New Mexico Civil War Books: A Collector's Authority Guide

On February 21, 1862, Confederate and Union forces clashed at the Valverde ford of the Rio Grande in the opening engagement of the westernmost major military campaign of the Civil War. Thirty-four days later, a Union flanking force destroyed the entire Confederate supply train at Johnson's Ranch behind Glorieta Pass in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, ending Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley's Confederate Army of New Mexico as an effective fighting force and closing the Confederate bid for a Pacific outlet. The New Mexico campaign of 1861-1862 was brief — roughly five months from the Confederate crossing into New Mexico Territory to the final Confederate retreat across the Texas line — but it generated one of the richest regional Civil War bibliographies in American history, anchored by an exceptionally strong academic press tradition centered at UNM Press, Texas A&M University Press, and the University of Texas Press. This is the collector's guide to that canon.

The NM Civil War collecting field organizes into three publication periods. PERIOD ONE — primary-source accounts and foundational institutional history 1863-1960: Hollister Boldly They Rode 1863, Whitford Colorado Volunteers in the Civil War 1906, the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion NM volumes published 1880-1901, the early twentieth-century New Mexico Historical Review campaign scholarship. PERIOD TWO — the modern scholarly canon 1960-2000: Hall Sibley's New Mexico Campaign 1960, Thompson Henry Hopkins Sibley 1987, Taylor Bloody Valverde 1995, Alberts The Battle of Glorieta 1998, Edrington-Taylor The Battle of Glorieta Pass 1998, Meketa Legacy of Honor 1986, Josephy The Civil War in the American West 1991. PERIOD THREE — sesquicentennial and contemporary scholarship 2000-present: Sides Blood and Thunder 2006, the 2011-2015 sesquicentennial publications from New Mexico Historic Sites and the Museum of New Mexico, contemporary NM Historical Review scholarship, and the expanded National Park Service interpretive literature for the Glorieta Battlefield National Historic Landmark and Fort Craig National Historic Site. A serious NM Civil War library carries representative works from each period.

Last verified May 2026 · Original research by Josh Eldred

The Confederate Invasion: Sibley's Campaign up the Rio Grande

New Mexico Civil War Books, including Sibley's New Mexico Campaign (1960), are sought-after collectibles commanding premium prices among Southwest and Western Americana collectors. Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley (1816-1886, closed pool) was a West Point graduate (class of 1838), a veteran of the Seminole and Mexican Wars, and the inventor of the Sibley tent — a conical canvas field tent modeled on the Sioux tipi that the U.S. Army adopted in the 1850s and used through the Civil War. Sibley had served extensively in New Mexico Territory as an antebellum Army officer, and he knew the Rio Grande corridor and the territory's logistics intimately when he resigned his U.S. Army commission in May 1861 and traveled to Richmond Virginia to propose to President Jefferson Davis a Confederate conquest of the Southwest.

Davis approved the plan. Sibley organized the Army of New Mexico at San Antonio Texas through the summer and fall of 1861 — approximately 2,500 men drawn from three Texas mounted volunteer regiments (the 4th, 5th, and 7th Texas Mounted Volunteers) under Colonels William Steele, Thomas Green, and William Scurry. The army was organized as a mounted force rather than infantry, assuming they would fight as cavalry and dragoons across the open desert and mountain terrain of the Rio Grande corridor. This decision — excellent for mobility, catastrophic for the logistical demands of a sustained campaign — would prove the central vulnerability of the Confederate effort.

The Confederate campaign plan required capturing Fort Craig (the Union supply depot at the Valverde ford), Fort Union (the massive Union supply depot on the Santa Fe Trail northeast of Santa Fe), and Santa Fe itself, then continuing north to the Denver gold fields in Colorado Territory. If the plan succeeded, the Confederacy would control the Rio Grande from El Paso to Colorado, the Pacific access of Arizona and California Territory would be within reach, and the gold supply financing the Union war effort would be interrupted. The plan was audacious, strategically coherent, and ultimately defeated not by Union arms alone but by the logistical impossibility of sustaining a 2,500-man mounted force in a desert theater without capturing the Union supply depots the plan required.

Union Colonel Edward Richard Sprigg Canby (1817-1873, closed pool) commanded the Department of New Mexico with a mixed force of regular Army units and New Mexico territorial volunteers, including the First New Mexico Volunteer Infantry commanded by Colonel Kit Carson. Canby was an experienced frontier officer who understood his territory's logistics as well as Sibley did; his defensive strategy — holding Fort Craig at all costs and harassing the Confederate advance without a decisive pitched engagement — was sound even when it meant withdrawing from Albuquerque and Santa Fe temporarily. Canby was later killed in the Modoc War in April 1873, becoming the only U.S. Army general officer killed in an Indian war — an ironic end for the officer who defended New Mexico against Sibley and whose name was later attached to a New Mexico county.

