Glorieta Pass | Civil War New Mexico

[Music] hey everybody Gary Adan American Battlefield trust knocking off of my bucket list right now for the first time here I am at glor atap pass Battlefield the Gettysburg of the West so many other monikers go along with this particular battle but this is known as the big deal fight in the extreme Far West it's the one that is a federal uh Battlefield Park here and man I was already surprised I've seen pictures and everything like that and the terrain I mean it used to be a lot more clear but it is even more rugged than I expected even having seen the pictures like all these places you can't know about it till you actually come but I need to back up first of all I hope you've already watched some of our Fort Craig and Val day coverage because this is part of the same 1862 New Mexico campaign okay and around the same time this is going on in the winter and early spring of 1862 what else is going on around that time you've got us Grant capturing uh uh forts Henry and Donaldson moving on toward Pittsburgh landing and Destiny at Shiloh uh you've got uh the Battle of Pidge happening in March of 1862 and the union making huge gains in the west and the trans Mississippi you've got George mlen moving his mighty Army of the pomac over toward Richmond trying to take it uh you know from the Virginia penins he's going to be besieging Yorktown in April of 1862 and this is happening it's spanning a long while because this is a massive campaign not necessarily the number of troops you're talking about 7,000 on the combined sides or so but this is a big movement for the Confederates in general or in summary uh confederate general Henry Hopkins sibl is going to convince Jefferson Davis he can do a campaign sibl thinks he can move his Force quickly up through New Mexico into Colorado uh and he thinks he can uh you know get the mineral feral there then turn West toward California get a Pacific port it's Manifest Destiny uh for the Confederacy there it's not going to quite go that way uh but he will start out well you've got an advanced sort of movement by a guy named Baylor who is declared or declares himself a territorial government governor of New Mexico which included in at the time now Arizona as well Baylor will still stay back and do his political thing and Sibly moves forward uh there's a union Force Under Edward Canby at Fort Craig watch our other video for that and they're going to clash at val day the Confederates win but the the Yankees might win strategically a little bit the Confederates just have to keep moving and there's not a lot of supplies they're going to be bedraggled by the time they get into Albuquerque and Advance on Santa Fe which is only about 15 miles from where we stand now sibi pauses at those two places his men needed to refit and he knew that there were Yankees on the move from Colorado but Colorado's a ways away it's 400 miles away he didn't think he quite had anything to work uh worry about now on the union side you're going to have uh namely some people you really don't hear of before or after uh namely you've got a guy named Gabriel Paul some of you might hear about him at Gettysburg where he's going to be shot through both of his eyes as a matter of fact commanding a brigade on the first day field and he's in command at a fort that is about I don't know 50 miles away from here called Fort Union this is the big Fort this is where they stockpile the Munitions this is where they have all of the food stuffs and whatnot and it is the large Outpost fort to try to deal with this wild Untamed uh country here in uh the New Mexico territory uh you can still go there today we'll show you some b-roll from the place man you have a Civil War era for and then one that has sort of started during the Civil War a bigger one and you have remnants uh from both really impressive stuff and to understand this campaign you really need to understand and visit Fort Union and uh Fort Craig uh I can't stress that enough they're key to both all the movements in this area in any case uh the Confederates you know the Union soldiers in Colorado you've got sort of a fiery Minister a mountain of a man 6'4 250 lb John chivington and he's a minister that carried a gun to the pulpit uh in case things got out of hand with these wild hard drinking hard- fighting Colorado miners the Pikes peers and these guys are going to be organized into the first Colorado uh volunteers some of those soldiers ended up making it very few to Valverde others kind of make it to Santa Fe and try to put up a little fight but most of them are still back there when they get the urgent call from Canby Canby Way Down at Fort Craig might be able to move forward while these coloradans move the other way and catch si in a visce okay these coloradans under the command of a guy named John SLU or slow and they start moving they've got about 400 miles to go and they complete that March in 13 days you can do the math on that that's more than 30 miles every day and when they got closer to Fort Union where they were told that there was going to be you know the Confederates were going to sack the place and