The Battle of Glorieta Pass, 1862: How the Confederacy's Dream of a Western Empire Ended

In March 1862, on the Santa Fe Trail in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico, Colorado volunteers met Texans set on conquering the territory. The fighting of March 26–28 — often called the "Gettysburg of the West" — was the high-water mark of the Confederate offensive in the Far West, and ended with the invaders retreating to Texas.

A southern Manifest Destiny

Henry Hopkins Sibley, who had resigned from the U.S. Army to join the Confederacy, saw a chance in the thinly held West, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis shared his vision:

1. overcome the weak Union forts and take New Mexico Territory (today's New Mexico and Arizona);
2. open the way to Colorado Territory and its gold and silver mines;
3. go on to conquer California, and carry the Confederacy to the Pacific.

The moment looked right. Much of the West had only recently been won from Mexico, and secession mattered little to people struggling to survive there — but many men had gone east to fight, the frontier garrisons were much reduced, and Indian raids were increasing as some tribes sought to regain lost land and others, their treaty allotments disrupted by the war, raided to live.

The invasion

• December 14, 1861: Sibley takes command and marches the Fourth, Fifth and Seventh Texas Mounted Riflemen — about 2,500 men — from San Antonio to Fort Bliss, outside El Paso.
• January 18, 1862: the Confederacy declares the southern half of New Mexico Territory the Confederate Territory of Arizona. Sibley starts a winter invasion up the Rio Grande.
• February 21: at Valverde, near Fort Craig, the smaller Confederate force beats Colonel Edward Canby's Union troops, who withdraw into the fort. By early 1862 Canby had almost 4,000 soldiers. Believing them too badly beaten to threaten his rear, Sibley pushes north.
• March 2: the Confederates occupy Albuquerque; Major Charles Pyron takes the undefended territorial capital, Santa Fe. The few Union troops fall back to Fort Union, the main Army depot on the Santa Fe Trail, destroying ammunition and supplies.

The Texans met problems they had not foreseen: cold, a barren, dry land, a Hispanic population that saw them as thieves of their livestock, food and money, and Apache attacks on small detachments. Above all, Sibley underestimated the western volunteers.

The race to Fort Union

Only Fort Union stood between the Confederates and Colorado; its supplies would carry them north over Raton Pass to Denver.

The First Colorado Volunteers — 950 miners under Colonel John P. Slough — marched 400 miles from Denver through the deep snow of Raton Pass in 13 days, reaching Fort Union on March 10. Ovando J. Hollister, one of them, described a night of that march:

Away into the wee hours of morning did we tramp, tramp, tramp, — the gay song, the gibe, the story, the boisterous cheer, all died a natural death. … At length the animals began to drop and die in harness, from overwork and underfeed, which forced us to stop.

Defying orders to stay at the fort, Slough left on March 22 with about 1,350 men, regulars and New Mexico volunteers among them. By March 25 his advance under Major John M. Chivington was camped at Kozlowski's Stage Stop, east of Glorieta Pass. Pyron's Texans, heading east from Santa Fe, camped at Johnson's Ranch in Apache Canyon, just west of the pass — nine miles away, unaware.

Three days of fighting

The battles of Apache Canyon (March 26) and Glorieta Pass (March 28). Kozlowski's, Pigeon's and Johnson's ranches were all stage stops on the Santa Fe Trail. National Park Service

March 26 — Apache Canyon. Chivington's scouts captured a Confederate scouting party in the pass, then ran into Pyron's main force about 16 miles east of Santa Fe. In a two-hour fight Chivington took 70 prisoners, then fell back to Pigeon's Ranch; by evening both sides agreed a truce to tend their wounded. That night Confederate reinforcements under Colonel W. R. Scurry made a hard forced march through the cold to join Pyron — one Texan, Sergeant Alfred B. Peticolas, wrote in his journal of a march of at least 15 miles that took until half past three in the morning.

March 28 — Pigeon's Ranch. Learning the Confederates had been reinforced, Slough split his force: he would block the pass with the main body while Chivington and Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Chavez of the New Mexico Volunteers took a flanking party over Glorieta Mesa to strike the Confederate flank or rear. Scurry, leaving his supply train at Johnson's Ranch, marched east to fight on his own ground.

• Scurry's men caught Slough's troops filling canteens at Glorieta Creek near Pigeon's Ranch. The Union line formed on Windmill Hill, then fell back to the ranch.
• For three hours the Texans faced Union artillery at Pigeon's Ranch and Artillery Hill, then turned the Union right. Firing down from Sharpshooter's Ridge, they forced another withdrawal.
• A last Texan charge came near sunset. Slough pulled back to camp, leaving the Confederates the field after some six hours of fighting.

March 28 — Johnson's Ranch. Meanwhile Chivington's party, after 16 miles through the mountains, came down on the Confederate supply train. They drove off its few guards, killed 30 horses and mules, spiked a cannon, took 17 prisoners, and burned the wagons of ammunition, food, clothing and forage.

A victory that was a defeat

Scurry thought he had won. His report to Sibley from Santa Fe on March 30 called it "another victory … added to the long list of Confederate triumphs" — then conceded the cost:

The loss of my supplies so crippled me that after burying my dead I was unable to follow up the victory. My men for two days went unfed and blanketless unmurmuringly.

He had not slept for three nights, he added in a postscript, and could scarcely keep his eyes open. Slough, reporting to Canby on March 29, told it as a successful reconnaissance: "Hearing of the success of Major Chivington's command, and the object of our movement being successful, we fell back in order to our camp."

Without supplies, Scurry could not go on to Fort Union and retreated to Santa Fe. Two weeks later Sibley abandoned Santa Fe and Albuquerque. The Confederacy never tried again to invade the western territories: Glorieta Pass settled that the West would stay in the Union.

The battlefield today

Glorieta Pass Battlefield, designated by Congress, is administered by Pecos National Historical Park, off I-25 about 25 miles southeast of Santa Fe; tours of the battlefield are ranger-guided, by reservation only. Much of the land around it remains intact, thanks to its isolation and rugged terrain.

Sources

Based on "The Battle of Glorieta Pass: A Shattered Dream," a Teaching with Historic Places lesson by James McBride, a New Mexico historian, and Judy Reed of Pecos National Historical Park, National Park Service, drawing on the Glorieta Battlefield National Register nomination (1978), the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (1883), Ovando J. Hollister's History of the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers (1863) and A. B. Peticolas's journals; a work of the United States government in the public domain, rewritten in hubnx's own words, with quotations from 1863 and from the 1862 official reports. The lesson's questions and activities are left out, and its painting of the fight at Pigeon's Ranch, by Roy Anderson, is not reproduced. The lesson and Slough's report give different numbers for Chivington's flanking party and for the wagons burned, and the two commanders' reported losses do not agree with each other or with the lesson, so none of those figures is given here.