The Battle of Valverde, February 21, 1862

The Battle of Valverde was the opening major engagement of the campaign, fought at the Valverde ford of the Rio Grande approximately six miles north of Fort Craig in what is now Socorro County, New Mexico. Sibley's force moved to cross the Rio Grande at Valverde on February 20-21, 1862, bypassing Fort Craig on the west bank and threatening to cut Canby's communications with the north. Canby sortied from Fort Craig with approximately 3,810 men — a mix of U.S. regular-Army infantry and cavalry, New Mexico Volunteer Infantry including Kit Carson's First New Mexico, and New Mexico militia — to defend the ford.

The battle unfolded across the sandy flats and cottonwood bosque of the Rio Grande bottom on February 21. Confederate forces under Sibley's field commander Colonel Tom Green eventually forced the Union line to withdraw after intense close combat in the afternoon, the most dramatic episode being the capture of Captain Alexander McRae's Union artillery battery at the ford after McRae was killed defending his guns. Carson's First New Mexico performed creditably on the Union left but could not prevent the overall Confederate tactical success. Canby withdrew the Union force into Fort Craig rather than abandon it; Sibley's force crossed the Rio Grande but found Fort Craig too strong to assault.

The Confederate tactical victory at Valverde was a strategic setback: without Fort Craig's supply depot, Sibley's army had to live off the country as it advanced north. The Confederates bypassed Fort Craig and continued north on the east bank of the Rio Grande, occupying Albuquerque on March 2 and Santa Fe on March 4, 1862. The Union territorial government retreated to Fort Union on the Santa Fe Trail. The stage was set for Glorieta Pass.

The standard Valverde monograph is John Taylor's Bloody Valverde: A Battle of the New Mexico Territory, February 21, 1862 (University of New Mexico Press 1995 first hardcover) — the only full-length scholarly treatment of the engagement. Taylor's reconstruction draws extensively on the Official Records NM volumes, Confederate regimental papers, and survivor letter and memoir material, and is particularly strong on the New Mexico Hispanic soldiers' performance and the controversy over the Union artillery. The Valverde Battlefield is a New Mexico State Monument on private land with periodic public access; Fort Craig National Historic Site (Bureau of Land Management) preserves the fort adobe ruins adjacent to the battlefield.

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The Battle of Glorieta Pass, March 26-28, 1862

The Battle of Glorieta Pass — designated the Gettysburg of the West in the popular historical tradition — was fought in the Glorieta Pass corridor of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, approximately 17 miles southeast of Santa Fe on the principal wagon road from Santa Fe east to the Santa Fe Trail. The pass itself is a high mountain corridor at approximately 7,500 feet elevation, flanked by Glorieta Mesa to the south and broken canyon terrain to the north, with the narrow canyon and cottonwood riparian belt of Glorieta Creek running east-west through the center. It was the most defensible terrain between Santa Fe and Fort Union, and both sides understood its tactical significance.

The battle unfolded over three days. On March 26, an advance engagement at Apache Canyon (the western entrance to the pass, where Confederate forces had established a temporary post) was won by Union forces under Major William Channing and the advance elements of the 1st Colorado Volunteer Infantry, which had arrived at Fort Union by forced march from Denver under Colonel John Slough and Major John Chivington. The Confederate advance detachment was driven back with casualties. On March 28, the main engagement at Pigeon's Ranch — a stage-road hostelry at the center of the pass operated by Alexander Valle (the name "Pigeon" was a corruption of Valle from the French pigeon/pigeon, a nickname) — saw the Confederate main force under Lieutenant Colonel William Scurry engage Union forces under Colonel William Slough in a hard-fought tactical draw extending through the afternoon. Confederate pressure drove the Union force back toward the eastern end of the pass.

While the main engagement was fought at Pigeon's Ranch, Major John M. Chivington led approximately 430 Union soldiers — a column detached by Slough specifically for flanking operations — across Glorieta Mesa in a circuitous mountain route guided by Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Chaves of the New Mexico Volunteers, who knew the mesa trails. Chivington's force descended to Johnson's Ranch (Canoncito) at the western end of the pass behind the entire Confederate position and discovered the Confederate supply train: 85 wagons loaded with ammunition, food, medical supplies, and equipment. Chivington burned the wagons, destroyed the artillery pieces and spiked the howitzers, and bayoneted or drove off approximately 500 horses and mules — the entire Confederate transport and supply reserve. Without ammunition, food, or transport in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with winter conditions, the Confederate main force at Pigeon's Ranch had no choice but retreat despite the tactical draw of the main engagement.

The Confederate retreat was disastrous. Sibley's forces retreated south along the Rio Grande through Albuquerque and back toward Fort Craig, losing men to starvation, cold, exhaustion, and desertions. The Confederate Arizona Territory — proclaimed in Mesilla NM in 1861 by Confederate Lieutenant Colonel John Baylor — collapsed as Union forces consolidated the territory. The retreat ended by late April 1862 with the remnant Confederate force crossing back into Texas. The New Mexico campaign was over.

