Although it remained under military control until 1850, New Mexico very soon began to feel the effects of American influence. In 1847 a legislative assembly was held at Santa Fé; the first English newspaper, The Santa Fé Republican, was founded, and the New Mexicans had their first opportunity of becoming familiar with the mysteries of a sawmill, which was placed in operation on Santa Fé Creek. In August, 1848, the treaty of peace was proclaimed from the Palace, and the ancient city formally changed masters for the fifth time in its history. The volunteers were glad to return to their homes, the Santa Fé trade resumed its busy march, and modern ways made further impress on the manners of the old adobe town. In 1848 the first English school was put in operation at the capital; later in the year the New Mexican was founded, and, save for a few intermissions, has ever since been published; while the ecclesiastical importance of the town was augmented by the establishment of the Roman Catholic vicariate-apostolic of Santa Fé, with Bishop Lamy at its head. On March 3, 1851, after much wrangling and many attempts, New Mexico was organized into a full-fledged territory of the United States, James S. Calhoun becoming its first civil governor, and on July 14th the first legislative assembly fixed Santa Fé as the seat of the new government.
[ THE TERRITORIAL CAPITOL, COMPLETED IN 1900.]
![[ THE TERRITORIAL CAPITOL, COMPLETED IN 1900.]](#5548097350089155992_illo_517.jpg.id-7937558247015722706.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
Next came the Civil War, the principal operations of which were not so far away that Santa Fé failed to participate. The severe defeat of the Federals under Canby by the Texans under Sibley, at Valverde, in February, 1862 (where Kit Carson's bravery made him a brigadier), opened the northern way to the Confederates. Santa Fé was abandoned by the Union forces on March 3d, and Sibley took possession a week later. On the 22d Colonel Slough's Federal force of thirteen hundred men marched from Fort Union toward the town. On the 26th the vanguard of four hundred met the enemy in Apache Cañon, and in the severe engagements which followed on that day and on the 28th, the Federals were victorious and the way was again opened to their occupancy of Santa Fé on April 11th, the Confederates having evacuated three days earlier. This practically closed the war in New Mexico, the Texans returning to their homes minus half their number.
The recent years of Santa Fé's history have more than ever marked the passage of the ancient town from the lethargy characteristic of the century of its founding to the enterprise which one expects in an American settlement of the present day. The contrast between the sleepy Mexican village in the wilderness during the early years of American occupancy and the progressive, substantial, picturesque town of nowadays is vast. The great awakening came with the first screech of the locomotive on February 9, 1880, which forever hushed the rumble of the long caravan as it rolled its weary way into the crooked streets of the City of the Holy Faith. New Mexico's capital was enabled at last to make the acquaintance of the outer world, although rival settlements, created by the new trail of steel, robbed it more and more, as year after year passed, of the trade which had helped to make it famous. Its genial climate and other advantages attracted many from the East; schools and hospitals were established, and as the seat of federal and territorial administration, as well as of military and ecclesiastical importance, its social advantages became widely recognized.
Despite its modern buildings devoted to various uses, there are parts of the town which have not changed greatly during the half-century of American influence. The plaza, of tragic memory, has evolved from a barren common to a bower of beauty ornamented with a monument dedicated to the heroes of Indian and civil strife. The old Palace, in which the gallant Vargas was dungeoned, and in which Lew Wallace wrote the last chapters of Ben Hur, has been refurbished, but probably no walls within our domain hold in hiding such a wealth of cruelty and horror, of treachery and suffering, of valor and chivalry, as the great adobe structure which still overlooks the historic plaza of our oldest western town.
