New Mexico Territory During the Civil War: Wallen and Evans Inspection Reports, 1862-1863 By Jerry D. Thompson, Jerry D. Thompson
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press 2009 | 312 Pages | ISBN 0826344798 | PDF | 1.82 MB
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press 2009 | 312 Pages | ISBN 0826344798 | PDF | 1.82 MB
In the summer of 1862 the Civil War was going badly for the North. The distant New Mexico Territory, however, presented a different situation. After an invading army of zealous Texas Confederates won the field at Valverde near Fort Craig, Colorado Volunteers fell on the Rebels at Glorieta Pass and crushed Confederate dreams of conquering New Mexico and the Far West. The Texans, hungry and disheartened, retreated, leaving uncertainty and social unrest in their wake.
By the late summer of 1862, Gen. James Henry Carleton arrived from California, determined to impose federal control on the territory. Major Henry Davies Wallen and Captain Andrew Wallace Evans were appointed inspector general and assistant inspector general, respectively. Fearing a second Confederate invasion, Carleton had Wallen and Evans examine various routes the Rebels might use to invade the territory as well as a variety of logistical and operational issues. Tellingly, their reports repeatedly mention troop drunkenness and poor relations with the locals as primary problems. These inspection reports, edited by award-winning Civil War historl War years.ian Thompson, provide unique insight into the military, cultural, and social life of a territory struggling to maintain law and order.
Summary: Turning a Light on a Little-Known Part of the War
Rating: 5
Professor Thompson's absorbing new book offers a wealth of richly detailed information about the fascinating but too-long-neglected subject of the Civil War in the American Southwest. Thompson has rescued from the National Archives the reports of inspector generals Maj. Henry Davies Wallen and Capt. Andrew Wallace Evans, who toured New Mexico and Southern Colorado in 1862-63 evaluating conditions at a series of remote army posts. While the book is not a traditional narrative history, Thompson helpfully provides an introduction describing the context within which Wallen and Evans worked–the ultimately unsuccessful 1862 invasion of New Mexico by a Confederate force under Brig. Gen. Henry H. Sibley and Col. John R. Baylor. Within that setting, the book provides a series of descriptions of the garrisons, equipments, weather, and conditions of life at such posts as Fort Craig, Fort Union, Fort Stanton and others which played historic roles in the struggle for the Southwest. Thompson serves up not history itself but, more importantly, the stuff of history; and he does it so fully that the informed reader–and even the armchair generalist–can clearly visualize the harsh, unforgiving, often unglamorous and sometimes hazardous lives the officers and men of the Union forces led. The famous–Kit Carson and Big. Gen. James H. Carleton, for example–as well as the anonymous officers and rankers who also served, are found in these pages. The author provides a treasure trove of biographical and historical annotations to supplement the reports of Wallen and Davis, and the result of the whole is an invaluable reference work for anyone who wishes to write about, or learn about, the Civil War period in New Mexico Territory. This is a must read!