The two standard Glorieta Pass monographs were published simultaneously in 1998: Don E. Alberts's The Battle of Glorieta: Union Victory in the West (Texas A&M University Press 1998 first hardcover) and Thomas S. Edrington and John Taylor's The Battle of Glorieta Pass: A Gettysburg in the West, March 26-28, 1862 (University of New Mexico Press 1998 first hardcover). Alberts provides a comprehensive operational account with strong Union perspective and excellent Colorado volunteer treatment; Edrington-Taylor offers a more ground-level reconstruction with superior battle maps and stronger Confederate regimental sourcing. Both are essential; a library serious about Glorieta Pass holds both.

The Foundational Scholarly Canon: Hall, Thompson, and the UT Press Tradition

Martin Hardwick Hall's Sibley's New Mexico Campaign (University of Texas Press 1960 first hardcover) is the foundational scholarly account of the entire 1861-1862 Confederate New Mexico operation — the book that established the modern scholarly framework and remains the indispensable starting point for every subsequent researcher. Hall was a historian at Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University, Lubbock) who spent years working through the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion NM volumes and Confederate regimental records that were poorly accessible in the pre-microfilm period. His 1960 University of Texas Press monograph was the first systematic scholarly account of the campaign from its organization at San Antonio through the final Confederate retreat to Texas. No subsequent work has superseded Hall as the foundational reference; Thompson, Taylor, Alberts, and Edrington-Taylor all cite Hall as the starting point.

Points-of-issue for the Hall 1960 University of Texas Press first hardcover: original UT Press binding in cloth, first edition statement on the copyright page, the period-style map inserts (the maps are a signature feature of the first edition). The book is genuinely scarce — a University of Texas Press academic monograph from 1960 with a limited print run, 65-plus years of attrition, and a specialized audience concentrated in Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado Civil War historical communities. When the Hall 1960 UT Press first appears at auction or in specialist dealer catalogs, it trades in the Tier 1 range; ex-library copies are significantly discounted but represent the principal supply of accessible copies for most purchasers.

Jerry D. Thompson's Henry Hopkins Sibley: Confederate General of the West (University Press of Kansas 1987 first hardcover; expanded and revised edition as Confederate General of the West, University of North Texas Press 1996) is the standard Sibley biography — the full-career account covering Sibley's antebellum Army career across the Mexican War, the Seminole Wars, and frontier service through the 1861-1862 New Mexico campaign, his later Confederate service in Louisiana, and his post-war exile to Egypt (where he served as a general in the Egyptian Khedive's army) before returning to the United States. Thompson was a historian at Texas A&M International University in Laredo TX and the most prolific contemporary academic scholar of the Civil War in the Far Southwest. His broader corpus includes Desert Tiger: Captain Paddy Graydon and the Civil War in the Far Southwest (Texas Western Press 1992), the edited Confederate regimental accounts in Civil War in the Southwest: Recollections of the Sibley Brigade (Texas A&M University Press 2001), and numerous scholarly articles in the New Mexico Historical Review, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, and the Journal of Arizona History.

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Kit Carson and the First New Mexico Volunteers

Kit Carson (Christopher Houston Carson, December 24, 1809 — May 23, 1868, closed pool) commanded the First New Mexico Volunteer Infantry as Colonel from July 1861 through the Civil War period, making him the central Union military figure of the New Mexico campaign from the New Mexico Hispanic community's perspective. Carson's regiment participated in the Battle of Valverde on February 21, 1862, performing on the Union left flank, and Carson's subsequent service with General Carleton — the Mescalero Apache campaign of 1862-1863 and especially the Navajo Long Walk campaign of 1863-1864, in which Carson's forces conducted a scorched-earth campaign against Navajo agriculture and forced the Navajo people from Dinetah to the Bosque Redondo reservation at Fort Sumner — represents the most contested dimension of Carson's legacy.

The Carson bibliography divides sharply between a pre-1960 celebratory tradition and a post-1960 revisionist tradition that engages the Navajo Long Walk and Carson's relationship with the peoples his career affected. The two major contemporary works are Marc Simmons's Kit Carson and His Three Wives: A Family History (University of New Mexico Press 2003 first hardcover) — a focused study of Carson's marriages to Waanibe (Arapaho), Making-Out-Road (Cheyenne), and Maria Josefa Jaramillo (New Mexican Hispana) that illuminates Carson's cross-cultural world — and Hampton Sides's Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West (Doubleday 2006 first hardcover), the best narrative account of Carson's full career from the fur trade through the Navajo Long Walk, written for a broad popular audience with rigorous scholarly grounding.