they knew if Fort Union was was lost a lot was lost so they marched the last 92 mi in 13 hours an unbelievable March I don't know of another uh longer more desperate March in um you know a blizzard at times and through terrible terrain and they made it to Fort Union just as the Confederates are getting ready to leave Santa Fe okay so then that's going to bring uh the uh troops to this area now this battlefield that takes place over a three-day period they actually fight on two days they fight uh on March 26th to the uh west of us okay so you got to know the main features here there's a ranch this is along the Santa Fe Trail there's Johnson's Ranch then there's a canyon called Apache Canyon then there's gloriaa pass near where we stand right now and at Gloria pass there's pigeon's Ranch and you might be able to if if if the cameraman that's Justin Shaw behind the camera were to stand up he'd be able to see pigeon Ranch and you might be able to catch over my shoulder a Rocky Ridge called Sharpshooters Ridge as well so we're right near the the kind of climax of the battlefield here and if we go a little further over we'd be at koslowski's Ranch okay so those are some of the features of this battlefield in summary on the 26th of March 1862 they fight over uh near and at Apache Canyon and on the 28th they're going to fight in this area it's a little more complex than that though so the Confederates start marching up uh toward Apache Canyon uh they're going to establish their supply base at Johnson's Ranch and then start moving forward but all of a sudden Here Comes John chivington some of these coloradans he's got some United States troops with as well got a cannon or two I think and they're going to start pushing against the Confederates in Apache Canyon and one two three different positions the union pushes them back upon their supplies at Johnson's Ranch I don't think the union got a good look at that point at uh Johnson's Ranch but the Confederates have ordered up the rest of their men they're marching up here from Albuquerque they're marching up here from Santa Fe and they're getting ready and there's going to be a whole another day really at this point where nothing happens both sides expected the other side to move neither one did so they kind of got ready uh for another fight by this time the Confederates most of the Texas mounted infantry are on site the Confederates have three cannons going on here and they're going to start to push against the Union Soldiers now the day before or two days before the union kind of were climbing the sides of Apache Canyon so that the Confederates couldn't outflank them and they had the Confederates in a crossfire shooting down from above and it worked really well and the Confederates are going to learn that lesson a little bit and try to employ some of those tactics against uh the union the following uh on on the 28th now um one more thing while we're in a panse canyon you the members of the organization of the American Battlefield trust were able to preserve something like a dozen Acres at aache Canyon uh the only acreage actually preserved from the March 26th fight it's now in the hands of the National Park Service where it should be okay but this on this area the park owns a substantial amount of land we're on one of the walking trails right now good Wayside exhibits and whatnot and the trust has been able to add I think another couple of acres to this battlefield as well just uh North just west of pigeons Ranch now here comes the main day the Confederates might have uh something like 2,000 soldiers or a little bit less than that the union might have just about as many except uh they are going to send chivington with 400 of them across a Mesa it's called Glorietta Mesa also called r Mesa and they're going to be Marching In other words we're the the battle is fought along the Santa Fe Trail chivington is going to March his 400 men across the Mesa hoping to get behind the Confederates while they're moving toward um Glory at a pass he's going to something else is going to happen though that he didn't expect but throughout this battle he's marching uh to the west to try to get behind the Confederates in the meantime the southerners come and push the union back they climb some of the sides of The Ridges these rugged uh Texas Mount mounted infantry begin to push against the Union Soldiers they fall back again uh the Confederates do the same thing again and this is happening all afternoon this is a long fight and eventually the union will establish a line right where we stand right here right at Sharpshooters Ridge behind me above pigeon's Ranch the union comes up with a desperate movement with seven cannons could you imagine moving cannons around terrain like this here they're blasting away at the southerners but here they go you got Major John I think it's a major John Shure and he is uh with he's a kuckian fighting with the Texas mounted infantry he tries to outflank the Union Soldiers and he is shot um actually mortally wounded uh I believe right in the head and he's going to fall on the battlefield near where the interstate is see now we stand between