Blood and Sand: Valverde

(NYTimes) By the late afternoon on Feb. 21, 1862, the furious Battle of Valverde raged in the sandy, cottonwood flood plain of the Rio Grande in the New Mexico Territory. Just six miles north of the Union post at Fort Craig, hundreds of dead men, horses and mules littered the battlefield as a furious artillery duel and infantry charges stretched on into the late afternoon. At 4 p.m., the Union commander, Col. Edward Canby, decided to make his move and finish the rebel forces, led by Confederate Brig. Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley. Continued

Photo: Colonel (later General), Thomas Green, CSA.

Go West, Young Confederacy

(NYTimes) In the blistering August heat of 1861, an ambitious 45-year-old officer arrived in the dusty streets of San Antonio to organize one of the most daring Confederate offensives of the Civil War.
Freshly promoted to brigadier general by none other than President Jefferson Davis, Henry Hopkins Sibley was a distinguished soldier who had spent 22 years in the West. And Davis was suitably impressed with his plan: to cross 1,300 miles of forbidding desert, capturing New Mexico, present-day Arizona, the California gold fields, and the ports of San Francisco and San Diego. Continued

Photos: 1. Fort Union, NM 2. Henry Sibley