The standard scholarly biography is David Remley's Kit Carson: The Life of an American Border Man (University of Oklahoma Press 2011 first hardcover), which situates Carson in the borderlands tradition and provides the most balanced assessment of his contested legacy. Earlier important works: Harvey L. Carter's 'Dear Old Kit': The Historical Kit Carson (University of Oklahoma Press 1968 first hardcover, the principal mid-century scholarly reassessment); M. Morgan Estergreen's Kit Carson: A Portrait in Courage (University of Oklahoma Press 1962 first hardcover); and the foundational Edwin L. Sabin's Kit Carson Days: Adventures in the Path of Empire (A.C. McClurg Chicago 1914 two volumes, the foundational early biography, extensively researched with survivor interviews). The Sabin 1914 McClurg two-volume first set is the Tier 1 early-biography trophy in the Carson collecting field.

The Carson dictated memoir is available in Milo Milton Quaife's Kit Carson's Autobiography (Lakeside Press Chicago 1935, the standard scholarly edition with Quaife's scholarly apparatus) and in subsequent Lakeside Press reprints and University of Nebraska Press paperback editions. The 1935 Quaife Lakeside Press edition is a Tier 2 acquisition; the Lakeside Press format (the Lakeside Classics series) is itself a collecting category with its own constituency.

Rafael Chacon and the Hispanic Union Soldiers

One of the most important and underappreciated books in the NM Civil War canon is Jacqueline Meketa's Legacy of Honor: The Life of Rafael Chacon, a Nineteenth-Century New Mexican (University of New Mexico Press 1986 first hardcover). Rafael Chacon (1833-1925) was a Hispanic New Mexican who served as Captain of Company K, First New Mexico Volunteer Infantry under Kit Carson, fighting at Valverde and participating in the broader Union defense of New Mexico Territory throughout the Civil War period. His memoir — preserved in manuscript and translated and edited by his granddaughter Jacqueline Meketa — is the principal Union Hispanic soldier account of the New Mexico Civil War experience and one of the few first-person accounts of the campaign from a New Mexico Hispanic perspective.

Legacy of Honor is important for several reasons beyond its military-history content. Chacon's memoir covers his full career from his birth in Santa Fe in 1833 through the Mexican War period (when New Mexico was ceded to the United States), the antebellum New Mexico territorial period, the Civil War service with the First New Mexico, and the post-war decades — providing a continuous Hispano perspective on the transformation of New Mexico from Mexican territorial status through American territorial governance. The book is the central primary source for the New Mexico Hispanic community's experience of the Civil War and the principal counterweight to the Anglo-and-Texan-dominated Confederate literature and the Anglo-Union-dominated regimental histories like Hollister and Whitford.

The Meketa 1986 UNM Press first hardcover with original dust jacket is a Tier 2 acquisition. UNM Press first editions from the 1980s are relatively accessible but the Legacy of Honor first is sought by Civil War collectors, Hispanic New Mexico history collectors, and First New Mexico Volunteer Infantry regimental researchers — three distinct collecting communities that give it a wider market than most regional UNM Press titles. Meketa-signed copies (Meketa is the editor/author, not the memoirist) are infrequently encountered at specialist Western Americana dealers.

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Hollister, Whitford, and the First Colorado Volunteers

The 1st Colorado Volunteer Infantry was the decisive Union force at Glorieta Pass — the regiment whose arrival from Denver in early March 1862 tipped the defensive balance and whose flanking action under Chivington destroyed the Confederate supply train. The regiment's eyewitness literature is the most historically valuable and most collectible segment of the NM Civil War primary-source canon.

Ovando James Hollister's Boldly They Rode: A History of the First Colorado Regiment of Volunteers (printed at Loveland Colorado 1863) is the most important primary-source account of the Battle of Glorieta Pass from the Union participant perspective. Hollister was a private in the First Colorado who served through the New Mexico campaign and wrote his regimental account while still in service; the 1863 Loveland printing is one of the earliest published eyewitness accounts of any Civil War western-theater engagement and one of the scarcest books in the NM Civil War collecting canon. Fewer than a dozen confirmed institutional copies of the original 1863 Loveland printing exist; the book does not appear at auction with any regularity. The principal accessible edition is the 1949 Lakewood Colorado Golden Press republication, printed in a small edition for the Colorado historical collecting community and itself scarce. Hollister went on to a career in Colorado journalism after the war; his post-war writings occasionally returned to the Glorieta campaign but none matched the immediacy of the 1863 account.

William Clarke Whitford's Colorado Volunteers in the Civil War: The New Mexico Campaign in 1862 (State Historical and Natural History Society of Denver 1906 first edition) is the companion 1st Colorado regimental history, written forty-plus years after the campaign with the Official Records and survivor interviews available. The Whitford 1906 Denver first edition — a State Historical Society publication in a limited print run — is scarce and is the Tier 1 First Colorado regimental-history trophy alongside the 1863 Hollister first. Together Hollister and Whitford constitute the essential First Colorado primary bibliography.

