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

LAND OF ENCHANTMENT: SOUTHWEST U.S.A

(PublicResourceOrg) 1948 Documentary: Depicts traditional crafts in an Indian settlement in New Mexico. R.1. Visits the home of artist Georgia O'Keefe, examines her art and shows Navaho artists making pottery. Indians perform ritual rain dance. R.2. Men illustrate adobe construction. Scenes of the Rio Grande River. Modern irrigation methods insure a harvest of corn, peppers and wheat. R.3. Wheat is ground by water power. Scenes of family life in the settlement's Spanish enclave. Georgia O'Keefe returns to the desert, the inspiration for her work. U.S. Information Agency. (1982 - 10/01/1999). Made possible by a donation from Andrew Gray.

No pardon for Billy the Kid

(CNN) Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico will not pardon legendary Wild West outlaw Billy the Kid in the death of a law enforcement officer more than a century ago, he said Friday.
Richardson made the announcement on ABC's "Good Morning America" the same day he leaves office.
The issue facing Richardson was whether one of his predecessors, Gov. Lew Wallace, promised about 130 years ago to pardon Billy the Kid -- known more formally as William H. Bonney -- for killing Sheriff William Brady of Lincoln County, New Mexico. Continued

Billy the Kid: a pardon at long last?

(L. A. Times) "I expect you have forgotten what you promised me," Billy the Kid wrote to New Mexico Territory's governor, Lew Wallace, in 1881. The Kid was writing from a Santa Fe jail cell. He was there because of the dogged efforts of Pat Garrett, who had been elected sheriff of Lincoln County, which comprised the southeastern part of the territory, on the promise that he would put a stop to Billy and his gang of rustlers. Now Billy was waiting to be transported to Mesilla, where he would be tried for the murder of another Lincoln County lawman, Sheriff William Brady. Continued

1906