Blog Archive
Historians Contextualizing the Capitol Insurrection: A Roundup
On January 6, 2021, a white-supremacist mob, incited by the President of the United States, attacked the U.S. Capitol building. They ran through its halls and chambers, broke into congressional offices, brandished weapons and Confederate flags, and took selfies. After several hours of occupation and looting, most of the insurrectionists were allowed . . .
Read MoreWriting Exercise: The Five x Five
Figuring out the best structure for your project is a vital part of the writing process. For most academic historians, the basic structures for journal articles, masters’ theses/Ph.D. dissertations, and books are pre-determined: an introduction with a descriptive opening, a historiographical turn, and then argument-driven sections, followed by a conclusion. For historians . . .
Read MoreIntroducing: James Carleton
James Henry Carleton produced more primary document material than the other eight protagonists in The Three-Cornered War combined. As commander of the 1st California from 1861-2, and then the Department of New Mexico from 1862-67, Carleton wrote copious letters and reports to his superiors and his subordinates. His words were reprinted and . . .
Read MoreIntroducing: John Clark
John Clark was not one of the original protagonists in The Three-Cornered War. Clark was a surveyor, lawyer, and landowner in Illinois when the war began. Too old to shoulder a rifle, he hoped to serve the Union in other ways. President Lincoln appointed him surveyor-general of New Mexico Territory in the summer . . .
Read MoreIntroducing: Kit Carson
Kit Carson is the only protagonist in The Three-Cornered War who is well-known outside of the Southwest, and western history. But what most Americans know about him are his actions before the Civil War: his work as a guide for John C. Frémont’s expeditions into the West; his fame as an Indian . . .
Read MoreIntroducing: Alonzo Ickis
Alonzo Ferdinand Ickis was the first person I wrote about in The Three-Cornered War. I found his wartime diary in the Western History Collection at the Denver Public Library during my initial research trip for this project, in 2010. It is a small, leather-bound volume, and Ickis wrote over his initial penciled . . .
Read MoreIntroducing: Juanita
Juanita was not one of the original protagonists of The Three-Cornered War. Initially I planned to write about her husband, Manuelito, a powerful Navajo headman who had a long history of resisting Spanish, Mexican, and American incursions into Diné Bikéyah, the Navajo homeland. I wrote a chapter about him, and had nearly completed . . .
Read MoreIntroducing: Bill Davidson
On New Year’s Eve 1861, William Lott Davidson (Bill to his friends) was huddled around a campfire outside the adobe walls of Fort Bliss, a Confederate installation north of the Rio Grande in far western Texas. He and his fellow soldiers in Company A of the 5th Texas were recovering from their march . . .
Read MoreIntroducing: Louisa Hawkins Canby
I first read about Louisa Hawkins Canby in the records of Confederate Texans. She was married to the Union colonel Edward Richard Sprigg Canby (whom she called Richard, although he went by E.R.S. or sometimes Edward in military documents), and was living in Santa Fe when the war began. The Confederates called . . .
Read MoreIntroducing: Mangas Coloradas
When John Baylor invaded New Mexico Territory on behalf of the Confederacy in the summer of 1861, the Chiricahua Apache chief Mangas Coloradas had already been at war with the U.S. Army for several months. U.S. soldiers had tried to take his son-in-law Cochise prisoner during a parlay at Apache Pass the . . .
Read More