Major John M. Chivington (1821-1894, closed pool) was the First Colorado's most consequential officer — the architect of the supply-train destruction at Johnson's Ranch that decided Glorieta Pass — and also the officer responsible for the Sand Creek Massacre of November 29, 1864, in which Colorado territorial troops under Chivington killed approximately 150-200 Cheyenne and Arapaho civilians at Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado Territory. The Sand Creek Massacre is extensively documented in a separate scholarly literature (Stan Hoig The Sand Creek Massacre, University of Oklahoma Press 1961; David Svaldi Sand Creek and the Rhetoric of Extermination, 1989; Jerome Greene and Douglas Scott Finding Sand Creek, 2004) and intersects the NM Civil War collecting field through the Chivington figure, who appears as a hero at Glorieta Pass and a villain at Sand Creek — a dual legacy that shapes the historiographical treatment of the First Colorado across both the NM Civil War and Colorado Indian-war collecting literatures.

The California Column and James Carleton

The California Column — officially the Column from California — was a Union military force of approximately 1,800 soldiers organized by Brigadier General James Henry Carleton (1814-1873, closed pool) at Fort Yuma California in the spring of 1862 and marched east across Arizona Territory toward New Mexico in response to the Confederate New Mexico campaign. Carleton's force was too slow to arrive in time for the fighting at Glorieta Pass or the subsequent Confederate retreat, but the California Column completed the Union reconsolidation of the territory when Carleton arrived at Mesilla NM in July 1862 and assumed command of the Department of New Mexico from Canby.

Carleton's subsequent career in New Mexico was transformative and deeply contested. As department commander from 1862 to 1866, Carleton directed the Mescalero Apache campaign (with Kit Carson in command of the field operations), established the Bosque Redondo reservation at Fort Sumner, directed the Navajo Long Walk campaign under Carson (1863-1864) that forced approximately 8,000-10,000 Navajo people on a series of forced marches to Bosque Redondo, and administered the Bosque Redondo reservation system that collapsed in humanitarian failure by 1868. The 1868 Bosque Redondo Treaty — negotiated by General William Sherman with Navajo leaders including Barboncito — allowed the Navajo people to return to Dinetah and established the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners region.

The California Column and Carleton are documented in Aurora Hunt's The Army of the Pacific: Its Operations in California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Plains Region, Mexico, etc., 1860-1866 (Arthur H. Clark Glendale CA 1951 first hardcover, the standard California Column operational history); in Thompson's Sibley biography and related works; in Frank McNitt's Navajo Wars: Military Campaigns, Slave Raids, and Reprisals (UNM Press 1972 first hardcover, the standard Navajo Wars scholarly treatment spanning the period through the Long Walk); and in Peter Cozzens's edited anthology The Long War for the Southwest: Dispatches from the New Mexico Territory, 1850-1880 (University of Nebraska Press 2022, the most recent comprehensive anthology). The Hunt 1951 Arthur H. Clark Glendale first hardcover is scarce (Arthur H. Clark Company was a specialty Western Americana publisher in limited editions) and is a Tier 1 California Column trophy.

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Confederate Arizona Territory and NM Territory During the War

The Confederate Territory of Arizona was proclaimed on August 1, 1861 by Confederate Lieutenant Colonel John Robert Baylor at Mesilla NM, covering the southern half of the existing New Mexico Territory south of the 34th parallel (including present-day southern New Mexico and all of present-day Arizona south of the Grand Canyon). Baylor's proclamation installed himself as Governor of Confederate Arizona Territory and was ratified by the Confederate Congress in January 1862. The Confederate Arizona Territory existed for approximately one year — from Baylor's August 1861 proclamation through the Union reconsolidation of the region by Carleton's California Column in July 1862.

The Confederate Arizona Territory creates a parallel collecting category within NM Civil War books: the documentation of the Confederate occupation, the Confederate political and military infrastructure in the territory, and the complex loyalties of the Mesilla and El Paso Valley Hispanic and Anglo population under Confederate governance. Alwyn Barr's Texans in Revolt: The Battle for San Antonio, 1835 (University of Texas Press) and the broader Texas-Confederate historiography provide context; the most focused NM-Confederate territorial treatment is in Jerry Thompson's various monographs including his edited Confederate Lawman: The Life and Times of Harry Wheeler, Arizona Territory Sheriff (Texas Western Press 1994) and in Max L. Heyman Jr.'s Prudent Soldier: A Biography of Major General E.R.S. Canby, 1817-1873 (Arthur H. Clark Glendale CA 1959 first hardcover — the Canby biography and another scarce Arthur H. Clark specialty monograph). The Confederate Territory of Arizona is also documented in extensive NM Historical Review articles from the 1930s-1980s by Loomis Ganaway and others.

