This Day In Civil War History February 21, 1862 Battle of Val Verde

Battle of Val Verde Confederate troops under General Henry Hopkins Sibley attack Union troops commanded by Colonel Edward R. S. Canby near Fort Craig in New Mexico Territory. The first major engagement of the war in the far West, the battle produces heavy casualties but no decisive result.

This action was part of the broader movement by the Confederates to capture New Mexico and other parts of the West. This would secure territory that the Rebels thought was rightfully theirs but had been denied them by political compromises made before the Civil War. Furthermore, the cash-strapped Confederacy could use western mines to fill their treasury. From San Antonio, the Rebels moved into southern New Mexico (which included Arizona) and captured the towns of Mesilla, DoÝa Ana, and Tucson. Sibley, with 3,000 troops, now moved north against the Federal stronghold at Fort Craig on the Rio Grande.

At Fort Craig, Canby was determined to make the Confederates lay siege to the post. The Rebels, Canby reasoned, could not wait long before running low on supplies. Canby knew that Sibley did not possess sufficiently heavy artillery to attack the fort. When Sibley arrived near Fort Craig on February 15, he ordered his men to swing east of the fort, cross the Rio Grande, and then capture the Val Verde fords of the Rio Grande. He hoped to cut off Canby's communication and force the Yankees out into the open.

At the fords, five miles north of Fort Craig, a Union detachment attacked part of the Confederate force. They pinned the Texans in a ravine and were on the verge of routing the Rebels when more of Sibley's men arrived and turned the tide. Sibley's second in command, Colonel Tom Green, filling in for an ill Sibley, made a bold counterattack against the Union left flank. The Yankees fell back in retreat, and headed back to Fort Craig.

The Union suffered 68 killed, 160 wounded, and 35 missing out of 3,100 engaged. The Confederates suffered 31 killed, 154 wounded, and 1 missing out of 2,600 troops. It was a bloody but indecisive battle. Sibley's men continued up the Rio Grande. Within a few weeks, they captured Albuquerque and Santa Fe before they were stopped at the Battle of Glorieta Pass on March 28.

If my genealogy research is correct, and I'm never sure that it is given the conflicting records that I often encounter, my paternal G-Grandfather may have taken part in that battle. He and his father in law, my G-G-Grandfather of course, resigned from the Texas Rangers at some point after TX seceded. I haven't found any record of what my G-G-Grandfather did after resigning from the Rangers, but the family story is that he returned to MO where he lived before migrating to Bexar county TX.

OTOH, my G-Grandfather enlisted in Company B, 10th TX Cavalry and served in that until it surrendered to the Federal forces at Brownsville after Lee's surrender at Appomattox. He was badly wounded in the hip at some point before the surrender, and the almost total lack of medical treatment during both the time before surrender and the following 6 month incarceration in an open-air POW camp at Galveston left him seriously disabled until he died in 1914 of an unrelated illness.

The history of the 10th TX Cavalry is somewhat muddled and confusing in every official and unofficial account that I can find, but it seems likely that his unit spent most of the war on the west TX frontier protecting civilians from Comanche raids and other plains tribes' attacks on white settlers instead of fighting Federal forces in the east where most other TX units were sent. I haven't found any reference to the 10th being involved in the New Mexico battle, but I would think that every Confederate unit in that general area would have been involved in any major effort to oust the Feds from what the Texans believed was their rightful territory.

Please excuse me for this intrusion into the thread, it's just seemed to be an appropriate place to post a comment on a historical matter in which I have a personal interest.

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks mainepatsfan. This would secure territory that the Rebels thought was rightfully theirs but had been denied them by political compromises made before the Civil War. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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