the interstate I believe it's 25 and the Old Santa Fe Trail which is also Route 50 now I believe and we're between them I they fought a lot of battles around Transportation facilities cuz they had to get there somehow and they tended to be important the union is holding out okay but they're about to break and just as they're about to break and fall back further toward their supply base at kow's Ranch that's when chivington has discovered that at Johnson's Ranch he's not finding the Confederate rear he's finding all of the Confederate wagons for the entire campaign and the southerners have one Cannon there and very few troops they open up some shots on chiving 's men chivington's men get closer creep up shoot the caners and then they descend upon the camp they absolutely burn all the wagons I think they slaughter most of the mules there and now the Confederates win their great Victory here at Gloria a pass only to see smoke rising in their rear and they eventually get word that all of their stuff is gone just like at Valverde the Confederates have won a victory uh tactical victory in a battle and they are losing the campaign and this was the last straw at this very moment the governers knew their campaign is over they could no longer move on Fort Union they didn't have any supplies left and they turn around and head all the way back across New Mexico this is a drive that takes hours and hours to do in your car imagine doing it as it's starting to get hotter and nastier with fewer uh you know uh water holes because there had been a drought before this and then here's Edward Canby actually coming up and you know trying to catch them in a vis which makes them add even more to their March the union has one John slow or SLU who took this Grand gamble to come out here uh thought it wouldn't work and he thought he was going to get in trouble so he said like resigns right away he's eventually going to uh you know go back to what he's good at politics he's going to be shot in a Santa Fe uh barroom I think in 1867 by one of his political Rivals uh John chivington will end up doing a whole lot of things not all of them popular uh in the Civil War this is a rugged type of man Gabriel Paul like I said will be blinded in both eyes at the Battle of Gettys and you've got all of these Confederates who are going back but they eventually fell back they don't hold the field anymore a lot of the Dead are buried right around pigeons ranch right in this area here and it was not until 1987 that uh receiving word local history and whatnot that uh there were a lot of burial still um that hadn't been moved to the Santa Fe National Cemetery They Came Upon bodies and they eventually realized they were side by side they saw their Confederate uniforms and and autant and whatnot and uh this one of the men was able to using a wedding ring that was engraved identify one of the soldiers another one was identified using a wound that was described by a guy named pedac colus who had been at a Valverde and a Gloria a pass another guy threw the distinctive wound in the top of his head and major Shropshire because of the accounts Left Behind they found those bodies and a total of 31 Confederates uh or 32 all but one were moved to the Santa Fe National Cemetery not common to have Union Confederate soldiers buried together or even near each other in the same National Cemetery we'll try to show you some b-roll of some of that and Shropshire himself was moved back to his home state of Kentucky this was all happening in the early 90s by the time they actually moved them um so there is so much more to this story I would encourage you all you see you know I'm a military guy mostly but the story of what's going on with the soldiers wives and the hispanos and the Native Americans around here and how this whole War the Indian Wars and the Civil Wars Collide out here it's Beau beautifully told in the three quartered War by my friend Megan Kate Nelson I would encourage you to uh check out this book if that is of interest to you and Edward can's wife who is captured so to speak by the Confederates at Santa Fe and how she was well treated and she treated them well in turn afterward it just adds such a different layer to the story but this is insufficient uh you have to put this on your bucket list go to Fort Craig and Fort Union come to glor atap pass and if you can make it we talked about on the other video try to get to Valverde as well it's been eye openening for me we appreciate all the support you've provided and helping us to preserve some of this critical Battlefield here thanks to Justin Shaw for filming behind the camera here and thanks to you all for supporting Battlefield preservation and education hello I'm Trace Atkins to stay up to date on all the latest and coolest videos please subscribe to the trust YouTube channel preserve educate inspire

Channel: American Battlefield Trust

Views: 33,264

Keywords: American Battlefield Trust, Civil War Trust, civil war new mexico tour, battle of glorieta pass tour, civil war new mexico

Id: 8SFWmX8iunU

Length: 13min 56sec (836 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 23 2024