The Official Records and Primary-Source Infrastructure

The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion (U.S. War Department, Government Printing Office, 128 volumes, 1880-1901) is the essential primary-source infrastructure for any serious NM Civil War research. The NM campaign reports are concentrated in Series I, Volume 9 (Western Department operations) and contain the official reports from Canby, Sibley, Slough, Chivington, Scurry, Green, and all the principal commanders on both sides, along with regimental returns, supply and casualty reports, and the official correspondence between the field commanders and their departmental superiors. The Official Records are available in the standard Government Printing Office bound volumes (finding individual campaign volumes at auction is straightforward; complete sets are less common), in the National Historical Society's 1970s photomechanical reprint set, and digitally through the Making of America project at Cornell and HathiTrust. Collector interest in the NM-volume Official Records is driven by completeness and condition of the original GPO binding; a fine original binding Series I Volume 9 is a Tier 2 acquisition.

Alvin Josephy's The Civil War in the American West (Alfred A. Knopf 1991 first hardcover, large-format with period photographs and maps) provides the best narrative overview of all western Civil War theaters including New Mexico, placing the Sibley campaign in the context of the simultaneous Confederate operations in Missouri, Arkansas, and Indian Territory. Josephy was the most accomplished popular historian of the American West in the late twentieth century; this was his last major work before his death in 2005. The Knopf 1991 first hardcover with original dust jacket is a Tier 2 acquisition; the Vintage trade paperback is the standard working-library edition.

Sesquicentennial Publications, 2011-2015

The 150th anniversary of the 1861-1862 campaign generated a substantial wave of academic and popular-press publications that represents the most recent major period of NM Civil War publishing activity. Key sesquicentennial-period publications include: Don E. Alberts's The Battle of Glorieta: Union Victory in the West reprinting and extended bibliography (Texas A&M University Press sesquicentennial paperback 2011); New Mexico Civil War Council publications including battlefield-guide pamphlets for Valverde, Glorieta Pass, Apache Canyon, and Peralta; the Museum of New Mexico / New Mexico History Museum sesquicentennial exhibition catalog and associated publications; expanded National Park Service interpretive materials for the Glorieta Battlefield National Historic Landmark within Pecos National Historical Park; Bureau of Land Management Fort Craig National Historic Site interpretive expansions; the New Mexico Historical Review sesquicentennial issue (2012) with new scholarly articles on the campaign; and the Fort Craig Foundation's commemorative publications.

The sesquicentennial publications are Tier 3 working acquisitions — accessible, substantial, and useful for the working researcher and general NM Civil War library, but not the trophy acquisitions that the Hall 1960, Thompson 1987, and Hollister 1863/1949 occupy. The exception is any sesquicentennial publication issued in genuinely limited editions with specific institutional affiliation (Fort Craig Foundation limited-edition hardcovers, New Mexico Civil War Council commemorative publications in small print runs); these are Tier 2 regional ephemera acquisitions in the same tradition as the Whitford 1906 State Historical Society Denver first.

Institutional Holdings

Four institutions hold the essential New Mexico Civil War research collections. The New Mexico State Records Center and Archives (Santa Fe) holds the territorial government records of the Civil War period including Canby's correspondence with the New Mexico territorial civil government, Governor Henry Connelly's papers, and the records of the First New Mexico Volunteer Infantry. The Palace of the Governors / New Mexico History Museum (Santa Fe) holds the principal New Mexico historical photography collection, period maps and documents, and Civil War-era material culture (weapons, equipment, uniforms) in the museum's collection, along with one of the strongest New Mexico Civil War research libraries in the state. The UNM Center for Southwest Research (Albuquerque) holds the most extensive academic research collection in New Mexico including the complete run of the New Mexico Historical Review, extensive manuscript collections from New Mexico historians including Marc Simmons and Jacqueline Meketa, and the standard reference library for NM Civil War research. The Glorieta Battlefield National Historic Landmark, interpreted within Pecos National Historical Park (Pecos NM, National Park Service), includes a visitor center with battlefield interpretation, period maps, artifact displays, and one of the most complete NM Civil War popular-press bibliographies in an NPS interpretive context; the park's research library is accessible to researchers by appointment.

Fort Union National Monument (Mora County NM, National Park Service) — the massive Union supply depot on the Santa Fe Trail that was the logistical anchor of the Union defense of New Mexico Territory throughout the Civil War period — holds substantial Civil War-period artifact collections and interpretive materials. Fort Craig National Historic Site (Socorro County NM, Bureau of Land Management) preserves the adobe ruins of the fort adjacent to the Valverde Battlefield. The Colorado State Archives and the History Colorado Center (Denver) hold the principal 1st Colorado Volunteer Infantry records including the muster rolls and service records that are essential for Glorieta Pass regimental research.

Five Identification Problems

Problem one: Hall Sibley's New Mexico Campaign 1960 UT Press first authentication. The 1960 University of Texas Press first hardcover is the canonical first and the principal collecting target. Later printings: UT Press subsequent hardcover printings (1963, 1965, 1968) and a paperback reprint. Authentication: first-edition statement on copyright page; the period-style map inserts; original UT Press cloth binding. Ex-library copies dominate the surviving supply but are substantially discounted from fine copies; a fine or near-fine copy in original dust jacket is the target acquisition and trades significantly above ex-library condition.

