New Mexico in the American Civil War
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As the main route to California, the New Mexico Territory was disputed territory during the American Civil War, resulting in settlers in the region carved out by the Gadsden Purchase willingly joining the Confederate States of America, while much of the rest of the present day state of New Mexico remained loyal to the Union.
Confederate troops from Texas briefly occupied southern New Mexico Territory. Union troops re-captured the territory in early 1862. As the war lengthened and Union troops were withdrawn to fight elsewhere, famed explorer and frontiersman Kit Carson helped organize and command the 1st New Mexican Volunteers, a militia unit, to engage in campaigns against the Apache, Navajo, and Comanche in New Mexico and Texas, as well as participating in the earlier Battle of Valverde against the Confederates. Confederate troops withdrew after the Battle of Glorieta Pass, because Union scouts had burned the Confederate supply train. The Union regulars, 1st Colorado Volunteers ("The Pikes Peakers"), and New Mexican Volunteers had lost the battle, but won the campaign, nonetheless the battle was dubbed as the "Gettysburg of the West."
Confederate Arizona Territory, which split off from New Mexico Territory in 1861, was the first American incarnation of Arizona which would come into existence as a U.S. territory in 1863. Confederate Arizona was created by capturing the southern tier of the Union's New Mexico Territory, while the boundary established in 1863 created an Arizona on the west separated from New Mexico on the east.
