Battle of Glorieta Pass

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Glorieta Pass was fought over three days in late March 1862, high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico Territory. On the final afternoon, Confederate troops pushed Union soldiers back through the main canyon and held the field. By any normal accounting, the South had won the day. Then word reached the Confederate commander: his entire supply train had been destroyed behind him. Without food, ammunition, or the horses and mules to move them, there was nowhere to go but backward. That retreat grew into a full withdrawal from New Mexico Territory, with Union forces retaking full control by June 1862. The South would never attempt another invasion of the region. Glorieta Pass sits just southeast of Santa Fe on the old Santa Fe Trail. Here the Confederacy's most ambitious western campaign reached its limit. The army that set these events in motion began its march from El Paso, carrying an ambition that stretched all the way to the Pacific coast.

• 2. The Confederate Dream

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  Confederate Brig. Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley marched north through the Rio Grande Valley in early 1862 with ambitions stretching far beyond New Mexico. His targets were the gold and silver mines of California and the Colorado Territory, along with the Pacific seaports of Southern California. Controlling those ports would give the Confederacy a route around the Union naval blockade slowly strangling its economy. His force represented the westernmost military operation of the entire Civil War. It was also the South's only genuine attempt to conquer and occupy Union territory in the West.

  The southern portion of the New Mexico Territory had long been neglected by both federal and territorial authorities in Santa Fe. Confederate sympathy ran high among local residents who hoped a new government might treat them better. In early 1862, the Confederacy formalized that support by establishing the Confederate Arizona Territory. It encompassed the southern halves of both modern Arizona and New Mexico. Its capital was Mesilla, roughly 45 miles from El Paso and near what is now Las Cruces.

  Sibley's campaign had already shown strength before it reached Glorieta. At the Battle of Valverde in February, he completely outmaneuvered Union Col. Edward Canby, driving him back into Fort Craig. Rather than waiting to force Canby's surrender, Sibley bypassed the fort and advanced north along the Rio Grande. He occupied Santa Fe on the 10th of March and established his headquarters at an abandoned Union storehouse in Albuquerque. Canby stayed at Fort Craig, hoping to cut Sibley's supply line from Texas while waiting for reinforcements. Sibley's next objective was Fort Union, the major Union stronghold on the route north into Colorado Territory. The road to Fort Union ran directly through Glorieta Pass.

• 3. The Armies of Glorieta

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  Col. John P. Slough of the 1st Colorado Infantry led the Union force to Glorieta Pass. His men had covered 400 miles in 14 days, marching from Denver over Raton Pass and through Fort Union to the Sangre de Cristos. Combat began almost immediately after they arrived, leaving little time to rest. Slough shared command with Maj. John M. Chivington, who would lead a separate detachment during the main fighting on the 28th of March.

  Three Texas volunteer mounted regiments formed the backbone of the Confederate force. They were the 4th, 5th, and 7th Texas Mounted Volunteers. Artillery and supply units supported them, assembled by the Confederacy from late summer to early autumn of 1861. Virtually every field officer in this brigade had served in either the Indian Wars or the Mexican-American War. The Confederate commanders at Glorieta were Maj. Charles L. Pyron, who led the initial advance, and Col. William Read Scurry. Sibley had also dispatched Col. Tom Green with six companies to block the eastern end of the pass. Whether Green would arrive in time shaped every Confederate decision in the fighting ahead.

• 4. The Fight at the Pass

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  Chivington led 418 soldiers toward Apache Canyon on the morning of the 26th of March. Pyron had camped 300 Confederates there and posted a picket of 50 men at the summit of the pass. Union troops captured the picket, only to find the main Confederate force waiting behind it. Artillery fire drove Chivington back. He split his command and pushed men up both walls of the canyon, catching the Confederates in a crossfire. Pyron fell back roughly a mile and a half to a narrower stretch of the pass, but Chivington flanked him there as well. When the Confederate artillery withdrawal caused Pyron's line to break into scattered clusters of men, Chivington ordered a mounted Colorado company to charge the guns. That charge captured several Confederates and scattered the rest. Chivington pulled back to Kozlowski's Ranch to wait for Slough, his small victory a notable boost to Union morale.

  No fighting occurred on the 27th of March. Scurry arrived at the Confederate camp at 3:00 am that morning with reinforcements, bringing the Confederate strength to roughly 1,100 men and five cannons. As the senior officer present, he took command. Scurry chose to stay in position and dig rifle pits, expecting Slough to attack again and hoping Green's column would arrive from the east. Slough reached the pass on the morning of the 28th of March with about 900 more men, bringing Union strength to around 1,300.