Problem two: Hollister Boldly They Rode 1863 vs 1949 vs subsequent. The 1863 Loveland CO first printing is the definitive primary-source artifact and essentially institutional — fewer than a dozen confirmed surviving copies. The 1949 Lakewood Golden Press republication is the principal accessible collector target; it was published in a small edition and is itself scarce. Subsequent reprints include a 1959 edition and various twentieth-century facsimile printings. The 1949 Lakewood edition is the Tier 1 accessible target; any edition purporting to be the 1863 first should receive provenance scrutiny commensurate with a genuinely rare item.

Problem three: Thompson Sibley 1987 Kansas first vs 1996 North Texas revised. The 1987 University Press of Kansas first hardcover is the collector's preferred acquisition; the 1996 University of North Texas Press revised edition (retitled Confederate General of the West) incorporates substantial additional research and is the standard scholarly reference. Both editions are Tier 2 acquisitions; Thompson-signed copies of either edition are available and trade Tier 1.

Problem four: Meketa Legacy of Honor 1986 UNM first vs subsequent. The 1986 UNM Press first hardcover with original dust jacket is the standard Tier 2 acquisition. UNM Press produced a paperback edition subsequently; the first hardcover is the collecting target. The book is sought across three distinct collecting communities (Civil War, Hispanic New Mexico history, First New Mexico Volunteer Infantry regimental) and trades actively at specialist Western Americana dealers.

Problem five: Official Records NM volumes in original GPO vs reprint binding. The original U.S. Government Printing Office bound volumes of the Official Records (1880-1901) are distinguished from the 1970s National Historical Society photomechanical reprint set by binding style, paper quality, and printing characteristics. Original GPO bindings are preferred for completeness-of-set acquisitions; individual volumes in fine original GPO binding for Series I Volume 9 (the NM campaign) are Tier 2 acquisitions. The National Historical Society reprint set is the Tier 3 working-library standard.

Three-Tier Collector Market

Tier 1 trophy (mid-three-figure to low-four-figure or higher): Martin Hardwick Hall Sibley's New Mexico Campaign University of Texas Press 1960 first hardcover with original dust jacket (the foundational scholarly account, genuinely scarce); Ovando Hollister Boldly They Rode 1863 Loveland CO first printing (when it appears — institutional provenance only, estimate four-to-five figure); 1949 Lakewood Golden Press Boldly They Rode republication (scarce Colorado small-press edition); William Clarke Whitford Colorado Volunteers in the Civil War 1906 Denver State Historical Society first edition (scarce institutional publication); Edwin Sabin Kit Carson Days A.C. McClurg Chicago 1914 two-volume first set in original binding; signed Jerry D. Thompson Henry Hopkins Sibley University Press of Kansas 1987 first hardcover; signed Hampton Sides Blood and Thunder Doubleday 2006 first hardcover; signed Marc Simmons Kit Carson and His Three Wives UNM Press 2003 first hardcover; Max L. Heyman Jr. Prudent Soldier: A Biography of Major General E.R.S. Canby Arthur H. Clark Glendale 1959 first hardcover (scarce Arthur H. Clark specialty monograph); Aurora Hunt The Army of the Pacific Arthur H. Clark Glendale 1951 first hardcover (scarce Arthur H. Clark specialty).

Tier 2 collector targets (low-to-mid three-figure): Unsigned Tier 1 firsts in fine condition; John Taylor Bloody Valverde UNM Press 1995 first hardcover with original dust jacket; Don E. Alberts The Battle of Glorieta Texas A&M 1998 first hardcover (unsigned); Thomas S. Edrington and John Taylor The Battle of Glorieta Pass UNM Press 1998 first hardcover; Jerry D. Thompson Henry Hopkins Sibley University Press of Kansas 1987 first hardcover (unsigned); Jacqueline Meketa Legacy of Honor UNM Press 1986 first hardcover; Alvin Josephy The Civil War in the American West Alfred A. Knopf 1991 first hardcover; Harvey L. Carter Dear Old Kit University of Oklahoma Press 1968 first hardcover; Frank McNitt Navajo Wars UNM Press 1972 first hardcover; David Remley Kit Carson University of Oklahoma Press 2011 first hardcover; the Official Records Series I Volume 9 in original GPO fine binding; Thompson Confederate Lawman Texas Western Press 1994 first; Thompson Civil War in the Southwest Texas A&M 2001 first hardcover.

