June 22, 1997
'Bull' Took Post by Horns
By James Abarr
Of the Journal
Lt. Col. Edwin Voss Sumner was a man with an unenviable task.
As commander of the newly-created Military Department of New Mexico, Sumner had a directive from his boss, Secretary of War Charles Conrad, instructing him to "revise the whole system of military defense" within the department, "making such changes as you may deem advisable."
It was the summer of 1851, and New Mexico, a new U.S. territory, had been ceded to the United States by Mexico only three years earlier. There was little in the way of a formal military structure. Fort Marcy, built in Santa Fe in 1846 when the city was occupied by U.S. forces during the Mexican War, was the only permanent military post in the territory — which in 1851 included Arizona.
Other troops were garrisoned in a number of towns in quarters leased from civilians — a system deemed both expensive and detrimental to efficiency and morale.
Col. Sumner, a hero of the Mexican War, was known throughout the Army as "Bull," a sobriquet acquired because of his booming parade-ground voice. He was a crusty, by-the-book veteran of 33 years in the military, and he complied vigorously with Conrad's order. Within a month of assuming command in New Mexico, Sumner reported to Washington:
"My first step was to break up the post at Santa Fe, that sink of vice and extravagance, and to remove the troops and public property to this place."
Sumner's "place" was the new post of Fort Union, which from humble beginnings and an initial garrison of a mere 50 men of the 1st Dragoon Regiment, grew to become the largest and most important military station in the Southwest. Its infantry, cavalry and quartermaster units would serve the nation for the next 40 years.
Col. Sumner was a New Englander, and to show where he stood in the growing dispute between North and South, he chose the name Fort Union.
Bedbugs and battles
Sumner also established four other forts in New Mexico as part of his reorganization program, but it would be the post founded in the broad Mora River Valley, 26 miles north of Las Vegas, that would be his legacy.
In its formative years, Fort Union was a modest, if not crude, installation of 30 structures built by the soldiers themselves after Sumner fired civilian workers in an economy move. Barracks and other facilities were constructed of unbarked pine logs, and living conditions did little to endear the soldiers to life on the frontier.
A surgeon stationed at the fort in 1856 offered this appraisal:
"The buildings ... widely separated, caused the post to present more the appearance of a village rather than an Army post. Unseasoned, unhewn and unbarked pine logs are rapidly decaying.
"In many of the logs of the house which I occupy, an ordinary nail will not hold, to such an extent has the timber decayed. The unbarked logs afford excellent hiding places for that annoying and disgusting insect, the Cimes Lectularius (bedbug)."
Bedbugs aside, the men of Fort Union had more serious things to occupy them.
Throughout the 1850s, the post's Dragoon companies mounted major Indian campaigns against hostile Jicarilla Apache, Ute, Kiowa and Comanche bands across northern and eastern New Mexico.
In addition, Fort Union guarded the western segment of the Santa Fe Trail, the vital supply route linking New Mexico to the rest of the nation.
Near Fort Dodge, Kan., 250 miles northeast of Fort Union, the heavily-traveled trail split into two routes — the mountain branch west into Colorado and then south over Raton Pass into New Mexico, and the Cimarron Cutoff, a shorter but more perilous passage that angled southwest through Indian country on a direct line to New Mexico.
Near Fort Union, the two routes rejoined for the final 90-mile leg into Santa Fe. Today, deep ruts left by the thousands of wagons that once plied the famous trail, blazed in 1822, are clearly visible.
Confederate threat
In 1861, Indian campaigns and protecting travelers took a back seat as Fort Union faced a more immediate and vital mission. The Civil War had flared in the East and the Confederacy harbored the dream of a Western empire.
Weaver of the dream was Henry Hopkins Sibley, a native of Louisiana who in July 1861 had been a major commanding Fort Union. Sibley was one of many Southern-born officers on frontier service who resigned their federal commissions to cast their fortunes with the South.
Hurrying to Richmond, Va., Sibley sold Confederate President Jefferson Davis on a grandiose scheme to seize New Mexico and the gold and silver mines of Colorado to enhance the Rebel treasury. He then envisioned the capture of California, thus extending the Confederacy from ocean to ocean.
With a commission as brigadier general in the Confederate Army, Sibley traveled to San Antonio, Texas, where he raised a 3,500-man brigade of cavalry. In early 1862, he marched on New Mexico.
Fort Fillmore, north of Las Cruces, surrendered to Sibley without a fight, and the Texans advanced up the Rio Grande Valley to deal with the mixed garrison of federal and militia forces at Fort Craig, south of Socorro. In the ensuing two-day Battle of Valverde, a few miles from the post, Sibley brushed aside the Union forces and continued north to occupy Socorro, Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
Only the 700-man garrison at Fort Union was left to bar Sibley's path to Colorado.
Help from the north
As the Texas regiments marched northeast from Santa Fe, Fort Union prepared for battle. The original post was abandoned as undefensible and a new "Star Fort," a massive earthwork of bunkers, redoubts and gun enplacements laid out in the form of a five-pointed star, took shape a mile to the east.
Col. Gabriel R. Paul, post commander, and his outnumbered forces dug in to await the Confederate attack.
