`Gettysburg Of West' Winner Still Debated -- Pigeon's Ranch Fight Ended Confederate Advance

GLORIETA, N.M. - The Battle of Glorieta Pass is still being fought nearly 130 years after the bloody Civil War encounter. Historians can't agree who won.

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

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 soldiers 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.

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 said.

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," Alberts said. "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."

And many believe the Battle of Glorieta Pass was really decided three miles west of Pigeon's Ranch, where a Union flanking force 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 a thousand 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 says.

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

Wess Rodgers of Albuquerque counts himself as a loyal Southerner. But he says the Confederates were clearly defeated at Glorieta Pass and there's 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.

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

About the supply-train fiasco, he said, "I suspect it was significant, but it was not a show-stopper."

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

But Alberts says Sibley had to withdraw when he couldn't resupply.

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

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

But 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. "But I know Col. (John) Slough felt he had accomplished his orders, which were to slow the Confederates down and prevent them from getting to Fort Union. So he was withdrawing his men, much to their chagrin. They wanted to continue the battle."

It's common, Alberts warns, 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 planned conquest of the West reflected such wishful thinking, he says.

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