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 MoreJohn 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 MoreKit 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 MoreJuanita 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 MoreOn 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 MoreI 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 MoreWhen 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 MoreWhen I started thinking about this project, I knew I wanted to begin The Three-Cornered War with the Confederate invasion of New Mexico Territory in July 1861. That meant starting with John Robert Baylor. Baylor was born in Kentucky in 1822 and lived much of his early life in Indian Territory, the son of . . .
Read MoreOn a chilly day in December 1861, an Iowa farmer and Colorado gold miner named Alonzo Ferdinand Ickis put on his Union uniform—what he called his “suit of Sam’s best”—and set out from Cañon City with ninety fellow soldiers in Company B, 2nd Colorado Infantry. Their destination was Fort Garland, a federal . . .
Read MoreWhy do so few historians talk about the American Civil War in the West? And by “the West” I don’t mean the trans-Mississippi. I mean the vast stretches of high desert and the extensive mountain ranges west of the 100th meridian, where elevation and aridity make everything a bit more difficult: breathing, . . .
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