Tier 3 working library (upper-two-figure to low-three-figure): Subsequent printings of all above; Marc Simmons Kit Carson and His Three Wives later UNM Press printings; Hampton Sides Blood and Thunder Anchor trade paperback; Josephy Civil War in the American West Vintage paperback; UNM Press paperback reissues of Taylor and Edrington-Taylor Glorieta works; National Historical Society Official Records reprint set individual volumes; New Mexico Historical Review bound annual volumes with NM Civil War articles; Sunstone Press Marc Simmons Trail Dust column collections with Civil War material; National Park Service Pecos National Historical Park Glorieta battlefield interpretive publications; Fort Craig BLM interpretive publications; New Mexico Civil War Council sesquicentennial (2011-2015) commemorative publications; Friends of Fort Craig publications; Colorado Historical Society and History Colorado Center 1st Colorado Volunteer Infantry exhibition catalog publications; Daughters of the Confederacy New Mexico chapter historical publications; regimental-history pamphlets and booklets from the sesquicentennial period.

NMLP Intake Position

New Mexico Civil War books arrive in NMLP donation pickups with meaningful frequency given the depth of the New Mexico historical library tradition. Donor demographic concentration: Albuquerque-Santa Fe-Las Vegas Anglo and Hispanic professional retirees with substantial NM history libraries accumulated over 20-40 year careers in academia, law, medicine, and government; estates of New Mexico History Museum, Palace of the Governors, and Museum of New Mexico Foundation members; UNM faculty and staff estates with Southwest history research library accumulations; Civil War Preservation Trust (now American Battlefield Trust) member households in the Santa Fe-Glorieta Pass-Pecos-Las Vegas corridor; Sons of Confederate Veterans and Daughters of the Confederacy New Mexico chapter member estates; Kit Carson Historic Sites Foundation and Kit Carson Home and Museum (Taos) supporter households; the Navajo Long Walk scholarly-and-community collecting constituency; Friends of Fort Craig member households in the Socorro-Fort Craig corridor; New Mexico Civil War Council member households; Colorado history collecting households with 1st Colorado Volunteer Infantry regimental research interests.

NMLP routes Tier 1 trophy items (Hall Sibley's New Mexico Campaign 1960 UT Press first, Hollister Boldly They Rode 1863 or 1949 editions, Whitford Colorado Volunteers 1906 Denver first, Sabin Kit Carson Days 1914 two-volume first, Heyman Prudent Soldier 1959 Arthur H. Clark first, Hunt Army of the Pacific 1951 Arthur H. Clark first, signed Thompson and Simmons firsts, signed Sides Blood and Thunder firsts) to specialist Western Americana and Civil War dealers (Heritage Auctions Western Americana, Cowan's Western Americana, Brian Lebel's Old West Auction, William Reese Company New Haven CT, Gregory Scott Books, Calhoun's Books, specialist military-history dealers with Western American focus). Tier 2 trade firsts route through SellBooksABQ standard hand-sort with Civil War collector outreach. Tier 3 paperback reprints and sesquicentennial publications — supported by donor contributions — route to APS Title I schools (NM history curriculum includes Civil War New Mexico content), the New Mexico History Museum research library, the UNM Center for Southwest Research, Fort Craig National Historic Site BLM visitor center donations, Pecos National Historical Park bookstore donations when accepting, Little Free Library stocking across the Santa Fe-Glorieta-Las Vegas corridor, and Bernalillo County Adult and Family Literacy Programs.

External References

• Pecos National Historical Park (NPS) — Glorieta Battlefield National Historic Landmark
• Fort Union National Monument (NPS) — Union supply-depot anchor of the NM defense
• Fort Craig National Historic Site (BLM) — site of the Valverde defense
• University of New Mexico Press — publisher of Taylor Bloody Valverde, Edrington-Taylor Glorieta Pass, Meketa Legacy of Honor
• Texas A&M University Press — publisher of Alberts The Battle of Glorieta
• Wikipedia: Battle of Glorieta Pass
• Wikipedia: Battle of Valverde
• Wikipedia: Henry Hopkins Sibley
• Wikipedia: Kit Carson
• Wikipedia: Edward Canby
• Wikipedia: John Chivington
• Wikipedia: James Henry Carleton
• Wikipedia: Ovando James Hollister
• Wikipedia: Confederate Territory of Arizona

Related on This Site

• NM Railroad Books — AT&SF Glorieta Pass alignment crosses the 1862 battlefield corridor
• Billy the Kid Bibliography — post-Civil War New Mexico violence and Lincoln County War
• Lew Wallace and Ben-Hur — Union General Wallace was NM Territorial Governor 1878-1881
• NM Spanish Colonial Historians — the pre-Civil War Hispano context
• NM Native American Literature — Navajo Long Walk and post-Civil War Dinetah context
• Navajo Weaving Books — Bosque Redondo period and post-Long Walk weaving tradition
• Manhattan Project & Los Alamos Books — the next great New Mexico military-history collecting field
• Book Collecting Glossary — points-of-issue, closed signature pools, edition terminology

Related: Billy the Kid, the Lincoln County War & New Mexico Outlaw Literature: A Collector's Authority Guide

Related: John Nichols & The Milagro Beanfield War: A Collector's Authority Guide to the New Mexico Trilogy, the Taos Years, and the Complete Bibliography