The American Civil War Begins
Date: April 12, 1861
Location: Fort Sumter, Confederate South Carolina
Prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War, the US and the Native tribes of the Southwest had a tumultuous relationship. Thousands of people from the eastern US had begun pouring into the Southwest and into ancestral tribal lands in increasing numbers every year after the Republic of Mexico ceded to the US the territories that made up the American Southwest following the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848. Eventually, tensions reached a tipping point. The Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, and other tribes began retaliating by attacking forts, army patrols, towns, and wagon trains on their land after enduring years of the killing and enslavement of their people, theft of their livestock and game, and colonizers illegally encroaching on their land. This conflict initially consisted of small ambushes, quick raids, and other elements of guerilla warfare, but grew in size, scale, and regularity following the outbreak of the American Civil War.
On the opposite side of the country, on April 12, 1861 secessionist forces in South Carolina surrounded and shelled Fort Sumter and the US Army forces within.
United States President Abraham Lincoln
The American Civil War had begun, a little over a month after Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration as President of the United States.
A copy of the Preamble of the Confederate Constitution
Back in the Southwest, the loyalties of the people were divided. California was a free state and Colorado a free territory prior to the war, and both would fight for the Union. Texas was a slave state prior to the war, and would fight for the Confederacy. The New Mexico Territory, composed of the modern states of New Mexico and Arizona, was mostly sympathetic to the Union, particularly the populous northern half, but many of the Anglos and Hispanos in the southern half had felt abandoned by the Union during the conflicts with Native tribes prior to the war, having received little to no military protection or aid. Thus, despite slavery being almost nonexistent in the region and much of the population opposed to Article I of the Confederate Constitution and its provision for slavery, many in the southern half were sympathetic to the Confederacy, seeing in it a government that would provide better protection than the Union.
Confederate Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor
Seeking to capitalize on the Confederate sympathies in the southern half of the territory, in early July 1861 Confederate forces under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor marched from the recently seceded state of Texas into the New Mexico Territory with the goal of capturing and occupying the Union forts located along the Rio Grande River, capturing key cities, and claiming the entire territory for the Confederacy.
The long, bloody campaign for control of the New Mexico Territory, and with it, control of the entire Southwest, had begun.
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