War in the Far West
From the beginning, the Confederacy had wanted to expand west. In his prewar days, Jefferson Davis had helped engineer the Gadsen Purchase of southern Arizona and New Mexico. In California lay gold, a rich treasure for any country, and its ports promised trade with Asia. With these in their hands, the Confederacy might gain control of northern Mexico. Between California and the Confederate state of Texas lay the New Mexico Territory. To link the Confederate states to the Pacific meant securing this territory, and a Confederate named Henry Sibley tried to do just this.
A good deal of Federal supplies and some of its forts along the Rio Grande had fallen into Confederate hands after Fort Sumter, so the Southerners had a good jump on their expedition into the New Mexico Territory. They started off from El Paso and marched up the Rio Grande. They fought a battle at Valverde near Fort Craig on February 21, 1862, against a Federal garrison under Edward Canby. The struggle did not slow the Southerners appreciably, and they continued north to Albuquerque and then Santa Fe. But by early March they found these cities barren of the supplies they had counted on seizing; Canby had sent orders ahead to burn anything the Confederates could use.
Both the North and the South relied on Native Americans. The Confederacy wanted to enlist Native Americans both to help man its armies and to help defend Texas from invasion from Kansas. Many Indians remained neutral; others hoped to take advantage of the Union's distraction back east to reclaim land in the west, and some enlisted with Confederate forces.
The Federal stronghold near Santa Fe was Fort Union. Sibley believed that soon its garrison would come out to fight them, and it did in late March. First it lured a portion of Sibley's men into an ambush. Then the Federals defeated Sibley's little army in the Battle of Glorieta Pass on March 28. Sibley was out of supplies and didn't feel welcome by the civilians. His only good option was to retreat back down the Rio Grande to Texas. This he did, and Confederate hopes of reaching through New Mexico to California were never revived.
