But the conspirators had reckoned without their host; they imagined the native Mexicans would eagerly accept their overtures, and readily support the Southern Confederacy. Mr. Davis and his coadjutors had evidently forgotten the effect of the Texas Santa Fe Expedition, in 1841, upon the people of the Province of New Mexico; but the natives themselves had not. Besides the loyalty of the Mexicans, there was a factor which the Confederate leaders had failed to consider, which was that the majority of the American pioneers had come from loyal States.
Of course, there were many secessionists both in Colorado and New Mexico who were watching the progress of rebellion in eager anticipation; and it is claimed that in Denver a rebel flag was raised—but how true that is I do not know.
John B. Floyd, Secretary of War, was one of the leading spirits of the Confederacy. A year before the Civil War he placed in command of the department of New Mexico a North Carolinian, Colonel Loring, who was in perfect sympathy with his superior, and willing to carry out his well-defined plans. In 1861 he ordered Colonel G. B. Crittenden on an expedition against the Apaches. This officer at once tried to induce his troops to attach themselves to the rebel army in Texas, but he was met with an indignant refusal by Colonel Roberts and the regular soldiers under him. The loyal colonel told Crittenden, in the most forcible language, that he would resist any such attempt on his part, and reported the action of Colonel Crittenden to the commander of the department at Santa Fe. Of course, Colonel Loring paid no attention to the complaint of disloyalty, and then Colonel Roberts conveyed the tidings to the commanding officers of several military posts in the Territory, whom he knew were true to the Union, and only one man out of nearly two thousand regular soldiers renounced his flag. Some of the officers stationed at New Mexico were of a different mind, and one of them, Major Lynde, commanding Fort Filmore, surrendered to a detachment of Texans, who paroled the enlisted men, as they firmly refused to join the rebel forces.
Upon the desertion of Colonel Loring to the Southern Confederacy, General Edward R. S. Canby was assigned to the command of the department; next in rank was the loyal Roberts. At this perilous juncture in New Mexico, there were but a thousand regulars all told, but the Territory furnished two regiments of volunteers, commanded by officers whose names had been famous on the border for years. Among these was Colonel Ceran St. Vrain, who had been conspicuous in the suppression of the Mexican insurrection of 1847, fifteen years before. Kit Carson was lieutenant-colonel; J. F. Chaves, major; and the most prominent of the line officers Captain Albert H. Pfeiffer, with a record as an Indian fighter equal to that of Carson.
At the same time Colorado was girding on her armour for the impending conflict. The governor of the prosperous Territory was William Gilpin, an old army officer, who had spent a large part of his life on the frontier, and had accompanied Colonel Doniphan, as major of his regiment, across the plains, on the expedition to New Mexico in 1846.
Colonel Gilpin at once responded to the pleadings of New Mexico for help, by organizing two companies at first, quickly following with a full regiment. This Colorado regiment was composed of as fine material as any portion of the United States could furnish. John P. Slough, a war Democrat and a lawyer, was its colonel. He afterwards became chief justice of New Mexico, and was brutally murdered in that Territory.
John M. Chivington, a strict Methodist and a presiding elder of that church, was offered the chaplaincy, but firmly declined, and, like many others who wore the clerical garb, he quickly doffed it and put on the attire of a soldier; so he was made major, and his record as a fighter was equal to the best.
The commanding general knew well the plans of the rebels as to their intended occupation of New Mexico, and, notwithstanding the weakness of his force, determined to frustrate them if within the limits of possibility. To that end he concentrated his little army, comprising a thousand regular soldiers, the two regiments of New Mexico volunteers, two companies of Colorado troops, and a portion of the territorial militia, at Fort Craig, on the Rio Grande, to await the approach of the Confederate troops, under the command of General H. H. Sibley, an old regular army officer, a native of Louisiana, and the inventor of the comfortable tent named after him.
Sibley's brigade comprised some three thousand men, the majority of them Texans, and he expected that many more would flock to his standard as he moved northward. On the 19th of February, 1862, he crossed the Rio Grande below Fort Craig, not daring to attack Canby in his intrenched position. The Union commander, in order to keep the Texas troops from gaining the high points overlooking the fort, placed portions of the Fifth, Seventh, and Tenth Regulars, together with Carson's and Pino's volunteers, on the other side of the river. No collision occurred that day, but the next afternoon Major Duncan, with his cavalry and Captain M'Rae's light battery, having been sent across to reinforce the infantry, a heavy artillery fire was immediately opened upon them by the Texans. The men under Carson behaved splendidly, but the other volunteer regiments became a little demoralized, and the general was compelled to call back the force into the fort. Sibley's force, both men and animals, suffered much from thirst, the latter stampeding, and many, wandering into our lines, were caught by the scouts of the Union forces. The next morning early Colonel Roberts was ordered to proceed about seven miles up the river to keep the Texans away from the water at a point where it was alone accessible, on account of the steepness of the banks everywhere else.
The gallant Roberts, on arriving at the ford, planted a battery there, and at once opened fire. This was the battle of Valverde, the details of which, however, do not belong to this book, having been only incidentally referred to in order to lead the reader intelligently up to that of La Glorieta, Apache Canyon, or Pigeon's Ranch, as it is indifferently called.