The Civil War in the Western Territories: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah

1960 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 630
Author(s):  
Robert G. Athearn ◽  
Ray C. Colton
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
Civil War

Theater of a Separate War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas W. Cutrer
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Military History ◽  
Indian Territory ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Desert ◽  
North And South

Though its most famous battles were waged in the East at Antietam, Gettysburg, and throughout Virginia, the Civil War was clearly a conflict that raged across a continent. From cotton-rich Texas and the fields of Kansas through Indian Territory and into the high desert of New Mexico, the trans-Mississippi theater was site of major clashes from the war’s earliest days through the surrenders of Confederate generals Edmund Kirby Smith and Stand Waite in June 1865. In this comprehensive military history of the war west of the Mississippi River, Thomas W. Cutrer shows that the theater’s distance from events in the East does not diminish its importance to the unfolding of the larger struggle. Theater of a Separate War details the battles between North and South in these far-flung regions, assessing the complex political and military strategies on both sides. While providing the definitive history of the rise and fall of the South’s armies in the far West, Cutrer shows, even if the region’s influence on the Confederacy’s cause waned, its role persisted well beyond the fall of Richmond and Lee’s surrender to Grant. In this masterful study, Cutrer offers a fresh perspective on an often overlooked aspect of Civil War history.

scholarly journals William Maurice Ewing, 12 May 1906 - 4 May 1974

1975 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 268-311 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
High Plains ◽  
The South ◽  
Good Education ◽  
West Texas ◽  
Married Life ◽  
Texas Panhandle

William Maurice Ewing was born on 12 May 1906 in Lockney, a town of about 1200 inhabitants in the Texas panhandle. When he grew up he rarely used the name William and was always known as Maurice. His father’s parents came from Kentucky, which they left after the defeat of the South in the Civil War. His mother’s family came to Texas from Illinois and Arkansas. Both families were among the earliest settlers along the edge of the high plains of northern Texas. His father Floyd Ford Ewing was a gentle, handsome, intellectual man with a liking for literature and music, whom fate had cast in the unsuitable roles of cowboy, dryland farmer and dealer in hardware and farm implements. He is spoken of with great affection by all who knew him;he was a talented violinist and also enjoyed fiddling in the Southern style with the instrument on his knee. His mother (born Hope Hamilton) was a small energetic woman. She married when she was 19 and her husband 22; they started their married life with a homesteading venture in New Mexico. The story of the ensuing disasters has been told with great skill and sympathy by Maurice’s brother, Floyd, who was a professor of history at Wichita Falls, Texas (F. Ewing 1963). In 1904 they returned to Texas. Maurice was the fourth of ten children. The three oldest had died very young in New Mexico so that he grew up as the eldest of seven children. Mrs Ewing was determined that her children should receive a good education and should have a wider choice of careers than was to be found in a small west Texas town. In fact all but one, the eldest daughter Ethel, went to university and had professional or academic careers. Ethel married very young and for many years was a most successful teacher of the piano in Tulia, Texas.

New Mexico and the Central Great Plains in the Civil War

2021 ◽  
pp. 168-186
Author(s):  
Stacey L. Smith
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Great Plains ◽  
Military Force ◽  
White Americans ◽  
American Empire ◽  
American States ◽  
Political Clout ◽  
New Mexico Territory

This chapter investigates campaigns of the American Civil War in New Mexico Territory and the Great Plains. It contends that the U.S. federal government fought a multifront war during the 1860s that spanned the Confederate South and the American states and territories of the Far West. The war in the Far West aimed to establish U.S. territorial sovereignty and political authority over the nation’s vast North American empire. Across the 1860s, federal officials sought to defend the West against Confederate invaders, compel Native Americans to submit to U.S. rule, force Spanish Mexican citizens to give up systems of Indian slavery and peonage, and rein in rogue White Americans living in federal territories. Federal officials, however, often lacked the political clout or military force to achieve these goals. The Civil War in the Far West reveals the unevenness and weakness of the American state in the mid-nineteenth century.

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