To the north, meanwhile, the Territory of Colorado was not unaware of the threat it faced, and officials there swiftly dispatched a volunteer regiment of infantry and cavalry to the aid of Fort Union. When the "Pike's Peakers" of fiery Col. John P. Slough arrived after a 92-mile forced march through a blizzard, it was decided that the federals — now 1,500 strong — would march south from Fort Union and meet Sibley in the field.
On March 26, 1862, the two armies collided in Glorieta Pass, 25 miles southeast of Santa Fe.
In a seesaw three-day battle, which historians have dubbed the "Gettysburg of the West," the Texas invasion — like Robert E. Lee's 1863 thrust into Pennsylvania — was blunted, and Sibley's dream evaporated in the pine-covered canyons of northern New Mexico.
With his forces checked and his irreplaceable supply train destroyed in a surprise flank attack by federal cavalry, Sibley abandoned his offensive and retreated down the Rio Grande Valley to El Paso.
As far as New Mexico was concerned, the Civil War was over.
In the aftermath of Glorieta, a defeated Confederate soldier lammented: "If it hadn't been for those devils from Pike's Peak, this country would have been ours."
Indian campaigns
With New Mexico now safe from Rebel incursions, Fort Union returned to its earlier role of Indian fighting.
Brig. Gen. James H. Carlton, an aggressive and veteran campaigner who now commanded the Department of New Mexico, ordered maximum efforts against the Mescalero Apaches, Navajos and Comanches.
Carlton called on Col. Christopher "Kit" Carson, commanding the 1st N.M. Volunteer Cavalry, to be the mailed fist with which he would strike the hostiles.
Carson, a frontier scout, trapper, mountain man and Indian fighter of legendary proportions, responded from his base at Fort Union with devastating blows against the Mescaleros in 1862-63 and the Navajos in 1864. In the latter campaign, Carson invaded the Navajo heartland in eastern Arizona, defeated the tribe and sent 8,000 men, women and children into captivity at Fort Sumner, in eastern New Mexico, where they were held until 1868.
Even as the Indian campaigns raged, a major building program began at Fort Union. A site near the "Star Fort" was selected, and between 1863 and 1869, a massive new installation — the third Fort Union — took shape.
It actually was three facilities in one — the Post of Fort Union, the Fort Union Arsenal and the Fort Union Quartermaster Depot, which became the major supply point for forts throughout the Southwest.
Buildings in the new post were in sharp contrast to the 1851 log fort. They were constructed in the Territorial architecture which was to become popular throughout New Mexico. Walls were of adobe, trimmed with red brick, and foundations were of stone.
A spacious parade ground, 1,500 feet long and 300 feet wide, separated a line of officers quarters on the west and enlisted men's barracks to the east. Other facilties included a five-cell stone military prison, quarters for enlisted men with families, laundress quarters, a bakery, telegraph office and stables and corrals for more than 200 horses.
Set slightly apart from these structures was a 36-bed hospital staffed by two surgeons. It was the best-equipped hospital in the territory in its day.
In the quartermaster depot were machine shops, mechanics corrals and massive warehouses, which could hold many tons of military equipment and supplies.
Contrary to the Hollywood stereotype of military posts on the Western frontier, Fort Union was not surrounded by high outer walls with cannon-studded towers — few forts in the West were.
Indians generally waged guerrilla warfare in small, swift-moving bands, and attacking a post the size of Fort Union was not in the equation.
Writers and movie-makers have attached much glamour to the life of the frontier soldier, but in reality, duty at the Western posts was hard and dreary. Indian campaigns and patrols offered relief from the humdrum of a garrison life that varied little from day to day, but they certainly added nothing to the soldier's comfort.
Said one historian:
"Many were immigrants, chiefly German and Irish only recently off the boat... .
"Meager pay, monotonous food, hard work and, above all, strict discipline made the private's lot an unenviable one. Officers wielded awesome authority and awarded cruel punishments for minor infractions. ... Desertions were common."
In 1879, the Santa Fe Railway reached Las Vegas, an event that effectively ended the era of the Santa Fe Trail and its countless trains of ox-drawn wagons. This, coupled with the end of Indian wars in New Mexico, diminished Fort Union's usefulness.
In 1883, the mammoth post was reduced to caretaker status.
It took the Army another eight years to order abandonment of the fort, but in May 1891, the order came and the last soldiers — a lieutenant and 19 men of the 10th Infantry Regiment — marched away to other duties.
After 40 years of service, one of the longest tenures for a military installation on the Southwest frontier, Fort Union passed into history.
For decades, the post, built where the seemingly endless plains of northeast New Mexico meet the lofty Sangre de Cristo Mountains, lapsed into ruins. Roofs decayed, adobe walls melted under the onslaught of wind, rain and snow, and grass grew high on a parade ground where many soldiers of the West had marched.
In 1954, Congress established Fort Union National Monument, and the National Park Service moved in with a four-year program to stabilize the ruins and halt further deterioration.
Today, the venerable post is a mere shadow of its former glory, but even in ruins, it stands as an impressive reminder of New Mexico's heritage and the turbulent days of the American frontier era.
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