The Civil War in New Mexico began in 1861 with the Confederate invasion and occupation of the Mesilla Valley. At the same time, small villages and towns in New Mexico Territory faced raids from Navajo
In 1861 and 1862, in the vast deserts and rugged mountains of the Southwest, eighteen hundred miles from Washington and Richmond, the Civil War raged in a struggle that could have decided the fate of
Riding the rough and sometimes bloody peaks and canyons of border politics, Santos Benavides’s rise to prominence was largely the result of the careful mentoring of his well-known uncle, Basilio Benav
If president Lincoln could have unmade a general, perhaps he would have started with Samuel Peter "Sourdough" Heintzelman, whose early military successes were overshadowed by repeated Union defeats in
Had Henry Hopkins Sibley and his troops succeeded in taking New Mexico, author Jerry Thompson argues, "the entire history of the Southern Confederacy might have been radically altered." In Confederate
Fifty Miles and a Fight: Major Samuel Peter Heintzelman's Journal of Texas and the Cortina War, a rare and dramatic firsthand account of one of the most volatile and traumatic events in the long histo
The "Reminiscences" of Maj. Gen. Zenas R. Bliss are a remarkably detailed account of his army service in Texas before and after the Civil War. Many scholars consider Bliss's recollections to be one o
