New Mexico Battleground Marks Western Limit of Confederate Thrust : History: Glorieta Pass was as far as Dixie went toward conquering the riches of the territories. The site will be part of a national historical park.

The Battle of Glorieta Pass is still being fought nearly 130 years after the bloody Civil War encounter. Historians can’t agree as to who won.

One outcome is clear: The National Park Service is a winner. President Bush has authorized a $400,000 appropriation to buy the battleground on Pigeon’s Ranch, which is privately owned, a year after he signed a bill creating the Glorieta Unit of the Pecos National Historical Park in northern New Mexico.

Linda Stoll, superintendent of the park, says that should be enough to buy 10 acres of the battlefield from the nonprofit Conservation Fund, plus the adjacent parcels.

But who won at Glorieta on March 28, 1862, in the so-called Gettysburg of the West?

The battle was significant because it was as far as Confederate troops got in their plan to conquer the gold and silver fields of Colorado, Nevada and California and to seize the ports of Los Angeles and San Diego.

Their advance halted that cold day in a little valley less than 20 miles east of Santa Fe among rolling hills bisected by the Santa Fe Trail, now New Mexico Highway 50. At the time, the land was owned by rancher Alexander Valle, a Frenchman nicknamed “Pigeon.” Valle’s adobe still stands beside the road.

Marc Simmons of Cerrillos, author of 25 books on New Mexico history, says the Union forces retreated that day, leaving the battlefield to the Confederates.

“Whoever holds the battlefield after the battle is the victor,” Simmons says.

“Yes, but ,” says historian Don Alberts, author of “Rebels on the Rio Grande.”

“The case could be made that the reason the Union guys went back to their camp is that’s where their camp was, where their food was. Certainly the Texans weren’t defeated at the main Pigeon’s Ranch battle, but it’s hardly a victory, either. Therefore it’s a drawn engagement as far as I’m concerned.”

Many believe the Battle of Glorieta Pass was decided 3 miles west of Pigeon’s Ranch, where a Union flank of about 300 men destroyed a Confederate supply convoy of 70 to 80 wagons.

“They lost everything they owned,” Alberts said.

The rebels pulled back to Texas shortly thereafter.

“You don’t retreat 1,000 miles after a great victory. They did well, but it wasn’t a great victory. It was a draw between two parties that were pretty closely matched,” Alberts said.

On each side 46 to 48 soldiers were killed and nearly 100 were wounded.

Wearing the gray that day were four Texas regiments under Maj. Gen. Henry Sibley.

In the blue were regular Army troops from the Ft. Union garrison and the 1st Colorado Volunteers under Col. John Slough, who hurried south to cut off the Texans’ thrust toward Ft. Union. The now-crumbling fort, 60 miles northeast of Glorieta, was the largest Union supply depot in the Southwest.

Wess Rodgers of Albuquerque counts himself a loyal Southerner, but he believes the Confederates were clearly defeated at Glorieta Pass and there is no way to say the flanking force was not part of the overall battle.

“Those Yanks fought like panthers, no doubt about it,” Rodgers said. “A couple of fellows have accused me of disloyalty. . . . It has come down to name-calling and sneers in public.

“I don’t think giving Glorieta to the Federals reflects badly at all on Johnny Reb. They were fighting a very well-trained foe, better armed and equipped and fed.”

Of the Pigeons’ Ranch battle itself, he said: “The federals were driven from the field on a dead, bloody run. That phase of the battle was very clearly a Confederate victory.”

Texas-born Thomas Edrington, a weapons evaluator at Sandia National Laboratories, N.M., says that even with the loss of the wagon train, the Confederates won at Glorieta.

Of the supply train fiasco, he said: “I suspect it was significant, but it was not a show-stopper.”

Sibley ordered the subsequent retreat not because of Glorieta, he said, but because Col. Edward Canby had moved his Union forces north from Fort Craig, N.M., to challenge the Confederates.

Alberts maintains that Sibley had to withdraw when he couldn’t resupply the troops.

“If they had found food and ammunition and clothing in Santa Fe, they would have continued the campaign, very likely, but New Mexico didn’t have those kinds of supplies,” he said.

Edrington, whose great-grandfather fought for the Confederacy, doubts that the South ever had the resources to conquer the West, as Sibley planned.

“To somehow imagine that with 2,500 troops all these things would fall into place, and that he could occupy the entire West, was a pipe dream,” Edrington said.

Glorieta, however, was a day of glory for the South, he said.

Chuck Counts, whose ancestors were Union soldiers in Indiana, says he, like Alberts, regards Glorieta as “a tactical draw.”

“I know at the end of the battle, the Confederates were pushing the federals,” Counts said in a telephone interview from Aurora, Colo. “But I know Col. Slough felt he had accomplished his orders, which were to slow the Confederates down and prevent them from getting to Ft. Union. So he was withdrawing his men, much to their chagrin. They wanted to continue the battle.”

Counts is a member of the modern 1st Colorado Volunteers, which annually participates in a Glorieta re-enactment. He said plans are under way for a 130th anniversary re-enactment next March 28.

It’s common, Alberts warned, for amateur historians with preconceptions to take details out of context or to read flowery field reports too literally.

“The legitimate use of history is not as propaganda, yet that’s its most popular use,” he said.

The plan to conquer the West reflected such wishful thinking, he said.

“It had rich potential but the potential wasn’t realizable,” Alberts said. “The Confederacy never again came here. This always remained Union territory.

“There was a chance--very slim--of this whole Southwest becoming the westward extension of the Confederacy to the Pacific, and with it rich mines, transcontinental rail routes and warm-water ports.”