clash at Glorietta Pass.  Sibley
hoped to engage Slough's troops (Slough was commanding the troops from Fort
Union, too) and defeat them before having to turn and face USA Colonel Colby
's troops again.  While probing to find Slough, the Confederates met up with
the Union in Apache Canyon on March 26, 1862.  The Confederates were forced
to retreat.  Two days later, they met again at Pigeon's Ranch.  The Union
fielded about 500 men, the Confederates about 600.  Fighting lasted well
into the day, eventually turning and driving back the Union troops.  But as
the battle wound down, Sibley began to hear reports that a Union cavalry
detachment had slipped around behind his troops, along a nearly impassible
path, to destroy his supply train.  During a post-battle cease fire to tend
to the wounded, Sibley took advantage of the opportunity to disengage and
return to Santa Fe "for something to eat".

I lose track of the numbers.  Historical summaries describe the wagon train
that the Confederates lost as being all the supplies for Sibley's troops,
yet only 600 of the former 2600 Texans were at Glorietta Pass to fight.
According to my book, however, the destruction of the Confederate supplies
merely sped along the inevitable - the Confederates were woefully
undersupplied anyway, and by failing to capture what they needed from Fort
Craig, they had no chance of winning their campaign.  Troops from Fort Craig
did march around the Confederates to group with troops from Fort Union, and
by then they greatly outnumbered their Texan foe.  After retreating from
Glorietta Pass, the Confederates later retreated to Albuquerque, then
decided to completely retreat from New Mexico Territory.  The Union was
content to herd the Confederates along, only really fighting them once more
in a brief skirmish at the Battle of Peralta on April 14th.  Part of the
Union reason to only push the Confederates away was to avoid the logistics
of taking care of more prisoners, thus more mouths to feed.  The Confederate
withdrawal was disastrous without adequate provisions, and by the time they
returned to Texas they had lost about 1000 of their men.

The interesting part of this whole campaign is the focus on supplies.  Forts
dominated valleys and rivers.  To bypass them was to abandon hope of
resupply, and to jeopardize a safe path to fall back.  Most the Confederate
victories on the field only compounded the Confederate difficulties - they
gained little by driving back the Union, and instead found themselves with
more supplies spent, more wounded to tend for, and more prisoners to bring
with them.  The battles were more tragically inept than many Eastern ones,
where opportunities were lost and the men were abused more out of pride than
necessity.  Many of the leaders' accounts smack of inexperience.  To call
Glorietta Pass the "Gettysburg of the West" is a bit of an overstatement -
certainly it was the high watermark for Confederate interests in the west.
But it was a badly managed and poorly fought campaign where historical
perspective suggests the leaders never really knew what their grand strategy
should mean.

In a vaguely related note, I recently finished reading "Dead Man's Walk" by
Fred McMurtry.  It's the third book in his Lonesome Dove series.  The first
book "Lonesome Dove" is outstanding - it won a Pulitzer, so it isn't just my
opinion.  "Dead Man's Walk" isn't as epic as "Lonesome Dove", but in many
ways it's creepier because more time is spent talking about the Commanche
and Apache villains.  McMurtry can freak you out with his bad guys
(especially if you want to learn about torturing your captives).  Anyhow, in
this book the main characters trek from Austin to Santa Fe, and a lot of
this real estate is described in its vastness and bleakness.  Good
background material if you want to know what New Mexico is like, at least in
some areas.

Tom Huntington
The Truth Is Yonder