The Battle of Albuquerque, April Eighteen Sixty-Two

By the spring of eighteen sixty-two, the American Civil War had arrived in New Mexico Territory. Confederate Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley had led roughly two thousand five hundred Texas mounted volunteers north from El Paso del Norte in an audacious campaign to capture the Southwest, seize the Colorado goldfields, and ultimately reach California. The Confederacy wanted a continental empire. New Mexico was the corridor.

Sibley's Army of New Mexico had won the Battle of Valverde in February, pushing Union forces back toward Santa Fe. The Confederates occupied Albuquerque in March. But at Glorieta Pass, east of Santa Fe, in late March of eighteen sixty-two, a Union force that included Colorado volunteers surprised the Confederate supply train, destroyed it, and eliminated the material basis of the campaign. Without food, ammunition, and medical supplies, the Confederate army in New Mexico was finished regardless of what happened in any subsequent engagement.

The retreat began. On April eighth, eighteen sixty-two, Sibley's forces reoccupied Albuquerque a second time while withdrawing southeast toward Texas. Union Colonel Edward Canby moved his army north from Fort Craig to probe Confederate strength. For two days, Union artillery fired into Albuquerque at long range. The exchange was militarily inconclusive. When a civilian informed Canby that the Confederates would not permit residents to seek shelter, Canby stopped firing. Under cover of darkness he withdrew without the Confederates noticing.

The Confederates evacuated Albuquerque on April twelfth. The campaign was finished. Of the two thousand five hundred soldiers who had invaded New Mexico Territory, roughly fifteen hundred survived to reach San Antonio by summer's end. The Confederate bid for a southwestern empire ended here.