  Both commanders decided to attack on the 28th of March. Slough sent Chivington on a circling route through the mountains. His orders: wait above the pass and strike the Confederate flank once battle was joined. Scurry, meanwhile, had chosen to advance. He believed the Union was retreating toward Fort Union, and he intended to keep pressing until Green arrived. He left one cannon and a small guard at Johnson's Ranch and marched more than 1,000 men eastward along the Santa Fe Trail. The two armies collided around 11:00 am near Pigeon's Ranch, with Slough surprised by how far forward the Confederates had come.

  Lt. Col. Samuel F. Tappan deployed his provisional battalion across the trail and held for about half an hour. Confederate numbers outflanked Tappan's line by noon, throwing Union troops back toward the adobe ranch buildings. Scurry launched a three-pronged attack. Shropshire drove at the Union left, Raguet and Pyron at the right, and Scurry himself pressed the center with artillery support. The attack on the Union left was beaten back, and Shropshire was killed. A Confederate cannon was disabled and a limber destroyed; the attack on the center then stalled. By around 3:00 pm, the Confederates had outflanked the Union right; Raguet was mortally wounded in the effort. From the high ground afterward called Sharpshooters Ridge, Confederate riflemen picked off Union artillerymen below. Slough ordered a retreat, with Tappan's men forming a rear guard. The Confederates held the field.

• 5. The Credit Dispute

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  James L. Collins, a Bureau of Indian Affairs official, was among those credited with suggesting the roundabout attack on the Confederate supply train. Many residents of Santa Fe also accused Chivington of nearly letting the opportunity slip past him altogether. On the 23rd of January 1864, the New Mexico Territorial Legislature adopted a resolution that did not mention Chivington by name. Instead, it asked President Lincoln to promote two regular army officers, William H. Lewis and Asa B. Carey, for "distinguished service" in the battle.

  The Rio Abajo Press of Albuquerque joined the criticism on the 8th of March of that year. The newspaper complained that Chivington was "strutting about in plumage stolen from Captain William H. Lewis," though it did not name Carey. According to the paper's editor, someone in the raiding party had first suggested the attack. Chivington had agreed to it only after "two hours persuasion." Lewis had led the actual descent on Johnson's Ranch. Chivington, said the editor, had been "viewing the scene from afar."

  Four hundred Union soldiers under Chivington waited in the mountains above the pass while the main battle raged at Pigeon's Ranch below them. Critics argued that Chivington's men could have reinforced Slough and attacked Scurry's flank as ordered, potentially changing the outcome. He waited instead. The controversy never fully settled. A federal commission would eventually give the Glorieta Pass battlefield the same preservation priority assigned to the most consequential battles of the entire war.

• 6. Memory and the Battlefield

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  In 1987, workers at Pigeon's Ranch uncovered two Confederate burial sites that had gone unmarked since the battle. One was the individual grave of Maj. John Samuel Shropshire, killed on the 28th of March 1862. The other held 30 men in a mass grave; only Shropshire and five others could be positively identified. On the 5th of August 1990, Shropshire's remains were reburied next to his parents in his family's cemetery in Bourbon County, Kentucky. The remaining 30 soldiers were reinterred at the Santa Fe National Cemetery.

  In 1993, a congressionally appointed Civil War Sites Advisory Commission reviewed more than 10,500 military actions from the war. It identified 384 of them, roughly 3.7 percent, as principal battles. The Battle of Glorieta Pass received the commission's highest rating: priority I, class A. That designation placed it alongside Gettysburg and Antietam in terms of strategic impact. Only 10 other battlefields in the country received the same rating. The commission also identified the site as among the most highly endangered Civil War battlefields in the nation.

  The popular nickname "the Gettysburg of the West" has not satisfied historians. They have called it a phrase that "serves the novelist better than the historian." A longer view suggests the Confederate position in the Southwest was probably untenable in any case. New Mexico Territory could not have sustained a prolonged Confederate occupation. A Union force known as the California Column was also advancing eastward through the region during the summer of 1862.

  Today the Glorieta Pass Battlefield is managed by Pecos National Historical Park. The park's Pigeon's Ranch unit covers roughly 20 percent of the full battlefield; the other 80 percent remains in private ownership. The Glorieta Battlefield Coalition, a nonprofit citizens' organization, supports the preservation effort. As of mid-2023, the American Battlefield Trust and its partners had acquired and preserved 19 acres. The battlefield holds designation as a National Historic Landmark.

  Sergio Leone's 1966 film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly sets one scene during the post-battle retreat of Sibley's army. The film refers to Glorieta Pass only obliquely. P. G. Nagle published a historical novel titled Glorieta Pass in 1999. Elmer Kelton's 2009 novel Many A River depicts the events at Johnson's Ranch with some changes to fit the plot. Tom Bensing's 2012 biography Silas Soule describes both the armies' journeys to the battlefield and the fighting itself. Megan Kate Nelson's 2020 book The Three-Cornered War devoted a full chapter to the battle and was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize.