Illusions of Empire: The Civil War and Reconstruction in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands 9780812298147

Citation preview

Illusions of Empire

AMER ICA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Series editors Brian DeLay Steven Hahn Amy Dru Stanley America in the Nineteenth Century proposes a rigorous rethinking of this most formative period in U.S. history. Books in the series will be wide-ranging and eclectic, with an interest in politics at all levels, culture and capitalism, race and slavery, law, gender, and the environment, and regional and transnational history. The series aims to expand the scope of nineteenth-century historiography by bringing classic questions into dialogue with innovative perspectives, approaches, and methodologies.

Illusions of Empire The Civil War and Reconstruction in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

William S. Kiser

Universit y of Pennsylvania Press Phil adelphia

Copyright © 2022 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8122-5351-1

For my daughters, Cassidy and Allyson

CONTENTS

Introduction

1

Chapter 1. The Origins of Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

9

Chapter 2. The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

32

Chapter 3. Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

65

Chapter 4. Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

100

Chapter 5. The Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy in Northeast Mexico

128

Conclusion

159

Notes

167

Bibliography

223

Index

249

Acknowledgments

261

Introduction

Just one week before the Confederate siege on Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward dispatched Thomas Corwin to Mexico City on a diplomatic mission. Lacking reliable information on the state of affairs in Mexico—which was just emerging from its War of the Reform—Lincoln and Seward may have equivocated on some policy details, but they agreed on the overall importance of Corwin’s ambassadorial assignment.1 Seward knew that the crisis of Southern secession was impeding relations with Mexico, and he predicted that “civil commotions in our own country” would likely spill across the border. Realizing that Mexico might be drawn into the American conflict—either directly as an allied combatant or indirectly for strategic purposes—the secretary envisioned a disastrous scenario wherein the violent division of the United States would leave Mexico vulnerable to the aggression of European monarchies as well as the Southern Confederacy. With these weighty possibilities in mind, the prophetic Seward and the intuitive Lincoln saw the mission to Mexico as “the most interesting and important one within the whole circle of our international relations,” and they implored Corwin to “be just, liberal, frank, and magnanimous toward Mexico . . . it can never be an enemy.” The abolitionist New York newspaperman Horace Greeley agreed, proclaiming that the mission to Mexico “may become the most important of all in our foreign relations.”2 Corwin spoke almost no Spanish, but he had political influence as a former U.S. congressman and Whig governor of Ohio, and he also commanded respect in Mexico City because of his impassioned speeches in 1847 protesting the MexicanAmerican War.3 Eight hundred miles away from Lincoln’s White House, in the first Confederate capital of Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs were also contemplating foreign relations.4 Secretary of State Toombs believed that Mexico would make a logical ally because “the institution of domestic slavery in one country and that of peonage in the other establish between

2

Introduction

them such a similarity in their system of labor.” Rebel leaders met in May 1861 and chose John T. Pickett as a special agent to negotiate a treaty, hoping that he could “cultivate the most amicable relations with Mexico.”5 Pickett previously served as a U.S. consular agent at Vera Cruz and seemed well acquainted with Mexican politics. But he also ridiculed the people of that country for their “gross ignorance and superstition,” felt that the Confederacy had a preordained right to absorb Mexican land for the expansion of slavery, and thought that Rebel troops ought to overthrow President Benito Juárez and reinstate the conservative faction to governance.6 Pickett’s racism, coupled with his prior complicity in filibustering, problematized meetings with Mexican officials from the outset, and the acid-tongued envoy proved to be a poor choice for such a sensitive foreign posting. His abrasive personality finally upended the mission when he beat up a Union sympathizer in a Mexico City bar, tried to elude arrest by claiming diplomatic immunity, then bribed his way out of jail while sneering that he had been compelled “to purchase a few hundred dollars’ worth of Mexican justice.”7 By that time, Pickett had been in Mexico for over four months and still had not heard a word from his Confederate overseers. He feared either that spies were intercepting his weekly reports to Richmond—which he disguised as “ordinary looking mercantile letters” sent through the British Royal Mail Steam Packet Company in Havana—or that his government had simply abandoned him.8 Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Manuel María de Zamacona considered the Rebel diplomat a nuisance, and Pickett’s insistence that the Confederacy desired “not one foot” of Mexico’s territory sounded especially ludicrous to his foreign hosts in light of antebellum Southern schemes to expand into Latin America.9 Indeed, it was Zamacona who ignored Pickett’s pleas for diplomatic immunity, believing that the Southerner made “insensible” demands on government officials as well as disingenuous claims of benevolence toward Mexico and its people.10 “This country has been the grave of diplomatists,” a disillusioned Pickett griped as he finally departed Vera Cruz in February 1862.11 Although their missions were not directly connected, Corwin and Pickett both arrived in Mexico at the dawn of the Civil War, and their activities below the border assumed great significance for the Union and the Confederacy. Aside from the timing and purpose of the trips, one remarkable commonality between Corwin and Pickett was that their respective assignments constituted the most normal diplomatic approaches to Mexico that either side would pursue during the Civil War. Outside of these two men—both of whom traveled in official State Department capacities to meet with Mexican dignitaries in

Introduction

3

pursuit of formal international arrangements—the methods that Union and Confederate operatives employed when dealing with Mexico perpetuated a kaleidoscopic array of personal scheming that originated in the antebellum decades. Nowhere would the gravity of this convoluted outreach be felt more acutely than in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, where Union agents, Confederate officers, Mexican governors, French imperialists, independent Indians, foreign filibusters, Hispanic and Tejano revolutionaries, and roving bandits competed for power on the extreme peripheries of national control. As they pursued their own ambitions, these groups promulgated some of the most idiosyncratic modes of diplomacy and intrigue that North America had yet seen, and their ability to do so stemmed from two factors: the eruption of major wars in the United States and Mexico, and the longstanding sense of regional autonomy along the border. Situated within the historiographies of nineteenth-century Mexican politics, American foreign policy, U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and the Civil War, Illusions of Empire argues for the centrality of Mexican regionalism in the course of hemispheric empire building, as longstanding divisions between centralists and federalists seeped across the border to influence Union and Confederate strategy in the Civil War as well as Greater Reconstruction initiatives during and after that war. Confederate leaders—Jefferson Davis and his secretaries of state among them—ambitiously imagined a stand-alone nation that included a Pacific coastline and portions of Mexico as slave states, and they believed that the backing of regionalist governors in Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas could not only drive that expansionist agenda but also facilitate the vital export of Southern cotton to Europe and Asia. United States officials, including Lincoln and Seward, correspondingly feared that Mexican support for the South and foreign routes around the U.S. naval blockade might tip the scales of the war and help secessionists make a reality of an empire they previously could only imagine. Furthermore, Emperor Napoleon III’s so-called Grand Design created the possibility of an alliance between the illegitimate entities of Jefferson Davis and Maximilian I of Mexico that would have expanded the American struggle into a hemispheric conflict. Unionists hoped to prevent French monarchists from creating an empire of their own in Mexico, because they believed that European footholds in the Western Hemisphere posed a direct threat to the security and sovereignty of the United States. For these reasons, the U.S.-Mexico border became a focus of international strategies in the mid-nineteenth century. To be sure, formal channels

4

Introduction

of diplomacy were retained through national embassies and local consulates. But this conventional approach usually failed to achieve the desired results— the calamitous Trent Affair of 1861 comes to mind, as does Pickett’s blundering in Mexico City and John Slidell’s abortive efforts in Paris—and national diplomacy often yielded to personal scheming. As Nathan Citino points out, “By focusing on official diplomacy, historians of American foreign relations tend to neglect behaviors on the ground and the complexity of intergroup relations carried on beneath the radar of state policy.”12 In this vein, Union and Confederate interactions with northern Mexico reveal that military commanders in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas saw their southerly neighbors as potential allies or enemies in three distinct regional campaigns: the first pertaining to the Civil War, the second relating to the French Intervention, and the third involving conflicts with Indians and outlaws.13 With this in mind, Illusions of Empire adopts a multinational view of North American borderlands and border lines, examining the ways in which Mexico’s north overlapped with America’s Southwest in the contexts of diplomacy, politics, economics, and military operations.14 Beyond these direct historical arguments, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands provide a case study for the overt and covert nature of diplomacy in regions of contested sovereignty. North American history is replete with complicated borderlands diplomacy involving various degrees of coercion and accommodation. A “middle ground” in which Great Lakes Indians met French colonizers in an environment of shared authority, temporary alliances between hegemonic indigenous confederations and imperialistic Europeans during conflicts like the French and Indian War, and treaties that Comanche leaders negotiated with Spanish officials in Texas and New Mexico during the late 1700s are just three of many examples.15 But several things made the midnineteenth-century U.S.-Mexico borderlands stand out in the longue durée of North American diplomatic history. One was the sheer number of actors involved: no less than two dozen military officers, a dozen Indian tribes or divisions of tribes, a dozen foreign consulate officials, half a dozen bandit groups, half a dozen filibusters, half a dozen revolutionary factions, half a dozen Mexican governors, half a dozen American governors, two U.S. presidents and their cabinets, a Confederate president and his cabinet, a Mexican president and his cabinet, a Mexican monarch and his court, and a French king and his court. Another was the simultaneous occurrence of major wars in the United States and Mexico that distracted each nation’s attention away from affairs on its peripheries, making those borderlands, which stretched

Introduction

5

more than two thousand miles from east to west, a place where all these actors enjoyed some degree of autonomy. The unconventional approaches to foreign relations along the border line demonstrate the complex ways in which independent local actors can influence the course of global affairs and reveal that borderlands, despite their political porosity, economic messiness, and cultural complexity, can simultaneously enable and stifle imperial growth. This offers a critical new way of thinking about Greater Reconstruction—or the dramatic nineteenth-century expansion of American capitalist empire and assimilation of minority racial groups—because postwar U.S. officials built upon their diplomatic and clandestine achievements in ways that increased federal power in the Southwest and far beyond. Critical to these arguments is the fact that many Mexicans had their own illusions of empire. Several governors, for instance, shunned their central government and opened illicit diplomatic relations with Union and Confederate agents as a method for achieving political autonomy and economic supremacy. By pursuing personal and local agendas, norteños like Ignacio Pesqueíra (Sonora), Luis Terrazas (Chihuahua), Santiago Vidaurri (Nuevo León), and Albino López (Tamaulipas) perpetuated the trend of liberal regionalism— what Mexicans called sentimiento de la región—that long defined their country’s frontier. All along Mexico’s boundary with the United States during the tumultuous 1860s, pluralities of sovereignty sprouted that encouraged gubernatorial schemes to facilitate commerce, law enforcement, seaport access, and troop movements. The extent and impact of these endeavors differed depending on the region and the individual motivations of the men involved. In Chihuahua, Terrazas sought to sustain wealth and prosperity by making trade arrangements with American agents while retaining his political clout in the state’s legislature, all of which became more complicated when Apache raiding was factored into the equation. In Sonora, Pesqueíra lacked the socioeconomic stature of Terrazas but enjoyed widespread support because he led the opposition to Mexican centralists, American filibusters, and Indian warriors. In northeast Mexico, Vidaurri was a radical separationist who aimed to carry Coahuila and Nuevo León into secession and simultaneously enrich himself by controlling the regional trade networks upon which Texas subsisted during the Civil War, but the incessant depredations of border bandits often upended best-laid plans. His counterpart in Tamaulipas, Albino López, hoped to capitalize on his state’s fortuitous geographic position along the Gulf Coast, from which point Southern cotton departed for Europe, although revolutionary factions repeatedly hampered his ambitions.16

6

Introduction

Independent Native leaders like Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Victorio of the Chiricahua Apaches also played important but indirect roles in the formulation of alliances between Americans and Mexicans. Throughout the borderlands, divisions of the Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, and Yaqui tribes pursued their own diplomatic, economic, and political objectives as they defended homelands from settler encroachment, ensured access to trade goods and livestock, and took the warpath whenever accommodation with Mexicans and Americans fell short of indigenous protocols. At the same time, opportunistic outlaws like Juan Cortina, Octaviano Zapata, and Henry Skillman commanded ruffian groups that preyed on local communities for economic gain. The havoc that Indian wars and bandit skirmishes wrought across the borderlands created an atmosphere of political uncertainty and influenced the way that Civil War operatives rationalized their positions when speaking to Mexican leaders, providing a compelling pretense for multinational agreements revolving around shared indigenous and criminal enemies. Many of the cooperative pacts between American officers and Mexican governors could not have been reached had it not been for a common interest in quelling borderlands raiding in its many forms. No other subject in U.S. history has attracted as much scholarly attention as the Civil War. One bibliographer recently estimated that at least sixty thousand books relate to that struggle, of which some fifteen thousand volumes pertain to Abraham Lincoln alone.17 If a person read one book per day every single day without pause, it would take them 164 years to consume the existing body of literature on the Civil War. But these staggering statistics are misleading, because certain aspects have received less consideration than others. Military campaigns and Indian wars in Arizona and New Mexico have garnered some attention, as borderlands and Western historians convincingly demonstrate the importance of the Far Southwest to the national struggle.18 Union and Confederate diplomacy, on the other hand, has yielded comparatively few full-length studies, and many people still think first of Europe when considering this topic.19 Although most scholarship on foreign relations covers the French Intervention and a recent transnational turn in the historiography has begun to assess the Civil War’s impact abroad, the major works in that field largely disregard Union and Confederate efforts to facilitate relations with Mexico’s northern states.20 Along these same lines, the important roles of independent Indians, Mexican revolutionaries, and border bandits receive only cursory treatment in books about Civil War diplomacy and the Far Southwestern theater of military operations.21 In short, while

Introduction

7

the work in these fields has been impressive, scholars still tend to overlook an important element of Civil War strategy that had profound implications for the course of American empire: the interconnectedness of antebellum foreign policy, wartime diplomacy, and postwar Reconstruction across the entire U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Another critical theme that emerges from illusions of empire in the borderlands involves the pursuit of Greater Reconstruction during the Civil War era. Elliott West originally described this paradigm to connect mid-nineteenthcentury histories of the South, the West, and the nation through the common strand of race, writing, “The term for this era, Reconstruction, has always thrummed with racial implications, but when broadened to apply seriously from coast-to-coast, the term strengthens and its implications deepen.”22 Elaborating on this concept with respect to U.S. wars against Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Lakota peoples on the Great Plains, Pekka Hämäläinen rightly tells us that “the separation of the histories of the Civil War and the American West [is] an artificial divide.”23 But so too is the separation of the histories of the Civil War and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands an artificial divide. Viewing the Civil War not just as a conflict over slavery in the East but also as an imperial exercise in the West and beyond, Illusions of Empire embraces an expansive vision of Greater Reconstruction in alignment with Steven Hahn’s formulation that “the issues of empire, slavery, the Pacific, and the struggle for continental and hemispheric dominance . . . place what we generally call the Civil War and Reconstruction in a rather new and arresting light.” Hahn points out that the destruction of the Confederacy, the abolition of slavery, and the expanded authority of the United States government set the country on an imperialist postwar path that went far beyond the assimilation or integration of racial groups residing within national boundaries.24 While the Greater Reconstruction literature continues to enlighten our conceptualization of federal power in the nineteenth century by examining the Civil War’s broader impact upon American Indians and Hispanics in the West as well as Latin populations in the Caribbean and Native inhabitants of Pacific islands, another important but overlooked component of this story involves the foundational role of irregular diplomacy and nation building in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. In the 1860s, Americans helped to oust French monarchists from Mexico and quelled revolutionary activities by saturating the lower Rio Grande Valley with military force, they dramatically undercut Apache power with a similar army buildup and transborder war of attrition in southern New Mexico and Arizona, and they increased their hemispheric economic dominance by sustaining Mexican

8

Introduction

leaders who were amenable to U.S. interests, thereby contributing to capitalist expansion during the Gilded Age. Civil War historians might view clandestine diplomatic activities on an international frontier as mundane compared to the gory battlefields of Antietam, Shiloh, or Gettysburg; as tangential to the national project of emancipation; as trivial to the overall result of the war. Scholars of Reconstruction may consider imperial initiatives in the lower Rio Grande Valley and southern New Mexico and Arizona as generally unrelated to the U.S. government’s ambitious plans for Southern reunification and the integration of four million former slaves into American society as freedmen and citizens. But this was not the perspective of those who participated in these events.25 Well before the first major battle of the Civil War was fought in northeastern Virginia, both sides courted Mexican leaders in hopes of building consanguinity, thinking that control of the borderlands could blossom into a decisive advantage in foreign affairs. Illusions of Empire challenges its readers to consider the importance of events that occurred thousands of miles away from the blood-soaked battlefields of Maryland, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania and equally far from the violently racialized atmosphere of a New South undergoing slave emancipation, because some of the principal participants in the Civil War and Reconstruction believed that their causes might live or die on the outcome of transnational operations in the political netherworld that straddled the U.S.Mexico border.

CHAPTER 1

The Origins of Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

Texas turned out to be a headache for the leaders of independent Mexico. In 1828, the central government selected General Manuel Mier y Terán as a boundary commissioner and sent him to determine the international border between the Mexican northeast and the American Southwest. The AdamsOnís Treaty between the United States and Spain, finalized almost a decade earlier, laid out the basic parameters for the boundary line, but that line had yet to be definitively surveyed. Because Texas posed several urgent challenges to the fledgling Mexican republic—most notably Indian raiding and American colonizing—Mier y Terán also had instructions to observe the influence that foreign empresarios were asserting over the Tejano population. When the general submitted his final report, it must have startled Mexican leaders. His prescient observations suggested that Texas was already slipping from Mexico’s grasp, and he predicted that serious diplomatic and political difficulties lay in the immediate future.1 Mier y Terán visited dozens of Texas towns and plantations and met with Tejano and Anglo inhabitants, giving him an understanding of rapidly evolving events on Mexico’s northeastern frontier. “The department of Texas is contiguous to the most avid nation in the world,” he cautioned in reference to the United States. With a hint of trepidation, he pointed out that Americans, in the five decades since their independence, “have conquered whatever territory adjoins them” and in so doing “become masters of extensive colonies which formerly belonged to Spain and France, and of even more spacious territories from which have disappeared the former owners, the Indian tribes.” The most extraordinary aspect of American expansion, however, was not the rapidity with which it kept happening. Far more concerning, he

10

Chapter 1

believed, were the sneaky methods that migrating Americans and their political leaders used to conquer and absorb new territory. His explanation was both a paean to the determination and efficiency of the foreign interlopers as well as a stark warning to Mexico’s government officials. “There is no power like that to the north, which by silent means has made conquests of momentous importance,” he warned after viewing the methods at work in Texas. “Such dexterity, such constancy in their designs, such uniformity of means of execution which always are completely successful, arouses admiration.” Traditionally, expanding empires employed much more overt and violent tactics in their conquests, but the American empresarios that he met in Texas seemed to have perfected a safer and equally effective technique for asserting control over land and people. “Instead of armies, battles, or invasions—which make a great noise and for the most part are unsuccessful—these men lay hand on means that, if considered one by one, would be rejected as slow, ineffective, and at times palpably absurd,” the officer added.2 Mier y Terán was not the only one sounding alarms about American encroachment. The French botanist Jean Louis Berlandier, who accompanied the 1828 expedition, noted that Anglo Americans seemed to be establishing “a monopoly” over Texas agriculture, and he came to the conclusion that native Tejanos “cannot vie in any respect with those industrious colonists.”3 That same year, an artillery lieutenant named José María Sánchez noticed that “North Americans have taken possession of almost all of the eastern part of Texas, in most cases without the knowledge of the authorities, since they emigrate incessantly without anyone to hinder them, taking possession of whatever place suits them, without asking.” By that time, he claimed, only San Antonio de Béxar and Nacogdoches retained Tejano-majority populations.4 In a speech to Mexican legislators two years later, the statesman Lucas Alamán cited these reports when referring to American settlement in Texas as “the progress of . . . evil.”5 It was apparent to firsthand witnesses that these newcomers had begun circumventing open diplomacy using a process of gradual conquest by settlement, taking advantage of the porous borderlands to expand American empire. All the migrants needed was an excuse for settling on foreign land—however extralegal or fanciful it might be—and once they gained that crucial foothold, the process of Americanization would be set in motion. When the aforementioned officers compiled their reports, empresarios and their colonial followers had been living west of the Sabine River for just five years, but already the U.S. government was working assiduously to purchase Texas and arrange for its annexation as a slaveholding state. The accounts of

Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

11

Mier y Terán, Berlandier, and Sánchez provide glimpses into one of the most well-known causes of diplomatic controversy between the United States and Mexico—the colonization of Texas—but the methods of settlement and political incorporation that the three men described would be repeated again and again over the next four decades. The United States and Mexico developed an increasingly fraught relationship, resulting in unconventional diplomatic techniques that finally reached their apex during the chaotic 1860s. Mexico gained its independence in 1821, and less than a year later, President James Monroe publicly recommended diplomatic recognition, making the United States one of the first nations to acknowledge Mexican sovereignty.6 As a testament to the power and influence of Indians on the country’s northern frontier, the new government also negotiated treaties with Comanches and Lipan Apaches within months of breaking from Spain. No sooner had Mexico become independent than a team of diplomats propositioned chiefs Barbaquista, Pisinampe, and Quenoc for peace. At a camp of five thousand Comanches, these tribal leaders convened a council that debated for three days before agreeing to sign a treaty at San Antonio in the summer of 1822. Several months later, another indigenous delegation under Chief Guonique rode to Mexico City, where they finalized a pact in which tribal diplomats acknowledged Mexican sovereignty in exchange for a reciprocal recognition of the “Comanche Nation.” Mexico also agreed to generous terms for trade, allowed the tribe to keep captives, and assigned a permanent diplomat to serve Comanche interests in much the same way that a minister plenipotentiary would do in a foreign embassy.7 That same year, Lipan chiefs Cuelga de Castro, El Cojo, and Poca Ropa also traveled to Mexico City for a peace agreement. They stayed at the capital for several months, lodging in the Colegio Apostólico de San Fernando, and in September finally made their marks upon a treaty that granted land for farming and pasturage, allowed tribe members to claim unbranded livestock, and promised government protection from enemies in exchange for the forgiveness of past wrongs and formal recognition of the Mexican government.8 Although Mexico initially came under the rule of Emperor Agustín de Iturbide—the three Lipan Apache chiefs and the Comanche leader Guonique all witnessed his coronation ceremony—the country managed to enact a democratic constitution in 1824 that, among other things, granted territorial status to New Mexico and statehood to the northern provinces of Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Chihuahua, Durango, and Occidente (later split into Sinaloa and Sonora).9 In 1825, Joel Poinsett was dispatched as the first American minister to serve in Mexico City, and the following year, commerce between the

12

Chapter 1

two countries exceeded $10 million in imports and exports.10 To the casual observer, these auspicious beginnings gave the impression that Mexico was headed for political stability and economic prosperity, but in truth, the country’s relationship with other nations, including independent Indians in Texas and New Mexico, had already begun to deteriorate, as even the most basic diplomatic interchanges tended to elicit stark disparities over foreign policy. The seeds of discord between Mexico and Europe were sown with remarkable rapidity. Within a decade of achieving nationhood, leaders in Mexico City had already saddled themselves with enormous debts to English and French benefactors.11 In 1824–1825, British companies loaned £6.4 million to Mexico at interest rates ranging from 5 to 6 percent. Beginning in 1826, Mexico added an average of $7.2 million to its national deficit each year, so that by 1844 the treasury found itself nearly $115 million (roughly $6 billion in 2020 dollars) in arrears.12 During its first three decades of independence, Mexico sustained massive shortfalls because its tax revenues never came close to equaling federal expenditures, even though, according to one eyewitness, the government had undertaken “the experiment of how much taxation the people can bear.”13 Each year, monetary shortages necessitated additional foreign loans to keep the nation afloat. Recalling the riches in silver and gold that Mexico produced during its colonial era, European firms sensed a lucrative investment opportunity and were eager at first to lend money. Acting on hindsight, financiers drastically underestimated Mexico’s fiscal straits and failed to anticipate the country’s inability to repay what it owed.14 “They borrow money, and lavish it as if it formed part of their annual income,” Poinsett wrote after his tenure as foreign minister ended. He added, “They anticipate their revenue at a ruinous sacrifice, and make no permanent provision for repaying their debt.”15 By 1838, in what came to be known as the Pastry War, France was sending battleships to blockade the Mexican coast at Tampico and Vera Cruz in an attempt to coerce amortization of mounting financial obligations.16 Economic uncertainty and foreign debts beleaguered Mexico’s early republic and led to the chronic political instability that plagued the country for many years. Nationhood had set off a self-defeating cycle for independent Mexico: inadequate tax revenue necessitated foreign loans, which prompted economic dependency on outside sources, and that in turn fostered political weakness that re-created the need for more loans, leading to diplomatic crises as Europe held Mexico accountable for its debts.17 While difficulties between Mexico and Europe began in the 1820s, the roots of troubled diplomacy with nomadic Indians on the northern frontier

Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

13

stretched back to the Spanish colonial era, and those conflicts would be exacerbated following independence. Comanches and Lipan Apaches in Texas posed the most serious threat to Mexican interests, although Chiricahua and Mescalero Apaches in New Mexico also raided and waged war with devastating effect.18 Initial tribal recognitions of Mexican sovereignty in 1822 proved unsustainable, largely because the country was unable to fulfill its treaty obligations. Within two years, the governor of Coahuila y Tejas predicted that the peace agreements would fail, as Comanches and Lipans raided frontier settlements with increasing intensity. National and local representatives negotiated new pacts with these powerful indigenous groups, one example being a treaty that the Comanche diplomatist Paruakevitsi approved at San Antonio in 1827. But four years later, when Tejanos commanded by Captain Manuel Lafuente killed Paruakevitsi during a haphazard attack on his camp, relations devolved once more into violence, and the contract became meaningless.19 Similar episodes of treachery occurred with shocking regularity throughout Mexico’s far north, where diplomatic resolutions proved difficult to attain. Chihuahua and Sonora sustained tentative conditions of peace with some subgroups of Chiricahua and Mescalero Apaches throughout the 1820s, issuing rations and supplies at establecimientos de paz (peace establishments) near towns like Janos and San Elizario. As Mexico’s fiscal straits deepened, funding for these subsistence programs dried up, and a smallpox epidemic compounded the stress. Under the leadership of Chiricahua chief Juan José Compá, some of the last remaining Apaches de paz deserted the establecimientos in the fall of 1831 and took to the warpath. In the first fifteen years of Mexican independence, Indians killed some five thousand fronterizos, and Mexicans reciprocated at every opportunity.20 One of the most renowned Apache diplomats of his time, Compá himself perished in 1837 when Sonora’s first experiment with bounty systems motivated a team of scalp hunters to blast twenty Indians with a hidden cannon during a trade fair. In the 1840s, state governments in Sonora, Chihuahua, and Durango settled on paid scalping and mercenary warfare as their preferred methods for dealing with Apaches, Comanches, Kiowas, Seris, and Yaquis, the result being a series of genocidal massacres that claimed the lives of hundreds of Indians and saw many more sold into slavery.21 When Indians did negotiate treaties, their Mexican counterparts usually acted at the state rather than national level, meaning that at any given time Chihuahua could be at peace with the same Apaches that Sonora was fighting or New Mexico might be in friendship with the same Comanches

14

Chapter 1

that Texas waged war upon. State leaders often encouraged different tribes to attack one another, and scalp-hunting gangs included Delaware and Shawnee operatives, further confounding diplomacy and creating a confusing atmosphere of borderlands violence that militated against any long-lasting or allencompassing peace pacts.22 Donaciano Vigil, a legislator in New Mexico, expressed the frustration that many Hispanos felt over this issue, criticizing the central government for neglecting the safety of its frontier inhabitants. “The peculiar location of our country, surrounded on all sides by heathen Indians who harass us most of the time . . . reduces New Mexico to a state of anxiety and distress,” he inveighed, pointing out that no other state or province was so egregiously ignored by the nation’s leaders.23 These dilemmas arose in part because of the pervasive spirit of federalism on the northern frontier, where state governments were unable or unwilling to act cohesively as a national unit and instead pursued their own courses with Indian tribes. Antonio López de Santa Anna criticized the Mexican north for this, saying that the lack of military cooperation in that region had “placed the peaceful inhabitants at the mercy of the aggressors.”24 Policies for preventing Indian raids became an important political issue across northern Mexico, and a convoluted borderlands environment emerged wherein Apaches of the Chiricahua, Lipan, Mescalero, and Western groups, Comanches from the Hois, Kotsoteka, Tenewa, and Yamparika divisions, as well as Indians from the Kiowa, Seri, Tarahumara, and Yaqui tribes found themselves interacting separately with Texas, New Mexico, Sonora, Chihuahua, Durango, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, and even the United States in a maelstrom of diplomacy and warfare.25 Cycles of debt dependency and revolving leadership in the national capital, coupled with oscillating conditions of peace and war with independent Indians on the northern frontier, enfeebled Mexico and left it vulnerable on the global stage. It also fed into racist slanders of Mexicans as politically inept, militarily deficient, and intellectually subpar.26 The New Orleans journalist George Wilkins Kendall—whose contempt for Hispanics was unparalleled even in an era of rampant nativism—epitomized the widespread notion that Americans could do better than Mexicans when it came to managing Texas, New Mexico, and California. In 1846 he guessed that the Mexican people outnumbered Comanches “ten to one” but claimed that they “are too lazy . . . and too timid” to confront and defeat their enemies.27 The perennial instability caused by debt to foreign nations and susceptibility to Indian raids enticed inegalitarian methods of diplomacy wherein foreigners cajoled, bribed, or otherwise

Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

15

attempted to manipulate Mexican dignitaries to suit their own purposes. This proved especially true when it came to Mexico’s far north, as many outsiders questioned regional sovereignty and believed the country incapable of controlling and developing remote regions where indigenous polities and foreign settlers exercised considerable power. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, Americans learned to use their neighbor’s political and economic disadvantages for diplomatic leverage, as Indians continued to play a major role in keeping Mexico weak and vulnerable. One of the earliest areas of disagreement between the U.S. and Mexico involved the Santa Fe Trade that began in 1821. With this new commercial network yielding handsome profits for American merchants, leaders hoped to negotiate a free-trade agreement with the Mexican government that would lessen the burden of tariffs. The fact that nearly half of the route to Santa Fe crossed Mexican territory created a serious obstacle to federal support, and some type of international agreement would be necessary to ensure that both countries contributed to the improvement project.28 Many American lawmakers raised dire concerns about the idea, fearing that Mexico’s insolvent government would not contribute its fair share to the project, but the Senate nonetheless passed a financing bill on March 3, 1825.29 It would be up to Joel Poinsett, who had just arrived in Mexico City, to secure Mexican support for the measure, but Secretary of State Henry Clay forewarned that the task would be difficult. The foreign minister had orders to stress that the road to Santa Fe “was intended purely for commercial purposes” and that U.S. citizens had no ulterior motives of territorial conquest in mind.30 The negotiations surrounding the Santa Fe Trade in the mid-1820s were indicative of the protracted and often futile attempts at diplomacy between the United States and Mexico. After months of conversations with foreign dignitaries, Poinsett failed to obtain a binding commercial treaty and instead badgered the Mexican government into a loose covenant that caused more problems than it solved. In the absence of a firm trade deal, participants in the Missouri–Santa Fe commercial network simply made their own rules. Nuevomexicano officials assessed exorbitant import duties and pocketed much of the cash, while American merchants circumvented customs fees by smuggling their goods into New Mexico, creating a black market rife with corruption and scandal.31 Poinsett himself was part of the problem during this early stage of U.S.Mexico relations. Although he spoke Spanish well enough to earn the ministerial appointment, the South Carolinian personally disliked Mexicans and acted condescendingly toward his hosts. The four years that Poinsett spent in

16

Chapter 1

Mexico City ended in controversy when the country’s politicians, upset over his mingling in government affairs, requested his recall. By the time Andrew Jackson chose Poinsett’s replacement in 1829, the botanist turned diplomat had done more harm than good.32 National leaders gave the impression that all was well—President Guadalupe Victoria told Mexican lawmakers that affairs with the United States “continue under the foot of the most frank friendship”—but behind this façade, a lack of trust and respect was brewing between the two governments.33 In a scathing indictment of American motives, one Mexican citizen wrote that U.S. politicians had become obsessed with “the dismemberment of our republic” and blamed “the tortuous and arrogant management of Mr. Poinsett” for causing political disorders throughout his country.34 Poinsett’s lackluster performance set a poor precedent for U.S.-Mexico diplomacy and became the norm rather than the exception. When Old Hickory appointed his longtime friend Anthony Butler (another South Carolinian) to replace Poinsett as the U.S. minister to Mexico, the expansionistic president had Texas foremost in mind. Southern Democrats like Jackson and Butler had a particular vision of America’s future that involved a preordained destiny to civilize the frontier in advancement of empire and national honor, and they believed that chattel slavery would hold a prominent place in the economic development of western lands. At Jackson’s bidding, administration officials approached Mexican leaders in 1829 to suggest an outright purchase of Texas, where thousands of white slaveholders and small farmers had already immigrated at the behest of empresarios like Stephen F. Austin.35 Compared to Jackson’s provocative occupation of Spanish Florida in 1818, his approach to Mexico seemed rather deferential, although the idea of annexing Texas was not solely attributable to Jacksonian Democrats. Four years earlier, when President John Quincy Adams and Secretary of State Clay first sent Poinsett to Mexico, they instructed him to buy Texas for $1 million, but nothing came of that offer. After Jackson took office, he heightened the pressure, first by telling Mexico that it lacked the ability to control Indian raiding in Texas, and then by increasing the bid to $5 million. But again these attempts fizzled after Butler discovered that Texas was not for sale at any price, and Mexicans felt demeaned by Jackson’s brusque comment about their management of frontier affairs.36 By relentlessly pursuing the purchase of Texas, Butler replicated Poinsett’s offensive posture and undermined any cordial channels of diplomacy that may have existed.37 Numerous meetings between Butler and Alamán yielded nothing—the minister of foreign affairs stated publicly that his government

Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

17

should adopt all “necessary measures” to prevent the loss of Texas—and the political situation in Mexico unraveled quickly.38 President Vicente Guerrero outlawed African slavery via executive decree before being overthrown in a coup, Mexico was slipping further into the twin catastrophes of financial crisis and political upheaval, independent Indians were striking deeper and deeper into the country during their raids, and the British expressed an interest in colonizing Texas—a grim prospect for all Americans regardless of sectional affiliation. It was becoming clear to many in the United States that they would have to be more aggressive if they wished to acquire Texas. “I scarcely ever knew a Spaniard who was not the slave of avarice, and it is not improbable that this weakness may be worth a great deal to us in this case,” Jackson told Butler, specifically referencing the Texas question in a private statement that, if made public, would have implicated the president in foreign intrigue.39 Over the next five years, Butler dealt with numerous Mexican officials, including Santa Anna, and resorted to every tactic he could think of—open diplomacy, backdoor bribery, and military threats—but he never came close to striking a deal for Texas. On April 5, 1832, the United States and Mexico exchanged ratifications for a treaty of “amity, commerce, and navigation,” but in Jackson’s mind this diplomatic achievement scarcely atoned for the Texas fiasco.40 Fed up with the minister’s ineffectiveness and infuriated that he had discussed illicit diplomatic methods in uncoded letters, Jackson relieved the “scamp” Butler of his appointment in January 1836, just as Texans rose in rebellion against Mexico.41 The revolution that took place in Texas was something of a whirlwind, sweeping the region to nationhood in a matter of months, and the increasingly powerful Comanches, Kiowas, and Lipan Apaches contributed to the unstable political environment that led to rebellion. When Mexican officials opened Texas to immigration in the early 1820s, they hoped that a large population of foreigners would help to quell Indian raids and create a buffer zone between Comanchería and central Mexico.42 Not only did this goal prove illusory, it also had serious unintended consequences. General Mier y Terán predicted in 1828 that the influx of Americans into the Gulf Coast and its hinterlands “will be the cause for the Mexican federation to lose Tejas.” And in 1834 Lorenzo de Zavala anticipated a looming conflict when noting that German, Irish, and American newcomers “will necessarily make up an entirely diverse nation” by renouncing the colonization charter that Emperor Iturbide issued to Moses Austin in 1823. But even these two prophetic observers underestimated just how rapidly the transition would occur once the political

18

Chapter 1

separation movement commenced.43 Texans issued a declaration of independence on March 2, 1836; the siege at the Alamo concluded four days later; and by April 21, the revolutionaries had vanquished Santa Anna’s forces at San Jacinto, prompting negotiations for the Lone Star Republic’s sovereignty.44 On May 14, Santa Anna signed two versions of the so-called Treaty of Velasco, an illegitimate agreement that was almost immediately repudiated in Mexico City. In the public document, the crestfallen Mexican leader agreed to withdraw his army south of the Rio Grande, implicitly recognizing that river as the Texas-Mexico boundary. Privately in the second contract, Santa Anna promised to make arrangements for the official recognition of Texas independence and secure congressional approval for a commercial treaty between the two countries. But Santa Anna’s tentative grasp on power (he held the presidential office eleven times between 1833 and 1855) was laid bare when the Mexican Congress rejected the Velasco treaty in both of its permutations, refusing to acknowledge Texas as anything other than a state in the Mexican nation.45 “The opinion of all good Mexicans,” Minister of War José María Tornel y Mendívil wrote in 1837, was that anybody sympathizing with “the Colossus of the North” or consenting to the independence of Texas “is a despicable traitor.”46 This final jab was aimed at Santa Anna, who published a ninety-page manifesto lamenting the many ways in which public criticism of his defeat at San Jacinto felt like “a mortal wound to my heart.”47 Even without Mexico’s blessing, the Lone Star Republic moved forward after 1836 as a sovereign entity, and its leaders immediately had to reckon with the reality of indigenous power. By this time, Comanches, Kiowas, and Lipan Apaches were striking throughout Texas and deep into Mexico, despoiling communities of livestock and material goods while carrying women and children into captivity. Warriors participated in these raids not merely for vengeance but also for economic reasons, as horses and captives became conspicuous markers of wealth in their indigenous societies.48 Acting within these borderlands dynamics, Sam Houston and his cabinet initially hoped to be appended to the United States, and the shrewd president tried to spark an Indian uprising that would pull American troops into Texas and thus create a stronger argument for annexation. When this scheme failed, Houston moved to initiate diplomatic relations with Comanches and Lipan Apaches. His efforts with the Lipans yielded a treaty, signed by Chief Cuelga de Castro near Corpus Christi on January 8, 1838, that promised peace between the two nations, but the republic’s Congress undermined Houston’s Comanche

Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

19

strategy by opening the country’s frontiers to civilian settlement and sparking violent tribal countermeasures.49 With Indian relations devolving, William H. Wharton was dispatched to Washington, D.C., as the first Texas foreign minister, carrying instructions to secure American recognition and, if possible, annexation “on an equal footing with the other states” and with “no special restrictions or limitations as to slavery.” Wharton informed Texas secretary of state Stephen F. Austin that if indeed the United States agreed to the proposal, it would cause an international uproar and “hush money” would have to be paid to Mexican leaders in order to avert war.50 Despite Andrew Jackson’s wholehearted support, antiexpansion northern Whigs vehemently objected to the addition of another slave state, and the annexation effort fell flat, leaving Texas as an independent republic and forcing it to deal with Mexico, as well as Indian nations, on its own terms.51 The fact that former U.S. citizens held most of the government positions meant that relations between Texas and its southern neighbor often seemed like a spinoff from the diplomatic interactions between Americans and Mexicans. Indeed, many Mexicans blamed the United States for the Texas Revolution in the first place. Minister of Foreign Affairs José María Bocanegra bluntly told Secretary of State Daniel Webster that “the insurgent colonists” of Texas “would have been unable to maintain their prolonged rebellion, without the aid and efficient sympathies of citizens of the United States.” He also accused American leaders of violating the 1831 treaty of amity by allowing their subjects to promote and participate in the Texan independence movement, a charge that Webster flatly denied.52 Such protestations notwithstanding, Texas made its first attempt to establish formal diplomatic relations with Mexico. After replacing Houston as president in December 1838, Mirabeau B. Lamar appointed Barnard E. Bee as minister plenipotentiary and sent him to Mexico City with orders to secure recognition of Texas independence. Bee was authorized to pay up to $5 million for this concession. Just as Lamar predicted, Mexican authorities refused to speak with the agent on diplomatic terms, because doing so would constitute a recognition of Texan sovereignty.53 Poinsett, now serving as secretary of war in Martin Van Buren’s administration, quipped that Texas should have sent Bee to Mexico as a secret agent to negotiate privately. Under such surreptitious circumstances, he suggested, the $5 million payment could have been offered as a bribe, potentially producing a more favorable outcome by avoiding political formalities.54

20

Chapter 1

Meanwhile, relations with Comanches worsened. Rather than pursue peace and conciliation as Houston had done, Lamar enlarged the republic’s army and recruited rangers to carry out campaigns of total warfare. Seeking an armistice, several dozen Penateka Comanches under Chief Muguara went to San Antonio in March 1840. In the ensuing Council House Massacre, local officials imprisoned the entire group before General Hugh McLeod ordered troops to shoot thirty-five of them. Retaliation would be swift, as warriors swept through Texas on deadly counterattacks until Houston reclaimed the presidency and sent diplomats back into Comanchería in 1842. Two years later, tribal leaders acted alongside Caddo, Cherokee, Delaware, Lipan Apache, Shawnee, and Waco dignitaries in their final act of diplomacy with the Republic of Texas. The resulting Treaty of Tehuacana Creek, signed on October 9, 1844, recognized the territorial boundaries of Indian homelands and established trading houses at which Comanches and their intermediaries could exchange goods.55 As Texans bankrupted their treasury through costly Indian wars and the expensive gift giving associated with tribal diplomacy, they also continued to seek Mexican recognition. In one instance, the republic enlisted a third-party intermediary, New York merchant James Treat, hoping that he might enjoy a friendlier reception than his predecessor. Treat had permission to disburse the $5 million as “secret service money to forward your operations,” but after arriving in Mexico City he found his hosts unwilling to consider what amounted to the “unconditional acknowledgement of the absolute independence of Texas.” The Mexicans even talked about raising an army to reclaim control over their rebellious northeastern frontier.56 Still anxious to break the diplomatic stalemate, Texans made a third and final overture in 1841 when they sent Secretary of State James Webb to Mexico City and enlisted British minister Richard Pakenham as a neutral mediator. Once again the effort misfired, at which point an exasperated Webb concluded that “all expectation of ever accomplishing anything by negotiation with the present Government of Mexico is at an end.”57 Here the United States entered the picture by revamping its attempts to absorb Texas. Just as independent Indians helped to create the circumstances leading to rebellion against Mexico in 1836, so too did their strong resistance to settler encroachment and assertive acts of diplomacy contribute to the conditions of financial weakness that encouraged the republic’s annexation. At a convention in Austin on July 4, 1845, Texan congressmen voted to join their American neighbors in political union, and the controversial addition of a geographically immense slaveholding region to the United States became

Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

21

official on December 29 with President James K. Polk’s signature.58 The era of Texas diplomacy may have ended, but the tendency of Texas to complicate Mexico’s foreign relations remained. Minister Luis Cuevas bristled at what he and his countrymen saw as an affront to national dignity, calling Texas “the fulcrum of the enterprising and ambitious policy of the United States.” He lamented the loss as “a misfortune that we shall always regret” and interpreted incorporation into the United States as an act of hostility that made war inevitable.59 Mexican ambassador Juan N. Almonte reproached American leaders for what he considered the most unjust act “in the annals of modern history.” Secretary of State James Buchanan immediately retorted that Texas annexation “is now irrevocably decided, as far as the United States is concerned,” and he sent Almonte a passport to leave Washington, D.C.60 An ardent Southern expansionist and a protégé of Andrew Jackson, Polk made it clear that the United States would retain Texas, even if it permanently destroyed his country’s relationship with Mexico. By the time Polk delivered his first annual address to Congress in December 1845, Mexico had suspended diplomatic relations with the United States.61 Early in 1846, a hawkish Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor’s army of nearly four thousand men to occupy South Texas, and when they camped in the disputed Nueces Strip north of the Rio Grande, it provoked General Mariano Arista to attack the invaders.62 The ensuing Mexican-American War became an exercise in militant Manifest Destiny. Polk admitted this purpose during his third annual address to Congress in December 1847, when he let it be known that any treaty ending the war must include provisions for “an adequate cession of territory” as well as recognition of the Rio Grande as the southern boundary of Texas. In reference to California and New Mexico, he believed that “Mexico is too feeble a power to govern these provinces” and suggested that it would be “in accordance with the convenience and interests of both nations” for Mexico to relinquish its northernmost possessions to the United States.63 When Polk made these statements, Nicholas Trist had already been working for months to negotiate an end to the war, but most of his activities, like those of American agents before him, were conducted secretly. The U.S. government had initially involved itself in unpublicized discussions with the exiled Santa Anna, who sensed an opportunity to use American interests to his own advantage before returning to Mexico in August 1846, but little came of the talks until Trist arrived at Vera Cruz on May 6, 1847. By that time, General Winfield Scott’s victories on the battlefield left little latitude for negotiation. Mexican leaders conceded that U.S. troops “are within

22

Chapter 1

the gates of the capital,” and they accepted Scott’s offer of a temporary armistice until peace could be finalized.64 At one point, with deliberations stalled, Trist thought about a nefarious payment of $10,000 to grease the wheels of diplomacy. Eventually the two sides reached terms without employing the timeworn technique of bribery, although Trist later complained that the months-long negotiating process had been “exceedingly laborious.”65 Not until Manuel de la Peña y Peña replaced Santa Anna did representatives from the two nations finally terminate hostilities, signing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848.66 Arranged between victors and vanquished at the termination of a war between nations, the pact was perhaps the most conventional act of diplomacy up to that time, but only overt aggression and military triumph had facilitated such an outcome. Despite opposition from the Polk administration—the president recalled Trist before the document’s signing and was dissatisfied with some of its provisions—the two countries exchanged ratifications, and the treaty went into effect later that year.67 “The results of the war with Mexico have given to the United States a national character abroad which our country never before enjoyed,” Polk cheered. “Our power and our resources have become known and are respected throughout the world.”68 Mexicans viewed the matter much differently. The outspoken nationalist Crescencio Rejón labeled the treaty “our sentence of death,” and his colleague Manuel Gómez Pedraza lamented that “the conqueror imposes his will at the point of the sword.”69 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo forced Mexico to give up all or part of present-day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. By midcentury, the quiet methods of peaceful conquest that Mier y Téran once alluded to in Texas had evolved into a violent form of national expansion, with the U.S.-Mexico borderlands at the core of that project. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo contained two problematic provisions that almost immediately sent American lawmakers scrambling for abrogation. The first quandary involved Article XI, which held the U.S. government responsible for preventing Indian raids into northern Mexico and repatriating Mexican captives. This section of the treaty was included at the insistence of Mexican negotiators, who recognized that Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa raiding had severely weakened the country’s northern frontier, in turn allowing U.S. troops to march toward Mexico City with minimal opposition from local inhabitants. By 1848, decades of devastating depredations had exacerbated regionalist sentiment in New Mexico, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Durango, where people felt abandoned by a central government

Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

23

that failed to protect them from Indians.70 Shifting responsibility for frontier defense from Mexico to the United States, Article XI became an expensive and cumbersome requirement that proved impossible to enforce. Within two years of the treaty’s consummation, Mexican minister Luis de la Rosa complained that American efforts to “prevent or punish the inroads of the savages . . . have been ineffectual,” and he pleaded with the State Department to uphold its obligations.71 The second issue with the treaty, pertaining to the survey of a new international boundary from El Paso to the California coast, stemmed from confusion over the exact point on the Rio Grande where that line would commence westward. This dilemma arose from dreams of a transcontinental railroad through the deserts of southern New Mexico; the original treaty line set the border at the Gila River, leaving the desired railway route within Mexican territory. For more than a year beginning in 1850, American and Mexican commissioners surveyed the area and managed to negotiate a provisional boundary, but congressional leaders rejected the agreement between John Russell Bartlett and Pedro García Conde and sought a new pact to mitigate the vexing issues of Indian raiding and international borders.72 In the meantime, frustrated Mexican officials protested American ineptitude, informing Secretary of State Webster that García Conde’s team had “acceded to everything” that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo required, “but at length they were paralyzed, because [of] the difficulties which the American commission kept stirring up.”73 The boundary dispute languished in Congress, where Northern and Southern lawmakers found themselves deeply divided along sectional lines when it came to possible routes for a transcontinental railroad. Mexico and the United States had agreed that the strip of territory in question, covering 29,670 square miles between the Mesilla Valley in the east and the Colorado River in the west, would remain unoccupied until adjudication of the appropriate boundary line. Known as the “disputed area,” this land sat in limbo until 1853, when the issue suddenly took on great urgency. In an unsanctioned act, New Mexico governor William Carr Lane raised a small army of volunteers and took possession of the contested Mesilla Valley “in behalf of the United States.” He issued a provocative declaration on March 13, informing Chihuahua governor Angel Trías that Americans would occupy the region until the two countries finalized a boundary agreement.74 An immediate uproar ensued throughout Mexico. Newspapers and politicians condemned Lane’s transgression as a “manifest violation of international law” and saw it

24

Chapter 1

as an American filibustering operation.75 Mexican minister J. Miguel Arroyo criticized Lane’s “highly irregular and reckless conduct,” raising the specter of renewed hostilities between the two countries.76 Santa Anna instructed Trías to resist the occupation through military force, whereupon 1,250 Mexican troops congregated south of the Mesilla Valley in preparation for an attack. Across the border at Paso del Norte, U.S. consul David R. Diffendorfer scrambled to defuse the situation. “At this moment much ill feeling exists against our countrymen,” he informed Secretary of State William L. Marcy, insisting that the U.S. Army be sent to protect American interests.77 As the controversy spiraled out of control, Lane withdrew his ad hoc force and was eventually replaced as governor, but severe damage to international relations had already been done.78 With another war looming, the United States and Mexico were forced into diplomatic action by activities occurring on their national peripheries. In Mexico City, minister Alfred B. Conkling attempted to smooth things over. He admitted that Lane’s behavior had been “rash and unwarrantable” and stalled for time until the U.S. government could devise a more permanent solution.79 In May 1853, James Gadsden was given the responsibility of easing tension over Lane’s occupation and solving the two major issues arising from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. A former military aide to Andrew Jackson, Gadsden went to Mexico to nullify Article XI and renegotiate the international boundary to include a railroad route from the western tip of Texas to the southern coast of California. The South Carolinian departed on his mission with orders to purchase this land from Santa Anna, who had recently ascended for the eleventh and final time to the presidency.80 Gadsden soon informed Secretary of War Jefferson Davis that the Mexican treasury was bankrupt and Santa Anna desperately needed money to “sustain the power which [he] weakly aspires to,” but if the United States did not act quickly the deal might not be approved because Mexico was on the cusp of another revolution.81 On December 30, 1853, Gadsden and his counterpart, Manuel Díez de Bonilla, signed a treaty that abrogated Article XI and set the border at its present location in exchange for $15 million. Manuel González Cosío, the governor of Zacatecas, remarked that it made little difference whether Mexico received $15 million or $200 million, because his country was losing its national honor in the transaction.82 American senators struck a further blow to that national honor when they reduced the sum to just $10 million before ratification.83 Santa Anna pocketed part of the initial $7 million payment, and by the following year he sat exiled in Cuba, never again to occupy

Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

25

the presidential chair.84 Foreign minister Juan Almonte and other Mexican officials peppered the State Department with dozens of letters requesting disbursement of the final $3 million, but several more years would pass before Congress finally released the funds.85 Compared to Texas annexation and the Mexican Cession, the Gadsden Purchase seemed like a far more peaceful means of acquiring territory, although Lane’s brash actions brought controversy and danger to the episode. This was the last time Mexico relinquished land to the United States, but not the final American attempt at territorial acquisition. As the sectional crisis of the 1850s grew increasingly unmanageable, Southerners seeking to expand slavery and preserve their political power in Congress eyed Mexico as a potential avenue of Manifest Destiny. Because the federal government would not support their schemes, proslavery expansionists devised independent methods of territorial usurpation through filibustering, and in 1854 George W. L. Bickley founded the Knights of the Golden Circle to support these sectional endeavors.86 Between 1848 and 1861, numerous mercenary armies embarked on expeditions of conquest, constituting one of the most bizarre aspects of antebellum U.S.-Mexico relations.87 In 1858, the fire-eater George Fitzhugh ventriloquized many of his Southern brethren when opining that Mexico “is wholly incapable of organizing and sustaining any permanent form of government,” making it a tempting target for militant colonizers. Fitzhugh portrayed filibustering as a benevolent extension of American democracy to undercivilized Latin American nations whose peripheral locations made them vulnerable to outside influence. “The finger of Providence [is] this so-called filibustering movement of America,” he wrote. “It proceeds from ambition; and ambition, rightly directed, is the noblest of human passions.” He named conquerors like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte as idols worthy of emulation and claimed that abolitionists were nothing more than meddlesome charlatans who “preached homilies” to demonize filibusters. All of this, he believed, was part of a Northern conspiracy against slavery and the South. In Fitzhugh’s mind, filibustering was a type of moral imperialism, fulfilling a Christian duty to spread the virtues of democracy and capitalism beyond America’s borders.88 In reality, it had much more to do with stemming the tide of abolitionism by imposing a Southern empire of slavery in the U.S.Mexico borderlands and beyond. “We have but to will it, and Mexico is ours,” Fitzhugh provocatively asserted. “She knows, from the past, how utterly incapable she is to resist us.”89

26

Chapter 1

Fitzhugh clearly considered Mexico ripe for conquest, but he should have known better. By the time he wrote his paean to filibuster opportunism in 1858, half a dozen brazen expeditions into Mexico had all failed, and many of the participants either stood before firing squads or quite literally lost their heads. In December 1848, Joseph A. White and David G. Wilds enlisted an army of five hundred men and led them from New Orleans to the Yucatán Peninsula, where Mayan Indians routed them; a handful of survivors limped back into the United States three months later. In May 1851, Joseph C. Morehead raised a contingent of two hundred mercenaries at San Diego and sailed to Mazatlán, but a sizable Mexican force confronted them when they landed; rather than perish on foreign soil, they turned the ships back to California. That same year, as part of the so-called Merchants War, José María de Jesús Carvajal enlisted an army in Texas with the intention of invading Tamaulipas and creating a new nation, the Republic of Sierra Madre. On two separate occasions he led his legionnaires southward, and both times Mexican forces defeated them and executed those they captured. Under pressure from Mexican leaders to do something about these violations of national sovereignty, U.S. authorities arrested Carvajal in April 1853 and tried him in Galveston for violations of international neutrality laws, but he was acquitted and soon returned to his habits.90 The most infamous of the filibusters, William Walker, also got his start in Mexico, where he established the proslavery Republic of Lower California in November 1853. Walker’s luck ran out when he invaded Sonora, where an army of two thousand Mexicans repelled his advance. With only a few dozen survivors, the hubristic “grey-eyed man of destiny” narrowly escaped, only to be executed several years later after attempting the same stunts in Nicaragua and Honduras. None of these disastrous outcomes dissuaded Henry Crabb, who hatched a plot in 1857 to colonize northern Sonora with one thousand followers from California. An intense six-day battle at Caborca cost most of the filibusters their lives, including Crabb, who was executed by firing squad and decapitated. The victorious Mexicans stuffed his severed head into a jar of embalming fluid as a macabre memento of filibustering’s perils.91 Sonora governor Ignacio Pesqueíra scorned these interlopers as a “horde of pirates, without country, religion, or honor,” and local newspaper editors flatly condemned foreigners who attempted to strip citizens of their property and livelihoods.92 Contrary to the opinion of George Fitzhugh, Mexicans proved remarkably adept at repulsing private armies, but armed exploits below the border still wrought havoc on international relations. Mexico repeatedly protested these

Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

27

acts, claiming that the U.S. government had a duty to prohibit expeditions from organizing on American soil, and indeed some officers, including Major General John E. Wool in California, devoted considerable effort to thwarting filibusters.93 But in the national capital, ambivalent bureaucrats developed a stock response to Mexico’s complaints. Government personnel typically claimed that they were powerless to stop marauders who acted independently in remote areas, noting that U.S. troops could not legally cross the border to pursue them.94 The year 1857 proved to be a watershed moment in the history of both countries. At about the same time that Henry Crabb’s head rolled in Sonora, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in the Dred Scott case, while Mexico erupted in a violent civil war after implementation of a liberal new constitution. These events signaled the coming of secession in the United States and French intervention in Mexico, the twin crises that forever changed the political trajectories of both nations. From 1857 to 1860, as federalists and centralists vied for supremacy in Mexico’s War of the Reform, the borderlands became the backdrop for rogue opportunists seeking power and profit in a remote place where contested sovereignty always seemed to complicate the course of events.95 Most famous among these regional actors was Juan Cortina, whose band of loyal followers would operate in northeast Mexico and South Texas for years to come. Born at Camargo in 1824, Cortina came of age in the bustling border town of Matamoros, where he witnessed the emergence of a wealthy capitalist class that included Mifflin Kenedy, Richard King, and Charles Stillman. In 1844 he enlisted in the Guardia Nacional de Tamaulipas, and two years later he served as a scout against General Taylor’s U.S. troops as they approached the Rio Grande, participating in the first battles of the MexicanAmerican War as a soldier under General Arista.96 Cortina was already a seasoned veteran of borderlands conflict when he issued an eleven-page manifesto in September 1859 claiming that Anglo Texans habitually robbed and persecuted Hispanics on both sides of the international line. He saw himself as a heroic spokesperson for voiceless victims—with whom he felt a cultural and ethnic affinity—and announced his intent “to chastise the unpunished villainy” occurring throughout the region.97 The ensuing Cortina War lasted until Colonel John “Rip” Ford’s Texas Rangers teamed with Major Samuel Heintzelman’s U.S. Army regulars to rout Mexican insurgents at the Battle of Rio Grande City on December 27, 1859. But Cortina survived the bloodbath and continued to influence events in the borderlands, and in

28

Chapter 1

1860 Texas governor Sam Houston gave serious consideration to establishing an American protectorate over northeast Mexico as Colonel Robert E. Lee patrolled the border with several companies of U.S. Army regulars.98 “It is an entire mistake if our government believes that the people of this country are or ever will be friendly to Americans,” Richard Fitzpatrick, the U.S. consul at Matamoros, concluded in his report on Cortina’s struggle. “They never will forgive the occurrences of our late war with Mexico, and if our government intends to protect the lives and property of our citizens in this country it must be done by force, for it cannot be done by treaty stipulations for they are utterly disregarded by every alcalde [mayor] and petty officer in command.”99 Fitzpatrick clearly understood the localized nature of borderlands diplomacy and intrigue that would soon proliferate even further. As Benito Juárez secured power after the War of the Reform, the Mexican Congress halted regular payments on foreign debts, prompting England and France to discontinue diplomatic relations with Mexico on July 25, 1861.100 At the Convention of London, those two countries joined Spain to form the Tripartite Alliance, which ostensibly sought to collect overdue loan payments but also posed a potential challenge to the Monroe Doctrine. In February 1862, Minister of Foreign Affairs Manuel Dobaldo eased tensions by negotiating the Tratado de la Soledad, wherein Spain and England rescinded their plan to attack Mexico and then withdrew from the European partnership.101 But France did not step down. Instead, Emperor Napoleon III developed his “Grand Design”—La Grande Pensée—for recolonization of the Americas under the banner of monarchical governance.102 Long enamored with Latin America, the fifty-four-year-old nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte had risen to power in 1848, founded the Second French Empire in 1852, and helped to defeat Russia four years later during the Crimean War. Emboldened by those victories, he ordered an invasion of Mexico. A staggering defeat at Puebla on May 5, 1862—Cinco de Mayo—did not prevent the headstrong emperor from publicly announcing his Grand Design later that year, and in October 1863 the thirty-one-year-old Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian accepted an appointment to the Mexican throne. If successful, this so-called French Intervention would implant a new monarchy in North America and block the United States from further hemispheric expansion, thus restoring France to its former glory as a preeminent global hegemon.103 Seeking to avoid direct conflict with the United States, French leaders planned to establish their new government through an electoral process and then withdraw most troops, giving an impression that the occupation

Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

29

of Mexico would be both democratic and temporary.104 Writers at the New York Times were not so easily fooled. Foreseeing an important aspect of Greater Reconstruction, they editorialized that “their ulterior purpose to give a death-blow to the Monroe Doctrine will be so apparent that when our own domestic troubles are settled, the military spirit and enterprise so fully aroused throughout the whole country, North and South, will roll over Mexico in one irresistible wave of retributive justice, and sweep every vestige of European domination from Mexican territory.”105 Secretary of State William Seward recognized the more immediate gravity of the situation, predicting in April 1861 that political upheaval in Mexico would tempt foreign entities— including not just France, Spain, and England but also the newly formed Confederacy—“to establish a protectorate or some other form of government in that country.”106 Just as Seward foretold, the Civil War reinvigorated American interest in Mexico and exacerbated the unusual diplomatic methods that typified the preceding four decades. This occurred for a variety of reasons. Although Mexico had long suffered from political instability, financial insolvency, and devastating Indian raids, its position on the world stage deteriorated even further at precisely the moment when Southern secession drove the United States to internecine conflict. As historian Artemio Benavides Hinojosa writes, European imperialists gained traction with local populations in Mexico because the divergent pathways of federalism and conservatism led many citizens “to surrender to a foreign intervention . . . that was then a political alternative that made sense.”107 The stage was set for a series of showdowns between France, Mexico, the United States, the Confederate States of America, independent Indians, and frontier revolutionaries. And the borderlands became the arena in which these struggles played out. Outside observers frequently expressed astonishment at the interminable instability that plagued Mexico, and they marveled at the various ways that Americans took advantage of their neighbor’s shortcomings. The Germanborn doctor Adolph Wislizenus arrived in Mexico in 1846 and only slightly exaggerated when writing that “such bloodless revolutions, brought on by intrigue and money, had been so common in Chihuahua, that the State was sometimes ruled every month by a different governor.” With this political turmoil in mind, Wislizenus accurately predicted that the United States would absorb vast amounts of territory from its weaker neighbor as an indemnity for the Mexican-American War.108 That same year, George Ruxton described the country’s “constantly recurring revolutions” and came to the conclusion that “the Mexicans are incapable of self-government.” He counted

30

Chapter 1

237 separate rebellions in the twenty-five years since Mexico gained independence, citing “individual ambition and lust for power” as the root of the country’s troubles.109 “She changes her form of government and her governors with astonishing facility,” added Gustavus Schmidt, a leading expert on Mexico at that time.110 Generations later, scholars have reached a similar consensus. In Mexico’s first thirty-three years of independence, forty-nine persons sat in the presidential chair, making it extremely difficult to strike meaningful and enduring international agreements. Taking these figures into account, one U.S. historian identifies “rapid rotation of government personnel” as the “essential feature of instability in Latin America.”111 As Brian DeLay has demonstrated, another critical part of this equation involves the relentlessness with which independent Indians plundered Mexico’s far north, fueling regionalist sentiment and weakening the country in the years leading up to the U.S. invasion of 1846.112 Mexican scholars tend to agree with these assessments. Luis Zorrilla notes that political struggles arose because “there was no unity” among the country’s people.113 Edmundo O’Gorman calls the early national period “a spectacle of unspeakable sadness” and blames the losses of territory and affronts to national honor on “the congenital incapacity of our people to govern themselves.”114 The economic historian Araceli Ibarra Bellon attributes Mexico’s long-term financial stagnation to fierce struggles between centralists and federalists and their largely dichotomous ideas about fiscal policy, which adversely affected foreign relations.115 While some scholars have pointed to the liberal 1857 constitution and the presidential rise of fifty-two-year-old Benito Juárez, a former governor of Oaxaca serving on the Mexican Supreme Court, as positive turning points in the country’s political misfortunes, the confusing methods of diplomatic scheming and concomitant power struggles during the French Intervention and the Civil War suggest otherwise.116 Isidro Vizcaya Canales comes nearer the truth when calling the 1860s “one of the most conflicted [decades] in Mexico’s history.”117 This was especially true on the northern frontier, where the French Intervention overlapped with Indian wars, bandit conflicts, and the Civil War to create confusing diplomatic scenarios that percolated inside a tinderbox of violence. In Mexico, retaining power was often more difficult than attaining it in the first place, and the turnover rate among political leaders had a profound influence on the tactics that foreigners used when dealing with that country. The resulting asymmetries in diplomacy demonstrate the devastating effects that political and economic uncertainty can have on a country, especially

Irregular Diplomacy in U.S.-Mexico Relations

31

one bordered by a larger nation like the United States and hegemonic tribes like the Apaches and Comanches. This characteristic of international relations facilitated the dismemberment of Mexican territory on three separate occasions—Texas annexation, the Mexican Cession, and the Gadsden Purchase—and encouraged additional attempts by American filibusters during the antebellum era. When the Civil War broke out, the U.S. and the Confederacy set their sights once more on northern Mexico, perpetuating a trend of political aggression and military conquest that had become all too familiar to residents of that country. The hemispheric turmoil of the 1860s enveloped the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in multiple conflicts, the outcomes of which would help to determine the future course of global empire.

CHAPTER 2

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

Two weeks before the First Battle of Bull Run, Jefferson Davis welcomed Henry Hopkins Sibley into his office. Sibley had recently resigned his commission as an officer in the U.S. Army to lend his services to the Southern cause, and he wanted to pitch a tactical scheme to his new commander in chief. Sibley believed that the Southwest could play an integral part in the war effort if the region could be wrested from federal control and incorporated into the fledgling Confederacy. He found an eager listener in Davis, whose prior experience as secretary of war and commissioner of the Pacific Railway Surveys spawned an abiding interest in New Mexico’s strategic potential as the connecting thoroughfare in a stand-alone Southern nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With illusions of empire swirling in his mind, Davis approved the plan, promoted Sibley to brigadier general, and placed him in command of an expeditionary force. The ensuing campaign into New Mexico during the winter of 1861–62 aimed to promote Southern expansion, absorb silver and gold mines, gain control of ports on the Pacific Coast, and boost Confederate momentum in the early stages of the Civil War.1 In a graphic metaphor, New York Times editors likened the scheme to an anaconda that would squeeze the Southwest and northern Mexico into submission and swallow the whole region into the hungry belly of a slaveholding empire.2 In the early stages of the Civil War, an important sidelight of the conflict involved courtship of political figures in northwest Mexico, a region that both North and South sought to control either directly through outright territorial possession or indirectly through the manipulation of regional figureheads. The diplomatic missions of Confederate Colonel James Reily in 1862 and U.S. Major David Fergusson in 1863 attempted to orchestrate alliances with the respective governors of Chihuahua and Sonora, and each quest was undertaken at the behest of local military commanders acting independently

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

33

of national leaders in Washington, D.C., and Richmond. Sensing a unique opportunity to gain assistance from a country that they viewed as politically inept, each side hoped that two Mexican leaders—Luis Terrazas and Ignacio Pesqueíra—might go rogue, disavow their nation’s neutrality in the Civil War, and assist in the fight for New Mexico and Arizona. Americans wanted to strike deals with individual Mexican governors to ensure a steady external source of supplies and arrange for troops to pass over foreign soil should the need arise. Confederate and Union operatives also attempted to build international military coalitions to fight their mutual Apache enemy, with the faint possibility that those partnerships might lead to direct Mexican participation in the Civil War. The commanders on both sides boasted considerable experience fighting Indians in antebellum New Mexico, and they recalled regional inhabitants pleading for help and protection from so-called indios bárbaros following the Mexican-American War. Mexico’s diplomats had conceded their nation’s weakness on this point when insisting on the inclusion of Article XI in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Even though the Gadsden Purchase abrogated Article XI in 1854, officers like Henry H. Sibley and James H. Carleton remembered the importance that this issue commanded among the people of northern Mexico and sought to employ that region’s vulnerability and public fear to their advantage during the Civil War. When American officers and Mexican governors discussed possible alliances around shared Indian enemies, they always had Chiricahua Apaches and Western Apaches foremost in mind, even though other tribes did inhabit the peripheries of departmental jurisdictions. A generation earlier, Comanches, Kiowas, and Lipan Apaches had raided Chihuahua, Durango, and other states with impunity, accounting for at least 2,649 Mexican deaths during the 1840s.3 Over the ensuing decade, increasing settler encroachment on their Texas homelands and a long period of drought, coupled with the construction of forts and intensive U.S. Army campaigning, reduced tribal power and territorial dominion to the extent that Mexican governors were far less concerned about these three tribes by the 1860s.4 So too had Mescalero Apaches, with homelands in Trans-Pecos Texas and southeastern New Mexico, struck haciendas and villages with regularity throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. After the Mexican-American War ended, companies of U.S. dragoons directed a series of destructive campaigns against the Mescaleros, culminating in 1855 with the construction of Fort Stanton near the sacred White Mountain (Sierra Blanca). By the late 1850s, many Mescalero subgroups were drawing

Chapter 2

Santa Fe

W AP ES AC TE H RN ES

Fort Yuma

Fort West Fort Goodwin

Rive r

CH

IR

CH

ES

Fronteras

Cananea Bacoachi

Paso del Norte

Gr an

N

Monterrey

AL O

of

Saltillo

lif

DURANGO

ZA

CA

TE

a

CA

ni

S

or

100

200 mi

Brownsville Matamoros

AS

A

Ca

0

La Paz

de

NUEVO LEÓN

SI

lf

PACIFIC OCEAN

San Antonio

COAHUILA

Gu

BAJA CALIFORNIA

TEXAS

LI PA N AP AC HE S

CHIHUAHUA

Guaymas

HES

Ri o

UIS

ANC

Sibley’s Invasion Route

Ciudad Chihuahua

Hermosillo

Tiburón Island

COM

USA O XIC

Ures

YA Q

CONFEDERATE TERRITORY OF ARIZONA (1861–62)

El Paso/Fort Bliss San Elizario

Corralitos

SONORA Bavispe

La Libertad

Fort McLane Fort Thorn Fort Cummings Mesilla

ME

Los Lobos

Albuquerque

UA

PA

AH

A

Fort Bowie/ Bascom Affair

IC

Tucson

INDIAN TERRITORY

ULIP

Ri o G r a

CA Gi l a

Battle of Glorieta

nd e

NEW MEXICO TERRITORY

TA M A

34

Tampico

Figure 1. Map of Regional Operations and Chiricahua Apache Homelands, 1861–1862.

rations and living semisedentary lives near Michael Steck’s agencies at Forts Stanton and Thorn, and tribal power was so effectively diminished that Colonel Kit Carson had little difficulty forcing most members onto the new Bosque Redondo Reservation in 1862.5 In Sonora, Yaquis and Seris once resisted Mexican settlement with considerable force, but state militiamen and paid scalp hunters campaigned relentlessly against both groups beginning in the 1840s, and their homelands were deep enough into Mexico that U.S. agents rarely concerned themselves with the possibility of raids above the international

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

35

boundary.6 This left the Chiricahua Apaches, numbering about three thousand individuals from the Bedonkohe, Chihenne, Chokonen, and Nednhi subgroups, and approximately four thousand Western Apaches, belonging to the Cibecue, San Carlos, White Mountain, Northern Tonto, and Southern Tonto subgroups, as the preeminent indigenous bulwarks against Civil War operations in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.7 The fact that commanders in blue and gray believed they could assert influence over rulers in northern Mexico, and perhaps conjure a spirit of cooperation through some sort of diplomatic wizardry, speaks to the precarious nature of political power and national sovereignty in the nineteenth-century U.S.-Mexico borderlands. It also indicates the extent to which American operatives in the 1860s took their cues from the lessons of Mexican federalism—the rough equivalent of a states-rights governing philosophy—during the previous three decades, when leaders across that country’s frontier advocated regional autonomy over centralized national authority. The refusal of Chihuahua and Sonora leaders to assist Americans in any meaningful way helped to ensure that the Southwest remained under federal control during the Civil War, because Confederate operatives placed too much faith in the assumption that certain Mexican officials would break with their own nation to aid the Southern cause. Although the cooperation of foreign governors would not have turned the tide of the war in the same way that the active participation of major European powers like England or France might have, the role of Chihuahua and Sonora did have an impact on Civil War campaigns in the Southwest, which in turn influenced the course of empire. The schemes that Union and Confederate operatives employed in their attempts to secure support from governors in northwest Mexico epitomized the unconventional modes of diplomatic interaction that took place in the contested borderlands.8 In June 1861, Thomas Corwin met with leaders in Mexico City in pursuance of a U.S. scheme to take possession of Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua. With Mexico “in a state of great disorder” because of its recent War of the Reform and the escalating European debt crisis, Corwin hoped to negotiate a treaty that would fund resistance to impending foreign onslaughts. In exchange for American loans, Mexico would have to put up its four northwestern states as collateral.9 However lopsided these provisions seemed, Mexicans had good reason to entertain the idea. Minister of Foreign Affairs Manuel María de Zamacona felt that such an agreement would “strengthen as much as possible ties with the United States, to ward off the dangers that may threaten from Europe.” He cautioned, however, that a

36

Chapter 2

partnership of this sort might create animosity with the Confederacy, giving Southerners “a pretext for aggression on our northern border.” The statesman understood that Mexico lay in a precarious position because of the dual clashes arising with the Civil War and the French Intervention, both of which overlapped with ongoing fights against indigenous groups in the borderlands. The Mexican government needed monetary and material support from the United States to defend against European invasion and Indian raiding, but it simultaneously hoped to avert conflict with the newly formed Confederate States.10 The clairvoyant Zamacona already sensed ensuing military and diplomatic struggles in the hotly contested U.S.-Mexico borderlands. The State Department had two major motivations in offering financial assistance to the Mexican government. First, the United States did not wish to see a monarchy in the Western Hemisphere, and the surest way to avoid that scenario was to aid Mexico’s republicans. With the Civil War underway, the Lincoln administration could not contribute to their plight militarily, but the Treasury could help finance the Mexican army. Second, federal leaders who sought to create a buffer against the Confederacy’s geographic expansion understood that U.S. acquisition of northwest Mexico would prevent Rebels from using that region to their tactical advantage. Corwin saw the treaty as a roundabout approach to purchasing Mexican land through loan defaults and confiscation of collateral. He believed that this would be the best way to defend Mexico “against Southern filibusters or European cupidity” and also felt that the region would be an ideal place “for the colonization of five millions of our negroes” if emancipation became a reality. At one point, Corwin asked for a $10 million slush fund to advance his visions, but Lincoln denied the request in fear that it might inflame the political passions of antiexpansion Northerners who opposed the acquisition of new territory from Mexico.11 Believing that Corwin’s ideas were a bit too extreme, Lincoln and his team of advisers proposed a treaty to Benito Juárez that involved assumption of the interest due on Mexico’s unpaid loans—amounting to $62 million—but not coverage of the entire Mexican debt.12 By paying off the recurring interest owed to European creditors, U.S. officials hoped to ease tensions and dissuade France from invading Mexico. Through his ministers in Paris and London, Secretary of State William Seward informed French and British leaders of this plan in hopes they would forgo hostilities. Although the new strategy differed from the original insofar as the U.S. government would repay part of the Mexican debt rather than finance its resistance to European invaders, it retained the provisions about territory as collateral. In reality, Mexico would

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

37

be shifting part of its debt burden from Europe to the United States, because the loans carried a 6 percent interest rate with a payoff deadline of just six years. The federal government fully expected Mexico to default and thus relinquish its northwestern sector to the United States, although Mexico’s foreign minister believed that such terms would not necessarily endanger the country’s geopolitical stature. Nonetheless, the diplomatic integrity of this approach was questionable enough that the Executive Department acted independently of Congress, foreseeing political resistance if senators and representatives were given a chance to debate the issue.13 Increasingly desperate to fend off a looming attack (France rejected the U.S. offer to pay down the debt), Mexican leaders agreed to the terms on April 6, 1862, but Lincoln’s act of political finesse misfired when the Senate rejected Corwin’s treaty.14 As Corwin pursued these federal initiatives in Mexico City, U.S. officers in New Mexico and California caught wind of an impending Confederate expedition and began dispatching civilian spies out of Fort Yuma to monitor troop movements along the border.15 Seward learned that Confederates also had designs on northern Mexico and immediately informed Corwin that secessionists on the West Coast planned to seize Baja California and restrict federal commerce with Mexico. Some of the areas surrounding Los Angeles, including El Monte and San Bernardino, became rendezvous points for Californians who favored the Rebel cause. One such individual was the Pennsylvania-born Dan Showalter, a two-term California legislator who openly supported secession and organized a party of two dozen likeminded men to join Confederate forces in Texas.16 With Baja California and the wagon road from Los Angeles to El Paso under their control, Southern intriguers like Showalter would, Seward feared, “extend their conquests to Sonora and Chihuahua” and might even seek the “absorption of all Mexico.”17 Thomas Sprague, a U.S. agent stationed at the city of La Paz, predicted that the Rebels would use Baja California as a base of operations against the Mexican mainland. To prevent this outcome, Sprague advocated federal possession of the region. “Rather than the filibustering secessionists should get possession of the peninsula of Lower California,” he reiterated, “I think our government quite warranted, in case no arrangement could be made with the Mexican government for its purchase, in taking possession of it for our own protection.”18 Although Union forces in southern California did not invade or occupy any part of Mexico, they did begin arresting Confederate sympathizers, including Showalter and his companions, who spent several months in the Fort Yuma guardhouse.

38

Chapter 2

Seward quickly verified rumors regarding Confederate intentions to extend their empire to the Pacific shoreline. Corwin’s confidantes eavesdropped on four Southern agents in the Mexican capital, who were “rejoicing over the victory at Bull Run,” and the information thereby gleaned revealed the ambitious extent of the Rebel agenda. According to Corwin, secessionists assumed a threatening posture toward the Mexican government after learning that U.S. troops might be allowed passage through Sonora and Chihuahua, suggesting that “Mexico will lose the State of Tamaulipas in sixty days” unless the central government overturned all edicts favoring the United States. Corwin also pointed out the geographical context in which this theater of the Civil War was unfolding. Referring to the whole Mexican frontier from Tamaulipas in the east to Baja California in the west, he postulated that the Confederacy intended “to seize all of these States—indeed, to possess itself of the entire Tierra Caliente of Mexico.” The ports at Tampico and Guaymas would be particularly important to the Confederate scheme, and the minister suggested that Seward work with the War Department to implement a preemptive defense plan. Unless the U.S. Army buttressed its presence in the Southwest, Corwin warned, the entire region “could be conquered by a comparatively small force.”19 As the Civil War got under way in the summer of 1861, officials in Mexico City and Washington, D.C., were taking Confederate expansion in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands very seriously. Federal officers actually took these threats a bit more seriously than they needed to. The forebodings of territorial usurpation that Rebels like John T. Pickett disseminated in Mexico City did not elicit any sympathy for their cause, and, despite its official status as a neutral nation, Mexico was already casting a cautious gaze toward the North to prevail in the Civil War. Recognizing that the Lincoln administration had the greater capability of repelling French interlopers and fighting Apache warriors, and wary that the South might expand its slave empire through political intrigue in the borderlands, Juárez kept a close eye on proceedings in the United States. As early as July 1861, Zamacona instructed the Mexican diplomat Matías Romero to make the most of his crucial appointment to Washington, D.C., in order “to cultivate with care the sympathies of the [U.S.] government.”20 As chargé d’affaires from 1860 to 1867, Romero ranked among Mexico’s most important foreign representatives. Only twenty-three years old, diminutive in physical stature, and prone to illness, the man’s appearance would have caused few to perceive his diplomatic prowess. Born in Oaxaca in 1837, Romero attended the state’s Institute of Arts and Sciences and earned a law

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

39

Figure 2. Matias Romero, c. 1860s. Courtesy of National Archives, Record Group 111, Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, 1860-1985, Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War–Era Personalities and Scenes.

degree at the age of twenty. A committed liberal and protégé of Juárez during the War of the Reform, he worked as a secretary to cabinet members before receiving his first diplomatic appointment to the United States in December 1859. Romero was a veritable nineteenth-century renaissance man, producing more than seventeen thousand pieces of diplomatic correspondence and publishing dozens of articles and books, in addition to serving Mexico as a three-time treasury minister, foreign envoy, senator, postmaster general,

40

Chapter 2

and railroad promoter before his death in 1898.21 Romero took his job seriously, sending detailed dispatches to the Mexican minister of foreign affairs on a weekly basis. He lobbied incessantly for federal support of the Juárez government—one antagonistic Mexican newspaper correspondent mocked him for pestering Seward with “thousands and thousands of letters”—hoping to persuade Lincoln and his cabinet that France’s violation of the Monroe Doctrine demanded immediate countermeasures.22 In 1861, Romero told Seward that “the southern states were trying to acquire the territory of Mexico to extend slavery,” and he hoped to arrange a treaty with the United States that would protect Mexico’s national boundaries from Confederate aggression. At one point, Romero complained that “offenses against Mexican territory and outrages against Mexican citizens have been committed in the Southern states” and even referred to Texas Confederates as “dissidents.”23 While Romero promoted Mexican interests in Washington, D.C., and Corwin pursued Union objectives south of the border, Confederate leaders in Richmond schemed to take control of northwest Mexico. General Sibley arrived in San Antonio on August 12, 1861, and began raising and training an army of 2,515 volunteers from the surrounding Texas countryside.24 As he formulated the diplomatic components of his campaign into New Mexico, Sibley tapped Colonel James Reily of the Fourth Texas Regiment as second in command, a position of high rank that virtually guaranteed an audience with foreign administrators in Mexico. Reily was selected for the role of ambassador because of his impressive professional pedigree. Born in 1811, he held multiple college degrees and married Henry Clay’s grandniece. After migrating from Ohio to Texas in 1836, he enlisted as a major in the Republic’s army and served as aide-de-camp to General Thomas J. Rusk, a future U.S. senator. In December 1841, Texas president Sam Houston appointed Reily as chargé d’affaires to the United States, a job that fostered a close working relationship with Secretary of State Daniel Webster. Although he maintained a law office in Houston and served as chairman of the Texas Whig convention in 1852, proslavery sentiment caused Reily to break from the party that same year when they selected Winfield Scott as a presidential candidate. As a Democratic convert, Reily endorsed James Buchanan in the 1856 election and received a patronage appointment as U.S. consul to Russia, where he served just two weeks before resigning because St. Petersburg was too cold. By 1861, he had become an outspoken proponent of secession and gave speeches throughout Texas advocating Southern independence. The colonel had extensive political and diplomatic experience, and Texas governor Francis Lubbock lauded him

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

41

Figure 3. Colonel James Reily. Image 1914/002-01. Courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

as “peculiarly fitted for the duty assigned him” in Sibley’s campaign. His inclusion revealed one of the foremost strategies—soliciting support in northern Mexico—that Confederates planned to pursue in their attempt to conquer the Southwest.25 After an arduous trek across West Texas, the Sibley Brigade reached southern New Mexico in December 1861. The large army rendezvoused with Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor, commander of 258 Texas volunteers who had already captured the federal troops at Fort Fillmore, occupied the Mesilla Valley, and established the Confederate Territory of Arizona with Baylor as self-proclaimed governor.26 Sibley assumed overall command upon his arrival and issued a declaration to the inhabitants of Mesilla that outlined his bold ambitions. “By geographical position, by similarity of institutions, by commercial interests, and by future destinies New Mexico pertains to the Confederacy,” he declared.27 Less than two weeks later, as the Texans moved up the Rio Grande Valley, Sibley dispatched his colonel on assignment to Mexico. Reily relinquished command of his regiment to Lieutenant Colonel

42

Chapter 2

William R. Scurry and departed with a twelve-man escort for Ciudad Chihuahua, three hundred miles to the south, bearing the honorific title of special ambassador for the Confederate States of America.28 Carrying a letter of introduction from Simeon Hart—an influential El Paso businessman, personal friend of the Chihuahua governor, and avowed Southern sympathizer who personally bankrolled the diplomatic endeavor—Reily had instructions to meet with Terrazas and Pesqueíra to discuss “subjects of great importance both to the operations of this Army and to the future relations of these [Mexican] States with the Confederate States.” The mission had several specific aims, all intended to support the war effort through alliances with regionalist Mexican politicians.29 Reily would first inquire whether or not the Mexican government was allowing U.S. troops and supplies to move through that country, and if so he would protest such an arrangement. A second query involved the interest that Texas and Mexico shared in curtailing Chiricahua and Western Apache raiding across the international border, and it was hoped that these mutual foes might provide a pretense for military cooperation between the Confederate and Mexican armies. Finally, Reily sought permission to purchase provisions from Chihuahuenses and transport those items to Sibley’s front lines in New Mexico.30 Although a Texas agent named Daniel Murphy had already bought guns and ammunition in Chihuahua and sent them across the border, Reily had more ambitious plans in mind.31 His quest stemmed from the fact that the Rebels had no direct supply line from Texas and resolved to live off the land and confiscate goods from federal supply depots. An agreement to transport provisions across the border had broad implications, because Mexico was the only foreign nation that abutted the Confederacy, meaning that a naval blockade could not restrict the flow of goods in that region as it had along the South’s coastline.32 A fourth and very ambitious objective of Reily’s foray involved the literal acquisition of Chihuahua and Sonora. Sibley understood that a political crisis involving the Tripartite Alliance had thrust the entire country into a precarious situation, and he realized that the national government’s concomitant weakness lent a greater degree of autonomy to governors on Mexico’s northern fringe. He also knew that the two states continued to struggle in their countermeasures against Apaches. Hoping to tap into this opportunity, Reily gauged the likelihood that Terrazas and Pesqueíra would sell or annex their respective states to the Confederacy.33 “We must have Chihuahua and Sonora,” Reily explained to John H. Reagan, a fellow Texan who served as

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

43

the Confederacy’s postmaster general. “With Chihuahua and Sonora we gain Southern California, and by a railroad to Guaymas render our State of Texas the great highway of nations.” He asked Reagan to pass these sentiments along to Davis at the earliest opportunity.34 Although his rhetoric resembled the aggressive tone of antebellum filibusters, and the rationale behind his mission stemmed from a Southern infatuation with expansion into Latin America, Reily’s approach was primarily diplomatic, reflecting his status as a commissioned officer rather than a stateless opportunist. He exercised far more caution and restraint than the rogue armies that invaded Sonora during the 1850s, but he still overstepped his bounds by seeking to obtain territory. Violent experiences with William Walker in 1853 and Henry Crabb in 1857 made Mexican leaders wary of any foreigners operating on their soil, and they acted with deep skepticism toward Americans of any sectional affiliation.35 Terrazas and Pesqueíra reflected this ongoing anxiety when dealing with Reily, even though the Confederate agent was not a filibuster himself, traveled without a large military escort, and lacked the ability to usurp their power. Indeed, any attempt to acquire portions of Mexico might have been disapproved at Richmond, because annexation of foreign territory was not a direct policy goal for the South at that time.36 Some Confederate figureheads believed it would be more fruitful—and far less provocative—to pursue alliances with proslavery interests in Latin America and the Caribbean Basin, and they shied away from public propositions to aggressively expand the South’s land base.37 Unaware of the cautious stance that Davis had taken toward territorial acquisition, Reily arrived in Ciudad Chihuahua on January 8, 1862, and booked a room at a hotel owned by former U.S. consul Bennett Riddells of South Carolina.38 At the governor’s palace he met thirty-three-year-old Luis Terrazas, a liberal who attained the governorship in 1860 in place of José María Zuloaga, whose conservative family had controlled key political positions since the colonial era. Terrazas made a name for himself defending Chihuahua during the War of the Reform, leading a movement to oppose powerful Catholic clergymen and centralist politicians. A wealthy capitalist boss (cacique), Terrazas owned vast ranches in northern Mexico and represented one of the country’s most elite families. He had three primary interests as governor: to defeat Chiricahua Apache enemies using the resources available in Mexico, to promote regionalism by controlling the state legislature and fending off centralist attacks, and to sustain the commercial interests of his family and business partners. Terrazas saw public security, political control, and

44

Chapter 2

Figure 4. Luis Terrazas, c. 1870s. Photo originally published in Jose Fuentes Mares, Y México se Refugió en el Desierto: Luis Terrazas, Historia y Destino (Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1954), frontispiece.

economic power as mutually reinforcing and fought shrewdly to uphold all three objectives in the face of American meddling.39 Based on these motivations, Terrazas and his colleagues peppered their visitor with questions about the size and purpose of the Texan army and asked for updates about the Civil War. Three days later, Terrazas summoned the colonel back to his office. Although he expressed “the loyalty of my sentiments toward the general-in-chief of the Army of the Confederate States,” the governor would not permit Confederate soldiers to pursue Apaches below the border. He cited the Mexican Constitution as his authority for denying the request to chase “savage Indians” and reiterated that Confederate troop movements in Mexico would not be tolerated for any reason. Reily pushed Terrazas especially hard on this point, insisting that historical precedent for the hot pursuit of enemies should enable Texans to cross the international boundary.40 Sibley and Reily understood that the shared Indian foe was the most useful bargaining chip when speaking with Mexican dignitaries, and they attempted to capitalize on unrelenting threats of Apache violence for

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

45

the ulterior motive of forging a broader foreign military alliance to impact fighting between U.S. and Confederate armies in the Southwest. Utilizing localized power structures in furtherance of national objectives seemed like a clever approach to diplomacy, and it might have succeeded had it not been for the unanticipated loyalty that Terrazas showed for the Juárez government. The fact that a Mexican leader rejected an appeal to fight Chiricahua Apaches—a group that most norteños hated with intense passion—speaks to the trepidation that he felt with respect to American agents of empire. Regarding the acquisition of supplies, Texans would have to employ nonmilitary contractors as intermediaries to buy goods from Chihuahua merchants and transport those items to Sibley’s army in New Mexico. Terrazas would not condone the direct purchase of provisions because “that may be interpreted as an act contrary to the absolute neutrality of Mexico.”41 At first glance, it seems remarkable that he even allowed limited commerce, given that Terrazas had plain orders from his government to observe “the strictest neutrality” in the Civil War.42 But the approval of a loose commercial relationship indicates the status of the Terrazas family as the region’s preeminent economic powerhouse, and it made sense that he would find a way to profit from the war raging to his north. He promised to sustain friendly relations with Southern agents in order to line the pockets of Chihuahua businessmen, but this rhetorical grandstanding did not change the fact that the governor effectively snubbed Reily’s overtures for direct support.43 When Edward H. Jordan, a Southern sympathizer in Chihuahua, approached Terrazas two months later to discuss troop movements, the governor reiterated that no soldiers—Union or Confederate—would be allowed through the state.44 Having concluded his business, the colonel departed Ciudad Chihuahua and rode north to Sibley’s headquarters at Fort Thorn on the Rio Grande. Reily informed his commander that the people of Mexico had received him amicably, which he misinterpreted as friendliness toward the Confederate cause. “The best feeling exists in Chihuahua,” Reily gasconaded, congratulating Sibley “in having obtained the first official recognition of the Government of the Confederate States by any foreign power.”45 He jubilantly told another Southern official that “my mission was entirely successful” and asserted that negotiations had prevented U.S. troops from marching through Chihuahua to attack Texas from the west.46 Most of Reily’s claims, however, stretched the truth. Terrazas was a state governor acting on his own accord, so his reception of the Confederate agent did not insinuate formal diplomatic recognition by the Mexican government. Furthermore, the statesman had refused all

46

Chapter 2

of Reily’s requests aside from limited trade, a policy that posed minimal risk to Mexico’s neutrality. Terrazas had taken a middle ground to avoid hostilities with the Texans and protect Mexican interests without jeopardizing his own political standing. At the same time that Reily pursued his mission in northern Mexico, Chiricahua Apaches under Chief Mangas Coloradas made their presence known to the invading Confederate Army. Having received his Spanish name from a red-sleeved military coat that he conspicuously wore, Mangas Coloradas rose to tribal prominence two decades earlier, leading destructive raids into Chihuahua and Sonora in retaliation for genocidal massacres involving state-employed scalp hunters. Having lost several of his own family members to mercenaries like John Johnson and James Kirker, he lamented that “Chihuahua has offered a reward for our scalps . . . and we have been hunted down ever since.”47 The most influential Chiricahua Apache chief of his generation, Mangas Coloradas would remain at war with Chihuahuenses and Sonorenses for the rest of his life. When he met American soldiers for the first time on October 19, 1846, the chief professed friendship and even proposed an alliance to fight Mexicans, telling one U.S. officer that “the Mexicans are rascals; we hate and will kill them all.”48 But the U.S. Army soon began building forts near sacred sites, from which points they led campaigns against tribal rancherías (campsites). In the Apache ethos, “the people’s sense of place, their sense of their tribal past, and their vibrant sense of themselves are inseparably intertwined,” so the American invasion eventually forced the chief to rethink his amicability in view of protecting the deep roots of tribal identity.49 By the early 1860s, Mangas Coloradas and his followers had been resisting federal troops for more than a decade, and they saw no difference between those longtime enemies and the Graycoats who entered Apachería as part of a faraway conflict over issues of slavery and sectionalism that tribe members knew and cared little about.50 Throughout the winter months of 1861–62, Chiricahua Apache warriors, many of them under the leadership of an aging Mangas Coloradas and his protégés Cochise and Victorio, conducted a series of subsistence raids on Rebel picket camps in southern New Mexico, siphoning away hundreds of horses, mules, and cattle. In Apache culture, raiding (“to search out enemy property”) was much different than warfare (“to take death from an enemy”), but their American and Mexican counterparts saw nearly all activities as hostile.51 These incursions prompted one Confederate officer to take unauthorized action against the tribe, and in the process Apaches directly but

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

47

inadvertently influenced the course of Confederate diplomacy. Partially to thwart depredations, and partially in advancement of his own hatred for Indians, Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor mustered several dozen men into a special unit called the Arizona Guards. Commanded by Captain Thomas J. Mastin, the company consisted of Southern sympathizers who devoted their attention not to vanquishing U.S. forces but to killing Apaches. Their official purpose to patrol the wagon road from Mesilla to Tucson had important implications for regional Confederate strategy, which now had to account for Native peoples who sought to protect their homelands from this most recent American invasion. The Arizona Guards fulfilled their purpose when they ambushed and killed eight Chiricahua Apaches in the Florida Mountains of southwestern New Mexico, but the attack only fueled Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Victorio to seek retribution during future raids.52 On February 27, Baylor personally led more than two hundred Texas soldiers on a vengeful campaign targeting the Chiricahua Apache rancheria of Chief Miguel Yrigóllen near the Mexican community of Corralitos. The Graycoats captured four adults and five children, and Baylor promptly ordered that the grown Indians be executed. One irate Chihuahua official condemned the military strike for “disgracing the rights and honor of the nation,” and Terrazas scribbled an angry dispatch demanding that Baylor be reprimanded, not for killing Apaches but for violating Mexican sovereignty.53 In Vera Cruz, newspaper editors complained that “Baylor has declared that there is no boundary line with relation to the savage tribes who ravage the two frontiers,” and even Sibley expressed regret over the incident.54 Realizing that this hapless invasion of Mexico constituted a threat to war efforts in the Southwest, Confederate secretary of state Judah P. Benjamin reached out to Terrazas in an attempt to smooth things over. Baylor’s activities also troubled President Davis, who viewed the episode as “justly offensive to our friendly neighbors in Mexico.”55 The incident cast a dark shadow over Confederate diplomacy before Reily even completed his tasks, and Baylor would further complicate borderlands affairs a month later when he issued a controversial order to his Arizona Guards calling for the treacherous extermination of Chiricahua Apaches during a peace conference in southern New Mexico. Fearing that such an evil act would taint the Confederacy’s image abroad and diminish the likelihood of British support in the Civil War, Davis again intervened by ordering an investigation and stripping Baylor of his command.56 Despite major setbacks from Baylor’s brash handling of Apache affairs, Sibley sent Reily back to Mexico on a second assignment to meet with Governor

48

Chapter 2

Pesqueíra.57 Captain Sherod Hunter and a detachment of sixty troops escorted Reily from Mesilla to Tucson, and when the agent reached the border he swapped his Texan chaperones for a contingent of Mexican guards.58 Reily presented the same requests as he had in Chihuahua, with an added entreaty for permission to land troops and supplies at Guaymas, a town of about two thousand inhabitants.59 Because of the tactical advantages of this Sonora harbor— one California senator called it “the most important port on the Pacific Ocean” and another firsthand observer claimed that “the commerce of the world could be transacted at this port”—the mission held added importance, and Reily was provided with $2,000 from the brigade’s quartermaster funds.60 Sibley relayed a message to Pesqueíra, intimating that he sought “relations not merely of peace, but of amity and good will.” Again hoping to find common ground, he pleaded with the governor to allow Texan troops into Sonora so that the Chiricahua and Western Apaches could be “effectually subjected or exterminated.”61 Alexander M. Jackson—an avowed secessionist who served as New Mexico’s territorial secretary prior to the Civil War and played an important role in planning the Confederate invasion as Sibley’s regimental adjutant—instructed Reily to gauge the sentiment in Sonora before deciding whether or not to extend his mission all the way to Mexico City, but he cautioned that Davis might prefer to handle such high-level diplomatic negotiations himself.62 Like Terrazas, Pesqueíra ascended to power during Mexico’s War of the Reform. A military and political leader (caudillo) who made a name for himself fighting Indians and resisting conservatives, Pesqueíra attained his position with the backing of local miners and merchants. After leading a revolutionary movement in 1857 that ousted the establishment political boss Manuel Gándara, he was elected governor as a liberal constitutionalist and sustained that power in spite of counterrebellions during the War of the Reform. No stranger to challenges, Pesqueíra was a hardened regionalist whose authority as governor derived from widespread public support for his opposition to American filibusters, Mexican centralists, and Apache and Yaqui raiders.63 He became deeply involved in the economic development of Sonora and was especially interested in exploiting the state’s mineral wealth, to the extent that he allowed American venture capitalists to finance exploratory mining operations below the border.64 In the winter of 1860, Cochise had led a party of one hundred Chiricahua Apache warriors on a whirlwind war raid through Sonora, killing more than fifty Mexicans while evading Pesqueíra’s forces.65 But in 1862, the governor’s stature would be tested by a Texas agent hoping to make Sonora an ally of the Confederacy.

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

49

Figure 5. Ignacio Pesqueíra. Courtesy of Arizona Historical Society, Image #7452.

Reily reached the city of Hermosillo on March 14 and requested an interview with the governor. Over the ensuing week he annoyed Pesqueíra by demanding to know the veracity of gossip about U.S. Army maneuvers near the coast, requesting permission to visit and inspect Guaymas, asking for travel passports, and inquiring about a trifling matter involving borrowed newspapers.66 The rumors that bothered Reily originated with a private meeting in Washington, D.C., almost a year earlier, when Secretary of State Seward asked Minister Romero to do him a personal favor in regards to the port at Guaymas.67 Romero passed the request to his superiors, and an obliging Mexican Congress granted permission for Bluecoats to land on the Sonora coast and proceed to Arizona “by the most direct route” and with the “strictest regard” to local authority and property rights.68 The governor insisted that only the national government—not individual state leaders—could negotiate

50

Chapter 2

foreign arrangements and assured Reily that he had not personally made concessions to the United States.69 This claim was somewhat disingenuous, because Pesqueíra actually had issued a decree allowing the U.S. government to transport supplies across the border.70 The Southern diplomat John Pickett protested vehemently about “the obnoxious permission” given to U.S. forces, calling it “a most suicidal step” that would “prove fatal to the peace of the frontier.”71 Because Arizona was a Confederate territory at that time, Pickett argued that Mexico was abetting a federal attack on Southern soil and thereby disavowing its own declaration of neutrality in the Civil War.72 At one point Santiago Vidaurri, one of the Confederacy’s foremost Mexican allies, tried to convince Pesqueíra to disallow U.S. movements through Sonora, but the request proved ineffective.73 Reily’s protestations not only irritated the governor, they also drew the ire of Manuel Doblado, who replaced Zamacona as minister of foreign affairs. In a terse complaint to Thomas Corwin—a U.S. employee with no control over Rebel activities—Doblado insinuated that the Civil War was causing headaches and said that the right of transit for Union troops had prompted the Confederate agent’s “arrogant mission” into Chihuahua and Sonora.74 As further evidence of Rebel conspiring, Juan de Dios Arías, an official with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sent Corwin facsimiles of nine letters that Reily and Sibley wrote to Pesqueíra and complained that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from southern Arizona in 1861 left Mexico’s far northwest vulnerable to Confederate incursions and Indian raids.75 Corwin assured his two angry counterparts that the United States was planning a mission that would relieve the Mexican frontier from “further molestation” by Southern interlopers.76 Drawing a direct parallel to antebellum filibustering schemes, Corwin predicted that the Graycoats would fail in their most recent attempts “to separate the Northern Mexican States from [their] Republic and thus realize the project of the Knights of the Golden Circle.”77 Although the American attaché believed that the Confederate mission below the border would lose traction, others viewed the scheme with greater trepidation. In April 1862, editors at the New York Times predicted that Texans would “push their incursions” into Sonora, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua in an attempt to control the entire region. Should this scenario materialize, they believed it would complicate relations between the U.S. and Mexico and impede communication between California and the Eastern states. Based on reports from an unnamed field correspondent near the border, the newspapermen also warned that Apaches might play a role in the Confederacy’s

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

51

plans. “The rebels in Arizona are already tampering with the Mexicans,” they explained, “and more especially with the wild Indians of Arizona and New Mexico, putting arms into their hands, and otherwise fitting them out to commit depredations on Union emigrants and settlers.” Not realizing that Baylor’s Arizona Guards were attempting to exterminate rather than ingratiate the Chiricahua Apaches, journalists called for the immediate organization of Arizona as a federal territory and insisted that a strong military force occupy the region to counter such fictitious schemes.78 Pesqueíra’s reticence toward Reily’s entreaties, Doblado’s concern about international ramifications of the Civil War, and the New York Times’s paranoia all emanated from the geographic location of Sonora, which shared a border with Confederate-occupied Arizona but also lay in close proximity to federally controlled California.79 Aware of his fragile predicament and fearful of igniting an international imbroglio, Sonora’s head of state adhered to the doctrine of neutrality even more rigidly than his colleague Terrazas. Both governors tried to uphold Mexican impartiality without jeopardizing their own political standing or the livelihood of their people. They received Confederate and Union agents amicably, but each man generally avoided agreements that might appear favorable to one side or the other. As they weighed the increasing tension between Mexico and France and considered the possibility that Juárez might fall, the two governors saw American agents as meddlesome and wanted to avoid additional conflicts. After returning to the Mesilla Valley on April 16, Reily informed Postmaster General Reagan that the trip to Sonora had been a difficult one. He claimed to have laid the groundwork for an international alliance by brokering an agreement to purchase unlimited supplies, march troops through the region, and build a “Confederate State Depot” at Guaymas.80 Like his earlier report on the Terrazas meeting, much of what Reily said was false. Although the Rebel agent inspected Sonora’s port, Pesqueíra refused to grant permission for a military station there and declined right of transit for troops and supplies.81 One possible explanation for the deceptive boasting is that he actually wanted U.S. officers to think that Mexican governors pledged their support to the Confederacy. If federal leaders in New Mexico and California believed this, Reily may have reasoned, with a mind toward Machiavellian twists, then they might attack Chihuahua and Sonora in retribution for abetting an enemy, which could pull Mexico into the Civil War as an ally of the South. One wry Unionist referenced these machinations when writing that the Confederates “are playing fine games in that distracted country.”82

52

Chapter 2

Federal officials understood what was at stake with these forays below the border. “What the devil do they care for Arizona, without 100 souls in it, and nothing worth having there?” one Union operative asked rhetorically in reference to Reily and Sibley. “They wish to march into Sonora . . . and take quiet possession.” Should the Confederates succeed in that mission, he posited, “the North may just as well give up the complete line through from the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of California, and it will require a supreme effort then to rout them.”83 Brigadier General James H. Carleton appreciated the gravity of this doomsday scenario and remained cautious as he recruited a column of 2,350 U.S. volunteers in southern California.84 Carleton feared that Sibley planned to “make a demonstration westward, having in view the secession of Sonora from Mexico and its accession to the Confederate States.” This, he believed, was the only plausible explanation for “this mission of the full Colonel Reily.”85 Union spies shadowed Reily’s movements in Ures and Hermosillo— Sonora’s two largest towns—and reported details of the Confederate mission to federal authorities in California.86 William L. Baker, the U.S. consul at Guaymas, also informed Secretary of State Seward about the colonel’s scheming and turned over incriminating copies of Confederate documents.87 On March 30, Carleton received the first of several reports from his spies—who included San Francisco newspaper correspondent W. G. Moody; the “loyal citizen of the United States” F. H. Waterman; and Peter Brady, who operated under the alias George Peters and, as a friend of Pesqueíra, represented “the best man the [U.S.] Government could have in that section of Sonora.”88 Waterman and Moody bribed Manuel Escalante, the governor’s interpreter, to duplicate Reily’s correspondence. Escalante allowed the two Union operatives into his office, laid the documents on a desk, and left the room. The agents soon discovered, however, that the Mexican turncoat had grown cold feet and carried several of the letters away with him, preventing the entire collection of transcripts from being copied. Waterman and Moody left Ures with facsimiles of some but not all of the papers, and they saw Escalante’s deviousness as an indication that the governor “may have somehow entangled himself ” with the Rebels. If nothing else, the letters verified that Reily and Pesqueíra communicated about Confederate war efforts. Wright forwarded the letters to Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas in Washington, D.C., and promised to keep him apprised of future developments.89 When the spies passed intelligence to Unionists in California, they explained that Pesqueíra reputedly denied the Rebel’s request for aid. They also noted with some surprise that Reily “boasted that he had obtained all the privileges asked for.” Waterman lent

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

53

little credence to this gloating and claimed that “Pesqueíra is friendly to the North.” He mentioned the troubled relationship between Mexico’s central government and frontier states like Sonora and Chihuahua, noting that regionalists like Pesqueíra shirked their superiors in the past when it came to customs duties and civil appointees and might do so again to “throw Sonora into the arms of the United States.” Most Sonorenses had vivid memories of James Gadsden and Henry Crabb, and they now feared that Confederates would “make an incursion into this state under some pretext or another.”90 By the time Reily arrived, residents understood their vulnerability to American expansion, having dealt with the issue numerous times before. In thinking that the governor would be eager to join the United States, federal officials misunderstood Pesqueíra’s stance toward Americans, a position of extreme caution that applied to the Union as well as the Confederacy.91 Accounts of Reily’s activities soon appeared in San Francisco newspapers, and the entire scheme became common knowledge throughout California. The same detectives that secretly copied documents in Ures also relayed that intelligence to the press. “There can be no doubt that there is a thoroughly organized plan by the Secessionists to take possession” of northwest Mexico, the agents disclosed. Should Reily’s diplomatic endeavors succeed, the Confederacy would enlarge its territorial holdings and expand chattel slavery into that region. Even more importantly, the acquisition of valuable mines in Chihuahua and Sonora would boost the Southern economy. With so much at stake on the northern frontier of Mexico, Union agents reiterated the importance of maintaining a strong military force along the border as well as a powerful naval presence off the coast of Sonora. “If our government does not take some preventive measures,” one man cautioned, “I have no doubt that we shall have serious trouble on our hands.”92 Brigadier General George Wright, commanding the U.S. Department of the Pacific, informed the Mexican governor that peaceful relations “would be jeopardized should the insidious proposal of the rebel general be for a moment entertained.”93 To counteract any influence that the Confederates might assert over Sonora, the spy Brady suggested that U.S. authorities “write to Pesqueíra” to intimate the repercussions if he aided Sibley in any way.94 At the same time, Carleton’s California Column marched eastward toward the Rio Grande, skirting the Mexican border in order to “sweep the predatory bands of [John R.] Baylor and Reily out of Arizona and break up their plan of obtaining a foothold in Sonora.”95 Still anticipating a Confederate alliance with Mexico, cautious U.S. officers put contingency plans in place. “Should

54

Chapter 2

the forces of Sibley invade Sonora,” Wright ordered Carleton, “you will pursue them without regard to boundary lines.”96 This remarkable directive blatantly disregarded international sovereignty and suggests that U.S. officers in the Far West were willing to invade their southerly neighbor and fight the Civil War on foreign soil if necessary. These proceedings turned the tables on Confederate attempts to establish friendly relations with Sonora, and Carleton contacted Pesqueíra from his headquarters at Fort Yuma, just north of the Mexican border. Hoping to curb Confederate influence and cultivate a sense of goodwill, he granted unsolicited permission for Mexican merchants and miners to enter Arizona and hoped that this open-border policy would be reciprocated for U.S. troops. After this innocuous icebreaker, he expressed concern about rumors that Pesqueíra had cooperated with the Texan emissary. Carleton warned that Sibley and his men “would, as filibusters, usurp the power you yourself hold, and subjugate your own State.”97 Wright sent an even blunter letter. With a tone of condescension, the general told Pesqueíra that he knew about Reily’s mission and was gratified to learn that Mexico had not lent material support to the Confederacy. “Any other decision than that which Your Excellency has made would have been deeply regretted,” he intoned. “Utter devastation and ruin would inevitably befall the beautiful State of Sonora should the rebel forces obtain a foothold within its limits.” If the Confederates did make logistical use of Sonora, Wright promised that U.S. forces would invade. “Under no circumstances will the Government of the United States permit the rebel horde to take refuge,” he resolved, informing Pesqueíra that he had “an army of 10,000 men” prepared to march into Mexico if necessary.98 This ominous threat from a U.S. commander sounded like a filibuster expedition in the making, and it alarmed Sonora’s leaders just as much as Reily’s diplomatic mingling. Pesqueíra waited several weeks to reply, biding his time to see how events would play out along the Rio Grande. When he did write to Carleton, he claimed that Mexico had a “great political interest” in sustaining a cordial but limited relationship with its northern neighbor, reiterating a position of vigilant neutrality without making any direct concessions. He considered Reily’s public pronouncements to be “exaggerated, or perhaps badly interpreted,” and reassured Carleton that he had made no agreements that would betray Mexico’s impartiality in the Civil War.99 The governor waited even longer before responding to Wright’s bullying letter. “You will notice that through my cautious management the chief of the Southern Confederacy could not calculate upon my sympathies to carry out his plans,” Pesqueíra wrote, clearly

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

55

annoyed by the arrogance with which American leaders addressed him. “You may rest assured that a step through this State by any force from the South under any pretext whatever will be considered as an invasion by force of arms.”100 If Wright read between the lines, he understood this as a veiled threat: U.S. troop movements in Mexico would also be viewed as a hostile inroad warranting a military response. Carleton was not entirely satisfied that Pesqueíra denied aid to the Confederates, and he also suspected that Terrazas turned a blind eye toward illicit commerce between Chihuahua and Texas.101 He wrote to Major Richard Drum, assistant adjutant general in the Department of the Pacific, suggesting that U.S. forces march into Sonora and occupy it under the pretense of wartime necessity. Assuming that the governor had cozied up to the Confederates, he thought it justifiable “to seize Sonora” until the Civil War ended. “Ethically we have the right [and the] duty to do this,” Carleton insisted as he schemed to commandeer Mexican land.102 In an ironic twist, U.S. officers repeatedly warned Mexican statesmen that Confederates planned to seize their territory, yet it was Carleton and Wright—not Sibley or Reily—who used an aggressive tone and threatened to invade northern Mexico. None of the doomsday scenarios of invasion or annexation came to pass. When Reily returned from Sonora, he must have been dismayed to learn that Sibley’s forces were retreating from New Mexico following the destruction of their supply train at the Battle of Glorieta on March 28, 1862.103 The expansionistic plan crumbled in the mountains east of Santa Fe, and without control of New Mexico and Arizona, diplomatic relations with Chihuahua and Sonora seemed meaningless for the South. Writing from the safe haven of Fort Bliss on May 5, Sibley lamented the failure of his expedition but praised Reily’s efforts, saying that the colonel had attended to his ambassadorial duty “with much ability and great success.”104 New York Times editors realized that “the intrigues of the Secessionists in Sonora and Chihuahua” had likely come to an end with Sibley’s starving army defeated and his war chest depleted. The writers expressed relief that California volunteers had recaptured southern New Mexico and, forgetting about the ongoing presence of Chiricahua and Western Apaches, thought that a mere five hundred federal troops would be necessary from that point on, “simply to cope with straggling bands of filibusters.”105 Although Sibley’s withdrawal marked the end of Confederate outreach to Terrazas and Pesqueíra, neither of them had heard the last from Union officials. As interim territorial governor of New Mexico, William F. M. Arny wrote to Terrazas in October 1862 about “the great trade” between Santa Fe

56

Chapter 2

and Ciudad Chihuahua, which had been disrupted by Confederate invaders and Apache raiders. Arny saw the reestablishment of commercial relations with Chihuahua as a stepping stone to stronger alliances, which he and Carleton would advocate over the coming months.106 Just as the governor commenced this program of diplomatic outreach, however, U.S. forces on the border incited an international controversy that undermined the overtures. From his post at the town of Franklin, just opposite Paso del Norte, Major William McMullen of the First California Infantry feared that Texans who fled to Mexico during the Confederate retreat might plot anew. In December 1862 he stationed his men at picket camps on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande to guard against nefarious Rebel activity. Much like Baylor, who invaded Chihuahua eight months earlier to attack Chiricahua Apaches, McMullen blatantly disregarded Mexico’s sovereignty and met with harsh rebuke from local officials. José María Uranga, the prefect of Paso del Norte, protested that “international rights have been violated” and demanded an explanation, to which McMullen brazenly responded that he would “not permit Mexican soil to shield our enemies.” Concerned about sparking a conflict, the major explained his course of action to Brigadier General Joseph R. West, commander of U.S. forces in southern New Mexico, who approved of McMullen’s tactic despite the risk it posed to foreign affairs.107 McMullen’s impetuous handling of the incident at Paso del Norte undermined Arny’s preliminary gesture to Chihuahua officials, so the governor requested a personal conference with Terrazas in March 1863.108 The Mexican leader declined the invitation but expressed a desire to continue written discussions about “the links that must bind our respective States and Governments.”109 Arny met instead with Uranga—whose anger over the McMullen incident had cooled—and local customs collector Juan N. Zubirán, both of whom articulated an interest in resuming trade with New Mexico. By that time, the combined calamities of the Civil War, the French Intervention, and Apache raiding had “in a great degree paralyzed” business along the border, so both countries would benefit from a renewal of commerce.110 Arny also suggested that Mexican authorities unite with U.S. forces to limit Indian mobility and halt the unlawful trade of contraband ammunition to “our common enemy.”111 In a testament to the efficiency of scouts and spies, it took just one month for news of Arny’s exertions to reach San Antonio and Houston, where Confederate officers learned about these events well before any reports reached Washington, D.C.112

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

57

From his headquarters at Mesilla, General West penned his own communiqués to Terrazas and Pesqueíra, revisiting the issue of Indian depredations as the pretense for military alliance. “An advantageous opportunity is now offered for your cooperation in their chastisement,” he stated in reference to the Chiricahua Apaches, expressing concern that “a mere geographical boundary might prevent the capture or punishment of a band of these savages.”113 Relations with the tribe had worsened appreciably since secession began in the East. In January 1861, Lieutenant George N. Bascom met with Cochise and several of his kinsmen to discuss the repatriation of a captive boy named Felix Ward, who had been taken from a ranch near the Sonora border south of Fort Buchanan. When Cochise claimed ignorance of the abduction and correctly suggested that Western Apaches must be the culprits, the parley turned sour, and soldiers swarmed the council tent. Renowned for his medicine power, fifty-year-old Cochise escaped by cutting his way through the canvas with a bowie knife, but his brother Coyuntura and two nephews were not so lucky. At Bascom’s command, U.S. troops seized the three accomplices and then hung them from an oak tree in retaliation for Cochise’s deadly attack on an unsuspecting wagon train as it approached Apache Pass on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route. “After this trouble all of the Indians agreed not to be friendly with the white men any more,” Geronimo stated rather dryly when recalling his own role in these events. Known in Chiricahua Apache oral history as “Cut the Tent,” the so-called Bascom Affair in southeastern Arizona touched off a vicious cycle of violence above the border that rivaled the brutality proliferating below it.114 Throughout the early months of 1862, as Baylor’s Arizona Guards crisscrossed Apachería on horseback and Carleton’s California Column marched toward the Rio Grande, many of Cochise’s followers fled southward into Mexico. By summertime, several hundred Chiricahua Apaches were living in the mountains around Fronteras, and Pesqueíra reinstated a scalp bounty to incentivize civilian warfare against the tribe.115 The following year, as New Mexico’s federal officers pursued their own policy of Indian extermination that closely resembled that of the departed Rebels, U.S. troops at Fort McLane jailed the septuagenarian Mangas Coloradas and executed him in cold blood. In a blatant display of scientific racism, they then chopped off his notoriously large head and shipped it to New York for laboratory examination.116 These incidents of hanging, scalping, and decapitation had a profound impact on Apaches, who believe that deceased persons enter the afterlife in the same

58

Chapter 2

physical condition that they depart the present. “Little did the White Eyes know how they would pay when they defiled the body of our great chief!” James Kaywaykla exclaimed years later. Geronimo was even more blunt, calling the elderly headman’s execution “the greatest wrong ever done.”117 With his mentor and father-in-law doomed to a headless eternity, a vengeful Cochise took command as the principal Chiricahua Apache headman. Thirty-fiveyear-old Victorio, a burgeoning Chihenne chief whose sister Lozen possessed a unique medicine power to detect approaching enemies, also assumed an increasingly vital role in tribal affairs. The four semiautonomous Chiricahua subgroups collectively sought revenge under the principal leadership of these two men and the “warrior woman” who aided them. “The People were in need of men of wisdom,” the elder Dilth-cleyhen explained, “leaders who could reason with their followers and guide them in battle [as] more and more strangers were invading the homeland.”118 Exactly five months after the murder of Mangas Coloradas, Chiricahuas under Victorio’s guidance attacked a detachment of U.S. troops at a Rio Grande crossing north of Mesilla. They killed three men, including Lieutenant Ludam A. Bargie, who was found with his head hacked off and his heart ripped out. The message could not have been clearer: soldiers and settlers now faced the grim prospect of corporeal mutilation as a form of Apache retaliation, and any hope for a peaceful solution to hostilities had faded. Fuming over Bargie’s gruesome murder, General West sent a stern message of his own, saying that the Chiricahua Apaches “must be exterminated to a man” and ordering one of his field commanders to “scour every foot of ground and beat up all their haunts” in pursuit of this genocidal objective.119 Despite these violent developments on both sides of the border, multinational partnerships remained elusive, not because Mexican governors felt any sympathy for Apaches—Pesqueíra personally led campaigns against Cochise and his followers in Sonora and even offered a reward of $100 for each warrior’s scalp—but because they feared the broader diplomatic implications of a foreign alliance predicated on military cooperation.120 Instead, both governors took independent action against Indians without American assistance or help from their own government. Early in 1863, Chihuahua officials announced a peace treaty with a band of Chiricahuas that Lieutenant Colonel Joaquín Terrazas (the governor’s cousin) and his men attacked and subdued.121 Local newspaper editors praised these developments and admitted that “peace with the Apaches is a great necessity,” as timely victories boosted the confidence of some statesmen and convinced them that they did not need external aid.122 In

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

59

northern Sonora, troops from Bacerac, Bavispe, and Fronteras campaigned against the Chiricahuas throughout the fall and winter to devastating effect. Captain Eraclio Escalante’s men killed twenty-one Apaches in an attack near Janos, and Captain Cayetano Silva’s troops slew twenty-one more during an ambush in the Chiricahua Mountains, but Cochise himself remained elusive. “Peace with this class of enemy is a Utopia, an unrealistic project,” one state newspaper declared in a moment of clear frustration.123 Although Apaches were fighting their own wars for their own purposes, with no clear intent to sabotage diplomacy between foreign neighbors, their actions continued to influence discussions between American and Mexican officials. In contrast to the relatively measured diplomatic approaches of Governor Arny and General West, the department commander pursued a more assertive line toward Mexican leaders. Carleton’s obsessive interest in subverting Indians and defeating Confederates persisted throughout the Civil War, although he eventually had to share jurisdiction over Apache policy with Major General Irvin McDowell after the District of Arizona was transferred to the military’s Department of the Pacific.124 Fearing that Texan troops would reinvade the Southwest, Carleton believed that his forces must occupy northern Mexico, both to inhibit the Rebels from using the region to strategic advantage and to eliminate a place where Chiricahua Apaches might seek refuge from his exterminatory campaigns. In January 1863, he explained to Colorado governor John Evans that Southerners still coveted “a strip of territory extending across the continent, to cover the silver and gold fields of Arizona and to have a port on the Pacific.” In Carleton’s mind, Jefferson Davis and his cohorts in Richmond would make “a strong effort to this end, sooner or later, unless we are more successful in the east than we have recently been.”125 He also told the adjutant general that Graycoats attached high priority to a “right-of-way to the Pacific.” Carleton speculated that the desire for a transcontinental-railroad connection “is perhaps a part of the plan to persuade, if possible, Chihuahua and Sonora to secede from Mexico and join the Southern Confederacy,” and he felt convinced that Reily’s mission the previous year aimed to accomplish that broader objective.126 Apprehensions about another Confederate invasion and continued Apache counterattacks induced Carleton to sustain communications with Mexican officials throughout 1863, although by summertime major Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg helped to relieve some of his most urgent fears related to the Civil War in the East. He claimed that George MacManus, the U.S. consul at Ciudad Chihuahua, was an “open and avowed” secessionist who

60

Chapter 2

met privately with Colonel Reily the year before in traitorous disregard to his duties as a State Department official. Carleton proposed that Reuben W. Creel be appointed as a replacement agent because of his longtime residency in Mexico and close connections to Terrazas.127 Creel married the governor’s sisterin-law, and his Mexican-born son Enrique would eventually form a crucial component of the regional economic machine during the Porfiriato.128 Even after Creel assumed the ambassadorial post, however, Carleton sometimes bypassed formal channels of diplomatic communication. That same year, he dispatched Major David Fergusson of the First California Cavalry as a special agent to confer with Mexican statesmen about Rebel activity in the area. The major had instructions to arrange for U.S. troops to march through Chihuahua to attack the Texan stronghold at San Antonio. Additionally, Fergusson would request that Terrazas crack down on Henry Skillman’s group of Texas guerrillas, who were taking refuge in northern Mexico and using the international border as a shield for their clandestine operations.129 The purposes of this mission paralleled those of Reily’s journey in 1862, one key difference being that Fergusson was something of a dilettante when it came to foreign diplomacy.130 When the major reached Ciudad Chihuahua on January 17, 1863, a local newspaper mentioned nonchalantly that “un gefe Norte-Americano” arrived under the escort of twenty-five cavalrymen. Fergusson met with Creel to discuss strategies for gathering intelligence from U.S. consuls at Matamoros and Monterrey and conveying that information to Carleton’s office in Santa Fe using the Chihuahua consulate as an intermediary. When Fergusson finally sat down with the governor four days later, he learned that Terrazas had already issued orders to counteract Skillman’s raiders, but little else of strategic value came from the conference. He also reported that Southern sympathizers from California regularly traveled through Ciudad Chihuahua en route to Texas, noting that he had missed the notorious Dan Showalter—who had been released from confinement at Fort Yuma—by just two months. By the time Fergusson walked the streets of Chihuahua’s capital, Showalter had safely reached Texas, obtained a commission as lieutenant colonel in the Confederacy’s Arizona Brigade (not to be confused with the Arizona Guards), and taken an active role in plotting an abortive reinvasion of New Mexico. Terrazas bade farewell to Fergusson with the same grandiose assurances of friendship that he’d professed to Reily the year before, and local journalists noted that their governor had hosted the American agent “with the utmost deference, consequent with the laws of neutrality.”131 Once again, a Mexican governor deflected the entreaties of an

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

61

American agent and avoided any agreements that would pull his country into the Civil War. Carleton later thanked Terrazas for his hospitality toward Fergusson and again proposed a military coalition between United States and Mexican troops under the familiar excuse of defeating “a band of outlaws and desperadoes”— Skillman’s men—who continued to raid along the border. Just as he once offered Sonorenses unrestricted commercial access to Arizona, Carleton now authorized Terrazas to send Mexican soldiers into New Mexico and Texas in pursuit of robbers and Indians. “In case your Excellency desires cooperation on our part to break up this nest of outlaws . . . we will give you our hearty support,” Carleton confided.132 The U.S. commander had no legal right to make such an agreement but proposed it anyway, attempting to pit Mexicans and Texans against one another and thus distract the Confederate war effort in the region.133 Terrazas refused the bait, realizing that such pacts would repudiate Mexican neutrality, thrust his military forces into conflict with Texas Rebels, provide Carleton’s Bluecoats with justification for operating on foreign soil, and imperil his own political standing. After leaving Ciudad Chihuahua, Fergusson traveled to Sonora to survey Los Lobos, La Libertad, and Tiburon Island in the Gulf of California. Each of these ports lay within two hundred miles of Tucson and five hundred miles of the Rio Grande and could provide a supply line for the U.S. Army in Arizona and New Mexico to augment the Gila and Santa Fe Trail routes, assuming that permission to build a naval station could be secured from Mexican authorities.134 The major requested that Pesqueíra institute a passport system to regulate movement between the two countries, an initiative that General West considered absurd because of the remoteness and length of the international line.135 Fergusson once more addressed the issue of Apaches, “who have so long been the scourge and terror of Arizona and Sonora,” suggesting that it would benefit both nations if an open-border agreement allowed military forces to operate free from jurisdictional constraints. Fergusson’s detailed report on Sonora’s ports and surrounding environs was soon laid before the U.S. Senate, which printed two thousand copies for public distribution.136 “Now that the subject is brought before the country,” a Santa Fe journalist wrote in reference to the acquisition of Sonora, “it is to be hoped that it will receive the consideration to which its importance entitles it.”137 Like Reily before him, Fergusson hoped that the threat of Indian violence in northern Mexico would facilitate a broader pact in pursuance of Civil War objectives, but once again the governor declined.138

62

Chapter 2

As these events played out in Sonora, the French Intervention gained traction and rumors abounded as to Napoleon III’s true ambitions. A major setback slowed the imperialists when Juarista forces defeated them at the First Battle of Puebla in May 1862, but by September—just as Fergusson received orders to survey seaports in Sonora—France was strengthening its forces in southern Mexico and seemed poised to usurp political power. If the French secured control of Mexico, Unionists feared that Paris might extend diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy, providing the South with a powerful ally and enabling the Rebels to circumvent the U.S. naval blockade by shipping supplies through all parts of Mexico.139 Northerners grew increasingly frantic over the threat from Europe, demanding full-fledged government support for operations in the Southwest. “In the event of complications growing out of the French occupation of Mexico,” editors of the New York Times wrote, Arizona and New Mexico “will be of very great positional importance” because they provided “a good stand-point from which to observe the operations of Louis Napoleon upon Mexico.”140 Implicit in these observations was the notion that a collaborative relationship with Chihuahua and Sonora would preempt any threat that French imperialists might pose to the region. Already foreshadowing Greater Reconstruction objectives, politicians in Washington, D.C., felt that foreign occupation of Mexico constituted “a violation of the established and known rules of international law” and proclaimed European meddling to be “not only unfriendly, but hostile” to U.S. interests.141 As congressmen deliberated, Carleton recommended for a third time that the government acquire Sonora, either from the state governor or the national president, whomever seemed most inclined toward the idea.142 When Seward failed to respond after six months, the anxious general wrote him again to reiterate “the prospective necessity now drawing close at hand of our having that foothold on the Gulf of California.”143 In the absence of State Department support, Carleton contacted General in Chief of the Army Henry Halleck and told him that Sonora was “the fruit that has ripened” and needed only to be plucked from its metaphorical tree. If the United States did not take advantage of the opportunity then France certainly would.144 New Mexico governor Henry Connelly, a longtime resident with deep economic and political ties to northern Mexico, also reached out to Seward, explaining that Sonora’s coastline “would be of great value to our government, [and] of incalculable injury, if in the possession of a foreign and powerful maritime nation.” He suggested a treaty with Mexico, akin to the Gadsden Purchase,

The Contest for Chihuahua and Sonora

63

transferring Chihuahua and Sonora to the United States.145 Nothing came of these requests because Seward hoped to maintain cordial relations with the Juárez government and wished to avoid provocative land grabs under the veil of preempting French expansion.146 As they attempted to incorporate Mexico into their illusions of empire, Unionists and Confederates planned on the assistance of regionalist governors and attempted to manipulate them as pawns of Civil War diplomacy. Sibley and Carleton each tried to capitalize on the precarious nature of political power in a vast frontier zone, recognizing the plurality of sovereignty that existed in the borderlands.147 With Mexico in turmoil over the European crisis, the United States divided against itself in bloody conflict, and Chiricahua and Western Apaches vigorously defending their homelands, an environment of contested authority proliferated, and no single entity held full sway. Under these circumstances, Americans assumed that officials across the border would act independently of their national government, but Mexican governors exercised authority with caution and upheld their country’s neutrality in a foreign conflagration that they wanted no part of. Agents like Reily and Fergusson overestimated the appeal of their own diplomatic gestures and underestimated the nationalistic resolve of leaders in Chihuahua and Sonora. With memories of Texas annexation, the U.S.-Mexico War, and American filibustering fresh in their minds, neither Terrazas nor Pesqueíra dared acquiesce to the requests of their foreign visitors and risk another embarrassing incident of political or territorial usurpation. For Pesqueíra, who achieved local popularity by repelling foreign onslaughts in the 1850s, the acceptance of U.S. or Confederate occupancy constituted nothing short of treason, and he wrote to President Juárez in 1863 promising Sonora’s cooperation in the fight against France.148 But the American officers who dealt with him during the Civil War knew nothing of his personal correspondence with Juárez and failed to appreciate his loyalty to the national government during a moment of crisis. When those same Union and Rebel agents approached Terrazas in Chihuahua, they misperceived the economic motivations that directed his actions. In fomenting their plans of borderlands intrigue, Sibley and Carleton based their conceptualizations of Mexican politics on prior knowledge of federalist dissent toward the centralists of Mexico City. But the War of the Reform that ended in 1861 ushered a liberal president into power, and norteño leaders did not harbor the same disdain for Juárez as they had toward conservative regimes of the

64

Chapter 2

past. Combined with the simultaneous threat of French occupation, this new political reality transformed many northern Mexicans into cautious nationalists rather than haphazard separationists. As the turmoil of the Civil War transcended national boundaries, geographic proximity to the United States, coupled with political instability and foreign invasion, made Mexico an important factor in Union and Confederate diplomacy.149 Many Rebel leaders thought that the backing of Mexican governors along the border could significantly improve their war effort, and U.S. officials worried that Mexican support for the South might shift momentum in the war. The attempts to establish alliances with individual state governors—rather than President Juárez or the national government—speaks to the enduring legacy of state autonomy on the Mexican frontier. They also illuminate the diplomatic adventurism that arose in a porous multinational borderland where the diverse arbiters of political power included Union generals, Confederate colonels, Mexican governors, Apache warriors, and secret spies.

CHAPTER 3

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

From his outpost in Texas, Brigadier General Hamilton Bee informed Richmond officials in October 1861 that “it is of the utmost importance to the Confederacy that Brownsville and the line of the Rio Grande should be held.” The reasons, he explained, were twofold. First, the river valley provided an important commercial corridor through which Southern cotton could be exported— and European arms and ammunition imported—without the high level of risk entailed in running the U.S. naval blockade. Additionally, economic and military control of this international frontier would help to prevent federal troops from staging an invasion of Texas through that vulnerable region. “It is the only point through which we can communicate with the nations of Europe,” Bee added in reference to the North’s Anaconda Plan, “[and] we have no other outlet so long as the supremacy of the seas is against us.” To protect Confederate interests along the border, he recommended that an officer who spoke Spanish and understood Hispanic culture be appointed to the army outpost at Brownsville, where the most important responsibility was to “keep the peace with Mexico and make her people useful friends.”1 Bee was hardly alone in making such recommendations. That same month, Department of Texas commander Henry E. McCulloch told Adjutant General Samuel Cooper that relations with Mexico were “of great importance to our government” and insisted that “nothing should be done to interrupt the most liberal trade and intercourse with the people of that country.”2 When Brigadier General Paul Hébert arrived at Galveston to assume command of the department, he immediately arranged for the procurement of munitions from Mexico.3 Vibrant but largely informal commercial alliances developed between Texan operatives and Mexican governors, providing the South with a source of supplies as well as a relatively safe outlet for cotton. Hyperinflation drastically reduced the value of Confederate currency, and foreign

66

Chapter 3

governments refused to accept it, so cotton became a primary medium of exchange and provided much of Richmond’s purchasing power in the international marketplace.4 Devalued specie was even scarcer in Texas than in other Southern states. At a Rebel training facility near the town of Victoria, Captain Udolpho Wolfe lamented in February 1862 that “this department is without money” and repeatedly told his professional acquaintances that he could not supply troops without the means to pay local contractors.5 One U.S. diplomat reported that same year that “the merchants of Matamoros will not receive a Confederate note at any price,” and Texans stored thousands of cotton bales in warehouses at San Antonio and Brownsville to exchange for articles of war anytime a shipment arrived in Mexico.6 An American correspondent in Monterrey marveled at the complexity of this trade network. “It is astonishing to see the enormous quantities of goods that go from here into Texas,” U.S. consul Myndert Kimmey explained to readers of the New York Times in 1862. “Millions of dollars’ worth of cotton is sold here monthly, all of which is sent back to the rebels, by their agents here, in the shape of powder, lead, coffee, blankets, shoes, rope, sugar, [and] cotton goods of all kinds.” He concluded that “until this trade is cut off, Texas will not feel the blockade.”7 William Hutchinson, a U.S. Navy surgeon aboard one of the blockading ships, recalled seeing “an immense fleet of vessels of all nations” moored at Bagdad, just off the shores of Tamaulipas, “awaiting cargoes of cotton or unloading cargoes of war stores.”8 Brownsville merchant Francis Latham only slightly exaggerated when recalling that “Matamoros was flooded with cotton,” as was the entire valley from Eagle Pass to the mouth of the Rio Grande.9 Eliza McHatton-Ripley, a Louisiana woman who fled her plantation home when U.S. forces occupied New Orleans in 1862, lived temporarily in Matamoros before escaping to Cuba with her husband. From her unique vantage point, she expressed a sense of awe at her government’s “stupendous efforts to procure army supplies through Mexico” but felt puzzled by the “wild speculation, reckless business methods, and amazing complications” that characterized trade on both sides of the border.10 At one point during the Civil War, General Bee recommended that at least five thousand additional troops be sent to protect Confederate interests in northeastern Mexico.11 But Bee failed to mention the extent to which banditry, smuggling, personal scheming, and nefarious acts of diplomatic intrigue created and reinforced the tenuous system of borderlands commerce upon which Confederates relied for regional primacy during the Civil War.

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

67

The Mexican northeast provided a unique opportunity as the Confederacy’s only international border and became an important avenue for circumventing the North’s maritime stranglehold. Whereas Rebel maneuvers in Chihuahua and Sonora aimed to project Southern power westward to Pacific shores, illusions of empire in Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas revolved primarily around the economic imperative of cotton exports and the military imperative of arms imports. Diplomatic endeavors in the Mexican northeast sought primarily to sustain Southern empire rather than expand it. The region was primed for these purposes before the Civil War even began. During Mexico’s War of the Reform, Tamaulipas governor Ramón Guerra established a statewide zona libre (free trade zone) that facilitated the shipment of contraband into Texas. In 1858 he abolished import duties on overseas merchandise, growing the local economy by redirecting the lucrative Texas trade through Matamoros. In a blatant display of regionalism, the governor implemented this act without the approval of national authorities. The U.S. consul at Matamoros, Peter Seuzeneau, considered the move so radical that he predicted a declaration of independence from Tamaulipas, but when the War of the Reform ended in 1861 President Benito Juárez endorsed Guerra’s decree. The zona libre centered regional commerce in northeast Mexico, allowing Texas merchants to redirect imports and exports through Matamoros and then carry or float crates across the Rio Grande without paying tariffs to the U.S. government.12 The reliability of the zona libre and its Matamoros trade network depended upon a provision in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ensuring that navigation of the Rio Grande would remain “free and common to the vessels of both countries.”13 Naval blockaders could not legally intercept seagoing traffic along this riverine trade route without consent from the other country. Since Mexico had not granted permission for U.S. commanders to extend their maritime cordon beyond the southern tip of Texas, ships could come and go from the mouth of the Rio Grande without harassment. Any direct interference in this commercial network, or extension of the blockade to include Mexico’s coastline, would constitute an act of war and might risk a foreign conflict. Union agents attempted to broker agreements that would lengthen the blockade, but the French Intervention—as well as lingering fears of American expansionism—dissuaded Juárez from allowing it.14 The Texas-Mexico border thus became a gaping hole in an otherwise tight blockade that employed over six hundred ships and spanned 3,549 miles of Southern coastline from the Potomac River to the Rio Grande.15

68

Chapter 3

When the Civil War began, Rebel operatives nurtured this preexisting network to ensure an open route around the U.S. blockade. The twin cities of Brownsville and Matamoros, along with the coastal town of Bagdad just south of the Rio Grande, took on great importance in the war effort, and Tamaulipas was identified as “the best and most expedient point of entry for the Confederates in the West.”16 Many Texas merchants owned two stores, one on each side of the border, but kept most of their merchandise in Matamoros and snuck it across the Rio Grande into Brownsville. According to one observer, a significant amount of commerce occurred after dark, when merchants “dressed in the habits of the lowest order of Mexicans” and secreted goods into the United States under cover of darkness, thus circumventing customs officers and avoiding “the thieves and robbers who infest this country.” In Brownsville, visitors and residents alike slept with loaded revolvers under their pillows, ready to defend their lives and property from any threat that might materialize during the night.17 In one typical instance of smuggling, U.S. customs officers in Matamoros discovered English-made Confederate uniforms stashed in flour barrels, waiting to be smuggled across the Rio Grande.18 U.S. consulate officer Leonard Pierce Jr. personally witnessed Francisco Yturría, a Mexicanborn businessman who operated mercantile houses in both towns, ferrying 110 kegs of gunpowder—also disguised in flour packaging—over the river to Graycoats at Fort Brown. The British schooner Will o’ the Wisp initially landed this illegal cargo on the Mexican coast after federal officers aboard the USS Montgomery confiscated seven thousand pounds of black powder—none of which was listed on the freight manifest—but failed to detect the remainder of the munitions hidden aboard the vessel.19 Because these activities contributed in various ways to the Southern war effort, Rebel agents worked assiduously to keep all avenues of exchange open regardless of legality. Caleb Blood, a U.S. diplomat at Monterrey, noticed that Texas troops were liberally supplied “by the connivance of the Mexican officers,” and his successor Myndert Kimmey realized that “the Rebels are getting all they need from Mexico in the way of army supplies.” Dubbed a “miscreant” by one Confederate agent, Kimmey tried on multiple occasions to sabotage the trade between Mexico and Texas but discovered to his dismay that local businessmen had a far greater interest in making money than they did in observing wartime neutrality. Francis Latham explained that “there was no stop” to the international arms trade along the border, and anybody with cash to spend or cotton to trade “could go into Matamoros and buy a thousand pistols almost any day.” Mexican officers became

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

69

San Antonio

To El Paso Fort Clark

To Houston and Westernmost Railhead

TEXAS Victoria Eagle Pass

Nue c

P

A

N

US

XIC

A

ME

To New Orleans

A

O

COAHUILA

I

es

R L

Port Lavaca

r ive

P A

Corpus Christi

C

H

A

Laredo

Nuevo Laredo

N

King Ranch

Ri o G r a

A

P

C

nde

A

H

Rou te

P

S

I

E

L

of U Nov .S. Inv emb asio n er 1 863 Force

Piedras Negras

Goliad

E

Carrizo

S

Edinburg Reynosa

d

Camargo

n e I s la

Rio Grande City Ringgold Barracks

Mier

NUEVO LEÓN

Pa d r

Guerrero

Fort Brown

Bagdad

Monterrey

Matamoros

TA M A U L IPA S Wagon road 25

Brazos Santiago Boca del Rio

Brownsville

0

Southernmost point of Union Naval Blockade

50 mi

Gulf of Mexico

To Tampico

Figure 6. Map of Regional Operations, 1861–1863.

so amenable to this lucrative traffic, Latham concluded, that “it was hardly necessary to bribe them.”20 The primary obstacle to Confederate commerce along the Mexican border was not the naval blockade, but the vast distance separating the lower Rio Grande from the main theaters of the Civil War and the Deep South’s

70

Chapter 3

cotton plantations, as well as the stateless bandits who interrupted traffic through the veritable no-man’s-land of the Nueces Strip. Located hundreds of miles from the nearest railway hub near Houston, Matamoros could only be reached by a cumbersome and dangerous journey over the wagon roads of South Texas.21 By the 1860s, Mexican renegades and Texas outlaws had become the foremost threat to regional operations, effectively replacing Comanches, Kiowas, and Lipan Apaches, whose hegemonic decline over the preceding decade limited the frequency and extent of their raiding.22 “Notwithstanding all this labor and expense,” wrote William Watson, who worked as a blockade runner on the Texas coast, “the demand for goods in the Confederate States, and the still greater demand for cotton outside, was so great that the quantity of goods imported and cotton exported by this route was incredible.”23 Mexican commerce primarily benefited the Trans-Mississippi West and was not a viable option for all eleven Confederate states, but the route did serve the needs of an estimated twenty thousand cotton speculators and accommodated at least 20 percent of all Southern imports and exports. With as much as $4 million worth of cotton flowing through northeast Mexico each month, Matamoros became an epicenter of the global market. Left out of this equation, however, is the borderlands contraband trade that flourished under the radar of ship manifests, merchant ledgers, and quartermaster receipts. Throughout the war, guns and ammunition produced in the foundries of New England filtered through Mexico and into Texas, and Southern cotton traveled via this same route to textile mills that produced uniforms for two million U.S. soldiers. Neither Northern merchants nor Southern planters wanted to be implicated in aiding and abetting an enemy for the sake of profit, so much of this exchange relied on undocumented smuggling or doctored cargo receipts.24 Jefferson Davis fully appreciated the importance of Mexico as a method for outflanking the blockade. When he sent John Pickett to Mexico City for a conference with the Juárez government in May 1861, he simultaneously dispatched a second diplomatic agent, José Agustín Quintero, to meet with Governor Santiago Vidaurri in Monterrey.25 Born the biracial son of a British mother and a Cuban father in 1829, Quintero spoke fluent English and Spanish and attended Harvard as a teenager. He returned home in the late 1840s and participated in the Cuba Libre movement to free the country from Spanish dominion. Jailed as an enemy of the state in 1848, Quintero escaped from a Havana prison and reached the United States a year later. The exiled poet ventured to Austin in the early 1850s and studied law, befriending former

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

71

Texas president Mirabeau Lamar and working as a clerk in the antebellum state legislature. When the Civil War broke out he enlisted in a Texas infantry unit, but Confederate leaders plucked him from his company for diplomatic service. Although Quintero had become a naturalized American citizen and espoused the Southern cause, he never shed the sense of nationalistic loyalty to his native country. The Cuban American supported two interrelated political movements, envisioning Confederate nationhood as a pathway to Cuba’s decolonization and thinking that the former would annex the latter upon achieving independence.26 Vidaurri was twenty years Quintero’s senior and came of age during Mexico’s early years as a republic. From his vantage point in Nuevo León, he witnessed the causes of revolution in Texas and even traveled there in 1841 as a spy. Vidaurri initially served as an assistant to several centralist politicians in his home state, but during the 1850s he became increasingly progressive. In 1855 Vidaurri overthrew the conservative governor, Gerónimo Cardona, and pondered the creation of an independent Republic of Sierra Madre where he could manage both the army and the customs houses. He failed to make this dream a reality but nonetheless cemented himself as Mexico’s foremost architect of regionalism, controlling the political and economic spheres of the country’s northeast.27 Although he studiously sent his Army of the North to battle conservative forces during the War of the Reform and proclaimed loyalty to the Juárez government, Vidaurri always eyed political stature and financial prosperity through his own brand of “regionalismo vidaurrista.”28 From his political base in Monterrey, the radical regionalist (puro federalista) often acted autonomously with whomever offered the best opportunities for profit and influence, understanding that customs duties and military power were mutually reinforcing because the money accrued from tariffs could finance an army. The governor’s proclivity toward the Rebel cause in the Civil War had little to do with proslavery ideology. Instead, he saw lucrative benefits to be derived from Southern cotton and initially believed that geopolitical absorption into the Confederacy would spare Coahuila and Nuevo León from the impending threat of French imperialism.29 In recent years, Mexican historians have criticized Vidaurri for his self-aggrandizement. Artemio Benavides Hinojosa explains that the profiteering governor “felt no inhibitions” in supporting the South and, in attempting to benefit from both the French Intervention and the Civil War, found himself subsumed in a “tempestuous career” of borderlands intrigue.30 Vidaurri’s cooperation was crucial to the success of Rebel operations in the Trans-Mississippi West, and he

72

Chapter 3

Figure 7. Santiago Vidaurri. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-22170.

proved adept at exploiting the Confederacy’s dependency on foreign trade in advancement of his own illusions of empire. Quintero traveled to Monterrey in June 1861 to discuss matters of border security with Vidaurri, and a diplomatic cat-and-mouse game ensued. As political shapeshifters willing to modify their approaches to curry favor with whomever they dealt, the two men were worthy counterparts. After a cordial reception in the state capital, the Rebel agent assured his host that the Confederacy sought friendship. Quintero hoped “to prevent border raids and lawless invasions” and requested that Vidaurri thwart the use of Mexican soil as a staging ground for banditry against Texas.31 He also had instructions to purchase all the supplies he could in Nuevo León, and international trade became one of his principal responsibilities.32 Confederate secretary of state Robert Toombs passed along a formal letter of introduction, informing Vidaurri that Pickett was already in Mexico City conversing with the

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

73

Juárez government. “I have thought it proper,” Toombs explained with veiled intrigue, “owing to the distance of your residence  .  .  . and the absence of speedy and constant communications with the central Government, to send you this special message.”33 Vidaurri read between the lines and understood that the Confederates wanted to work with him in their pursuit of independence, and he realized that handsome profits could be made from increased wartime traffic through customhouses that he controlled. Sensing an opportunity to play all sides to his advantage, Vidaurri reaffirmed his loyalty to Mexico while simultaneously accepting the recognition that the Confederacy offered. He claimed to lack the authority to conduct diplomacy, saying that only the national government could do so. The governor went on to say, however, that extraordinary circumstances in the two countries left him no choice but to accept, “in this instance and for this occasion only,” the role of a spokesperson between Mexico and the Confederacy. As part of his personal scheming, Vidaurri provided a copy of this correspondence to Mexico’s leading newspaper, publicizing evidence of his patriotism in case anybody labeled him a traitor for dealing with Richmond. Other periodicals reprinted the stories, and soon even New Yorkers were reading about Quintero’s operations below the border. “The Government of the Confederate States are determined to extract recognition from somebody,” New York Times editorialists quipped in reference to Pickett’s failed mission to Mexico City, “and to that end Secretary Toombs has opened diplomatic correspondence with Gen. Vidaurri.”34 Northern journalists mocked the Mexican governor for being “somewhat cowed by the presence of Confederate legionaries” who were desperate to find “that recognition without which youthful Republics have no right to believe in their own existence.”35 When U.S. minister Thomas Corwin learned of Quintero’s connivances he sent an urgent dispatch to the State Department, stressing “the absolute necessity” of sending a reliable consulate officer to northeast Mexico to counteract growing Rebel influence there.36 These Northern apprehensions were not ill-founded, because Vidaurri had a history of cooperating with foreigners in defiance of his national government. In 1856, he authorized the use of military force to combat Lipan Apaches who used Coahuila as a base from which to raid American settlements. On at least two occasions before the Civil War, Texans reached out to Vidaurri about the extradition of fugitive slaves. At a San Antonio convention in July 1858, a group of slaveholders wrote up a formal plan and sent an agent to meet with Vidaurri, proposing in vague terms to assist his interests

74

Chapter 3

in the War of the Reform in exchange for the extradition of approximately three thousand runaway slaves who had taken refuge below the border. The citizens who sponsored this independent diplomatic scheme acknowledged that “the Federal Constitution prohibits the State of Texas from entering into any compact or agreement with any foreign power [and] consequently the only remedy is for the people of Texas to act for themselves.”37 Although nothing immediately came of this gesture, Vidaurri communicated directly with Texas governor Hardin Richard Runnels two years later about a treaty to send absconded slaves back to their owners in the United States, an act that flew in the face of Mexico’s emancipation edicts and bucked that country’s trend of protecting fugitive bondpeople who made it safely across the Rio Grande.38 Quintero’s arrival in Monterrey initiated another unusual diplomatic relationship for Nuevo León’s governor, who unwittingly backed into a corner by portraying himself as a faithful servant to his own government while concurrently welcoming a foreign agent into his state and negotiating with the Confederacy as though he ruled a sovereign nation. By sending emissaries to confer separately with competing leaders—a separationist governor and the republican president—the Rebel government acknowledged the legitimacy of both Vidaurri and Juárez and risked offending both parties. The beginning of Mexico’s European crisis, coupled with the ongoing lack of political cohesion between frontier officials and central government authorities, led Americans to believe that diplomatic relations with Mexico could be pursued in multiple places at once. While Luis Terrazas in Chihuahua and Ignacio Pesqueíra in Sonora each acted in self-promoting ways when American officers approached them, Vidaurri went a step further by disavowing Mexico’s constitutional prohibition on localized foreign alliances.39 Notably, the Confederate State Department managed outreach to Vidaurri, whereas Southern military officers handled relations with Terrazas and Pesqueíra, demonstrating two very different approaches to borderlands diplomacy. These risky tactics floundered in Chihuahua and Sonora, but they paid off in the Mexican northeast. Quintero wrote to Richmond with the surprising news that the governor supported an economic partnership and might even annex his two states to the Confederacy. “General Vidaurri feels a great friendship for the South,” an elated Quintero wrote after his initial meeting, adding that “we have gained an ally.”40 Colonel Smith Bankhead stressed that the Confederate government must take full advantage of the governor’s amicable disposition, recommending that the department commander “express his high appreciation of Governor

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

75

Vidaurri’s enlarged and humanitarian view of international law.”41 At one point Vidaurri even flew the Confederate flag over Monterrey, although the proudly independent Mexican leader probably did so in promotion of an economic alliance with the South rather than a political one.42 Writing in cipher from Mexico City, Pickett went so far as to suggest that Rebel troops occupy Nuevo León and hold it indefinitely pending the outcome of the Civil War.43 Pickett favored the use of force under the assumption that Vidaurri would not resist, whereas Bankhead saw the governor as a political instrument whereby the Confederacy might gain favorability with neighboring Mexican states and strike additional trade agreements. Bankhead’s leveled approach prevailed, and Quintero would spend the next three years in Monterrey dissuading hostile acts against Texas, conveying intelligence about U.S. operations, negotiating tariff rates, and coordinating shipments of war materiel.44 Commercial fees became one of the most important items of discussion, and Vidaurri—who one U.S. diplomat sarcastically nicknamed “Maker of Tariffs”—used customs rates for diplomatic leverage over Texas Confederates throughout the Civil War.45 Quintero worked diligently to reduce or eliminate these duties, and the two sides continuously maneuvered against one another for advantage. Early in 1862, Vidaurri halved the cotton tariff from two cents per pound to just one cent. But when Colonel John S. “Rip” Ford, commander of the Confederate Sub-District of the Rio Grande, began abetting the banditry of Vidaurri’s longtime enemy José María de Jesús Carvajal, the governor promptly retaliated by raising the tariff back to two cents.46 A  Union sympathizer in San Antonio warned federal officials in 1862 that Carvajal’s attempts to “infect the Mexican Country with the K.G.C.’s [Knights of the Golden Circle] brainfever” were closely tied to broader schemes for Confederate expansion, and perhaps Vidaurri shared this concern.47 The sly manipulation of customhouse rates speaks to the localized power structures that proliferated in northern Mexico during the 1860s. These tactics were illegal because only the national government had the constitutional authority to handle foreign commerce, but with the French Army threatening Mexico, President Juárez could do little to prevent this type of independent scheming. Vidaurri’s strategy worked wonders in blackmailing the Confederates. Quintero implored the governor to reconsider the rate hike, and when he communicated these setbacks to superiors in Richmond, they immediately ordered Rebel troops at Fort Brown to crack down on raids staged from Texas soil. By April 1862 Carvajal had been defeated, but as a further act of assuagement, Jefferson Davis stripped Colonel Ford of his command, recalled him to

76

Chapter 3

department headquarters, and consigned him to a desk job in San Antonio.48 Having thus coerced the Confederates into combating a meddlesome group of bandoleros and removing an offensive officer from the border, Vidaurri lowered the tariff back to one cent per pound. All the while the avaricious governor profited handsomely, accruing as much as $175,000 per month from cotton duties.49 While tariffs primarily concerned the Confederacy, the problem of bandit depredations worried all parties, and such activity proved difficult to suppress even when the troops at Fort Brown committed themselves to that cause. August Santleben, a freighter in South Texas, recalled that “the country along the west side of the Rio Grande was then infested with outlaws.”50 At Matamoros, Leonard Pierce estimated that 1,300 armed desperadoes, mostly Tejanos and Mejicanos, “now keep the frontier as far as San Antonio in a perfect ferment.”51 During meetings with Vidaurri, Quintero raised the subject of Juan Cortina’s fighters and hinted at a possible alliance around this mutual foe, promising “to repress and punish, by the most ample and effective measures,” all persons caught stealing property or rustling cattle.52 Lawlessness would remain a vexing concern throughout the Civil War, and in South Texas border hopping became an evasive technique to shield illicit operations. In effect, outlaws in the lower Rio Grande Valley played the same indirect role as Chiricahua and Western Apaches in southern New Mexico and Arizona, in that they independently pursued their own objectives and in so doing influenced the course of Civil War diplomacy. In June 1861, Vidaurri received a letter seeking special arrangements to combat another local enemy. From his temporary headquarters at Fort Clark near the Texas-Coahuila boundary, Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor suggested a joint military operation against the Lipan Apaches. “The principal cause of inconvenience and the only evil at present are the depredations committed upon us by the Indians who live in Mexico,” the officer complained. “It certainly cannot be the policy of the Mexican Government to harbor this race of miscreants, who divide their depredations between Mexico and Texas.” With characteristic invective, Baylor proposed that Confederate and Mexican troops allow one another to operate freely across the border. By ignoring the existence of an international line—just as he would do several months later when attacking Chiricahua Apaches in Chihuahua—Baylor believed that both governments could prevent Indians from utilizing the border’s jurisdictional constraints for asylum. Even Baylor understood the peculiarity of his enterprise, acknowledging that his outreach to Mexico “may appear

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

77

strange and unusual.” But given the eccentricities of military operations in the region, he felt justified making the suggestion. “I do not think it necessary to remind you,” he lectured Vidaurri, “of the immense quantity of property destroyed, the houses plundered, the persons taken prisoners, the inhuman and horrid butcheries of defenseless women and children, as well in Texas as in Mexico, in order to induce you to cooperate in the destruction of a common enemy.”53 Vidaurri feigned helplessness, resorting once more to the excuse that he lacked authority to handle diplomacy, but he did offer some unsolicited advice by telling Baylor that he should chase Comanches rather than Lipan Apaches.54 Notably, Baylor’s letter marked one of the very few times that Confederate officers complained about indigenous peoples in their outreach to governors in the Mexican northeast. This not only demonstrates that the disruptive activities of bandit groups had indeed supplanted those of Native tribes in the eyes of local leaders, but also shows that Baylor’s comments had more to do with a personal vendetta against Indians than any real threat to regional operations. While Rebel operatives simultaneously pursued two different approaches to localized alliance—Quintero as diplomatic agent and Baylor as army officer—the U.S. government sought to facilitate foreign relations in a more conventional fashion. Leonard Pierce arrived at the Matamoros consulate office in November 1861 but found it difficult to assume his diplomatic duties with the city under siege. “Even the British consulate is riddled with the bullets fired” during these battles, the English officer James Fremantle reported as he traversed the city. A power struggle had erupted between the legitimately elected Governor Jesús de la Serna and his opponents, Cipriano Guerrero and General Guadalupe García, who raised an army of 1,500 men to thwart Serna’s political ascendancy. Once Pierce secured his exequatur (official diplomatic recognition) from the Juárez government in February 1862, he managed to carry out his tasks with less resistance from Mexican authorities, but Texans continued to impede U.S. diplomacy.55 Three months after his arrival in Mexico, Pierce informed Secretary of State Seward that “the Confederates had used every possible exertion to get me driven out,” explaining that 1,200 Graycoats occupied the lower Rio Grande Valley. These Southern operatives also seized and screened federal mail, forcing Pierce to pay secret messengers $100 per trip to carry his letters twenty miles from Matamoros to the U.S. ships anchored near the mouth of the Rio Grande.56 From his safe haven at the Matamoros consulate office, Pierce drew the ire of Southerners by offering asylum to refugees. These Texan Unionists—whom

78

Chapter 3

General Bee called “deserters”—risked execution if Rebel troops captured them before reaching Mexican soil.57 On August 10, 1862, Confederates ambushed a party of German immigrants as they fled their homes in the Hill Country north of San Antonio, killing thirty-seven of them in an infamous massacre on the west fork of the Nueces River. Seven survivors reached Matamoros a month later and related their harrowing tale to Pierce, but the deadly incident did not dissuade others from attempting the same journey.58 Some of the “deserters” to which Bee referred were actually U.S. soldiers who had been stationed at federal forts in Texas at the time of secession, while others had absconded from Confederate Army regiments after the war began. But most were either Tejanos or, like those killed on the upper Nueces, German Texans who had no interest in slavery and felt little nationalistic affinity for the South.59 Mexico had long been a destination for runaway slaves, and in the 1860s it became a beacon for Texans seeking to escape Confederate rule. Just as the border simultaneously abetted and prevented the construction of empire, so too did it entice as well as deter human migration.60 Many of those who fled Texas did so to avoid martial law and conscription into the state militia. Some remained in Mexico for the duration of the war, while others boarded ships bound for New Orleans or the Northern states and eventually enlisted in the Union Army.61 One such person was German-born Samuel Lewis, a naturalized American citizen who lived in Texas when the Civil War broke out. He spent time in jail as a Union sympathizer before escaping to Matamoros, where Pierce supplied him with a passport to New York via Havana. “I am continually besieged with refugees and deserters,” Pierce told Seward in March 1862, “most of them without funds who expect me to send them north.” Fifty Texans professing loyalty to the United States had just arrived at his office and hundreds more showed up over the ensuing months, straining Pierce’s resources to the limit.62 Lieutenant Charles Hunter, commanding the USS Montgomery, helped Pierce by maneuvering his ship closer to the Mexican shoreline to board scores of refugees seeking passage to the United States. In so doing, Hunter established a precedent that naval commanders followed throughout the Civil War.63 Quintero eventually prevailed upon Vidaurri to speak out against this trafficking. The Nuevo León strongman complained about Pierce’s activities to Minister of Foreign Affairs Manuel Doblado, and President Juárez acknowledged that the U.S. agent might “provoke a conflict between the border states and Texas.”64 But the two national figureheads did nothing to actively undercut Pierce because they faced more imminent threats from invading French

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

79

troops and did not wish to alienate the Lincoln administration by impeding asylum-seeking Unionists. Early in 1863, Pierce’s meddlesome presence in Matamoros, omnipresent threats of outlaw depredations, and the possibility of a major U.S. military operation along the lower Rio Grande prompted the Confederate War Department to pursue its own diplomacy. Claiming that U.S. agents encouraged Mexican governors to “annoy and injure us,” Bee used his stature as a military commander to seek “peaceful relations with the adjoining States of Mexico.” The general boasted that Vidaurri “evinced the most friendly spirit toward our cause and people,” noting that the governor repeatedly disobeyed national orders mandating the closure of customhouses and restricting foreign trade. Bee hoped to duplicate these favorable arrangements with other Mexican leaders, although he felt less confident about their compliance.65 Like Colonel James Reily, Bee preferred to deal with regionalist caudillos rather than central government authorities in Mexico City. Born in South Carolina, Bee had resided in Laredo since the 1840s and at one point served as Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. As an Anglo merchant living in a majority-Hispanic border town, he understood the importance of transnational alliances and intercultural friendships.66 Based on this experience, Bee planned secret discussions with the new governor of Tamaulipas, Albino López, whose voluntary reduction of cotton tariffs endeared him to regional agents of commerce and diplomacy. With personal interests in the lucrative borderlands market, López stood to fatten his wallet from these financial arrangements. As a gesture of goodwill to Southern officers, he also facilitated the capture of runaway black slaves and exchanged them for fugitive Mexican peons, an act that he carried out “in a quiet way” to avoid outrage from U.S. consular agents in Matamoros. Such actions hinted at the possibility of additional collaboration, and Bee hoped to exploit these promising developments.67 Bee arrived at Fort Brown in January 1863 and immediately reached out to López about enabling commerce and combating outlaws. Just as Baylor fabricated Lipan Apache threats as a pretense for military cooperation with Vidaurri and Reily focused on Chiricahua and Western Apache depredations when pitching an alliance to Terrazas and Pesqueíra, Bee seized upon the recent forays of Octaviano Zapata as a reason for cooperation between troops in Tamaulipas and Texas. He accused the guerrilla of acting at the behest of U.S. sympathizers—including Pierce—and claimed that the gang “sheltered their plans and movements under the neutrality of the flag of Mexico.” Even

Figure 8. Hamilton P. Bee, 1863. Courtesy of Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photographs, DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas.

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

81

Vidaurri chimed in, attributing Zapata’s deadly deeds to the conspiratorial dirty work of Unionists in Matamoros who sought to “revolutionize the neighboring state of Texas.” Vidaurri feared that these incidents might result in “great evils for our poor country” and blamed the controversy on imprudent leadership in Tamaulipas. The Mexican government addressed the situation by demanding reports from local authorities, reiterating that they must always adhere to the nation’s doctrine of neutrality and “admonishing [Pierce] not to mix Mexican citizens in the issues with the Confederates.”68 Residents on the Texas side of the border agreed with Vidaurri’s assessment. In and around Laredo, people believed that López facilitated the flurry of murders and thefts by looking the other way whenever the culprits made their escape across the Rio Grande. The Mexican governor vehemently denied these allegations and met with Quintero to plead his case. Most of his troops had been transferred south to fight French armies, López said, leaving him powerless to combat transborder raids. Newspaper editors in Brownsville scoffed at these excuses, believing that bandits targeted South Texas ranches “with the knowledge and probably the approbation of the authorities in Tamaulipas.” Some Texans even complained to Vidaurri, claiming that the U.S. consul in Matamoros was arming and paying the crooks in an attempt to disrupt Rebel operations. Under pressure from the local press, Bee insisted that López eliminate Zapata’s band, and he sent an invoice for stolen property with an appended note demanding that the Mexican government compensate Texans for pecuniary losses.69 The Confederate officer initially contemplated an armed invasion of Matamoros to unseat the governor, but he consulted with Quintero and realized that doing so would incite unwanted hostilities, so the brash officer decided instead to intimidate the newly seated politician with strong words and forceful demands.70 Bee’s concerns about border raiding carried considerable merit. Zapata rode at the helm of eighty guerrillas whose activities stemmed from an underground support network of local Unionists. Although Zapata’s men did not officially enlist as U.S. troops, they hit supply trains along the lower Rio Grande and killed Rebel troops guarding the provisions. At one point, López interrogated Pierce about his role in these activities, but the consular agent denied any involvement, and no hard evidence of his complicity surfaced. The height of Zapata’s misdeeds came on December 26, 1862. In this single eventful day, his followers slew four Confederate soldiers while ambushing a wagon shipment to Ringgold Barracks, then attacked Rancho Clareño and hung Judge Isidro Vela, a Tejano secessionist, as his family watched helplessly.

82

Chapter 3

Vidaurri condemned these acts as “a serious business” that could easily erupt in warfare, but he avoided any direct participation that might compromise his own political and economic standing. This created headaches for Texas military commanders and problematized their relations with Mexico because the criminals found sanctuary on foreign soil without meaningful interference from Vidaurri or López.71 When pressed about these incidents, the governors simply shrugged their shoulders and said that French onslaughts from the south and east prevented them from patrolling their northern border with Texas.72 Under these dire circumstances, Bee and López began corresponding in February 1863 to address mutual grievances. Despite Bee’s preliminary antagonism, López admitted that issues of commerce and security “are so blended” between Tamaulipas and Texas that it made sense to cooperate. Identifying a shared interest in policing the border, he highlighted the need to crack down on a “floating population” of miscreants that freely crisscrossed the Rio Grande to evade capture. He referred to Zapata’s raiders—nicknamed the “First Regiment of the Union”—as hindrances to peaceful relations and conceded that Texans and Mexicans must collaborate to thwart crime. With Quintero by his side throughout the negotiations, Bee reached a tentative understanding with López to improve border security and return runaway slaves, but the governor refused to pay indemnities for stolen property. López shrewdly reminded the Rebel officer of the Confederacy’s weak position as a rebellious nation without official diplomatic recognition from any foreign government. Bee took umbrage at this comment and came away dissatisfied with López, who seemed far less amenable to Southern interests than Vidaurri. Afterward, Quintero grudgingly admitted that he and Bee acted “with great moderation” when confronted with disparagements of their international standing.73 During the protracted discourse that ensued, Bee refrained from raising the thorny issue of Texas refugees, believing that Mexican leaders “are in dread of the United States authorities and would rather offend us than them.” He concluded that the commercial benefits derived from Mexico outweighed the extradition of deserters, postulating that “any rupture of friendly relations” would undermine Confederate trade.74 Already Bee had come to appreciate the fragility of borderlands diplomacy, realizing the need to tread cautiously in his outreach to Mexican regionalists lest his tactlessness offend them. Cognizant of the shared power dynamics under which they worked, Bee and Quintero negotiated with López for more than a week to decide acceptable terms for cooperation. Richard Fitzpatrick, in charge of

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

83

the Confederacy’s commercial agency at Matamoros, noted that the recent buildup of Rebel troops across the river at Fort Brown had more coercive effect on the Mexican governor than any of Bee’s verbal threats.75 Referring specifically to Zapata’s “band of robbers,” the general proposed that Mexican and Confederate soldiers assist one another in apprehending depredators along the Rio Grande. Bee employed the same hot-pursuit rationale that Rebel officers put forth in Chihuahua and Sonora in regard to Chiricahua and Western Apaches and that U.S. leaders spun in relation to Henry Skillman’s raiders near El Paso. He also supported vast militarization to “guard the line,” suggesting that López station troops at Reynosa, Camargo, Mier, and Guerrero while Confederates would occupy adjacent positions at Edinburg, Rio Grande City, Carrizo, and Brownsville. Bee envisioned “a system of vigilance and espionage,” insisting that a strict passport system akin to martial law be instituted for persons crossing the border in either direction.76 López pointed out that the Mexican Constitution forbade individual states from “celebrating treaties with foreign nations,” and therefore these arrangements would have to be made informally. Although he did not object to the idea of cooperating with Confederates, the statesman balked at approving expeditions into Mexico, fearing that Graycoats would abuse the privilege. He appreciated the need to suppress “evil-doers and Indians,” but felt that Bee’s plan granted “extreme latitude” for military operations that might result in territorial conquest. López also quibbled over the pervasive passport system because it might violate the rights of innocent civilians. The two men concurred about monitoring the border and protecting commerce, but they differed on the details. Much like his gubernatorial colleagues in Sonora and Chihuahua, López refused to sign any pact that would contradict Mexico’s “observance of strict neutrality” in the Civil War, but he left the door open to clandestine arrangements.77 The Mexican governor and his Confederate counterparts concluded a deal on February 25, 1863, that addressed many of the problems they faced. The three men operated autonomous of their national governments to forge a covenant that upheld regional interests.78 They agreed on the reciprocal detention of outlaws, which fell within the legal framework of an extradition treaty that Mexico and the United States ratified a year earlier. It remains unknown whether Bee realized the irony of his actions: by falling back on a previous agreement between Mexico City and Washington, D.C., he was implicitly acknowledging that the Confederacy was a rebellious faction and accepting the fact that Mexico did not officially recognize Southern sovereignty. As far as López was concerned, the deportation of criminals—which

84

Chapter 3

could be construed to include runaway slaves—remained “in compliance with a law of the Republic” and did not violate either Mexican neutrality or the constitutional prohibition on treaty making by state leaders.79 Other issues, however, would have to be handled furtively because they did not fall within the parameters of preexisting treaties. The resulting “agreement for the pacification of the frontier” upheld most of Bee’s original proposals, adding a toothless requirement that Confederate forces recover stolen property from the filibuster Carvajal. It also contained a “secret” article outlining Mexican responsibility for arresting and repatriating Texas deserters, a subject that Bee approached gingerly for fear of sabotaging the negotiations. López privately acceded to most of the Confederacy’s wishes, even though he voiced objections in his official correspondence with Bee.80 Three days after finalizing the deal, López circulated a confidential order to military commanders in his district, explaining the new guidelines for cooperating with Texas officials but stressing that Confederate troops could enter Mexico only under the most desperate circumstances. He also published a notice in the state’s official newspaper detailing new passport requirements.81 American officers—Union and Confederate alike—immediately protested various components of the arrangement. Pierce felt that the passport system had been designed to prevent Texas refugees from reaching Mexico. He claimed that López was “aiding the rebels directly” and contacted the governor in hopes of having the mandate rescinded.82 Within one week, Bee started complaining that certain provisions were not being upheld and wrote to his superiors in Richmond requesting permission to establish martial law along the lower Rio Grande.83 The general also expressed anger after learning that Unionists continued to find refuge at the consulate office in Matamoros, despite the secret article of his pact in which López pledged to crack down on this activity.84 Major General John Magruder, commander of the Confederate District of Texas, criticized Mexican authorities for their “flagrant violations of our rights” and asked them to stop working with U.S. agents. Magruder understood the volatility of the situation and admitted privately that “it is greatly to the interest of our enemy that we should be embroiled with Mexico.” The commanding general—along with his new personal aide, the ubiquitous California secessionist Dan Showalter—sensed a trap wherein U.S. officials might bait Texas troops into an invasion of Tamaulipas, providing Mexicans with “an excuse for cooperating with the Federals.”85 Matters came to a head on March 14, when a detachment of Confederate soldiers splashed across the shallow Rio Grande in search of Colonel Edmund

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

85

Davis and his Unionist followers who fled Texas. The Rebels captured Davis and killed several of his men on Mexican soil under the assumption that Bee’s arrangements with López validated such maneuvers.86 Davis, who became governor of Reconstruction Texas in 1870, narrowly escaped with his life. One Texan who participated in the stealthy raid recalled that “the desire amongst the boys to hang him was very strong,” but noted that Confederate officers feared the diplomatic repercussions of his execution.87 The incident infuriated Mexican officials. López confronted Bee over “one of the most serious crimes against international law” and demanded that the guilty parties be punished. A Mexican civilian had been wounded in the affray, and López castigated Bee for allowing such haphazard military action. If his own troops were ever to commit a similar act on Texas soil, the governor chided hypothetically, the Confederates would doubtless impose “grave consequences.”88 When he learned of the Rebel raid, President Juárez took a bold step by authorizing López to detain any Southern officers who set foot on Mexican soil.89 Local leaders sensed a double standard when it came to operations along the border, and indeed the attack in Tamaulipas closely resembled the illegal Chihuahua raids of Lieutenant Colonel Baylor and Major William McMullen. Bee professed total ignorance about the attack’s planning and perpetration, placing blame on Pierce’s “scandalous conduct” in protecting Texan refugees. The general believed that López bore equal culpability and claimed to have warned the governor that such a strike might happen if Mexican officials failed to detain absconding Unionists.90 In Monterrey, Vidaurri seemed unconcerned about the incident, telling Quintero that the attempt to capture deserters was “a good offset to the Zapata raid on Texas.” Although Colonel Davis remained “a bitter enemy of our cause,” Quintero informed Secretary of State Judah Benjamin that the unsanctioned operation to arrest him “may lead to new complications.” Bee grudgingly freed Davis and his compatriots and sent them back to Mexico in compliance with the demands of Governor López, who threatened to implement a trade embargo and dispatch a sharpshooter battalion to the southern banks of the Rio Grande with orders to kill anybody sneaking into Mexico.91 In Washington, D.C., Matías Romero grumbled about “insurgent Texans” along the border and told Seward that frontier uprisings posed grave threats to international security. “The dissenters of the South” continued to form rogue armies along the Rio Grande, Romero despaired, and “make common cause with the traitors of Mexico, which will cause great injuries both to the Government of that Republic and to the United States.”92

86

Chapter 3

Punishing deserters did not warrant risks of losing the vital trade route around the blockade, and Confederate officers endeavored to preserve peace even if it meant succumbing to humiliating requests from counterparts across the border. Bee informed López that he would withdraw Confederate troops from their station near Matamoros. “I remove the danger of unauthorized collisions, by placing my men beyond the reach of insult and menace,” he wrote contemptuously. “I have thus given your excellency every evidence in my power . . . to maintain peaceful relations with your government.” Bee admitted to a colleague that he feared local Mexicans would retaliate by closing ports of entry and shuttering customhouses.93 Magruder worriedly advised Robert Kean, head of the Confederate War Bureau, that the Mexican government might also take measures to stifle the borderlands cotton trade. He warned that the loss of this crucial commercial artery would cripple the Southern economy and hamper the army along the lower Rio Grande, leaving South Texas vulnerable to invasion by federal troops.94 As controversy over the Matamoros raid peaked, Vidaurri told Juárez that the constant arrival of Texas refugees “will be a problem” and predicted ensuing political troubles in his state.95 When Bee and López reached their initial agreement, Confederate officers granted Colonel Santos Benavides broad authority to police the border.96 Born into a Laredo mercantile family in 1823, Benavides served in the 1850s as the town’s mayor, and he knew the area and its inhabitants well. A regimental commander during the Civil War, Benavides rose to distinction as the highest-ranking Tejano soldier in the Confederate Army, and his longtime affiliation with Vidaurri made him an especially valuable asset for the Rebels. He and his troops patrolled the border from Eagle Pass downstream to Brownsville—a vast stretch known as the “Line of the Rio Grande”—and Governor Francis Lubbock praised the officer for “keeping Indians and Mexican Marauders off our soil.”97 In March 1863, when a Rebel soldier who crossed illegally into Nuevo Laredo was shot dead while resisting arrest, Benavides led sixty men into the Mexican city. According to López, the vengeful group began “trampling on the civil and military authorities, and committing other outrages.”98 In a terse letter to Bee, the governor said that “attacks like those made by Santos Benavides will produce bitter feelings” and hinted that repetition of such hostile acts might be cause for war. Denying any involvement in the protection of Texas expatriates, López assured Bee that all prior negotiations “will be useless if your subordinates do not act with more prudence.”99

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

87

The governor’s threat failed to dissuade Benavides from additional jaunts below the border. On April 12 he again rode into Mexico, leading thirty Graycoats in pursuit of cattle thieves. When a military officer at the town of Guerrero learned of the expedition, he notified Benavides that “he would not on any account allow any armed body of men within the limits of his command” and pressured the Texans to retreat immediately. Benavides dashed straight to Guerrero and conferred with the Mexican commander, who refused to honor the Bee-López contract for hot pursuit of criminals and forced the Rebel troops to disembark from their chase.100 According to López, Benavides “should have limited himself to giving information” to authorities at Guerrero and had no right to enter the town with armed troops. Bee of course disagreed. Feeling certain that Benavides acted “in conformity with the spirit of our agreement” by seeking to punish rustlers, he blamed the officer at Guerrero for refusing to comply and brazenly advised that that individual be replaced with somebody “more in harmony with us.”101 Bee, who had been friends with Benavides since the 1840s, politely instructed him to desist from further outings. The controversial officer nonetheless made one final foray in 1863 that proved the utility of his indiscreet approach to border warfare. Seventy-nine Confederate soldiers—predominantly Tejanos—ambushed Octaviano Zapata’s campsite near the Mexican town of Mier on September 2, killing the infamous guerrilla and at least ten of his followers. An elated General Bee claimed credit, saying that his agreement with Governor López earlier that year had paved the way for the destruction of Zapata’s banditti.102 On paper, Bee appeared to have scored a significant victory in borderlands diplomacy when he convinced his counterpart to approve a secret agreement that disregarded permissible approaches to foreign affairs. Secretary of State Benjamin praised his course of action as “wise and prudent” and foresaw tangible benefits to be derived from it.103 In reality, the surreptitious compact with López proved unenforceable, and officials rarely upheld their ends of the bargain. The goodwill pact actually caused more problems than it solved, creating false expectations and leading to provocative military actions that nearly erupted in open warfare. Although Confederate affairs with Coahuila and Nuevo León remained stable due to Vidaurri’s disposition, relations with Tamaulipas deteriorated. Bee did not believe that Texans were wrong to cross the border when chasing deserters and bandits. But Confederates in the Trans-Mississippi West had grown so dependent on the good graces of Mexican governors that they acceded to embarrassing demands by releasing

88

Chapter 3

imprisoned deserters, removing troops from the border, and apologizing for offensive campaigns. Equally vexing for Rebel operatives, the unpredictability of Mexican politics caused a rapid succession of state figureheads in Tamaulipas. Calling the situation “confusing and complicated,” Enrique Mejía maligned López as a weak leader whose private arrangements with Confederates and salutary neglect toward the Texas refugee situation would cause major foreign conflicts if he remained in power. Another firsthand observer, Jesús Fernández García, wrote that the state had been transformed into a “political corpse.”104 López lost his position within a matter of months and a new leader, Manuel Ruiz, filled the gubernatorial seat despite ongoing efforts by “the friends of Don Albino López” to see him reinstated.105 The López-Bee agreement became a moot point as a result of abnormal administrative turnover, a potent reminder of just how tenuous one’s stature could be in the Texas-Mexico borderlands. Describing the two-faced dynamics of regional politics, Francis Latham testified that, “I have known the commanders in Matamoras to be toasted and feted by the United States officers one night, and go the next night and have a big fandango and pow-wow with the confederate officers, and were just as amiable with one as the other.”106 When Ruiz took office in August 1863—just one month after the Confederate army suffered devastating defeats in Pennsylvania and Mississippi—Bee inquired whether or not he intended to abide by the terms of his predecessor’s contract. Ruiz did not work expeditiously with Texas officials, even though Quintero thought him “to be a worthy gentleman and well disposed toward the Confederacy.”107 Bee’s outreach proved fruitless in part because French imperialists were approaching Tamaulipas from the south and the governor had graver concerns to address.108 As the political winds shifted direction in Tamaulipas, regional Rebels finally received a long-awaited report from a special agent sent to confer with French officials in Mexico. This mission occurred under the purview of military authorities, as Texas governor Francis Lubbock deferred the topic to Confederate superiors on the belief that foreign aid “could be secured by the Richmond government in more adequate form and upon better terms than it could be obtained by a single state.”109 Acting largely on his own whims, General Bee had enlisted a Frenchman identified as A. Superviéle at San Antonio and dispatched him to Havana, where he boarded an English ship bound for Vera Cruz. Upon landing at the port city, Superviéle proceeded inland to Puebla, where he met the ranking imperial diplomat, Count Pierre Elizodor Alphonso Dubois de Saligny. After satisfying himself that Superviéle was

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

89

indeed a Rebel agent and not a Union spy, Saligny revealed that he had many friends engaged in the Confederacy’s secessionist cause. Superviéle briefed his audience on a scheme that would provide French imperialists with direct access to the lucrative Matamoros cotton trade if they would partner with the Confederacy to drive unfriendly Juaristas away. One motivation in making this offer was to disempower Mexican statesmen like López and Ruiz and replace them with a governing faction that might act in concert with Southern interests.110 If successful, such an arrangement would also constitute a form of diplomatic recognition for the Confederacy. When Saligny pointed out that he lacked the authority to grant such an acknowledgment, Superviéle responded that “good feeling and sympathy” from France would suffice. Wary of overstepping their bounds and facing reprimand from Napoleon III, French officers declined anything that would insinuate a formal partnership. They also refused to send a naval squadron to Matamoros, fearing that it would signal a military alliance between France and the Confederacy. These actions aligned with the preference of the emperor, who did not want to needlessly antagonize the United States. “He keeps his own intentions to himself,” Thomas Corwin wrote in reference to Napoleon III, noting that he would be apt to modify his policies toward Mexico based on the shifting trajectories of the Civil War.111 Superviéle’s mission suffered a further setback when Juaristas mistook him for a French spy. Everywhere he went, in fact, Superviéle attracted suspicion: cautious Havana officials pegged him as a Confederate agent, Saligny initially thought him to be a Union spy, and at Matamoros the governor believed he was a French mole. But the wily operative passed every interrogation to which he was subjected and returned to Texas unscathed in June 1863.112 Superviéle tried to play puppet master, pulling strings in Mexico to manipulate the course of the French Intervention in the Confederacy’s favor, but the effort proved illusory. His failure prompted an unusual idea in the mind of Robert Kean. In the privacy of his diary, the head of the Confederate War Bureau pondered a complex plan whereby Texas would secede from the Confederacy and align with France—which had recently prevailed at the Second Battle of Puebla on May 17, 1863, and thereby forced Juárez to flee Mexico City and reestablish his seat of government at San Luis Potosí. As the tide of Mexico’s war shifted in favor of imperial aggressors, the prospect for a French-controlled nation in the Western Hemisphere prompted Rebels to devise ways of exploiting these circumstances. Were Texas to “throw herself into the arms of France,” Kean schemed, the inevitable result would be “war

90

Chapter 3

between France and the United States.”113 The essence of this strategy was to invoke America’s commitment to the Monroe Doctrine by reconstituting a major portion of the pre-1845 Mexican Republic—but under French rule— and implanting a powerful foreign regime in North America that could rival the United States in economic output and military might. This would divide U.S. power through a multifront war against Rebel forces in the Southern states and French troops in Mexico and at sea, breaking the U.S. blockade and clearing a pathway for Confederate independence. Although this plan never gained traction in Richmond, some Southerners seemed willing to sacrifice a portion of their own territory to pull France into the Civil War. Rather than relinquish Texas as the proverbial sacrificial lamb of the Confederacy, Bee chose a more optimistic outlook, lauding Superviéle’s efforts below the border and predicting that the French would befriend the Southern cause.114 But France turned out to be far less amenable than Rebel leaders hoped. Wary of becoming a pawn in another country’s conflict, and sensing the peril of entangling themselves diplomatically, economically, or militarily with the Confederates, French officials shied away from any tactic that might invite a U.S. declaration of war and jeopardize their imperialist mission in Mexico. In fact, French naval officers acted in ways that harmed Rebel interests. At various times in 1863, they seized inbound vessels carrying guns and ammunition to Texas, creating a serious diplomatic conundrum as Southern officers attempted to negotiate the release of those ships and their cargoes. These seaborne dilemmas began when Confederate secretary of war James Seddon instructed Bernard Avegno, a Southern commercial agent at Vera Cruz, to take full advantage of French hostilities with Mexico. The buildup of arms concurrent with that conflict would provide good cover for smugglers, as European merchants sent vast quantities of guns and ammunition through the Gulf of Mexico. Avegno was instructed to use his own instincts in deciding how best to sneak munitions past customs officers and move them overland into Texas via Matamoros and Brownsville.115 Pursuant to these objectives, Simeon Hart—who previously financed Colonel Reily’s trips to Chihuahua and Sonora and now served in San Antonio as a special agent for Confederate commerce—finalized a private contract with the merchant Nelson Clements for the purchase and importation of several shiploads of supplies from England. Clements visited London to broker the transactions and oversee the transport of 20,000 stand of muskets, 5,000 revolvers, 5,000 sabers, and $1 million worth of military clothing. Hart promised to pay for these items upon delivery using Texas cotton as the medium of exchange.116 The intention

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

91

was to circumvent the U.S. blockade using ostensibly neutral foreign schooners laden with British goods under private contract and landing them on Mexican soil. The plan went awry when French vessels halted the ships and confiscated their freight, believing the payloads belonged not to Texas Confederates but to enemy Juarista forces in Mexico.117 The first shipment of 10,000 rifles sailed from England aboard the schooner Love Bird on May 16, 1863 and was seized on July 4 off the Mexican coast. The French captured a second ship, Caroline Goodyear, carrying a similar number of guns, and in November officials also confiscated 2.5 million rounds of ammunition from a third boat. Only 4,200 rifles reached Texas, all other articles being appropriated by imperial troops for their own use.118 Leonard Pierce reported these incidents to the U.S. State Department, remarking with tongue in cheek that “it turned out to be a most unfortunate affair for the rebel sympathizers.”119 Bee blamed the capture of Love Bird on the “ignorance, incapacity, and disgraceful conduct” of its captain, who sailed directly into French-occupied waters outside of Matamoros. “The captain of the Love Bird was insane enough to think that he was safe under the flag of England,” Bee raved, adding that, “with the slightest exercise of common sense, the whole cargo might have been landed in Texas.”120 The logistical importance of these supplies, coupled with the complicated nature of foreign affairs between France and Mexico, created a serious predicament for the Confederates. Because Love Bird’s captain was acting under the auspices of the Confederacy when caught in Mexico with a payload of Texas-financed contraband, the incident compromised relations between the two countries. Governor Ruiz apprehended and incarcerated the smugglers, causing an uproar among Rebel leaders. Burdened with the tricky task of negotiating the release of fifteen crewmen from a Matamoros prison, Bee paid off Ruiz with $1,000 per inmate plus additional “fines” amounting to $26,000.121 Dejected by the loss of vital cargo and embarrassed from doling out bribe money, Bee pleaded with French authorities at Vera Cruz to release the confiscated guns, and he even sent Superviéle back to confer with them.122 The seizure of these ships coincided with Rebel defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863 and compounded the strain of a calamitous month for the Confederacy. Although far removed from eastern battlefields, military leaders in Texas felt pinched by these setbacks, as the Confederacy’s complete loss of the Mississippi River placed added importance on the Southwest as a shipping corridor. In mid-July Major General Magruder instructed Governor Lubbock to raise an additional ten thousand troops, implored all

92

Chapter 3

men over the age of fifty who were fit for service to “organize themselves in the counties in companies of minutemen,” and asked Texans to release onefourth of their slaves into military custody to build fortifications. Northern Yankees, Magruder proclaimed, “will yet learn that the spirit of the Alamo is the quick spirit of the land, and that Texas will not suffer her sons to be subjected to territorial vassalage, nor daughters degraded to the associates of enfranchised slaves.”123 Beneath this display of Southern ideology lay a deep sense of desperation and despair, as Magruder realized that the tide of the war had shifted against the South. Back in Richmond, Judah Benjamin came to the same realization. He lamented the capture of supply ships on the Gulf coast, groaning that “every movement made by the French Government, however amicable its intentions, has been disastrous to us.”124 Failing to achieve the desired results from Frenchmen in Mexico, Magruder appealed to Paris dignitaries using commissioner John Slidell as an intermediary.125 He asked the diplomat to seek a directive prohibiting the French navy from further interference with merchant ships bound for Texas. The general also hoped that Napoleon III would release the weapons to help Confederates prolong the Civil War, keeping the U.S. government preoccupied with secessionists and preventing its intrusion into the imperial project. By seizing Rebel munitions off the coast of Mexico, the French inadvertently helped to seal a gaping alley in the U.S. naval blockade and contributed to the Union cause by preventing supplies from reaching Texas.126 Slidell assured Minister of Foreign Affairs Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys that the goods aboard all three ships belonged to the Confederate government and would be used only against the Union Army, but the appeal proved ineffective.127 Nelson Clements, who lost a small fortune in the ordeal, spent the remainder of the Civil War seeking indemnification from Confederate and French officials, but he too failed in that pursuit.128 “But for the interference of the French, 16,000 good rifles would have been in the hands of as many men,” Bee concluded with profound exasperation, pointing out that those weapons would be crucial if U.S. troops invaded Texas.129 The success of French forces at Puebla and their subsequent march toward Mexico’s northeastern states caused U.S. leaders to revisit the idea of attacking Texas. “In view of recent events in Mexico,” Lincoln told General Ulysses S. Grant in August 1863, “I am greatly impressed with the importance of reestablishing national authority in Western Texas as soon as possible.”130 The president also discussed this strategy with Secretary of State Seward, whose prior proposal to snatch Brownsville from the Confederates had been scuttled

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

93

by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.131 Midway through 1863, circumstances below the border prompted a change in federal policy that pointed toward Greater Reconstruction objectives. With French forces advancing northward, government officials—Seward chief among them—believed that U.S. troops must drive the Confederates out of their stronghold at Brownsville and occupy the city, just as they had done at Nashville and New Orleans. This would establish a bulwark against French encroachment toward the United States and prevent the imperialists from formulating military or economic liaisons with Texas agents. Seward’s fears of collusion seem overblown given the contemporaneous disputes between Confederates and Frenchmen over confiscated ships and the failure of Superviéle’s mission to Mexico. The secretary’s line of reasoning, though, revealed a deep concern at the highest levels of government about surreptitious enemy partnerships in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Seward’s preoccupation with this remote theater of Civil War operations also betrayed his anxiety over mysterious schemes like that involving Texas annexation to French-controlled Mexico.132 The rationale behind a Union invasion of South Texas therefore had as much to do with thwarting French ascendancy in North America as it did vanquishing Confederate troops at Fort Brown. Rebel agents like Quintero suspected from the beginning that U.S. soldiers would funnel guns into Mexico “in a quiet way” through occupied Brownsville, benefitting Juarista forces in their fight against imperialists. The operation to control the lower Rio Grande and its hinterlands thus became one of the few federal offensives devised in response to a foreign threat rather than a domestic one, marking one point of origin for Greater Reconstruction as it specifically applied to the federal government’s efforts to dislodge the French from Mexico and reassert U.S. dominance in the hemisphere.133 As three thousand U.S. troops approached Brazos Santiago via gunboats in October 1863, Bee realized that he lacked the manpower and provisions necessary to repulse an attack and prepared to evacuate Fort Brown. The Confederate officer enlisted a company of sixty Mexican citizens under the command of Captain Adrián Vidal to serve as spies near the Rio Grande delta. The entire group of scouts mutinied on October 28, leaving Bee without a reliable source of information about developments downriver.134 Fearing the influence of Union agents, the fearmongering general warned Governor Ruiz that Vidal “turned traitor to his country” and had “the avowed intention of plunder and rapine.” Ruiz sent troops to patrol his side of the border and within days two dozen of Vidal’s mercenaries had been apprehended and extradited to Texas, where Rebel officers charged them with treason against

94

Chapter 3

the Confederacy—a bogus accusation given their Mexican nationality. Vidal himself would perish less than two years later, when French imperialists captured the accused spy at Camargo and executed him despite the attempted bribery of his powerful Texan father-in-law, Mifflin Kenedy.135 The informal enlistment of foreign nationals speaks to the eccentricities of Civil War operations in the borderlands, where Northern and Southern operatives recruited Mexican citizens to gather intelligence and disrupt one another’s movements. But in the absence of nationalist commitment to either the Union or the Confederacy, these guerrillas often acted in self-interest and proved unreliable as spies in the American conflict. With few options remaining, Bee set fire to Fort Brown on November 3 and retreated with his troops toward San Antonio. As the post burned, its stockpile of gunpowder ignited buildings in surrounding Brownsville, destroying two city blocks and six hundred cotton bales.136 The crestfallen officer messaged Quintero in Monterrey, notifying him that Southern forces no longer controlled the lower Rio Grande and expressing hope that Vidaurri might come to their aid “in this emergency.” With Bluecoats in control of Brownsville, the Texas cotton trade would have to be diverted far upriver, passing through Piedras Negras (Coahuila) and Nuevo Laredo (Tamaulipas) in a circuitous route to Mexico’s Gulf Coast. Bee implored Quintero to “use all your influence” with Vidaurri, because much of the cotton economy now depended on the governor’s good graces. Strangled by the U.S. occupation and concomitant disruption of trade, Confederate officers resentfully bowed to Vidaurri’s demands. He could simply “say how he wishes it arranged,” Bee groaned, and the Texans would have to comply.137 Quintero negotiated terms for the transportation of cotton through the interior states of Coahuila and Nuevo León, informing Richmond officials that Vidaurri “offers ample protection on all goods” despite the fact that President Juárez ordered the governor to cease intercourse with the Confederate States.138 By mid-November, Hart was shipping almost all exports through Eagle Pass—more than 250 miles upstream from Brownsville—to outflank federal forces near the river’s mouth. “There was scarcely a day that hundreds of bales were not unloaded here and crossed the river as fast as possible,” wrote Jesse Sumpter, an inspector at Eagle Pass. One U.S. official documented 39,877 bales passing through that town in 1863 alone.139 To facilitate the movement of supplies, Confederate quartermaster Charles Russell traveled to Laredo to meet with the governor. Vidaurri told Russell that he sympathized with the Confederacy and acknowledged that “his individual interests

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

95

were sufficient to induce him to extend us every facility and all the protection in his power.” He even agreed to a 25 percent tariff reduction on goods bound for Texas.140 As Confederate leaders scrambled to cement relations with Vidaurri, Major General Nathaniel P. Banks led U.S. troops into the smoldering town of Brownsville without armed opposition. “The Rebels had skedaddled,” wrote Benjamin McIntyre of the Nineteenth Iowa Infantry. “The trade in cotton alone must have been immense,” he added, “for every road leading into the town shows unmistakable signs of the many loads that have passed into Brownsville.”141 Banks, a former governor of Massachusetts and Speaker of the House of Representatives, found a confusing state of unrest on both sides of the border. Governor Ruiz had been overthrown, which came as no surprise because he had predicted just weeks earlier that the turmoil between “los confederados y los Yankees,” coupled with intense political infighting between Rojos and Crinolinos (opposition parties) would lead to his ouster.142 At Brownsville, José María Cobos had established temporary headquarters for a pro-French movement after being banished from Mexico. From what he thought to be a safe haven on Texas soil, the exiled insurrectionary issued a proclamation on November 6—the same day U.S. forces arrived—declaring himself military leader of Matamoros in promotion of Mexico’s “national independence.”143 His absentee reign lasted less than twenty-four hours. To forestall “a French supremacy in Tamaulipas,” Juan Cortina led a sweeping counterrevolution, and his firing squad executed Cobos that same day. Cortina quickly issued a declaration of his own, claiming command of Tamaulipas and pronouncing himself “chief of the armies” in defense of Mexico’s 1857 constitution. Given two hours to leave town or be executed, Ruiz fled to Brownsville and sought asylum among U.S. troops, allowing Cortina to claim the governorship.144 Bee bristled at this, muttering that Cortina “is known to be bitterly hostile to us [and] through the Yankee influence, he may prohibit the transit of goods destined for Texas.” The Confederate officer believed that this would “throw us entirely on the generosity of the Vidaurri government,” a questionable claim given that Cortina acted independently for his own purposes and had aided the Rebels on prior occasions.145 In this chaotic environment, Banks readied his Union soldiers for military intervention and ordered the artillery to assume firing positions along the north bank of the Rio Grande. Wary that an assault on the city would provide the Mexican and French governments with a pretense for war against the United States, Seward instructed Banks to exercise extreme caution.

96

Chapter 3

Operations along the border were of “critical interest to the national cause,” according to the secretary of state, and he predicted that the “civil strife and foreign war in Mexico” would tempt private schemers like Cortina and Vidal to carry out their own “military enterprises.” The confusion might also arouse deposed governors like López and Ruiz to seek reinstallation to political posts through coups of their own. Should any of these delicate potentialities come to fruition, Banks would have to react forcefully but cautiously, because the United States could ill afford to fight either Mexico or France in addition to the Confederacy. Seward reminded Banks to sustain a policy of “absolute non-intervention and non-interference” in the war between France and Mexico. With this larger objective in mind, U.S. forces were forbidden from entering Mexico unless directly provoked. These instructions emanated directly from President Lincoln, who wished to avoid “any unnecessary and unlawful enlargement of the present field of war.”146 As fears abounded that Confederate sympathizers were congregating across the border and plotting hostilities from Mexican soil, U.S. officers felt pressured to react. Pierce informed local authorities that any offer of asylum to Rebels would constitute a violation of Mexican neutrality and could warrant U.S. involvement.147 When Major General Francis Herron assumed command at Brownsville in December 1863, he too received a copy of the nonintervention orders from Seward and Lincoln, but circumstances in this distant theater of operations induced him to violate that directive without seeking approval from the national capital. From his precarious position inside the consulate, Pierce wrote that the city was “in a most complete uproar” as the Cortina and Ruiz factions blasted cannons at one another. Herron sent two regiments of U.S. soldiers and a battery of light artillery into the city with explicit instructions to protect Pierce, who nervously guarded the diplomatic records and nearly $1 million in specie. Forced to vouch for his controversial actions, Herron submitted a facsimile of Governor Ruiz’s urgent message—dated 10:00  p.m. on the night of the insurrection—admitting his powerlessness to protect the U.S. consulate and asking that troops be sent across the border to guard American property.148 “Scores of men have been shockingly butchered or murdered in cold blood,” the soldier McIntyre observed the following morning as his company walked the eerie streets of Matamoros. “Ruiz was defeated and escaped with his life,” along with hundreds of other Mexican refugees who swam the river and took refuge in Brownsville.149 At least fifty men were not so lucky and perished in the affray, among them former governor Albino López.150 McIntyre concluded that Cortina “has exhibited a daring scheming plotting

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

97

spirit of intrigue seldom surpassed by any of the human family.”151 Afterward, Matías Romero condemned Herron’s involvement as “a flagrant violation of Mexican sovereignty” despite unmistakable evidence that Ruiz had solicited assistance.152 Unable to stymie Southern sympathizers through direct intervention in Mexico, Herron devised another plan for defeating Confederate forces. With U.S. troops in control of the lower Rio Grande, as well as New Mexico and Arizona far to the northwest, Herron believed that a campaign to command the entire border might be possible. In South Texas, preparations were underway for the recruitment of Mexican citizens to serve in the U.S. Army. A similar strategy had already been employed in New Mexico, where Governor Henry Connelly mustered thousands of Hispano volunteers from the local population to augment regular army forces. Banks and Herron believed that they could gather enough fighting men from the surrounding population to hold the Rio Grande as far upriver as Eagle Pass. From there, they intended to coordinate with General James H. Carleton, commanding New Mexico’s military department, in a joint maneuver converging from the west and the east. Once the two armies met near Eagle Pass, they would pivot eastward and lay siege to San Antonio.153 “I desire to make the road from San Antonio to Eagle Pass and Laredo so perilous that neither Jew nor Gentile will wish to travel it,” one officer boasted.154 But the scheme unraveled when Carleton declined to participate. Still leery of Confederate intrigue in Sonora and Chihuahua and preoccupied with violent wars of extermination and removal against Apaches and Navajos, he could not spare troops for what promised to be a bloody and protracted assault on Texas. With a strange hint of ambivalence, Carleton wrote on Christmas Day to wish his compatriots the best of luck if they pursued the operation on their own.155 Military officers, governors, secret agents, and merchants tried to use the porous South Texas borderlands to their advantage in many different ways. The U.S. blockade of the Southern coast made the region a vital commercial corridor for the Confederacy. Rebel operatives, especially those west of the Mississippi River, collaborated with Mexican governors in order to keep this international outlet flowing with cotton and war supplies. Even before the assault on Fort Sumter, Confederate officials understood the importance of the lower Rio Grande region, sending Quintero to negotiate terms of alliance with regional strongmen.156 In the broader context of the Civil War, historian Gerardo Gurza Lavalle calls the Confederacy’s shenanigans along the lower Rio Grande “the only diplomatic effort directed towards Mexico that

98

Chapter 3

yielded effective results.”157 But the political complexities of the borderlands made this task far more difficult than initially expected, and Mexican leaders frequently turned the tables by using the Civil War for profit and power. Hoping to tap into the spirit of regional autonomy, Confederates like Bee and Quintero worked tirelessly to make arrangements with Mexican politicians that would facilitate unfettered commercial access to Matamoros and strategic military partnerships to combat revolutionaries and bandits.158 In most cases, Confederates and Mexicans shirked traditional diplomatic methods by pursuing these negotiations autonomously. With both countries steeped in violent civil wars, personal scheming and secretive diplomacy abounded in the absence of unified leadership in Mexico City and Washington, D.C. Factionalism between liberal federalists and conservative centralists also dampened national unity in Mexico during the French Intervention. Governors like Vidaurri and López profited from these wars and sought to protect their own political power, formulating pacts with Confederate agents to uphold their economic positions while manipulating international relations to their advantage. Overdependency on the Matamoros trade disadvantaged Rebel officers, and Mexicans skillfully capitalized on that vulnerability when dealing with Southern agents. The Civil War and the French Intervention created pervasive turmoil across North America, and none of the participants enjoyed complete political, economic, or military control. All sides worked creatively to promote their own interests within the paradigm of contested power that the borderlands engendered. The tactics that these actors pursued varied by region but ultimately shared the same purpose. In northeastern Mexico, hopeful Southerners thought they had found a partner in Vidaurri, who initially seemed willing to append Coahuila and Nuevo León to the Confederacy. But the geopolitical dynamics of the lower Rio Grande hinterlands, along with the imposing threat of French imperialists, complicated matters of diplomacy, and Southerners instead pursued underground negotiations using secret agents and bribery. While the overall purpose of achieving independence and creating an economically and politically viable Confederate nation remained the same for all committed Rebels along the border, the methods they used to achieve those outcomes depended on regional contingencies. Southern expansionists seeking domination of Latin America and the Pacific World acted more aggressively in Chihuahua and Sonora than they did in Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas, where agents feted local leaders to ensure open

Confederate Lifelines in Northeast Mexico

99

supply lines. Although federal commanders in New Mexico and Arizona took strategic action to impede the threat of Confederate ascendancy in the Southwest, they did not behave with the same bellicosity as their comrades in South Texas, where Bluecoats forcefully occupied the lower Rio Grande midway through the war. These tactics began to change after 1863, as shifting tides of war in the United States and Mexico not only forced new approaches to alliance and diplomacy but also reshaped the many different illusions of empire that motivated actions along the border.

CHAPTER 4

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

Ignacio Pesqueíra had his hands full as the leader of Sonora. By 1863, his state had become a magnet for Confederate and U.S. agents seeking clandestine arrangements in furtherance of their causes in the Civil War. Even though they suffered defeat on the battlefields of New Mexico, some Rebels still had not given up on their aspirations of acquiring northwestern Mexico, and numerous other threats remained. Despite American attempts to entice the regionalist statesman into treasonous acts, Pesqueíra professed loyalty to the Mexican Republic and reiterated his patriotism in letters to Benito Juárez. The governor also informed his president that Indians, filibusters, and Frenchmen all posed immediate dangers to Mexican sovereignty in that part of the country. “The war with the barbarous Apache makes its ravages felt in all the districts,” he lamented, noting that his soldiers remained on constant alert throughout Sonora. Pesqueíra was also getting reports from California about looming Southern filibuster campaigns that might weaken his hold on power, and French conspirators were purportedly complicit in these external designs. Because he faced so many foreign enemies within his own state, Pesqueíra had little to spare in the way of troops, arms, or cash to help Juárez fight imperialists elsewhere in Mexico.1 In neighboring Chihuahua, Luis Terrazas reported much the same, telling the president on multiple occasions that he lacked the resources necessary to defend the capital and its hinterlands from American, French, and Apache threats. The porosity of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands continued to undercut state power, lending greater influence and autonomy to third-party actors seeking to capitalize on the transcontinental chaos wrought by the Civil War and the French Intervention. One of Sonora’s most pressing issues involved the plotting of filibuster expeditions in California. An ostensibly free-soil state, it was barely carried

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

101

Figure 9. William Gwin, c. 1850s. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-110003.

by Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election because thousands of Southerners had immigrated there in the years leading up to the Civil War.2 In the early 1860s, those secessionists hatched multiple plans to take control of Sonora. Most renowned among the California filibusters was William Gwin, believed to be an operative of the Knights of the Golden Circle. Originally a lawyer from Mississippi, he rose to fortune through the Jacksonian spoils system, using a posh government appointment to profit from land sales in the Deep South following the removal of Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians in the 1830s. The wealthy slave owner moved to the Pacific Coast during the antebellum Gold Rush and served alongside John C. Frémont as one of California’s first U.S. senators. An avowed agent of Manifest Destiny, Gwin built a reputation in Congress as a supporter of American expansion through territorial purchase, annexation, and even military conquest. With a personal background steeped in the proslavery ideology of Southern empire, the fifty-six-year-old politician winced at the fact that California remained in the Union and most of its troops wore blue uniforms.3

102

Chapter 4

Gwin had already been eyeing northwest Mexico for geopolitical incorporation into the United States for nearly a decade when the disruptive Civil War provided him with an opportunity to take independent action, free from the constraints of antislavery Northerners who opposed national expansion into Latin America. In November 1861, he was caught carrying secret documents that outlined a conspiracy to annex Baja California, Sonora, and Chihuahua to the Confederacy. General Edwin V. Sumner arrested Gwin for treason and conveyed him to New York City aboard the Pacific mail steamer Orizaba. President Lincoln eventually ordered Gwin’s release from prison due to insufficient evidence for conviction, whereupon Gwin resumed his clandestine activities.4 Union soldiers occupied his Mississippi plantation in 1863 (just before the siege at Vicksburg), and later that year, as French imperialists cast their gaze toward northwest Mexico, he scored a meeting in Paris with Napoleon III.5 “If the northern boundary of Mexico is left in its present defenseless condition,” Gwin told the monarch, the U.S. government would likely encourage its soldiers to colonize the region as a means of thwarting the imperial advance and preserving republican rule under Juárez. With an air of intrigue, Gwin tried to convince the French emperor that he must allow Southerners from California to settle in Sonora. Not only would such men profess loyalty to the regime, he argued, but they would also help defend the Mexican Empire from meddling U.S. operatives wishing to suppress monarchical rule.6 West Coast secessionists and their families had been fleeing through Mexico since the war began, some migrating as far to the southeast as Monterrey, and Gwin hoped to concentrate them in a single state to pose a more formidable threat to Union operations.7 American capitalists—many of them Californians—already owned eighteen mining companies in Sonora and were producing millions of dollars in silver and copper ore, providing a potential funding source for Gwin and his followers.8 By June 1864, Gwin was en route back to Mexico “to colonize Sonora with persons of Southern birth or proclivities,” and he carried a letter from the emperor “warmly recommending his enterprise” to imperial commandants in Mexico City. John Slidell, the Confederate minister in Paris, felt confident that the project would benefit the Southern war effort, adding that French leaders “fully examined and approved” the scheme.9 If all went as planned, according to Enrique A. Mejía, Sonora would become “a barrier to any aggression of the United States . . . sufficiently formidable to resist all attempts against Maximilian.”10 An anonymous newspaper correspondent reported that Gwin “is not a man to fail” and predicted, with clear bias toward the Southern cause, that the colony would

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

103

soon provide “those who are tired of revolutions, and of mobocracies, and political corruptions” with a bright and hopeful future in Mexico.11 Gwin’s colonization represented the latest in a long line of filibustering operations dating back to the early 1850s. At the height of the Civil War, Southerners were still transfixed on these illusions of empire, seeking to create colonies on Mexican soil that would perpetuate the plantation aristocracy and create a pathway for the future territorial expansion of the Slave South. Gwin reached Mexico City in the summer of 1864—just as the new emperor arrived from Europe to claim his throne—and easily enlisted the support of imperial Mexico’s two leading officials, foreign minister Marquis Charles François Frédéric de Montholon and commander in chief Marshal François Achille Bazaine. Both men saw Gwin’s plan as a logical step forward for the Mexican Empire in two respects. First, it would fulfill the French desire to populate the country with industrious foreign immigrants boasting experience in mining and agriculture. Second, Napoleon III, Montholon, and Bazaine all believed that Sonora’s fabled mineral wealth, if properly exploited, could help to replenish the French treasury. After Maximilian I accepted the appointment to rule Mexico, he agreed to terms in the Treaty of Miramar that included gradual payment of 270 million francs (roughly $3 billion in 2020) to Napoleon III in recompense for the costs incurred during the French military invasion and subsequent occupation. Sonoran mining seemed like one of the surest ways to repay this astronomical sum in a reasonable period of time, and the French monarch bluntly told Maximilian that Gwin “is the man best able to be of service in the Sonora area.” But Maximilian proved unenthusiastic about the idea and rejected his benefactor’s advice. Besides his general lack of trust in Gwin, the Mexican ruler sensed that a permanent settlement of secessionists near the border would undermine the legitimacy of his regime and prompt a hostile response from the United States.12 Ignoring the Mexican emperor and acting instead on the blessings of Montholon and Bazaine, Gwin approached Pesqueíra with an idea to establish the “Dukedom of Sonora,” a pro-French colony of American immigrants who supported slavery and espoused the Confederate cause. Having experienced these types of schemes before—most notably Henry Crabb’s expedition in 1857—the Sonora governor must have been stunned when a designing foreigner actually asked permission to act as a filibuster, but he flatly refused Gwin’s gesture and reiterated his allegiance to the Mexican Republic under Juárez.13 If nothing else, Pesqueíra was consistent in his deflection of Americans who sought power and control over his state, because Gwin’s entreaties

104

Chapter 4

elicited the same negative response as those of Colonel James Reily in 1862 and Major David Fergusson in 1863. After decades of unsavory experiences involving American aggression, Mexicans could scarcely have mistaken the irony in these jingoistic plans. Confederate secretary of state Judah Benjamin and his diplomatic agents repeatedly assured foreign counterparts that the South would protect Mexican territory from Yankee aggression. But zealous Southern expansionists also posed a direct threat to Mexico’s territorial sovereignty, and few men understood this better than governors in the border states. Back in Washington, D.C., chargé d’affaires Matías Romero continuously apprised military officers and even President Lincoln of Gwin’s plan to attract “all the discontents of this country” to northern Mexico.14 The State Department also received updates from William Corwin, who replaced his father Thomas as foreign minister to Mexico in April 1864. From his station in Mexico City, the younger Corwin wrote that “the great majority of the Mexicans are decidedly opposed to this scheme of immigration,” owing largely to their lingering fears of American filibustering.15 Secretary of State William Seward feared that secessionists, with French assistance, would use a colonial foothold in northwest Mexico as the staging ground to invade and capture southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico, and he denounced Gwin as “a menace against the United States.”16 At Seward’s insistence, U.S. envoy to France John Bigelow confronted Minister of Foreign Affairs Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys in Paris, explaining that American agents had captured secret correspondence proving Napoleon III’s complicity in Gwin’s scheming. Bigelow warned the French diplomat that the United States looked upon this collusion as an act of hostility and would pursue countermeasures if necessary. Drouyn de Lhuys took umbrage at Bigelow’s threatening tone, denied the authenticity of the incriminating letters, and explained in vague terms that France remained committed to neutrality, all while dodging the bigger question about Sonora colonization.17 Based on Seward’s conspiracy theory, the Confederates might reattempt General Henry H. Sibley’s failed conquest of the American Southwest, but from the direction of Mexico rather than Texas and with the active collaboration of a foreign government. Without Pesqueíra’s cooperation, though, Bazaine would have to send French soldiers to assert imperial control in the Mexican northwest before the Dukedom of Sonora colony could materialize. But time was not on Gwin’s side. General William T. Sherman’s occupation of Atlanta in September 1864, followed by Lincoln’s reelection by a comfortable margin of votes in November, seemed to signal an impending Union victory

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

105

in the Civil War.18 Coupled with Foreign Minister Alphonse Dano’s report explaining that tales of Sonora’s wealth were drastically exaggerated, this turn of events caused Napoleon III and his regents in Paris to waver in their support for the colonization scheme out of fear that it would incite a militaristic response from an undistracted U.S. government. As late as March 31, 1865, the French emperor still felt that Gwin’s plan might benefit Maximilian’s regime, but cautioned Bazaine “not to commit to a new expedition that could entail great expenses and great difficulties.”19 The United States had undertaken massive buildups of its army and navy during the Civil War, and French leaders dreaded the thought of this empowered military being unleashed on their relatively small force of thirty thousand troops in Mexico.20 By August 1865— just weeks after Bigelow’s discussion with Drouyn de Lhuys in Paris—Seward received news that Gwin’s plans for Sonora unraveled as the imperial government’s support for his endeavor waned.21 Napoleon III and his council of state were smart to anticipate this type of heavy-handed U.S. reaction. In a portent of things to come during Greater Reconstruction, Ulysses S. Grant, commanding the Union Army, paid close attention to Gwin’s acts of intrigue.22 Gwin had gone to Mexico and espoused Maximilian’s regime with the intent of supplanting Pesqueíra as governor of Sonora, making him, in Grant’s eyes, “a rebel of the most virulent order.” Gwin’s political connections in California and his alignment with the Mexican Empire posed a threat to the United States and its democratic institutions, and Grant feared the establishment of a new Southern power base from which Confederates might carry on their fight for independence. Grant empowered General Irvin McDowell, commanding the Department of the Pacific, to enlist as many volunteers as needed to counteract Gwin’s machinations below the border and repel any invasion of California and Arizona. Taking these strategic measures a step further, Grant also authorized a U.S. Army occupation of Sonora in the event that Confederates staged an attack on American soil from that location. A directive to occupy the territory of a neutral country was so extraordinary that Grant issued it independently, apparently without Lincoln’s knowledge.23 His actions harkened back to 1862, when James H. Carleton and George Wright reacted to Reily’s missions in Chihuahua and Sonora by plotting an invasion of northern Mexico without the approbation of either the State or Executive Departments. Already thinking about ways to reconstruct the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in line with broader American nation-building objectives in the West, McDowell began planning military operations in response to Gwin’s personal

106

Chapter 4

scheming, unaware that Napoleon III had rescinded his support for the venture. Still viewing the French imperialist project as an imminent threat to U.S. sovereignty in California and Arizona, McDowell took “the deepest interest” in Mexican affairs. Lincoln’s reelection, congressional debates over the Thirteenth Amendment to outlaw slavery, and the increasingly likely Confederate capitulation unnerved Southern sympathizers in California who, like some of their Rebel counterparts in Texas, began to consider flight to Mexico as a preferable alternative to surrender. McDowell learned in February 1865 that Gwin had at least two spies, Barclay Henry and Joseph Charles Ridge, working in San Francisco to assemble unapologetic Rebels and march them into Sonora, and an advertisement even appeared in a local newspaper encouraging “disunionists” to join the filibustering venture. Noting that it would take weeks for reinforcements to reach California by steamship, McDowell issued an order on February 11 that restricted borderlands migration by forbidding the issuance of passports to and from Mexico. Marshal Bazaine saw this as a ruse to prevent Americans from joining the imperial cause in Sonora.24 To augment his legal measure, the Union general ordered a military buildup along the border, dispatching troops to southern Arizona, raising additional volunteer regiments in California, and asking the U.S. Navy to reassign warships from the Atlantic Coast to blockade the port at Guaymas.25 McDowell hoped to prevent Gwin’s followers from reaching Sonora in the first place and, if they did manage to get there in significant numbers, to preempt any joint Franco-Confederate invasion of the United States by saturating the borderlands with federal power in much the same way that Grant would do in South Texas a few months later. The Department of the Pacific ultimately downsized its enlistments to a peacetime force in the summer of 1865, once it became clear that nothing would come of Gwin’s Mexican colony.26 But the fact that Grant, still contending with Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at a late stage of the Civil War, directed so much thought and attention to military strategy on an international frontier two thousand miles away from his headquarters demonstrates the importance that military leaders placed on events near the border line and shows that they were already looking ahead to Greater Reconstruction in the borderlands. Gwin was not the only Southern ideologue to plot aggressive Civil War schemes in California and northern Mexico. While he undertook most of his operations without the involvement of Confederate officials in Richmond, another plan to reinvade the American Southwest emanated directly from the offices of Jefferson Davis and his secretary of war, James A. Seddon. In

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

107

February 1864, around the same time that Gwin sailed to France and began enlisting imperial support for his pet project in Sonora, the Rebel government commissioned Major Lansford W. Hastings to recruit troops among the Southern sympathizers in California and prepare them for an attack on Arizona and New Mexico. A Northern-born secessionist with a lifelong attraction to colonization—in the 1840s he plotted the formation of an independent republic in California, and in 1866 he did the same for disaffected Confederates fleeing to Brazil—Hastings was an enigmatic figure who jibed well with the motley cast of characters in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.27 In a complex plot that linked Confederate diplomacy in Nuevo León, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas with military operations in Sonora and Chihuahua, Hastings planned to use proceeds from Texas cotton exports to fund the recruitment and training of a mercenary army on the West Coast. That force would be disguised as an exploratory civilian “mining association” to deflect the suspicion of Mexican governors and enable operations south of the border without violating wartime neutrality. Once enough men signed on to this clandestine force, they would abandon picks and shovels, shoulder their muskets, and march into Arizona to “commence their operations for the seizure and occupation of the country.”28 James A. Lucas, a former secretary of the short-lived Confederate Territory of Arizona, offered his wholehearted support for the Hastings invasion. “If it were known throughout Arizona and California that there was a Confederate agent at . . . some other point near the Sonora line, a great many good Southern men would flock to him,” Lucas reckoned. He mentioned that General Sibley’s withdrawal from New Mexico in 1862 and the subsequent imposition of martial law under Union rule had prompted many Southern sympathizers to leave the Mesilla Valley. Lucas felt confident that these disenchanted men would eagerly join any expedition of conquest that might take shape in northwest Mexico, pointing out that many ready and willing Rebel mercenaries already lived in the area.29 The Hastings reinvasion plan ultimately failed to materialize because of its strategic complexity and the active opposition of Mexican leaders, who wanted no part of yet another Civil War insurgency on their territory. But not all Rebels felt dissuaded by these shortcomings. Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor, the fiery Texan who played a prominent but counterproductive role in the initial Confederate invasion of New Mexico, choreographed his own plan to retake control of the Southwest. In some ways, the scheme that he pitched to Secretary of War Seddon in December 1864 mirrored that of Major Hastings. Baylor optimistically predicted that ten thousand armed volunteers

108

Chapter 4

could be raised among Southern sympathizers residing in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora, and Chihuahua. Back in 1861, Baylor had hoped to tap into this fabled pool of Rebel support, but his tenure as governor of the Confederate Territory of Arizona was cut short when Jefferson Davis recalled him after the ill-advised order to exterminate Chiricahua Apaches. Shortly thereafter, Sibley’s campaign suffered defeat and retreated to Texas before any reinforcements could be enlisted through surreptitious means. To help ensure success the second time around, Baylor recommended a novel use of strategic diplomacy that could only have worked in the widely contested borderlands. In a remarkable reversal from his previous treatment of Indians, Baylor proposed an alliance with South Plains tribes, who could disrupt U.S. communications and supply lines on the Santa Fe Trail and thereby isolate Union forces in the Southwest. Baylor intended to confiscate land in northern Mexico and redistribute it as private property to Confederate veterans after the campaign concluded as an incentive for joining his ad hoc army, although his formulation included no such benefits for the Native auxiliaries he planned to use.30 Seddon forwarded Baylor’s proposal to Jefferson Davis with an appended note, informing the president that “no resources for such an enterprise can be now spared” and recommending instead that all remaining soldiers in the Trans-Mississippi theater be sent to Virginia and eastern Tennessee battlefields, where the fate of the rebellion hung in the balance.31 Throughout 1864, the Confederate president had maintained a hope that Lincoln would be defeated in the November election and that his successor would seek a peace agreement recognizing Southern independence. Eye-raising battlefield casualty counts under Lieutenant General Grant’s leadership increased Northern distaste for the war and reinforced Rebel optimism that a political changeover would occur in Washington, D.C. But this hope evaporated when the Democratic candidate, George B. McClellan, lost the election and polling showed that approximately three-quarters of all Union troops voted to retain their commander in chief. With Honest Abe holding the presidency, Davis revisited a strategy in the far western theater of the war that might help to counterbalance the political and military setbacks that Rebels faced in the East.32 Having been a strong proponent of the first attack on New Mexico in 1861, Davis disregarded Seddon’s sage advice and expressed interest in recruiting a fighting force on Mexican soil to harass U.S. troops using guerrilla raids along the border. With many years of experience on the Texas and New Mexico frontiers, Baylor would be an ideal commander for such nefarious

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

109

activities, but distractions in the East delayed the president’s order to commence the campaign.33 A full month passed without any news from Richmond, so Baylor renewed his request to raise a conglomerate force of Texas cavalrymen, Southern refugees, and sympathetic Mexicans to seize Arizona’s mines and confiscate supplies from regional Unionists. With the notable exceptions of mustering on foreign soil and enlisting Mexican citizens, Baylor’s latest schematic concoction resembled the failed invasion of New Mexico in 1861–62, and yet his plan came remarkably close to fruition. On March 25, 1865—just three weeks before the Civil War ended—Baylor received word that the maneuver had been approved.34 Still clinging to their illusions of a Pacific empire, Davis and his Southern cohorts saw a glimmer of hope in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, where Chiricahua Apaches continued to avenge the genocidal massacres of scalp hunters, the Bascom Affair, and the murder of Mangas Coloradas. Coupled with the ongoing chaos of French imperialism in that quarter, this power struggle enticed Rebel operatives during the last desperate days of the rebellion. Even as the Civil War neared its finale, Confederates continued to view northern Mexico as an important theater of military and diplomatic operations. Like Baylor, Colonel James E. Harrison of the Fifteenth Texas Infantry also felt it would be wise policy to negotiate an alliance with South Plains tribes, who could act “as auxiliaries in harassing and even cutting off all communication” between Santa Fe and Fort Leavenworth. A peace agreement with Comanches would theoretically provide a secondary benefit by reducing raids along the Texas frontier, thus freeing Rebel troops from Indian patrols and allowing them to be repurposed for campaigns against the Union Army. Seddon and Davis liked the idea of pursuing strategic diplomacy with Indians and felt that such an approach could assist Baylor’s operations further west, but they left the final decision to General Edmund Kirby Smith as commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department. After hearing rumors that the Comanche, Creek, and Cherokee nations had become “enraged against the United States, and were anxious to make peace with the Confederates,” Smith sensed a unique opportunity to turn those groups into allies and made plans to meet with tribal leaders at Council Grove in Indian Territory. He appointed Brigadier General James W. Throckmorton as peace commissioner, but soon realized the impropriety in sending a Texan who had fought and killed members of these same groups during the antebellum era. Assuming that the inclusion of a second agent from another state might “conciliate the Indian chiefs and give the negotiation . . . a more national character,” Smith

110

Chapter 4

asked General Albert Pike of Arkansas to join Throckmorton in a diplomatic capacity. Distinguishing between sedentary and nomadic tribes, Smith began thinking about a tripartite treaty between “the wild prairie Indians . . . the united Indian nations [of Indian Territory] . . . and the Confederate Government,” wisely avoiding the notion of a single agreement classifying all Native peoples as a monolithic entity.35 But Lee’s final surrender derailed General Smith’s scheme before Southern agents could meet with any of the tribes in advancement of a grander Civil War strategy, and the legacy of Confederate Indian policy in the Southwest would remain one of overt extermination rather than covert cooperation. As Rebels pursued these ambitious acts of borderlands intrigue, U.S. officers and agents remained alert to regional threats and responded with creative tactics of their own, using a combination of military planning and diplomatic arm twisting. In New Mexico, General Carleton and his team of officers addressed Confederate chicanery and Apache resistance with tremendous resolve, and they repeatedly attempted to incorporate Mexican administrators into their plans. In February 1864, U.S. Army inspector Nelson H. Davis visited Guaymas and found “a bad state of things” in regards to foreign affairs. He came to the conclusion that Governor Pesqueíra “is very much of an independent sovereign” and predicted that Sonora and its ports on the Gulf of California “will soon be ours,” if only the federal government would approve definitive action on the matter.36 With this report in hand, Carleton authorized one of his subordinates at the Tucson post, Lieutenant Colonel Theodore A. Coult, to contact Pesqueíra in March 1864. Coult introduced the governor to a new Union agent, Captain William Ffrench of the Fifth California Infantry, and simultaneously clued in Edward Conner, the U.S. consular agent at Guaymas, so that he could provide any assistance necessary. Ffrench had orders to comport himself with professionalism but also to “exhaust every argument” with the Sonora governor on several items of mutual interest. This included landing steamers at the ports of Guaymas, Libertad, and Los Lobos; shipping supplies through Sonora to federal forts in Arizona; assisting in the ongoing fight against Chiricahua Apaches on both sides of the border; and subversion of Rebel schemes. Ffrench was given many of the same responsibilities as Major Fergusson one year earlier, the hope being that Pesqueíra might prove more amenable to diplomatic negotiation now that Southern filibusters, French imperialists, and Apache warriors all stood at his doorstep.37

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

111

Coult acknowledged that some of these aspirations would be difficult to achieve through legal means, especially an arrangement for U.S. troops to chase Indians into Mexico, because such a pact could only be made via treaty between national governments. Hoping to capitalize on the exigencies of the porous frontier in which they operated, Coult and Ffrench appealed to Pesqueíra’s sense of duty and spontaneity in addressing the mutual threat of Chiricahua and Western Apache raiding, assuring him that U.S. soldiers and their commanders would never impede Mexican troops should they wish to cross into Arizona or New Mexico for the same purpose. Left unspoken in this proposal, however, was the fact that U.S. soldiers could and would use Pesqueíra’s tacit approval for maneuvers into Sonora as a pretense to justify aggressive military operations against Southerners like Gwin, who was in the midst of his colonization plan at the time these discussions took place. Much to the delight of U.S. officials, Pesqueíra conceded to most of Ffrench’s requests, allowing army supplies bound for Arizona to be landed at Guaymas and even agreeing that Bluecoats could briefly traverse Mexican territory in hot pursuit of Indians. Just one month before Ffrench’s visit, Pesqueíra led Sonora’s militiamen in a bloody battle against Chiricahua Apaches after establishing field headquarters near the copper mines at Cananea, just below the Arizona border. He gleefully informed Juárez that his men managed to “punish the savages a little,” and he may have seen the U.S. Army’s proposal as an opportunity to capitalize on that momentum.38 The governor might also have been thinking about the contemporaneous French advance into northwest Mexico and realized that his armed forces would soon be distracted from Indian warfare in order to address the imperial threat. Whatever Pesqueíra’s motivations, Carleton thanked him for “these kindnesses” and expressed his appreciation for having “obliging neighbors” below the border.39 With one governor’s tacit approval, Carleton promptly ordered Major Davis on a 1,200-mile scout through northwestern Mexico, where the inspector met with the influential military officer and hacienda-owner José María Zuloaga to discuss Apache policy.40 This transborder operation yielded no direct military or diplomatic results, but Sonora’s soldiers ambushed a rancheria shortly thereafter, killing thirty-nine Chiricahua Apaches and capturing twenty-eight more before returning in triumph to Bavispe.41 Sensing an opportunity for collaboration, Carleton informed both Pesqueíra and Terrazas of a forthcoming campaign of total warfare against the Chiricahua Apaches in southern Arizona and New Mexico. As large

112

Chapter 4

contingents of U.S. troops took the field, Carleton warned the two governors that some of the Indians would doubtless flee into Sonora and Chihuahua. To prevent their enemy from crisscrossing the international boundary to escape punitive measures, the general asked that Mexican troops from both states be sent out to patrol the border “so that we may make a combined effort against these Apaches.” Carleton proudly referenced the success of recent campaigns of attrition against the formidable Navajos, telling Pesqueíra and Terrazas that military insurgencies had already forced more than six thousand members of that tribe onto the Bosque Redondo Reservation in New Mexico and suggesting that a similar outcome could be achieved with the Chiricahua Apaches if the two countries worked in tandem to block escape routes.42 Just as Abraham Lincoln began laying the groundwork for Southern Reconstruction well before the Civil War actually ended, so too did James Carleton set a foundation for Greater Reconstruction by plotting and executing massive deployments of military force to weaken powerful Indian nations like the Chiricahua Apaches and the Navajos, and to assert national dominance over the isolated U.S.-Mexico borderlands. As the leading Chiricahua Apache chief, Cochise responded to Carleton’s military initiatives by modifying his strategy of resistance. In the wake of the Bascom Affair and the murder of Mangas Coloradas, he and Victorio had led offensive campaigns of vengeance across southern Arizona and New Mexico. But now that U.S. troops were directing so much attention toward Apachería and had constructed four new posts—Forts Bowie, Cummings, Goodwin, and West—at critical water sources, Cochise moved many of his followers into northern Mexico. In Chihuahua and Sonora, an increasing imperial threat was forcing the governors to redirect their attention toward French invaders, providing the Indians with a greater modicum of safety and independence in that region. From this new base of operations, two hundred Chiricahua Apaches began ambushing wagon trains on the road between Bavispe and Janos, killing dozens of Mexican soldiers and civilians in a series of vicious strikes during the spring of 1865. In neighboring Chihuahua, warriors descended upon the small town of Cruces, slaughtering twenty people and carrying several more into captivity. One observer living in Hermosillo stated that northwest Mexico had become an “open, unprotected field” for Apache depredations, and it would remain so for several more years.43 By the very nature of their violent resistance to American and Mexican colonizers, Chiricahua Apaches under the able leadership of Cochise and Victorio continued to shape the outcome of most events in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

113

As U.S. officers planned their missions against Chiricahua Apaches, they carefully maintained a middle ground between the Mexicans and the French in order to avoid armed conflicts abroad that would distract attention away from the Civil War and Indian wars. Carleton acknowledged the complexity of shared power dynamics in the borderlands, imploring his field commanders to be extremely cautious lest their campaigns inadvertently provoke Juarista nationalists or French imperialists, with whom he had not made any type of agreement for transborder operations.44 Although Pesqueíra granted permission for brief forays into northern Mexico, neither Juárez nor his archenemy Maximilian had done so; Carleton did, however, solicit the blessing of Minister of Foreign Affairs Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada for the Apache campaigns.45 At this late stage in the Civil War, Carleton was pursuing a much different policy toward Indians than his Confederate counterparts in Texas. While Rebels pondered strategic alliances with South Plains tribes, Unionists did the exact opposite, ordering destructive campaigns against Apaches, Navajos, and Comanches. In fact, Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson’s expedition into the Texas Panhandle that culminated in the First Battle of Adobe Walls on November 25, 1864, occurred as a direct result of rumors that Kiowas and Comanches had assisted the Confederacy as spies on the Santa Fe Trail.46 Having repulsed the first Confederate invasion and enlisted the cautious support of Mexican leaders for transnational operations against some of these tribes, Union officers held the upper hand and had no incentive for reverting to tentative partnerships with Indians as a method for waging the Civil War in the Southwest. While Carleton targeted Indians as part of a strategic step to counteract Rebel operations in Chihuahua and Sonora, his colleagues in California also influenced the course of events south of the border, but they did so in starkly different ways. In 1863, Juárez had appointed General Plácido Vega as a special agent and dispatched him to San Francisco to confer with U.S. officials about weapons shipments to the Mexican army. A veteran of the War of the Reform who served as a general in the Sinaloa Brigade, the liberal Vega quickly rose to political prominence and was elected governor in June 1861, aided in his ascendancy by a close relationship with the influential Pesqueíra in neighboring Sonora. Vega had difficulty consolidating power within the state and then suffered a devastating military defeat at the head of Juarista forces near Puebla on May 8, 1863, leading him to relinquish the gubernatorial seat to handpicked provisional governor Jesús García Morales the following year. With his political duties in Sinaloa terminated, Vega was free to serve the Juárez government

114

Chapter 4

in clandestine operations abroad. He spent the next two and a half years in California, where he doled out more than $600,000 on thirty-three separate shipments of arms and ammunition for the republican armies of Mexico. He also used government funds to purchase influence among the local population by placing advertisements in California newspapers and organizing “Mexican Clubs” in nearby Spanish towns and “Monroe Doctrine Societies” in goldmining camps to rally support for the Juarista cause. At a recruiting office in downtown San Francisco, he enlisted hundreds of Hispanic and Anglo volunteers willing to fight alongside republican forces in Mexico in exchange for salaries and land bounties. Vega organized the battalion under the misleading aegis of an “Arizona Exploring Expedition,” adopting the same strategy as secessionists like Gwin and Hastings by attempting to disguise mercenaries as civilian miners.47 Charles de Cazotte, the consular officer at the city’s French legation, tried to keep track of the men who registered with Vega and appealed directly to General McDowell “to suspend these enlistments” in deference to the principles of neutrality.48 Vega’s operations in California were tricky and had to be conducted with extreme caution. Lincoln had issued an executive order two years earlier prohibiting the export of guns and ammunition during the Civil War, and Seward established a reputation for scuttling foreign arms shipments whenever he caught wind of them.49 In April 1864, Vega met with U.S. special agent Thomas Brown, California governor Frederick Low, and Surveyor General Edward Fitzgerald Beale to discuss “repelling the usurpation” of Emperor Maximilian. All three U.S. representatives assured their Mexican counterpart that they supported the Juárez regime and professed their desire to thwart the French imperial project, to the extent that they were willing to disobey Lincoln’s wartime mandate and arrange for the illegal purchase and shipment of weapons to Juarista forces in Sonora and Sinaloa. Vega was in the process of loading twenty thousand rifles onto steamships in the San Francisco harbor when U.S. Army officers suddenly halted his operation, confiscated the munitions, and impounded them at Benicia Arsenal.50 Mexican officials had little doubt that Cazotte—who “worked tirelessly” to subvert pro-Juárez sentiment in California and paid bribes to ensure that armed volunteers and weapons shipments bound for Mexico never left the docks—had sabotaged the operation by suborning US authorities into superseding on behalf of imperial interests.51 Vega immediately contacted Beale, hoping that he could solve the problem. Beale in turn approached Charles James, a U.S. customs collector at

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

115

San Francisco who sympathized with the French and befriended Cazotte, imploring him to release the arms. He threateningly told James that any refusal to comply would subvert North America’s democratic institutions by facilitating “the extinguishment of the last feeble flame of republicanism in a neighboring country.” He accused the customs officer of being a Confederate sympathizer in cahoots with French imperialists, calling him “the modern political Judas who has betrayed liberty with a kiss.” If Mexico ultimately fell to monarchical rule it would be entirely James’s fault, Beale hyperbolized, placing the weight of the Monroe Doctrine, the future of republicanism, and the success of Greater Reconstruction squarely on the shoulders of a U.S. Customs official. The insinuation that twenty thousand obsolete rifles would tip the scales of a lengthy war between European imperialists and Mexican republicans stretched the truth, but it signified the extreme anxiety arising from the ongoing French project below the border. Despite the slanderous threats, James cited Lincoln’s executive order and his own obligation to duty, telling Beale that he “can neither be bullied, wheedled, coaxed nor cajoled” in matters concerning federal law.52 Unable to prevail upon U.S. Customs officers, Vega took his protests directly to General McDowell, complaining that this unexpected act caused “incalculable injury to the defense of the continental cause” and jeopardized Mexico’s independence. Citing his arrangements with the aforementioned U.S. officials, the Mexican agent insisted that he paid for the guns and they rightfully belonged to him. Vega also appealed to McDowell’s sense of duty to the defense of democracy, asking him to lift the wartime weapons embargo and assist in defeating the “execrable tyrant” Maximilian, along with the “rabble of filibusters” who threatened Mexican sovereignty.53 McDowell refused to take the bait, explaining that Brown, Low, and Beale were all civil authorities who lacked the ability to sell War Department property to foreign proxies, and he accused Vega of committing an act of intrigue to “secretly carry off the arms.” By appealing to those three officials and circumventing U.S. Customs inspectors when loading his ships, Vega sidestepped the proper channels of government authority, perhaps realizing that army officers would be unlikely to sell quartermaster stores to an agent from another country. The department commander explained that he had no power to dictate his country’s foreign policy and would only return the confiscated property if Lincoln modified his executive order, or if Vega could prevail upon the president to issue a special directive releasing his weapons for shipment to Mexico. In either case, the appropriate avenue for diplomatic discussion would be the State Department

116

Chapter 4

in Washington, D.C., and McDowell thus washed his hands of the controversy.54 Not until May 3, 1865, would President Andrew Johnson lift the U.S. embargo on weapons exports, more than six months after the incident in San Francisco.55 Frustrated Mexican officials castigated Vega for these failures; by 1866 he stood accused of misappropriating government money, and Juárez eventually stripped him of his commission as special agent.56 The situation in California revealed a discrepancy between military and civil officials when it came to matters involving foreign affairs, and it represented one of the few instances during the Civil War in which a U.S. Army officer in the Far West opted not to consider an individual act of diplomacy with Mexican agents. The backtracking that occurred after Vega’s initial arms purchase frustrated men like Matías Romero, who began to question U.S. motives.57 Several months later, when two French warships were allowed to refuel at California ports, Romero accused the State Department of showing undue favoritism and violating its supposed neutrality in the Mexican conflict. The annoyed diplomat told Secretary of State Seward that coal for a gunboat constituted “contraband of war,” and if the United States continued to block shipments of weapons to Mexico then it must also prohibit aid to armed French vessels. Seward’s refusal to interpose and his claim that coal, unlike rifles, was not war materiel infuriated Romero and added to the escalating tension in the borderlands conflict.58 Incidents like this also irritated Benito Juárez. “I fear always the excessive prudence of Seward,” he brooded in reference to the State Department’s minimalist approach to enforcing the Monroe Doctrine so long as the Civil War remained unfinished.59 Romero and his colleagues in the Juárez government had good reason to be irritated by these developments, because their plight against Maximilian’s army seemed increasingly futile. From the beginning of the French Intervention, imperialists had coveted the Mexican northwest for its gold, silver, and copper ore, and Unionists above the border feared the prospect of a European presence so close to home. Rumors of foreign occupation in Chihuahua and Sonora swirled throughout the United States, and false reports suggested that French soldiers had taken possession of the port at Guaymas. Journalists for the New York Times further sensationalized the story by misinforming readers that French warships plied the Pacific Coast of Mexico from Guaymas to Acapulco, forcing a halt to American steamship traffic to and from California. Both of these reports were wrong, although the editors came closer to the truth when explaining the possible ramifications of imperial occupation in northwest Mexico. “If, in the future, the French Government

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

117

should recognize the so-called Southern Confederacy and afford the rebels aid directly or indirectly,” they predicted, “the forces of the latter thrown into Arizona to cooperate with the French in Sonora, would prove a very serious matter to us.”60 Political and military setbacks prevented French forces from advancing as quickly as originally planned, but Union officials continued to monitor the situation in Mexico very carefully. By 1864, some onlookers began to foresee a military operation to preempt the French advance into northern Mexico and perhaps even expel the monarchists entirely. In Santa Fe, reporters projected that New Mexico and Arizona would soon “be the scene of important events” because the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, by virtue of geographic location and hotly contested political power, “will naturally attract attention as a base of operations.”61 Santa Fe’s newspaper featured weekly updates on the French Intervention, reproducing excerpts from eastern sources in the editorial fashion of the day. The primary editor, former Superintendent of Indian Affairs James L. Collins, proposed a wild solution to the imperial problem. “Napoleon [III] has, in a manner, filibustered himself into Mexico. Let us filibuster him out of it,” he mused. Under this hawkish scheme, the United States would mount an offensive military campaign into a neutral country to intervene in a foreign conflict in which it likewise claimed neutrality. Admitting the extreme irregularity of this approach, Collins felt confident that such a bold plan of action would catch everybody by surprise and “make the gay and festive Frenchmen march on double quick to a place of embarkation and leave Mexico.” To make the idea feasible, mercenary armies would have to muster in California, Arizona, and New Mexico, because the United States could not afford to divert thousands of troops from eastern battlefields during the Civil War.62 The freewheeling plan that Collins invented would have enabled Americans to wage two wars in two countries using two very different armies, but it posed major logistical and ideological issues insofar as it involved fighting on foreign soil with untrained troops and also lay bare the country’s hypocritical condemnation of European imperialism in Mexico. Journalists were not the only ones sounding alarms about the French threat along the border. In March 1864, General Wright told California governor Frederick Low that recent imperial advances raised the ominous portent of a French blockade along Mexico’s Pacific shoreline, which could disrupt supply shipments to military posts in Arizona. He feared that the imperialists would soon “plant a foreign power on our southern frontier,” opining that France sympathized with the Confederacy and “will fraternize

118

Chapter 4

with [the] rebels” upon cementing the conquest of Mexico. Wright remembered his tense communications with Pesqueíra during Reily’s visit to Sonora two years earlier, lamenting that federal officials never approved his plan to preempt Confederate and French operations by forcibly occupying Guaymas. Now, with Maximilian’s army marching into the region and threatening Juárez’s hold on power, Wright began plotting anew. Fearing that bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., did not take the situation seriously enough, he adopted elements of the Collins filibustering plan, asking for Low’s support in raising an independent army “to rescue a sister Republic from the grasp of a ruthless invader.” Wary of the monumental legal and political implications, the California governor shied away from the proposal, claiming that the current legislative session in Sacramento was keeping him so busy that he had no time for other endeavors.63 Low’s refusal to conspire in the extralegal plot did not deter Wright from his obsessive interest in foreign affairs. The general expressed deep concern about Mexican spies in California who, under the influence of French imperialists and Southern secessionists, might incite an uprising among the state’s Hispanic population to distract attention away from colonization projects like that of William Gwin.64 Wright appealed to Colonel Edward D. Townsend, the assistant adjutant general in Washington, D.C., hoping to spur the War Department into action. With imperialist armies creeping closer and closer to Sonora, he pointed out that an unfriendly occupation of that region would have detrimental ramifications for Americans on the West Coast and might even influence the future course of empire in the Pacific World. If the French gained control of northwest Mexico, he felt certain that they would follow up that conquest with an attempt to take “the glittering prize of California.” Wright harangued his War Department superiors for not acting sooner and again expressed regret that his plan to invade Sonora earlier in the Civil War met with disapproval. “The northern and western States of Mexico must maintain their independence as a Republic or attach themselves to the United States,” Wright ranted, insisting once more that a campaign be authorized to strike south of the border and that all points in southern Arizona and California be reinforced immediately.65 While Wright’s most immediate concern involved Sonora affairs, he also watched nervously as Mexican officials reacted to the French army’s advance into Chihuahua. Questions about the loyalty of Governor Terrazas arose when the Juarista military commander José María Patoni expressed doubt as to whether the wealthy caudillo could be trusted to back the republican

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

119

government.66 Terrazas had already declared the French Intervention “an insidious and surprising transgression” and reassured Patoni of his devotion, explaining that Chihuahua citizens almost unanimously opposed Maximilian’s regime but could contribute little to the war effort because of insufficient funds, scarcity of weapons, and omnipresent threats of Apache raiding. He mentioned that General Carleton “privately offered” to help defend Chihuahua by sending U.S. soldiers from New Mexico—ostensibly to fight Indians— and the governor also hoped that shipments of guns would arrive from San Francisco. As a further affirmation of his faithfulness, Terrazas said that he disagreed with a recent proposition floating around Mexican political circles that called for Juárez to resign the presidency.67 “Here you have a nice view of Mexican politics,” Terrazas’s brother-in-law Reuben Creel wrote in reference to the petition. “The Generals of Juarez begging him to resign, and the bishops protesting that the French are worse than Juarez, and fit only for hell.”68 At the time, Juárez was at Saltillo preparing to march on Monterrey and depose the turncoat Santiago Vidaurri, so the president could ill afford to deal with another disloyal governor. The controversies surrounding Terrazas as either a hero or a villain extended beyond his lifetime, as Mexican historians in later years continued the debate over his long and influential political career.69 Despite reassurances at the time, Terrazas repeatedly came under scrutiny for being treacherous, largely because he refused to relinquish funds collected at the customs office in Paso del Norte and failed to send Chihuahua troops to help the Juarista army against imperialists.70 Much like Governor Pesqueíra in Sonora, Terrazas had his hands tied with interminable wars against the Chiricahua Apaches—his cousin Joaquín led many of the state’s military campaigns against that tribe— and he lacked the manpower and funding to simultaneously tackle Indian conflicts and French imperialism. From the governor’s perspective, Apaches still posed a more urgent threat than monarchists, and this sentiment reflected a lingering sense of regionalism wherein Terrazas showed more interest in local rather than national affairs.71 The permission that he granted in 1862 for Confederate agents to purchase supplies in Chihuahua, together with his ongoing foreign correspondence about Indian affairs and military alliances, may also have aroused suspicion among Mexican leaders. A confidential letter from one U.S. consular agent in Ciudad Chihuahua—which Secretary of State Seward dutifully read to Matías Romero during a private meeting—did not help Terrazas’s cause with the Juárez government. The governor “has in fact completely ignored the authority of the Supreme Government,” the

120

Chapter 4

report stated, claiming that “he only takes care of making money” and had no interest in defending the state from any forthcoming French onslaught. Romero notified the minister of foreign relations and suggested an investigation to determine the veracity of the accusations, adding that Terrazas ought to be removed from office if the charges proved true.72 A local power struggle ensued when Juárez chose a replacement governor, Angel Trías, and Terrazas in turn refused to recognize him.73 A military force from Durango set out to depose Terrazas, but he fled Ciudad Chihuahua for Paso del Norte, and rumors began to circulate that the embattled caudillo might bolt across the border.74 Terrazas relinquished the seat of government for Patoni and his forces to hold and took up temporary residency in the vacant El Paso home of Simeon Hart, who was serving as the Confederate Cotton Bureau chief in San Antonio.75 The situation remained dire not just on the northern frontier but throughout Mexico. One sarcastic observer nicknamed Juárez the “pilgrim president” as he and his cabinet scurried from San Luis Potosí to Durango to Coahuila to Nuevo León to Chihuahua. “The general state of the country could not be much worse than it is,” William Corwin reported from Mexico City. “Bands of guerrilleros are laying waste the haciendas and small towns in all directions, robberies and murders are committed every day, and a feeling of uncertainty as to the future seems to have taken hold.”76 By 1865, every state capital and major seaport had fallen to Maximilian’s control and imperial forces under the command of Marshal Bazaine totaled sixty thousand men, outnumbering Juarista troops nearly three to one.77 With Pesqueíra and Terrazas under direct pressure from imperialists as well as their own republican government, U.S. congressmen became anxious about the situation in northern Mexico. California senator James McDougall shared General Wright’s concern about French advances into Sonora and began meeting with the Mexican minister to glean information on affairs in that country. In preparation for a lengthy speech on the Senate floor, he solicited updates from Romero regarding Juárez’s precarious position in Chihuahua.78 McDougall feared that France, if successful in Mexico, might try to extend its conquests northward to retake the Louisiana Purchase lands as well as California and Texas. Two New York representatives had particularly strong opinions about this scenario. James Brooks felt that the European threat to northwest Mexico surpassed the abolition of slavery as the nation’s gravest concern, saying that the states of Baja California, Chihuahua, Durango, Sinaloa, and Sonora “are worth ten times what we are

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

121

fighting for” in the Civil War and declaring that “the Monroe Doctrine is gone.” With slightly less vitriol, Fernando Wood intoned that Napoleon III “seeks Sonora, the richest mining district of Mexico, [so] that his coffers may be replenished.” Some hawkish congressmen wanted to confront France and demand the withdrawal of its forces from the Western Hemisphere, but cooler heads prevailed as listeners realized the potential consequences of such rhetoric. Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner refused to discuss the matter, proclaiming that “there was no time” for such a conversation as long as the Civil War remained unfinished. In Sumner’s estimation, any aggressive act toward France and Mexico would adversely start another war and divide resources in numerous directions against multiple enemies, all but ensuring Confederate independence and the perpetuation of slavery.79 As Sumner and others realized, cautious methods of diplomacy would be needed to defeat the Rebels and simultaneously thwart French ambitions in Mexico. Even so, a U.S. House of Representatives that typically found itself divided on many important issues voted unanimously in favor of a resolution condemning any European monarchy that might take root on the continent.80 Edward Conner, the U.S. consul at Guaymas, reported that Sonora affairs were becoming increasingly complicated, and inefficient modes of communication with Washington, D.C., meant that information traveled slowly. The Sonora governor and his cohorts in Sinaloa and Chihuahua were taking diligent precautions to oppose the approaching imperial army, even though some of them remained preoccupied with wars against Cochise’s Apache followers. Pesqueíra proposed to unite the armed forces of all three states in common defense and invited Juárez to take refuge behind this conglomerate army, and Conner felt confident that republican soldiers would mount a “fierce and determined” resistance to Maximilian.81 Juárez actually preferred that enemies march on Sinaloa and Sonora, rather than his temporary headquarters in Chihuahua, because he had faith in the leaders of those two states as reliable allies.82 As far as “the colonization schemes of Mr. Gwin,” Conner announced that such machinations had yet to materialize but warned that two of the filibuster’s henchmen were loitering in Guaymas to spy on local affairs.83 On April 29, 1865, Conner informed State Department officials that nine hundred French troops under General Armand Alexandre de Castagny had arrived via gunboats and established a foothold at Guaymas, a strategic move that Bazaine considered imperative in order to prevent U.S. forces in Arizona from using that port to their own advantage. More than one

122

Chapter 4

thousand Juarista combatants fled in panic as warships shelled their positions near the town.84 Two weeks later Bazaine assured superiors in France that developments in Sonora seemed favorable for the Mexican Empire— Pesqueíra and his dwindling followers were purportedly on the brink of capitulation—but as a further precaution he ordered Castagny to enlist and pay up to five hundred Yaqui Indian auxiliaries to capitalize on the momentum already achieved in that part of the country.85 Wishing to avoid provocation of the U.S. government, Castagny took a careful approach to his conquest by protecting the rights of American merchants and miners living in Sonora.86 The French officer met with Conner to acknowledge him as a legitimate diplomatic representative, even though the consular agent had no authority to treat on official terms because the United States did not recognize the Maximilian empire that Castagny represented. As a further gesture of conciliation, the imperial officer said that he would allow three hundred tons of military supplies from San Francisco to pass through the Mexican port en route to U.S. soldiers in Arizona. But quartermaster Thomas Jesup, who escorted the shipment, sensed a trap and chose to unload his cargo at the mouth of the Colorado River, much closer to American soil and a safe distance from Frenchmen who might confiscate the goods for their own use.87 Castagny’s attempts to cultivate friendly relations with U.S. agents in Sonora and California indicates the extent to which Union military planning in that region affected the strategies of Maximilian’s officers. Thousands of Bluecoats stationed in New Mexico, Arizona, and California could reverse the tide of imperial advances if ordered to intervene, and Castagny understood his concomitant weakness in this environment of contested power. Had Gwin’s plan to colonize Sonora in 1864 been successful, French forces might have merged with sympathetic Southern secessionists who were ready and willing to fight the Union Army under the auspices of any commander—Confederate, Mexican, or French. But without Gwin’s followers, Castagny lacked reliable allies and, having less than one thousand men under his command, felt it prudent to appease U.S. agents. Events in Chihuahua looked equally bleak for the republican government, which had exercised very little control over that state since the French attack on Mexico began. Creel described a tenuous system of political power and informed Secretary of State Seward of the devastating effects this wrought throughout the frontier. Juárez attempted to levy numerous taxes in Chihuahua—just as he did in all of the northern states—to help fund the national fight against foreigners, but corrupt local officials pilfered most of the

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

123

Settlement Confederate colony El Paso

100

0

Paso del Norte

CHIHUAHUA

Ri

oG

ra n

M

de

EX

US IC

New Orleans

San Antonio

A

O

200 mi

Eagle Pass

Piedras Negras COAHUILA

s oop . Tr U.S 1865 0 er ,00 50 Summ

Laredo

Br

ow

n sv i ll e Matamoros Monterrey

NUEVO LEÓN Palacio

Saltillo

ZA

N

LU

IS PO TO S San Luis Í Potosí

Tuxpan

RA

E

Carlota

MÉXICO PUEBLA

HE

6

Veracruz

EC

Mexico City

MP

C

ÁN

UZ

O

M

ICH

C OA

CR

IC

1

N

4 Querétaro 5

VE

IF

JALISCO

1. COLIMA 2. AGUASCALIENTES 3. GUANAJUATO 4. QUERÉTARO 5. HIDALGO 6. TLAXCALA 7. TABASCO

Tampico

7

CA

PAC

3

San Lorenzo

TA M A

CA

A

TE

O

CA

AL

S

N

U L IP

SI

SA

2

A

Gulf of Mexico

AS

DURANGO

Brazos Santiago

Figure 10. Map of Regional Operations, Northwest Mexico, 1864–1867.

revenue for their own benefit. Creel believed that the majority of Chihuahua citizens opposed the French monarchy but also sensed a half-heartedness in their patriotism, noting that “not one single volunteer has gone from this state, and no troops have been sent” to aid Juárez despite several requests for military support on the battlefields of central Mexico. At this midway point in the French Intervention, residents of Mexico’s far north felt disconnected from a national government that had ostracized them for decades, and a spirit of regionalism still prevailed in the borderlands. If the French chose to invade Chihuahua, Creel had little faith in local authorities to mount a

124

Chapter 4

meaningful resistance. “Mr. Juarez is president of this republic,” he concluded rather ominously, “but he does not command in Chihuahua.”88 The absence of federal power in the north would change dramatically in October 1864, when the itinerant Juárez reached Ciudad Chihuahua and established his seat of government there.89 To objective spectators it seemed like an odd choice for a last stand against the imperialists. Henry Cuniffe, the U.S. consul at Paso del Norte, informed Seward that the plight was hopeless because “the people have all lost heart.”90 The same month that Juárez arrived, Creel told General Carleton that “the people of Chihuahua are politically dead, dead to all enthusiasm for the republic, dead to all feeling in favor of the monarchy.” Creel blamed this on the litany of state leaders who, since the moment of Mexican independence, promoted federalist platforms at the expense of unified nationalism. Exhausted by decades of political upheaval, many inhabitants seemed apathetic toward their leaders and ambivalent to the war’s outcome. “The usurpations of the state governors have brought about this great disgrace,” Creel opined, suggesting that the politics of regionalism would be to blame if imperialists took possession of northern Mexico.91 Vagaries of local sentiment aside, Chihuahua would host the republican government for the next two years as Juárez and his followers fought desperately to preserve their nation’s independence. In New Mexico, U.S. officers followed developments in Chihuahua with keen interest. For one thing, Carleton remained nervous about banditry and the effects it might have on military operations. These concerns were somewhat allayed in April 1864 when Captain Albert H. French and twenty-five men of the First California Cavalry ambushed Henry Skillman’s camp near Presidio del Norte on the Rio Grande, killing the guerrilla whose raids along the border caused considerable anxiety earlier in the Civil War.92 With Skillman dead, Carleton reached out to Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, one of Juárez’s closest confidantes, saying that he could no longer spare U.S. troops to police the border but expressing a hope that the Mexican government would take appropriate action against Southern “freebooters” who imperiled local resistance to imperialists, filibusters, Indians, and Confederates.93 Carleton’s second major concern involved the French threat. As the U.S. consular agent in Ciudad Chihuahua, Creel submitted standard diplomatic reports to Washington, D.C., but also corresponded regularly with Carleton on this subject. In July 1865, he told the general that Chihuahua languished in widespread confusion; a handful of people rejoiced over the French occupation while most others “view it with shame and humiliation.” He warned that Mexico’s

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

125

war might soon spill over the border into western Texas and southern New Mexico, explaining that he would be unable to send further updates due to the indefinite stoppage of mail service. Realizing that this would blind him to future developments in Chihuahua, Carleton forwarded Creel’s message to the War Department and requested permission to protect Juárez and his followers if and when they escaped into the United States. Carleton felt that he at least owed this much to “our sister Republic,” and he had no intention of allowing the monarchists to capture and execute Mexico’s president.94 With his cabinet and a small force of about 350 soldiers, the president eventually fled Ciudad Chihuahua and headed for Paso del Norte, a large border town that Cuniffe described as “less effected by the war of intervention than any other portion of the Republic.”95 From this location, the peripatetic Juárez could literally walk into the United States if necessary. Carleton welcomed the president to take up quarters at Hart’s Mill on the U.S. side of the border, shrewdly recognizing an opportunity to aid the recognized leader of Mexico while simultaneously appropriating the property of renowned secessionist Simeon Hart for a cause antithetical to Confederate interests.96 Operating spontaneously in response to rapidly evolving events along the border, regional army officers were willing to grant asylum to the Mexican government even though the State Department repeatedly balked at sending arms and ammunition to the republican army. By February 1866, imperial forces had built fortifications at Ciudad Chihuahua and seemed poised to march onward to Paso del Norte, an act that would have completed their conquest of Mexico’s northern frontier. From his consulate office, Cuniffe saw the end drawing near. “Send me some instructions how to act when this place is occupied by the Imperial troops,” he wrote in a remorseful missive to Seward.97 But the diplomat’s fears turned out to be premature. Uncertainties surrounding Terrazas and his patriotism had dissipated after he rejected an appointment from Maximilian as Chihuahua’s imperial prefect, and the governor now served as a loyal ally of the republican government.98 In short order, the imperialists vacated Chihuahua, leaving the capital for Terrazas and Juárez to reoccupy on March 23. Creel considered this a crucial turning point, predicting that republican forces would wage a counteroffensive to drive the remaining French sympathizers away.99 “Juarez’s foot has not touched American soil, although for months he lived in sight of it, and in a few hundred yards of it,” Creel reported in August. “Peace reigns throughout the length and breadth of this state,” and the inhabitants showed no inclination to challenge the authority of Juárez.100

126

Chapter 4

In Sonora events proceeded in a similar fashion. Conner reported in September 1865 that imperialist troops and their Yaqui allies remained “in peaceable possession” of the state and that most Mexican opposition to their presence had dissipated, aside from occasional guerrilla raids in the countryside. A month later, a Mexican agent in Europe named Jesús Terán felt convinced that Napoleon III had his eyes fixated on Sonora as a prize of conquest, even though the emperor had already begun contemplating the withdrawal of French troops from Mexico. Like Terrazas, Pesqueíra crossed the international border and took refuge in Arizona, but most Sonorenses felt little or no allegiance to Maximilian’s regime and eagerly awaited their governor’s reappearance. The exiled head of state soon returned to the capital city of Ures, where he began rallying republican forces for a countermeasure to push Castagny’s men out of the state. In August 1866, as Terrazas and Juárez triumphed in Chihuahua, Pesqueíra made final preparations to reclaim power in Sonora.101 Six hundred French troops remained at Guaymas with their fleet moored in the harbor, but defeat at the Battle of Guadalupe forced them to evacuate the city on September 14, and three days later the governor made his victorious return.102 The French threat to the region had ended, and Mexican officials in the northwest turned their attention once more to fighting Indians, just as their U.S. counterparts had done when the Confederates left New Mexico in 1862. Not long after imperial troops evacuated Sonora, Pesqueíra announced another policy of Apache extermination, reinstituted a scalp bounty system, sent troops to three outposts in preparation for renewed hostilities, and placed the veteran Indian-fighter Lieutenant Colonel Angel Elías in command of field operations. Meanwhile in Chihuahua, a detachment of soldiers under Cayetano Ozeta killed twelve and captured twenty-six others during a single attack on a Chokonen rancheria, and troops regarrisoned the post at Janos for the first time in a decade. The governor’s cousin, Lieutenant Colonel Joaquín Terrazas, reestablished himself as one of the state’s most prolific field operatives and became a “Chihuahuan hero” for his exploits. For the first time in many years, Chihuahua and Sonora worked concertedly in their approach to Apache warfare, focusing their full attention on the followers of Cochise and Victorio in a borderlands conflict that would endure into the 1880s.103 From 1863 until the end of the French Intervention in 1867, events in Sonora and Chihuahua perplexed powerbrokers from Mexico, France, and the United States. The region’s longstanding spirit of individualism and the porosity of the border itself invited multiple incidents of scheming by state

Chaos and Imperialism in Northwest Mexico

127

and nonstate actors alike. Because nobody could be certain of political allegiances in northern Mexico, national officials on all sides—Juárez and Lerdo de Tejada in Paso del Norte, Davis and Seddon in Richmond, Lincoln and Seward in Washington, D.C.—viewed localized events like Indian raiding and Californian filibustering as a very real threat to the outcomes of the French Intervention and the Civil War. Beset by their own trepidation, policymakers concocted a variety of strategies in the Southwest, hoping to gain an upper hand that might in turn benefit their respective war efforts in the eastern United States and central Mexico. Within this context, Sonora and Chihuahua took on significant meaning as a centerpiece of continental illusions of empire. French imperialists and Southern secessionists envisioned the region as part and parcel to grander ambitions of territorial expansion and political supremacy, Mexican republicans and American unionists endeavored to block the creation of monarchical regimes and proslave empires in North America, and Chiricahua Apaches under the leadership of Cochise and Victorio resisted foreign designs on their homelands at every turn. In a borderlands environment where none of the competing countries, factions, or tribes could claim total hegemony, operatives often pursued their ends through illicit raiding, subversive intrigue, and irregular statecraft.

CHAPTER 5

The Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy in Northeast Mexico

Patrick O’Dowd ranked among northeastern Mexico’s shrewdest capitalists and most talented political intriguers. Born in Ireland, he immigrated to North America in 1845, changed his name to Patricio Milmo, and established the banking firm Casa Milmo with branches in Mexico and Texas. By the time the Civil War began, his diverse business interests included mining, livestock, and cotton, making him a wealthy and influential cacique. His marriage to Prudencia Vidaurri—the governor’s daughter—further empowered him with a direct family tie to the regional strongman. Today, his name lives on through a San Antonio–based investment firm called Milmo Group, but in the 1860s he was better known throughout South Texas as a con artist who took advantage of the multidimensional nature of political and economic power in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands to advance his own interests at the expense of the Confederacy.1 Milmo’s illusion of empire was a distinctively economic one, but its realization depended on the political and diplomatic eccentricities of the borderlands region he called home. In December 1863, with Brownsville occupied by U.S. troops, Milmo burst to the forefront of attention. That month, a Rebel treasury agent named Clarence Thayer arrived in Mexico toting seven briefcases stuffed with $16 million in Confederate greenbacks. He had instructions to deliver the money to Southern officials at San Antonio, and this infusion of cash into the local economy was intended to purchase supplies, pay troops, and restore fiscal confidence in the government. Some of the money could also be used to grease the wheels of diplomacy and open alternative routes for exporting cotton through Coahuila and Nuevo León, upriver from federal soldiers posted near the Rio Grande delta. Upon reaching Matamoros, Thayer conferred

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

129

with another Rebel officer, Major Charles Russell, who suggested that Milmo could assist in transporting the briefcases to Eagle Pass and thence into Texas, safely circumventing the Bluecoats. Thayer trusted the Irishman because of his close relation to Vidaurri—“a tried and true friend of the South”—but the surreptitious plan backfired spectacularly when Milmo confiscated the money.2 The wily businessman clarified his reasoning for such brash action, informing Thayer that he would hold the cash as collateral until the Confederate government paid for half a million pounds of flour that his mercantile firm had shipped to Texas.3 Because hyperinflation drastically devalued the paper currency, Milmo seized 2,120 bales of Southern cotton stored at Piedras Negras as a secondary indemnity, and he employed a band of robbers under Vicente de la Garza to sequester another eighty-eight bales from the Texas firm of Kenedy, Stillman & King. Milmo told the Cotton Bureau agent Simeon Hart that both the cash and the crop would be returned once the Confederate government satisfied its debt to him and other Mexican merchants.4 Mystified by this display of “bad faith,” Thayer immediately solicited assistance from José Quintero in Monterrey, but even the silver-tongued Cuban Confederate diplomat could not persuade Milmo to release the funds. Growing nervous over their predicament, the two Rebel agents appealed directly to Vidaurri, but numerous meetings proved ineffective.5 At one point Quintero even wrote to Pedro Santacilia, a relative of President Benito Juárez, requesting that the national government step in to mediate. Milmo was acting “in the shadow of his father-in-law,” Quintero opined, claiming that the two caciques had asserted their political clout to subvert Mexican authorities as well as Texas merchants. “If Vidaurri continues in his blind obstinacy,” the Confederate agent threatened, “hostilities may break out between Mexico and Texas.” Quintero claimed to have done all in his power to ease tensions and still hoped for a peaceful resolution, but he felt that the national government was the last viable option for effective arbitration. In a sign of disintegrating relations, Quintero went so far as to tattle on his Mexican counterpart, telling Santacilia that the governor had personally profited from Texas cotton exports by pocketing thousands of dollars each month from customs duties.6 This candid accusation of fraud was intended to arouse immediate action on the part of Juárez, who desperately needed tax money to fund his ongoing fight against the French army. According to Quintero, the governor declined to intervene in his son-inlaw’s machinations because the two men had mutual financial interests in the unpaid flour contracts.7 Brownsville merchant and customs collector Francis

130

Chapter 5

Latham—who also served as a secret intermediary by sending and receiving disguised diplomatic correspondence between Monterrey and Richmond— knew from experience that Vidaurri and Milmo controlled northeastern Mexico like rulers of a sovereign nation. “Revenues all went through Milmo’s house, and they made it a very large house,” Latham explained. “Milmo had a monopoly of the custom-house,” and employees at Mexican ports of entry rarely bothered to inspect crates or even question the origin of goods. “We just paid them the money, and they would pass anything,” he recalled. Latham revealed that the two regional powerbrokers operated in close but unofficial partnership with one another: Milmo’s private companies provided the backdoor channels for embezzling the customs duties and tax revenues that Vidaurri’s political supremacy commanded.8 Having just arrived in Mexico, Thayer was naïve to these illicit financial arrangements and failed to appreciate the threat that such collusion posed to his mission. Both he and Quintero tried to deflect blame for the humiliating incident by accusing Russell of alerting Milmo to the contents of the briefcases, and a subsequent investigation revealed that the Confederate major had indeed acted treacherously by accepting bribes from Mexican officials. Still, Thayer realized that serious consequences awaited in Virginia, so he remained in Mexico to recover the assets.9 In San Antonio, Hart also felt pinched by the urgency of the situation. Quintero informed him of Vidaurri’s unwillingness to intervene and concluded that the only remedy would be to pay the full amount owed.10 To stall for time, Hart told Milmo that the Union occupation of Brownsville had disrupted freighting through South Texas and delayed shipment of cotton bales that the Confederacy intended to use as payment for the outstanding receipts. A bit more candidly, he confessed to a Rebel confidante that his Cotton Bureau office owed more money to Mexican contractors than it could possibly repay with the number of bales on hand at that time. Hart stressed the importance of maintaining good credit with Mexican businessmen because of the extent to which Confederate operations west of the Mississippi River depended on the free flow of goods across the international border. The openness of this commercial artery in turn relied on the whims of local Mexican officials, and Hart knew that Milmo held the upper hand because Vidaurri would never deviate from his son-in-law in matters where both men stood to profit.11 After a month of failed negotiations, General Edmund Kirby Smith, commanding the Department of the Trans-Mississippi, sent a team of three special agents to Monterrey to arrange a “speedy and friendly adjustment of

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

131

all embarrassments growing out of this surprising affair.” Through his spokesmen, Smith appealed to Vidaurri’s sense of stately honor by highlighting the importance of respecting rights of commerce between nations. Refusal to relinquish the money-stuffed briefcases constituted an act of hostility, the general chided, and the Confederacy would withhold payment of all outstanding debts to Mexican citizens until the matter was resolved.12 Vidaurri stood his ground with a provocative note of his own, lecturing Smith about laws “common to all the civilized world” that allowed creditors to seize property in recompense for overdue payments.13 Hart believed that Milmo and Vidaurri conspired to create this “very serious imbroglio” and thereby expose Confederate weaknesses. In so doing, the two men resorted to blackmail and were setting an example that other Mexicans might follow to extort outstanding debt payments. With this in mind, Hart planned a demonstration of political fortitude and military force to assert Confederate hegemony along the border. Beyond Smith’s diplomatic measures, Hart recommended moratoriums on all exports to Mexico, confiscation of Mexican property in Texas, and concentration of three thousand Rebel troops along the lower Rio Grande to assume “a firm and decided, but not a hostile, attitude.” Taking the offensive in such a sagacious way would add teeth to Confederate demands. “The stoppage of cotton and intercourse would at once array all the commercial influence of Monterey, Matamoros, and the country generally in favor of the release of the funds,” Hart predicted in defense of his proposal.14 Quintero agreed that definitive countermeasures should be taken and wrote a threatening letter to Vidaurri, insisting that Milmo’s shenanigans be stopped and hinting at the possibility of military action. Noting that Vidaurri “has no resources at present but those he derives from our trade,” Quintero wanted to obstruct the Nuevo León governor’s primary stream of revenue by freezing cotton exports through Piedras Negras and making “private arrangements” with other Mexican officials to divert those shipments to Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas.15 In January 1864, the Confederate government acted on the advice of Hart and Quintero by temporarily prohibiting exports to Mexico and mandating that all Mexican property in Texas be detained there until further notice. In a testament to the delicate nature of these proceedings, the order said nothing about sending an army to the border and relied on economic sanctions as the method of diplomatic persuasion.16 After more than two years of discreet diplomacy between South Texas and Northeast Mexico, the two sides appeared to have reached an impasse.

132

Chapter 5

Cutting off cotton exports through Piedras Negras put financial pressure on Vidaurri because of his reliance on customs duties. The governor’s political status languished in limbo because he shunned the liberal Juárez government but had yet to definitively ally himself with conservative imperialists.17 Southern leaders felt similarly strained with the potential loss of $16 million and the embarrassment that would ensue if the debacle became public knowledge. While the cessation of exports through Nuevo León would dent Vidaurri’s pocketbook, it also had the potential to hurt the Confederate economy—and by extension the war effort—given the global purchasing power of cotton. Rebel operatives realized that the situation needed to be resolved quickly but carefully, because Trans-Mississippi military operations—which had assumed added importance when the South lost control of the Mississippi River the previous year—would be hamstrung until liquidation of Mexican debts occurred. Vidaurri and Milmo emerged victorious in this contest of diplomatic wit and political forbearance. The three commissioners that General Smith sent to Monterrey struck an agreement whereby Texas officials would relinquish 2,200 bales of cotton to Milmo and his associates—basically allowing them to keep everything confiscated at Piedras Negras—and Confederate agents received the briefcases of cash in return. With this, Quintero thought it best to “forget the partial injury” Vidaurri had inflicted in view of his prior favors to the South and the future role he might play in Rebel operations.18 Although the Milmo incident reached an anticlimactic conclusion, it easily could have erupted in violence had it not been for the vulnerabilities on each side that compelled a peaceful outcome. Even though it occurred behind closed doors, the fiasco served as a stark reminder to Confederates that the international borderlands were a shadowy place that brewed unpredictable power struggles. Working in tandem, Vidaurri and Milmo took advantage of the South’s dependency on Mexico as a commercial lifeline during the Civil War. The Irish-turned-Mexican capitalist utilized the political contingencies of the Rio Grande frontier to maximize profits, and he did so with negligible risk because of his kinship to the governor. With Mexican leaders pulling the puppet strings of borderlands diplomacy, the trajectory of the Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi West looked bleak for the Confederacy as the calendar turned to a new year. At the beginning of 1864, the situation in Texas must have seemed depressing to Southerners. The state’s primary harbors remained under naval blockade, five thousand U.S. troops controlled the lower Rio Grande, Hart and Quintero were scrambling to reclaim a missing fortune, cotton

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

133

exports had been suspended, and northeastern Mexico devolved into chaos at the hands of opportunistic revolutionaries. When Jefferson Davis delivered his annual message to the Confederate Congress on December 7, 1863, he was not yet aware of the chicanery going on with Milmo and Vidaurri. Had he known of the diplomatic conundrum developing in Nuevo León, a speech laced with subtle pessimism about the war might have struck a more ominous tone. In reference to England and France he confessed that “there has been no improvement in the state of our relations with foreign countries.” As for Mexico, Davis hoped that the recent success of French forces in the northeastern theater of operations and the appointment of Maximilian I as emperor would precipitate “important changes” in that country’s government, an expectation that Richmond newspaper editors echoed when voicing support for the imperial regime. Rather cryptically, Davis concluded that Confederate operatives would achieve strategic inroads with Mexico’s new monarch, promoting the war efforts of both countries through the sort of agreements that had been unattainable under President Juárez.19 In Mexico City, U.S. diplomat Thomas Corwin conjectured as to what such an arrangement might look like. Warning of possible conspiracies, he asked poignantly: “If the French power is extended over the whole Mexican territory, will not the Emperor find some reason for connecting Arizona and Texas with his Mexican colony? Will not the South make terms with him in such case? A guarantee of Southern independence might be considered worth the transfer of Arizona and Texas to the French colony of Mexico.”20 From his diplomatic post in Washington, D.C., Matías Romero arrived at a similar conclusion. If Maximilian’s imperialists gained control of Mexico’s northern boundaries, Romero postulated, the Confederates could more easily procure supplies from overseas, land them at Vera Cruz and Tampico, “and march without obstacles” to Matamoros, Paso del Norte, or any other location on the border.21 Corwin and Romero had identified a significant transformation in Confederate foreign policy. With the French army prevailing over Mexican forces and Juárez on the run, Rebel leaders sought to mitigate dire circumstances in the borderlands by shifting their diplomatic endeavors toward Maximilian. Hoping that the newly installed emperor would be more amenable to the cause of Southern independence, Graycoats began to pursue open relations with Mexico City for the first time since John Pickett departed there in disgrace more than two years earlier. Just one month after accepting the Mexican emperorship, Maximilian and his regent, General Juan Almonte, expressed a sense of solidarity with

134

Chapter 5

the Confederacy, saying that they sympathized with the struggle for independence and hoped the South would win the Civil War. Such blunt confessions from the new leaders of Mexico inspired hope among Rebel leaders who desperately needed foreign support to boost morale and counterbalance the damaging effects of Union victories on the battlefield.22 On January  7, 1864, Davis appointed William Preston as an envoy to Mexico City and wrote a letter to Maximilian expressing the South’s desire to establish formal relations of friendship with the imperial government.23 A Kentuckian by birth, Preston earned a degree from Harvard in 1838 and served in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 1850s while maintaining a law firm in Louisville. President James Buchanan tapped him as the U.S. minister plenipotentiary to Spain in 1858, a position that he held until the secession crisis broke out. He joined the Confederate Army and rose to the rank of brigadier general before Davis called upon him for diplomatic duties in Mexico, thinking that prior ministerial experience in a Spanish-speaking country qualified him for the job.24 Secretary of State Judah Benjamin provided Preston with detailed instructions about his mission and ordered that he malign the U.S. government as vociferously as possible during conversations with imperial officials. “The diplomacy of Mr. Seward will know no scruples,” Benjamin propagandized in reference to State Department tactics. He claimed that Union officials would one day turn on their North American neighbors “to extend their conquests by the annexation of Canada on the north and Mexico on the south.” If the U.S. forced a Confederate surrender to end the Civil War, Benjamin felt confident that Lincoln’s government would “make Mexico the field of a new war of aggression.” These were misleading claims, because antislavery Northerners had long resisted attempts to absorb parts of Mexico, whereas Southern groups like the Knights of the Golden Circle and filibusters like William Walker and Henry Crabb assumed leading roles in the push to seize Latin American territory during the 1850s. Pickett had understood geopolitical expansion as a primary goal of his trip to Mexico City in 1861, saying rather provocatively, “Now’s the time for our people to wade into the northern [Mexican] provinces.”25 Benjamin turned this storyline on its head and laid out the parameters for diplomatic fearmongering, hoping that Preston could convince naïve imperial officials that U.S. agents had territorial conquest in mind. By this twisted logic, only the Union posed a direct threat to the monarchy in Mexico, and the ideal way to counteract that hazard would be a multinational alliance between secessionists and imperialists. In short,

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

135

Confederate agents would attempt to reorient Maximilian’s illusion of empire to more closely align with their own. The Confederate secretary of state believed that Northern aggression against the South would be extended across the border under the pretense of consolidating republican power in Mexico. The Juárez government had long looked to Lincoln’s administration for material aid and moral support— primarily through the talented diplomat Romero—and U.S. leaders unabashedly favored the republican president over French monarchists who acted in direct defiance of the Monroe Doctrine. According to Benjamin, however, any federal operations to assist the Juárez government had the ulterior motive of forcing Mexico to cede Baja California, Sinaloa, and Sonora to the United States once the French evacuated the country. This assertion was based on the unratified Corwin Treaty of 1861, wherein the U.S. government would fund Juarista opposition to France with millions of dollars in loans, the caveat being that northwest Mexico be sacrificed as collateral. “The safety of the new empire is dependent solely upon our success in interposing a barrier between northern aggression and the Mexican territory,” Benjamin explained.26 This commentary on ulterior motives was calculated to scare both the French and the Mexicans into allying with the Confederacy or, at the very least, severing their diplomatic ties with the United States. Rebel agents had consistently failed to make any meaningful inroads with either the French or the Mexican governments, settling instead for murky arrangements with independentminded governors along the border. Less than a year earlier, Confederate mediators encountered difficulties with French authorities when the latter seized cargo ships loaded with war matériel bound for Texas, but now that the French monarchy was installed in Mexico City, Southern operatives hoped for a more favorable outcome. Conversely, Juárez previously snubbed Southern agents and refused to recognize Confederate sovereignty, but now that he was losing to the imperialists and his government was exiled to Mexico’s northern states, Richmond officials sensed that desperation might change his outlook on foreign affairs. Based on Benjamin’s assumptions, Preston set out to convince Maximilian’s court that the U.S. government was actively aiding Juárez and his constitutionalist army, which in turn made Lincoln’s Unionists an enemy of the imperial cause. If successful, these machinations would create the sense of a common foe in order to forge a Franco-Confederate alliance against the United States, aiding the Confederate independence movement while providing security for the imperial government in Mexico.27 Preston would first

136

Chapter 5

attempt to negotiate for the open use of Mexican seaports so that war supplies could be safely disembarked and transported across the Rio Grande, and he also had instructions to extend the metaphorical olive branch in hopes that Maximilian would formally recognize Confederate nationhood. In a twist of chicanery, Benjamin ordered his new agent to pursue this line of negotiation with French and Mexican officials, recognizing that neither the imperialists nor the republicans had yet prevailed in their contest and that each faction controlled various regions of the country. The Confederate secretary of state informed John Slidell, his leading diplomat in Paris, about these plans and predicted that “our relations with Mexico are likely to assume a very interesting complexion.” This double-dealing made Preston’s diplomatic mission so delicate that he had to memorize ciphers to communicate with Richmond in case spies intercepted his correspondence.28 If anyone discovered his duplicity, the entire scheme could backfire. In a worst-case scenario, this trickery might encourage the Mexicans or the French (or both) to declare war on the Confederacy; at best, political and commercial ties would be severed and all hope of cooperation lost. The fact that Southern officials consciously took such profound risks—historian Patrick Kelly labels these proceedings a “bipolar approach”—underscores their anxiety as conditions unraveled not only in the South Texas borderlands but in the overall war effort as well.29 When Secretary of State Seward learned of the Confederate attempt to court favor with both sides of the French Intervention crisis, he remarked rather admiringly that “the insurgents are inventive and bold in political expedients.”30 In conjunction with these efforts, Slidell had already been working for over a year to convince French dignitaries in Paris that the Confederacy had no expansionist agenda toward Mexico. He repeatedly told Minister of Foreign Affairs Edouard Thouvenel that France need not fear Southern aggression in Latin America. According to Slidell, all previous attempts to expand slave territory southward and westward aimed solely to buttress the South’s political power by increasing proslavery congressional representation in stride with the rising antislavery population in the North. The rebellion, if successful, would grant political independence to the Slave South and render future territorial expansion unnecessary. The imperial insurgency in Mexico “will be regarded with no unfriendly eye by the Confederate States,” Slidell reassured Thouvenel.31 Shortly thereafter the Rebel diplomat met with the French emperor himself. Lincoln’s government supported Juárez, Slidell told Napoleon III with direct reference to the Corwin Treaty, and the

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

137

Confederacy therefore hoped to “make common cause with him against the common enemy.”32 As Preston commenced his duties in Mexico, Slidell began a propaganda campaign in Paris to sway popular sentiment in favor of a FrancoConfederate alliance. He employed a “secret author” to write and distribute a pamphlet entitled France, Mexico, and the Confederate States. The booklet described conditions in Mexico in such a way that insinuated common causes between the three countries, but government suppression limited its circulation throughout Europe. Ironically, it had a greater impact on public opinion in the United States, because several New York newspapers published a translated version that seemingly confirmed Northern anxieties about collusion between Paris and Richmond.33 Not long after this bungled publicity stunt, the Confederates suffered another setback with France when Slidell unwittingly insulted Napoleon III during a card game.34 Relations between the two countries thus remained tenuous as Preston renewed Southern outreach to imperial leaders in Mexico City, and this latest diplomatic endeavor became a frustrating exercise in futility. Preston was recalled to Richmond in July 1864 without ever even speaking to Maximilian in person.35 As Maximilian and his wife Carlota settled in at their thrones, French expeditionary forces under Marshal François Achille Bazaine pushed into northeast Mexico.36 This prompted Vidaurri to announce his split from the Juarista republicans, a move that surprised almost no one given his renowned proclivity for flip-flopping.37 Calling Vidaurri “one of the shrewdest and most influential men in Mexico,” Confederate General John B. Magruder had already predicted that he would “join the French as soon as he ascertains that they are likely to be permanent in Mexico.”38 Quintero knew Vidaurri better than any other foreigner and explained that “his policy has been to cultivate friendly relations with all the parties which are contending for supremacy in this country and let the course of events decide as to his future action.”39 Just as the artful governor of Nuevo León courted the Confederacy in 1861 when it appeared that they had momentum in the Civil War, he cast his lot with France three years later when monarchy seemed ascendant in Mexico. As these events played out, though, Baron Alphonse Edouard Aymard, an imperial colonel at San Luis Potosí, warned Bazaine that “Vidaurri’s behavior . . . is very ambiguous, and I would not be surprised at all if he conceived the crazy thought of forming in the North a small independent state.”40 Harboring reservations about the governor’s true sympathies, Bazaine ordered his military

138

Chapter 5

commander in neighboring Tamaulipas, General Tomás Mejía, not to take any action that might spook Vidaurri away from the French cause, and Rebel officers had likewise come to expect the strongman’s quirkiness.41 Vidaurri’s sudden new direction posed a risk to the Mexican government because the influential regionalist could help the imperial army consolidate power over Coahuila, Nuevo Léon, and Tamaulipas.42 In February 1864, Juárez marched on Monterrey to depose the perfidious governor and commandeer customs revenues from the port of entry at Piedras Negras. The U.S. diplomat Myndert Kimmey watched anxiously from the safety of his consulate office as three thousand Mexican troops approached the city. Vidaurri fortified the citadel with twenty-eight cannons and an army of loyal followers before demanding that Juárez withdraw his forces. General Manuel Doblado held a tense twenty-minute conference with Vidaurri during which the governor promised to resist at all costs. Juárez and his cabinet members departed for Saltillo shortly thereafter, leaving Doblado behind to deal with the situation at Monterrey.43 Vidaurri called upon local leaders to “make superhuman efforts to save Nuevo Leon and Coahuila from the deplorable loss that awaits it if these men succeed in their fatal projects.”44 Back in Washington, D.C., Seward anxiously read reports from Mexico and worried about the possible ramifications of Vidaurri’s newfound allegiance to the imperial project, realizing that the governor might become a linchpin binding French and Confederate interests in the borderlands.45 Seward need not have fretted, because Vidaurri quickly discovered that his separationist decrees and provocative actions did not resonate with the majority of his constituents, many of whom remained loyal to the republican government. In March, Juárez circulated an official edict throughout Mexico declaring Vidaurri a traitor to his nation and people.46 Kimmey summarized the situation neatly: “He held here for nine years the office of governor, always legally elected, and had for years been considered the most powerful man in northern Mexico, but as soon as he openly showed his hostility to President Juarez his favor here was at once lost.”47 An eyewitness named Antonio de Castro y Carrillo reported that “Vidaurri and his main accomplices have no other choice than to go abroad to save themselves from the punishment they deserve for their betrayal.”48 Lacking popular support, the embattled governor absconded to Texas and sought refuge among the Rebel leaders with whom he had long colluded in commerce and border security. Aware of the close relationship between Vidaurri and the Confederacy, Americans followed his flight from Mexico with deep interest. In Union-

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

139

occupied New Orleans, journalists covered a conference between Vidaurri and Magruder with biting sarcasm. “It was a solemn and impressive spectacle, the meeting of these two noble and devoted patriots . . . [who] made enormous fortunes by stealing cotton from defenseless citizens . . . and pocketing the proceeds,” the editors wrote, taking solace in the assumption that the governor’s retreat from Monterrey forced him to abandon all of his “ill-gotten gains.”49 New York newspapers printed extensive updates from field correspondents, reveling in the downfall of a rogue Mexican governor who aided Texan secessionists.50 On April 2, Juaristas regained control of Monterrey and several days later captured the remnants of Vidaurri’s army.51 Hoping to buttress his forces in the region and prevent the exiled governor from reclaiming power, Juárez began recruiting foreigners for military service, promising them land bounties once the war against France ended.52 With Vidaurri banished to Texas, Patricio Milmo found himself in an unenviable predicament. He lost the political foundation for his economic dominance over northeastern Mexico, and his previous gamesmanship came under intense scrutiny. Aware that the governor and his son-in-law defrauded the government of vast sums in tariffs and other taxes, Juarista authorities threw Milmo in jail and investigated his account books to determine “whether he has, in fact, ever paid any duties into the National Treasury on the immense stocks of goods imported by him.” An anonymous reporter for the New-York Daily Tribune said that Milmo was guilty of a “double violation of the laws of neutrality.” He abetted the Rebels by facilitating contraband trafficking across the border into Texas, which flew in the face of Mexican impartiality, while simultaneously committing an act of subversion against his own government by pocketing customs revenue during the war with France.53 This turn of events had important consequences for international strategies as the Civil War entered its third year. Aside from the plight of Milmo— whose deviousness made him persona non grata among Rebels and helps to explain why he too did not flee to Texas—the fall of Vidaurri and concomitant roadblocks to French ascendancy along the border favored U.S. interests. One Unionist living in Matamoros described these developments as “a source of unutterable anguish to the Rebels,” predicting that Southerners would attempt to reinstall Vidaurri through some form of intrigue.54 Quintero reached out to General Miguel Negrete, the minister of war in Juárez’s cabinet, requesting that trade between Texas and Mexico remain unimpeded. Negrete anticipated no major changes in commerce under republican rule, and Juárez personally promised Confederate agents in Monterrey that he

140

Chapter 5

would continue to “observe strict and impartial neutrality” in the Civil War, but Mexico’s steadfast refusal to recognize the Confederacy made Quintero nervous nonetheless.55 Coupled with Maximilian’s ascendance to the throne, Vidaurri’s ouster convinced Southerners that they should turn attention once more toward imperial leaders in Mexico. Because top-level diplomatic efforts in France yielded no tangible benefits, Southerners fell back on localized methods of outreach in the U.S.Mexico borderlands. Secretary of State Benjamin instructed Quintero to “establish the most cordial relations with the French authorities” if and when they ascended to power in northeast Mexico.56 According to New York Times editors, Texas agents were pursuing relations of “quasi friendship toward the French,” and it appeared that this might pay off even though Slidell’s propaganda drive in Paris failed.57 With Juárez en route to Chihuahua, Vidaurristas retook Monterrey in August, and their commander, Colonel Julián Quiroga, became acting governor. One week later, he relinquished his seat to General Armand Alexandre de Castagny, who arrived in the city with two thousand French troops. Further east, four hundred more imperial soldiers under General Mejía landed on the Gulf Coast, seized Bagdad, and marched toward Matamoros, where Juan Cortina still clung to power as self-proclaimed governor of Tamaulipas.58 Over the preceding months, Cortina had sent no less than $85,000 in customs revenue to Juárez in an attempt to demonstrate loyalty and secure official recognition, and he even led republican forces in an offensive campaign against the French at Tampico. But the crafty revolutionary proved to be an adept schemer who took advantage of the contest between North and South to strengthen his own standing in Mexico. He openly professed friendship to the U.S. forces occupying Brownsville, telling Major General Francis Herron that he would cooperate in every way possible, and the Union Army even gave Cortina ten cannons for his own use. He issued a public announcement condemning Rebels along the border, but continued to facilitate Southern commerce by keeping Nuevo Laredo open to cotton exportation, and for this Confederate Major General John B. Magruder thanked him. At one point, Cortina’s aide, José María Silva, even offered to sell a large number of guns to Confederate forces across the river. When imperial troops drew near in September 1864, fifteen hundred men of the Cortina Brigade mounted a brief but ineffective resistance before fleeing the city. Texas Colonel John S. “Rip” Ford and Lieutenant Colonel Dan Showalter, whose Fourth Arizona Brigade had recently reoccupied Fort Brown, tried to buy the ten Union-issued

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

141

cannons, but Cortina refused the offer, and the U.S. consul predicted “a border warfare” would ensue between angry Confederates and desperate Cortinistas. Major General John G. Walker, commanding the Confederate District of Texas, issued an order for Cortina’s execution should he be captured. Finding himself in a major predicament—Rebels were after his head, most of his erstwhile Union allies had fled South Texas, and French forces occupied Matamoros—Cortina met with Mejía and endorsed the Mexican Empire in an unforeseen move that underscored his personal scheming.59 When Thomas Corwin resigned as U.S. minister to Mexico in September 1864, French armies controlled much of the country’s northeast after Vidaurri and Cortina switched sides to join the imperialists.60 Hoping to take advantage of these developments, the Confederate officer John F. Dayton invited Mejía to meet with him privately in Brownsville (Mejía accepted the invitation), and Quintero suggested that Major Felix Ducayet, a Spanishspeaking native of New Orleans with family roots in France, be appointed as a special agent in Tamaulipas.61 Eliza McHatton-Ripley, who lived in Matamoros, summarized the complicated power struggle: “On the south bank of the Rio Grande, the Mexican government held possession; the opposite bank was under Confederate control. Here [at Matamoros] the French were exulting over the capture of the city; and across the river the Federal army occupied Brownsville—the flags of four nationalities floating almost in sight of each other, amid the ‘pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.’”62 Confederate officers in Texas sensed opportunities to capitalize on these events in northeast Mexico. On March 19, 1864, Colonel Santos Benavides thwarted a Union Army attempt to seize five thousand bales of cotton at Laredo.63 By the end of July, General Nathaniel Banks had withdrawn nearly all Union troops from Brownsville and relocated them to Louisiana; only a small contingent of Bluecoats remained behind to occupy Brazos Santiago, described by one visitor as a “miserable dilapidated place containing perhaps fifty or one hundred inhabitants” at the Rio Grande’s mouth.64 The Union departure reopened much of the region to Confederate operations, which had temporarily shifted upriver when the U.S. Army occupied Brownsville.65 In September, Vidaurri left Texas to meet with Maximilian at Guanajuato and formally pledged his support to the Mexican Empire. The exiled governor soon returned to Monterrey with an appointment to the “Council of the Nation,” and he provided the imperial government with intelligence on regional operations and advice about how to consolidate power over the lower Rio Grande.66 Late in the year, a Rebel agent named W. G. Hale went to

142

Chapter 5 Paso del Norte

USA MEXICO

Route of Benito Juarez and His Government Routes of French and Mexican Imperial Armies Routes of Juarista Republican Army

Janos Bavispe

Ri

Ures

Cruces

Hermosillo

Chihuahua City

0

oG

ra n

de

100

200 mi

Piedras Negras

Guerrero

Guaymas

Nuevo Laredo Parral

Gu lf of

Saltillo

Monterrey

Matamoros

Ca

li

Gulf of Mexico

fo

rn

Durango

ia Mazatlán

San Luis Potosí

Aguascalientes

Tampico

Guanajuato Guadalajara

Manzanillo

OCEAN

ne ve bor nsi Sea Offe nch 65 Fre 18

PACIFIC

ne n bor asio Sea h Inv c n 62 Fre 18

Querétaro

Mexico City

Acapulco

Puebla

Veracruz

Oaxaca

Figure 11. Map of Regional Operations, Northeast Mexico, 1864–1867.

Mexico City to speak with the emperor, hoping to succeed where Preston had failed by inaugurating formal relations with the new government and asking that the monarch allow Confederate ships to dock at Mexican ports.67 As Hale pursued these objectives in the Mexican capital, Confederate military officers took approaches of their own. General Edmund Kirby Smith wrote directly to one of Maximilian’s generals, Florentino Gomez,

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

143

“to cultivate the most agreeable and friendly relationship with the Imperial Government of Mexico.”68 Brigadier General James E. Slaughter, stationed on the lower Rio Grande, hoped that Maximilian would honor previous trade agreements between Texans and Mexicans. At the same time, however, he understood the utility of local negotiations and reached out to General Mejía in an attempt to normalize relations with the imperial military commander in Tamaulipas. In December 1864, Slaughter and Mejía drafted articles of extradition for criminals and deserters on both sides of the international line and established a working relationship to uphold mutual interests, leading the Confederate officer to boast that his Mexican counterpart “promised to do all in his power to aid us.”69 The arrangement resembled that of Hamilton Bee and Albino López two years earlier, and indeed one Mexico City newspaper told its readers that Mejía had merely followed in the footsteps of his gubernatorial predecessors.70 The fact that each successive leader in Tamaulipas had to recreate the same basic deal with Texans served as a testament to the interminable headaches that bandits and smugglers caused, as well as the generally unmanageable nature of the border itself. But when Mejía began deporting Unionist refugees back to Texan custody, he drew the fury of U.S. diplomats. Consular agent E. D. Etchison, who replaced Leonard Pierce in Matamoros, threatened the use of force to protect U.S. citizens abroad, and a personal spat quickly developed between the two men. Mejía denied the allegations, saying that he never apprehended or expelled any Americans, and he scorned Etchison’s “strange hallucination of mind.” The frustrated federal diplomat departed Matamoros in a huff, leaving the office vacant until his replacement, Amzi Wood, arrived several weeks later.71 Matters remained complicated in the Texas-Mexico borderlands as the Civil War entered its final months. In Matamoros, U.S. diplomats quarreled with imperial officers over the extradition of Unionists. At Monterrey, Kimmey complained that city leaders “sympathize warmly with the so-called Confederate States.” Maximilian’s staff refused to recognize Kimmey’s diplomatic credentials because his exequatur had originally been issued by the Juárez government, and at one point the embattled American envoy was imprisoned for refusing to enlist in a French foreign legion.72 Union agents in Tamaulipas and Nuevo León struggled throughout the Civil War to perform their consular duties and prevent Mexican leaders from deporting American refugees. The Confederacy once again had multiple agents working regionally and nationally, courting French officials much as they had Mexican figureheads earlier in the war. Rebel operatives were usually willing to cooperate

144

Chapter 5

with whomever wielded power, whether it be imperial commanders like Mejía, Mexican governors like Vidaurri, or independent revolutionaries like Cortina.73 With so many rulers coming and going in Mexico, Confederate representatives remained flexible in their diplomatic tactics, seeking first and foremost to protect their military and commercial interests regardless of who prevailed south of the border. As always, these interests proved exceedingly difficult to defend, because Unionists worked to sabotage Southern imports and exports while bandits siphoned away merchandise through incessant raiding along the border. With the U.S. naval blockade still in place and leadership continuously reverberating in Mexico, smuggling took on added importance for Confederate war efforts. Kimmey wrote that Rebels were shipping “enormous quantities of goods” into Texas through the customs houses at Laredo and Eagle Pass, noting that the federal occupation of Brownsville had “no effect in stopping the trade.” Secretary of State Seward called Brownsville a “very active center of a traffic in articles of contraband of war” and complained of Cortina’s purported complicity. Minister of Foreign Affairs Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada ordered a crackdown on the flow of war matériel into Texas, requiring local officials to block such traffic whenever possible. But this had little effect because the Juárez government lacked the ability to enforce such edicts along the border. Kimmey blamed this precedent on Vidaurri for allowing illicit commerce to continue unabated for so long, explaining that “hundreds of thousands of pounds” of contraband continued to filter across the Rio Grande “disguised as other goods.” Raw lead to melt and mold into bullets was the most important item smuggled into Texas, with skyrocketing demand bumping the price from three cents to eight cents per pound. Kimmey reminded Seward that the Confederacy had become increasingly dependent on their Mexican supply line since Bluecoats gained complete control of the Mississippi River after the sieges at Vicksburg and Louisiana’s Port Hudson in July 1863.74 As late as January 1865, northern Tamaulipas continued to serve as a hub for smugglers. “Matamoros is to the rebellion west of the Mississippi [River] what New York is to the United States—its great commercial and financial center,” wrote S. S. Brown, a Union sympathizer who lived in the town. “The entire Confederate Government is greatly sustained by resources from this post.” Etchison parroted this statement, guessing that 90 percent of the goods landed at Matamoros wound up in Texas, and his successor Amzi Wood found it impossible “to prevent the continued trade with the rebels, which is done covertly.” These revelations struck a familiar chord with U.S. officers,

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

145

who tried in vain to suppress commercial traffic between Mexico and Texas. Union General Lew Wallace, who organized the Mexican Aid Society and helped Juaristas procure supplies from the United States as part of an early initiative of Greater Reconstruction, forwarded Brown’s note to Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia. He also appended a suggestion that the United States help Juárez reclaim power in Tamaulipas under the condition that he “smother the Brownsville-Matamoros trade.” Wallace likened the possible effects of a U.S. military operation in the lower Rio Grande hinterlands to General Sherman’s recent campaign through Georgia and South Carolina, saying that firm republican control over northeast Mexico would, like the destructive March to the Sea, stagger the Confederacy’s ability to wage war.75 Before any operations could be planned in support of Juárez, Lincoln and Seward met with Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens to discuss possible terms for ending the Civil War. At the Hampton Roads Peace Conference on February 3, 1865, Rebels pitched a creative scheme as an act of appeasement between North and South. The brainchild of Francis P. Blair and his son Montgomery (the former U.S. postmaster general), the plot involved Southern troops in an invasion of Mexico with the intent of ousting French forces from the Western Hemisphere. It would also be a direct contradiction of the South’s repeated efforts to ally with French and Mexican monarchists. If properly coordinated with Juárez, the operation would impose the Monroe Doctrine by eliminating a European threat to North America while simultaneously fostering a sense of reunification in the United States as the Civil War ended. The idea had the cautious approbation of Juárez, who needed American support to sustain his constitutional government in the face of Maximilian’s ascendancy. Lincoln, however, refused any terms other than unconditional Confederate surrender and had no interest in another thinly veiled scheme of territorial expansion at the expense of Mexico.76 The plot failed to gain any traction before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, an event that had multitudinous effects on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Marshal Bazaine realized that the Confederate capitulation and Lincoln’s subsequent assassination would have profound ramifications for French imperialism. Noting rather ominously that the Mexican Empire “today is much less popular than it was in its beginning,” he predicted that the U.S. government would soon carry out an intervention on behalf of Juarista interests.77 Along the border, the South’s defeat also stifled international commerce and temporarily exacerbated regional instability. The pent-up demand for war matériel in Texas evaporated, the U.S. naval blockade was lifted, and

146

Chapter 5

independent mercenaries and raiders sought to take advantage of a power vacuum resulting from the disenrollment of Rebel troops. “The business of Matamoros has undergone a great change since the close of the war,” U.S. vice consul Louis Avery observed, noting that some merchants liquidated their inventories at one-fifth of wartime prices while others shipped surplus merchandise all the way to New Orleans for resale.78 The ongoing military contest between French invaders and Juarista defenders, coupled with omnipresent banditry—Francis Latham remarked that rustlers stole “great quantities of cattle . . . with the same propriety that they smuggle”—made regional trade especially hazardous.79 As commander of imperial troops in northeast Mexico, Mejía felt isolated and vulnerable because armed insurrectionists patrolled all roads leading into Matamoros, a setback that he attributed to Yankee conspiracies against the Mexican Empire.80 He declared Matamoros “in a state of siege” and called upon citizens to take up arms against the Cortinistas, who were “causing the ruin” of local commerce.81 In April 1865, Cortina assembled a small army south of the Rio Grande and “pronounced against the [Mexican] Empire.” Proudly disavowing his prior endorsement of the imperialists, the longtime revolutionary switched sides once more and proposed a joint operation in which his followers would lay siege to Matamoros and depose imperial officers if the U.S. Army flushed lingering Confederates out of adjacent Brownsville, where Colonel “Rip” Ford commanded a band of unvanquished Rebels acting concertedly with Mejía’s men.82 Indeed it was Ford and his Second Texas Cavalry who fought and defeated U.S. troops at the Battle of Palmito Ranch near Brazos Santiago on May 12 and 13, 1865—several weeks after the Civil War officially ended. As these events transpired, journalists in Mexico City concluded that “nothing would please [Cortina] as much as giving rise to a war between this country and the United States.” Because of this ongoing unrest, inhabitants were fleeing to safer locales and commerce had become “paralyzed.”83 Mejía implored Major General Frederick Steele, commanding U.S. forces on the lower Rio Grande, to take action against Cortina’s “gangs of criminals,” and local merchants with dwindling profits likewise appealed for some sort of military intervention.84 At one point, Cortina collaborated with U.S. officers in planning a daring nighttime raid on the Mexican town of Bagdad that temporarily ousted imperial forces from their crucial beachhead on the Rio Grande delta. The French government formally protested to the State Department, claiming that American officers along the border allowed Cortina to recruit fighters in Texas despite a U.S. commitment to nonintervention in the Mexican

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

147

conflict. Specifically referencing the Cortinistas, Marquis Charles François Frédéric de Montholon insisted that Seward order his diplomatic coterie to act with less ambivalence toward those who used American soil as sanctuary in their opposition to French interests. Imperial newspapers similarly protested Seward’s tack toward Maximilian, demanding that General Steele be recalled from his position at Brownsville.85 In making such statements, French-oriented observers failed to appreciate two very different aspects of State Department operations: Seward’s official position of nonintervention did not jibe with his personal preference for the republican cause in Mexico.86 As disruptions to regional trade networks bankrupted businessmen on both sides of the border and Cortina’s raids frustrated imperialists, another significant development involved Rebels fleeing to Mexico. William Marshall Anderson, a Southerner who reached Vera Cruz just four days after Lee’s surrender, remarked that Maximilian’s government “seems greatly apprehensive about American emigration.” As a Confederate himself, he understood the long history of filibustering and knew that some Southern diehards would never submit to Yankee rule. Anderson foresaw a widespread exodus of Confederate soldiers, officers, and politicians seeking not only to avoid punishment for treason, but also to perpetuate their plantation aristocracy in the agricultural backwaters of Mexico’s “empire, republic, or whatever it may eventually prove to be.”87 A similar revelation came from Blondeel van Cuelebroeck, the Belgian foreign minister in Mexico City, who warned Marshal Bazaine that disaffected Southerners and the U.S. troops sent to interdict them at the border “can lead to deplorable complications.”88 The ink had barely dried on Civil War surrender agreements when Confederate stalwarts west of the Mississippi River began concocting schemes to avoid submission. Already residing in Mexico as a Rebel diplomat, Quintero took a page from Vidaurri’s playbook and espoused the French cause. A Union “secret-service man” named A. H. Cañedo had been sent to Matamoros to gather information, and he reported that Quintero and others were recruiting a Texan regiment to serve alongside the imperialists.89 Major General Magruder learned of Lee’s capitulation on May 4 and immediately addressed his Texas troops. “We are not whipped,” he vowed, “and no matter what events may transpire elsewhere, recollect that we never will be whipped.”90 At almost the same time, Edmund Kirby Smith sent an agent named Robert Rose to meet with Maximilian, intending to initiate relations between Confederate expatriates and Mexican imperialists. Smith instructed Rose not to claim any official diplomatic authority, but to inform

148

Chapter 5

the emperor that Southerners sought “a liberal agreement with the authorities of the Mexican Empire, based upon the principle of mutual protection from their common enemy.” According to Smith, the U.S. government had “ambitious designs” against the European project in Mexico, and an alliance between fugitive Rebels and imperial Frenchmen made sense for the interests of both parties. The determined officer still clung to the command of sixty thousand Graycoats in the Trans-Mississippi Department and hinted that their “services might be tendered to [Mexico] against the North.” Smith was offering his entire Confederate army to Maximilian as a last-ditch effort to carry on the fight against the United States under the auspices of Mexican monarchists.91 Seeing their foreign neighbor as an escape hatch to avoid emancipation and Reconstruction, men like Smith, Magruder, and Hamilton Bee refused to admit defeat and sought instead to capitalize on French ascendancy in Mexico as a means of preserving their freedom abroad and perhaps even prolonging the war against the North.92 Among the most ambitious of the Confederate intriguers was Alexander W. Terrell, a former district court judge from Austin who also served in the First Texas Cavalry Regiment. In the wake of Lee’s surrender, he sent confidential communications to Bazaine’s chief of staff warning that “France will be deceived by the treacherous diplomacy of the United States Government.” Terrell proposed a multifaceted scheme whereby he would publicly renounce his preestablished connection with the French army but continue to draw a government salary while operating in Texas as a secret agent of Maximilian’s regime. He would transmit intelligence to Mexico City through ciphered correspondence carried by paid messengers, and if a war broke out between France and the United States, he intended to raise an army of four thousand former Confederates to fight alongside imperial troops in Mexico.93 Within weeks, however, these blusterous Rebels realized the implausibility of clandestine foreign military alliances. On May 26, Smith surrendered the soldiers and property under his command to Major General Edward R. S. Canby at New Orleans. Canby offered gracious terms, granting amnesty to the general and his subordinate officers and paroling the enlisted men.94 This generosity, however, did not dissuade Smith himself from joining fellow Southern officers like General Joseph “Fighting Jo” Shelby in Mexico, where Maximilian welcomed them as civilian colonists.95 Acting as an organ for the imperial government, Mexico City newspapermen expressed sympathy for these defeated Rebels and heralded their arrival as new settlers. “The Confederates, banished, persecuted, and vilified by the

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

149

victor, will seek shelter here . . . and humanity, sanity, and well understood interest, advise Mexico to welcome them as guests,” one journalist wrote, suggesting that the immigrants be converted into allies against future threats to Maximilian’s throne.96 The fact that the emperor not only allowed former Confederates into Mexico, but also feted them at Chapultepec Palace, issued land grants for colonization, and appointed them to political positions, created friction with the United States and implied some sort of broader conspiracy.97 “The [Southern] rebellion has not been stifled yet,” a Mexico City newspaper reported in September 1865 as Magruder took an imperial government role as supervisor for colonization lands.98 Another Southern exile, Commodore Matthew F. Maury, was a longtime friend of Maximilian—at one point he offered to command an imperial squadron of ironclad ships to ply the Mexican Empire’s long Pacific shoreline—and he later became the commissioner in charge of a colonization council established on September 5, 1865, by royal decree.99 The emperor granted Maury permission to open subsidiary offices in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Alabama, and Louisiana, along with the Union states of California and Missouri. Within these eight states special agents would disseminate literature—much of it written by Maury himself—on the burgeoning Confederate colonies in Mexico and enlist potential immigrants seeking a way out of the South after the Civil War.100 Private enterprises even emerged to promote and profit from the exodus, one example being the American and Mexican Emigrant Company that organized at St. Louis in 1865.101 Consisting of ten articles, Maximilian’s “Colonization Law” opened the country to all foreign immigration, offered a one-year tax exemption on property that incomers claimed, and granted a five-year release from military service with the caveat that colonists form “sedentary militias” to protect themselves. The new law also addressed the pressing issue of slavery on foreign estates, banning institutions of racial bondage but allowing for a system of peonage, innocently termed “contract labor” in the official edict. The parameters of this debtor servitude closely resembled the South’s chattel slavery, outlining relations between masters and servants, permitting hereditary labor obligations, and establishing legal mechanisms for capturing and punishing runaways.102 The emperor forbade the establishment of ex-Confederate colonies anywhere near the U.S. border for fear of provoking a militaristic response, yet he allowed a thinly veiled system of slavery that proved antagonistic to many Americans who had just fought a lengthy war to abolish that institution.103 Recognizing the potential implications of Maximilian’s mandate

150

Chapter 5

at the very moment that the United States was moving toward Constitutional abolition, Romero circulated the Colonization Law among American leaders and bluntly told them that it reestablished slavery under a different but no less odious form in order to attract ex-Confederates.104 In Congress, the Radical Republican supermajority took this situation so seriously that they dedicated an entire section of a special report on Mexican affairs to the “restoration of slavery or peonage . . . under the decrees of Maximilian.”105 Empowered by the Colonization Law’s lenient provisions, Maury oversaw the establishment of “New Virginia” settlements throughout Mexico, including Carlota and Tuxpan in the state of Veracruz, Palacio in Durango, and San Lorenzo in Jalisco. He advertised Mexico to a global audience, claiming with considerable exaggeration that immigrants would find ideal agricultural land for profitable export crops, an abundance of precious metals to be mined, a healthy climate, hospitable people, and even good schools for their children.106 Former Tennessee governor Isham Harris heeded the call, reaching a Mexican colony late in 1865 and finding what he considered a Southern promised land.107 Approximately five thousand Southerners immigrated to these colonies in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, and many of them continued to employ slaves under the auspices of debt peonage.108 By fleeing the United States and retaining slave labor, they violated their terms of surrender and circumvented abolition. This drew the immediate ire of U.S. officers like Major General Phil Sheridan, who demanded that absconding secessionists be arrested and tried by a military commission. An extradition agreement with Maximilian was not an option because it would constitute a formal recognition of his regime, so Reconstruction initiatives would have to be expanded to include federal military operations on the faraway Mexican border. Many Unionists believed that the rebellion could not be wholly crushed and the project of national reunification effectively implemented as long as unreformed and unrepentant Southerners had the ability to leave the country. “We never can have a fully restored Union, and give a total and final blow to all malcontents, until the French leave Mexico,” the general remarked. Most Confederate colonists eventually returned to the United States when Maximilian’s empire fell, but few of them suffered punishment as Sheridan hoped.109 United States officials did not lounge idly as ex-Confederates escaped into Mexico and Maximilian spread imperial rule over the country. With the Civil War finally over, War Department officers and State Department diplomats redirected their attention toward the French threat and began plotting to eliminate the emperor in an early manifestation of Greater Reconstruction,

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

151

in which a massively expanded federal government projected its power not only southward but westward as well.110 Based on four decades of experience with American expansionism, many Mexicans looked upon U.S. involvement with deep skepticism. “The geographical position, the historical background and the current interests of the United States with respect to Mexico, lead us to believe with a closed eye that . . . the American protectorate can not mean anything other than the conquest of Mexico,” editorialists announced in one Mexico City newspaper just weeks after the Civil War ended.111 Lieutenant General Grant, fresh off his defeat of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, added his influential voice to those advocating use of force below the border. Well before he presided over Southern Reconstruction as president, Grant emerged as one of the country’s leading proponents of Greater Reconstruction with respect to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. In June 1865, Grant proposed “open resistance” to Maximilian and told President Andrew Johnson that “the act of attempting to establish a monarchical government on this continent in Mexico by foreign bayonets [is] an act of hostility.” He felt that the French Intervention and the chaos it caused throughout northern Mexico had enabled the Confederates to sustain their war effort for four years by utilizing the region to outflank the U.S. naval blockade. Coupled with Maximilian’s offers of asylum to impenitent Rebels, this justified military action in Grant’s eyes. War Department arsenals housed vast stockpiles of guns and ammunition from the Civil War, and Grant suggested that these surplus arms be sold to Juaristas at cheap prices to assist their resistance to French aggression. Ultimately some thirty thousand leftover muskets transferred to Mexican custody, although this number would have been far higher had Seward not habitually interceded to prevent mass transfers of arms during the Civil War.112 Grant also felt that U.S. Army officers should be awarded leaves of absence so that they could travel to Mexico, facilitate the disbursement of munitions, and restore the republican government to power. For Grant, Greater Reconstruction meant the preservation of democracy in Mexico using the U.S. Army, in much the same way that the preservation and expansion of democracy in the New South relied on military occupation. He proposed these initiatives primarily to eliminate a European threat to American hegemony over the Pacific Coast and the western states and territories, although he also felt a moral responsibility to aid Mexican liberals. Grant harbored lifelong regret for his role in the “wicked” MexicanAmerican War, which he viewed as profoundly unjust, and he believed that his own countrymen were partially responsible for Juárez’s plight because

152

Chapter 5

the turmoil arising from the Civil War distracted the U.S. government from policing the Western Hemisphere and provided France with its opportunity to invade Mexico.113 In July, Sheridan became Grant’s leading agent in these Greater Reconstruction initiatives when he went to the lower Rio Grande to inspect conditions and gauge the extent of the French threat along the border. This bothered imperial sympathizers, including editorialists in Mexico City who feared that Sheridan “cared very little about the law of nations.” They reminded their readers of events in 1846, when General Zachary Taylor occupied South Texas as a pretense for war with Mexico, and warned that Sheridan would replicate that aggressive strategy.114 Soon after his arrival, Sheridan, who personally hated Texas and Texans, reported that most imperialists had withdrawn from the frontier because they lacked sufficient manpower to control the region.115 But Matamoros, ignominiously dubbed “the heroic city of a hundred sieges,” remained an exception. The city came under attack once more in October 1865 when the republican General Mariano Escobedo tried unsuccessfully to oust Mejía’s troops. “For the last twenty years or more this section [of Mexico] has been at the mercy of any ambitious leader who could gather around him a few scores of men who had rather live by plundering than by honest toil,” mused Louis Avery from his perch in the U.S. consulate office, noting that the establishment of the Mexican Empire “has only served to make matters worse.”116 Aside from the violence that threatened to spill over to the American side of the border, Sheridan took special interest in Jo Shelby and his band of Confederate mercenaries, who had “taken service with the Imperialists.” Remarkably, one of Shelby’s followers was the self-proclaimed “arch-rebel” Dan Showalter, the renowned secessionist from California who had survived imprisonment for treason at Fort Yuma, a horseback trek from Sonora to Texas, battles with Union forces on the Gulf Coast, skirmishes with Cortinistas in the lower Rio Grande Valley, and a desperate flight to Mexico, only to die in February 1866 during a drunken gunfight inside his own saloon at Presidio de Mazatlán. Sheridan correctly speculated that Maximilian was granting colonial charters to encourage men like Shelby and Showalter to fight Juarista forces. Fearful of a conspiracy between Confederate expatriates and Maximilian’s court, the general thought that Juárez needed direct support from the United States if the French project was to be derailed. “I think we ought to go after Shelby and his command,” Sheridan concluded in characteristically blunt terms. “I feel certain that with 6,000 or 8,000 cavalry I can stir up the whole of Northern Mexico.”117

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

153

With Sheridan’s report in hand, Grant pressed the issue with President Johnson, who had not fully bought in to Greater Reconstruction in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and seemed hesitant to pursue the hawkish sort of action that his generals recommended. “To let the Empire of Maximilian be established on our frontier is to permit an enemy to establish himself who will require a large standing army to watch,” Grant forewarned. Failure to intervene quickly and decisively would likely result in a much longer and bloodier war between the United States and France, because a monarchy and a democracy could not permanently coexist as hemispheric neighbors. In short, Grant said, the United States government must take whatever steps necessary to “secure the supremacy of the republican government of Mexico,” because doing so would help to secure American supremacy in hemispheric affairs.118 Johnson assured the antsy general that he would supply Juárez with the weapons his army needed. The president also revealed a secret plan for encouraging Unionists to immigrate and take up arms with Juaristas in Mexico, an idea that Grant wholeheartedly endorsed. “If I had my way,” Grant confided to Sheridan, “I would use U.S. forces” to drive the imperialists out of Mexico.119 Tellingly, military intervention was being considered as a unilateral operation without direct guidance from Juárez, who the U.S. government continued to recognize as president despite Maximilian’s ascendancy. According to the American minister in Mexico City, ex-Confederates living in that region actually welcomed a mass U.S. invasion, believing that “it will give the South another opportunity to assert and fight for its independence.”120 Sheridan and Grant drew direct parallels between the Civil War and the French Intervention, recognizing the interconnectivity of the two events. Both men chafed at the thought of a permanent monarchy in Mexico, not only because of the threat this posed to American democracy, but also for the outlet it provided to Southerners skipping out on Reconstruction. Sheridan believed that these twin offenses constituted ample justification for military action south of the Rio Grande. Both senior officers advocated overt enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine, but the president and secretary of state balked at the prospect of entangling the United States in a complicated war on foreign soil against a major European power. Indeed, the country deliberately avoided such scenarios in the past: the U.S. had never fought France, and major wars with England in 1775 and 1812 played out primarily on American soil. In the months following Lee’s surrender, however, the War Department sent fifty thousand troops to Texas (newspapers aligned with the Mexican Empire consistently inflated this number to one hundred thousand) with orders to

154

Chapter 5

protect American citizens from the violence in Matamoros and to flex hard power in plain view of Maximilian and Napoleon III.121 In advancement of Greater Reconstruction objectives, Grant used his authority to saturate the Texas-Mexico borderlands with military forces, just as General George Wright had hoped to do in Arizona and Sonora the year before. Romero hailed these developments as “a very favorable course” that could hasten the French withdrawal from Mexico’s frontier, and he hoped that Juárez would allow direct American participation to defeat the imperialists more quickly.122 The fact that some of the nation’s highest-ranking military commanders dedicated so much thought to these issues while simultaneously embarking on the monumental task of Southern Reconstruction shows the ongoing importance of Mexico in the overall context of Civil War Era events. Frustrated by State Department passivity, Sheridan griped that Seward suffered from “butt-headedness or the indifference or vanity of old age.”123 Grant perceived the French threat as a more urgent matter than Reconstruction policy in the South, and a rift developed between him and Seward over the Mexico situation, with the former advocating aggressive military action while the latter preferred measured diplomacy.124 Grant anticipated congressional debate on the matter and told Sheridan to stall for time. “Instruct the commander on the Rio Grande that he can make no agreement with Imperial or Liberal commanders,” Grant ordered, insisting that strict neutrality be observed until further notice.125 On December 11, 1865, the Senate and House of Representatives issued a joint resolution diagnosing the French monarchy as a threat to democratic institutions in the Western Hemisphere and granting President Johnson wide latitude “to vindicate the recognized policy and protect the honor and interests of our Government.”126 With this sweeping declaration, Congress effectively endorsed Grant’s Greater Reconstruction program for the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Representative Elihu Washburne of Illinois declared that the French must be compelled to “put aside this little tin crown in Mexico,” and another congressman proposed that Juárez be loaned $20 million to sustain his forces in overthrowing the monarchy.127 Despite the general consensus against the Mexican Empire, politicians diverged on the issue of Southern flight to Mexico. Some did not even consider it worth broaching at the individual level, seeking instead to address larger concerns surrounding relations with foreign governments. “It may not much harm the nation that citizens from Texas go into Mexico and shoot, or get shot,” Timothy Howe of Wisconsin joked with his Senate colleagues. “But it does harm the nation that the whole municipal authority of a state is lodged in tribunals

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

155

pledged to the support of an alliance which the Constitution forbids, and to the prosecution of a design which may involve the nation in a foreign war.”128 The American public had no stomach for another deadly conflict so soon after the calamitous Civil War, and Southern resistance to Reconstruction demanded increasing military attention in that arena. With these considerations in mind, federal officials never approved direct army action on behalf of Mexico’s republican forces. As it turned out, they wouldn’t need to act belligerently, because the end of the Civil War and the ensuing threat of U.S. military intervention that arose as part of Grant’s Greater Reconstruction scheme caused French leaders to rethink the ambitious Grand Design. Many influential Mexican conservatives turned against Maximilian after his decree in December 1864 calling for freedom of worship and nationalization of Church lands, Juarista forces still had not been vanquished after years of fighting, and the imperial project continued to drain the French treasury. It also siphoned attention and resources away from more pertinent issues, including the rapid rise of Prussia as a core component of the German Empire, which posed a direct threat to French hegemony in Europe.129 By September 1865, public opinion in Paris was steadily shifting against further involvement with Mexico and a small but vocal anti-Intervention movement emerged. French leaders conceded that the recent arrival of U.S. troops along the border, coupled with the ungovernable nature of that frontier, transformed their imperial project into a futile exercise. As Napoleon III began to equivocate in his enthusiasm for the Mexican Empire, Secretary of State Seward shrewdly ratcheted up the diplomatic pressure to ensure that French troops withdrew peacefully from Mexico.130 An estranged Maximilian tried to explain the dire political situation in Mexico City and begged for reconsideration, but his panicked protests fell on deaf ears across the Atlantic. On January 15, 1866, the emperor informed Maximilian of the final decision to extract French troops from Mexico, and one month later he provided Marshal Bazaine with instructions for executing the evacuation.131 In a speech explaining his decision to withdraw from Mexico, Napoleon III expressed his ultimate hope that amicable dispositions would calm American animosity toward the French, a position that drew stern condemnation from Mexicans who supported the Maximilian regime.132 Changes of heart in Paris notwithstanding, northeast Mexico remained one of the most volatile and unpredictable areas along the border. “There is a state of anarchy and vandalism [along] the Rio Grande which has no parallel in the annals of this continent,” one Mexican newspaper correspondent

156

Chapter 5

reported early in 1866. “If hell had emptied its contents in the Rio Grande Valley, it could not produce a Gehenna as terrible as the one existing there now.”133 In February Tomás Mejía added to the unrest by implementing an exorbitant tariff on all foreign goods passing through Matamoros, reputedly as an indirect method for blocking supply shipments to Juarista forces.134 Angst over this latest fee adjustment would be short lived, however, because the last remnant of French power along the border dissolved after General Escobedo’s crushing defeat of imperial troops at the Battle of Santa Gertrudis southeast of Camargo on June 16, 1866. Eight days later, Mejía’s army fled down the coast to Tampico and Vera Cruz, never to return to Tamaulipas.135 With the imperialists vanquished, republican forces quickly reoccupied Tamaulipas, but another power struggle soon enveloped the region. In August 1866, the Juárez government accused José María de Jesús Carvajal of deliberately allowing the traitor Mejía—“the favorite General of the Emperor Maximilian”—to escape unpunished. Stripped of his commission and facing charges of treasonous wartime misconduct, Carvajal fled across the border into Texas.136 With the strongman exiled, Servando Canales held Matamoros, Mariano Escobedo occupied Monterrey, and Juan Cortina controlled all roads leading into the interior of Mexico. Each of these three men subsisted by preying on local commerce. Canales—who lasted just one day as the recognized governor of Tamaulipas—levied customs duties on goods entering Matamoros; Cortina charged tolls on shipments passing over the highways; and Escobedo assessed fees on merchandise filtering into Monterrey. This newest competition between regional stalwarts had little to do with French interventionists, who had already departed from Mexico’s frontier, but emanated instead from the inability of Juárez to rein in localized hegemons. According to U.S. diplomat Louis Avery, these headaches arose “from the personal ambition of a few leaders” who placed personal profit above “their own constitution, their treaty obligations, and the humiliating spectacle they present to the world.”137 Avery lamented that citizens of Tamaulipas “are beyond the reach of the general government and are at the mercy of any leader who can influence a few hundred men to do his bidding.”138 In September, a movement to overthrow Canales—who eyewitness Sóstenes Rocha dubbed “the most pernicious” of all the revolutionaries—failed after two days of intense fighting that claimed the lives of nearly one hundred men.139 A greater semblance of stability would come to Mexico in January 1867, when French forces finally began to withdraw from Mexico City. Within a matter of weeks, all imperial soldiers departed the capital, and Napoleon III

Shifting Tides of War and Diplomacy

157

abandoned Maximilian to his fate. Without military and financial support from France, the Mexican Empire crumbled. After four years on the run, Juárez reconsolidated political power over the country. His allies included California Yankees who formed the “American Legion of Honor” under the auspices of secret agents Plácido Vega and Gaspar Sánchez Ochoa, fighting as soldiers of fortune with Mexico’s republican army and capturing the deposed emperor during a seventy-day siege at Querétaro.140 British and French dignitaries implored American officials to somehow save Maximilian’s life, but very little thought or energy was expended toward that end. A remorseless Seward commented publicly that no “European power will attempt either invasion or intervention hereafter in Mexico or in any other nation on the American continent.”141 Many U.S. citizens saw karma in the emperor’s violent demise because of a controversial order he issued two years earlier—the “Black Flag Decree”—mandating death penalties for any Mexicans caught resisting the government.142 In his last words, the doomed monarch admitted the folly of his attempt to implant “new political institutions” in Mexico.143 The era of imperial rule ended with Maximilian’s execution on June 19, 1867, and three weeks later Vidaurri and Mejía met the same fate. Samuel Basch, the doctor who autopsied Maximilian’s corpse, found six bullet holes—one passing directly through the heart and another severing the aorta—and concluded that “the emperor’s death struggle must have been extremely short.”144 Half a dozen shots from a firing squad flatlined the French Intervention and ushered in a new era for Mexico. The French crisis in Mexico coincided with the calamity of the Civil War, and in some ways the two events were mutually reinforcing, because the breakup of the United States and the sudden realization after the First Battle of Bull Run that Americans were in for a long and difficult struggle encouraged foreign meddling in the Western Hemisphere.145 In the 1860s, the number of state-level actors in the borderlands of South Texas and Northeast Mexico increased to include Mexicans, Frenchmen, Unionists, and Confederates. Stirred into this volatile mix were several autonomous bands of Mexican revolutionaries and bandits, whose raiding zones replaced those of Comanches, Kiowas, and Lipan Apaches a generation earlier, adding to the confusion along an international border that many individuals refused to recognize or respect. The constitutional government’s victory over the Maximilian Empire brought closure to three major dichotomies—republicanism versus monarchy, federalism versus centralism, and secularism versus ecclesiasticism—and leaders in Mexico City hoped that the elimination of French imperialists, coupled with a crackdown on the activities of stateless rogues in

158

Chapter 5

the far north, would mark a turning point in their nation’s history of political instability.146 Thousands of miles away, U.S. officials set similar sights for an ambitious new democratic trajectory, amending the federal Constitution to abolish slavery, grant birthright citizenship, and expand voting rights to African American men.147 Despite profound Southern resistance to emancipation and racial integration, the United States government consolidated political power within its own national boundaries through Reconstruction policy and then projected its rising influence over Latin America and the Pacific World via dramatic enlargements of original Reconstruction initiatives. The epoch of irregular diplomacy and territorial ambition that defined the first half-century of relations between the United States and Mexico finally waned. In its place arose a Greater Reconstruction in which American politicians and their capitalist friends would attempt to exercise cultural, economic, and military dominance over the western frontier and the international borderlands.

Conclusion

Some Mexicans hailed William Henry Seward as a hero for his role in helping to thwart French imperialism. When his tenure at the State Department ended in 1869, Seward accepted an invitation to visit Mexico City as a special guest of Benito Juárez, who hosted a lavish banquet at the National Palace to honor the secretary.1 That same year, a Presbyterian minister from New England named Gorham Abbot published a lengthy study of Mexico in which he boldly predicted that the country “will enter, with the United States, on a new career of freedom and prosperity.”2 But the good feelings and high hopes emanating from recent triumphs proved misleading, because Seward and Juárez still lived in two very different countries. By the time the United States celebrated its national centennial in 1876, Mexico was experiencing yet another coup d’état. Political upheavals were nothing new in that country, but unlike dozens of revolutions before it, this particular incident produced lasting results. As a former general in Juárez’s republican army who served loyally against the French in the 1860s, Porfirio Díaz rose to power in November 1876 and stayed there for almost thirty-five years. Along with a cadre of so-called científicos, or technocratic advisers, he presided over the Mexican government with minimal opposition, in part because of close connections to American capitalists who abetted his rise to power as one small part of Greater Reconstruction. This long period of rule by a single party marked a transformative shift from pre-Maximilian times, when federalists and centralists vied for supremacy and the country averaged a new president every five months. Known as the Porfiriato, the new era ushered in dramatic changes throughout Mexico, and the administration’s permanence helped to stabilize diplomatic relations with the United States and other foreign nations.3 But as historian Steven Hahn points out, “Mexican eyes see more of a continuity of American imperial aggression throughout the nineteenth century,” and indeed the outcome of the Civil War would resonate in Mexico for years to come as empowered American capitalists

160

Conclusion

achieved economic and political ascendancy throughout the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific World.4 Officially dubbed the Plan de Tuxtepec, the revolutionary movement that overthrew Sebastían Lerdo de Tejada and catapulted Díaz to the presidency originated in the chronically chaotic U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Operating from the safe haven of Brownsville, the former Mexican general enlisted support from powerful American businessmen like James Stillman (president of National City Bank, precursor of today’s Citibank) and cattle barons Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy, all of whom accumulated vast fortunes by facilitating transborder commerce during the Civil War. As some of the wealthiest financiers and largest landholders in Texas, these three men had strong interests in border security—bandit groups like the Cortinistas continued to plague the Nueces Strip into the 1870s—and to that end they threw the weight of their bank accounts behind Díaz, who promised to protect regional business interests. Brownsville’s coterie of merchants helped to finance and supply the revolution, providing Díaz and his followers with thousands of rifles and millions of cartridges, along with thousands of dollars in cash subsidies.5 Americans had adopted a new technique for influencing the economic and political affairs of their southern neighbor. Rather than seizing territory through irregular acts of diplomacy, military invasions, or filibuster campaigns, capitalists and congressmen now left Mexico’s national boundaries intact but controlled much of the country’s economy by implanting and sustaining rulers amenable to commercial relationships that enriched outsiders. Because Díaz owed his political standing to the support of Gilded Age businessmen and their political friends in Washington, D.C., there was no longer much need for secretive diplomacy with regional leaders along the border. By the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States had half of its foreign investments in Mexico, with the highest percentage of those holdings scattered throughout the northern border states. More than 1,100 American companies, along with forty thousand private U.S. citizens, had investments in Mexico totaling $511 million in value, 70 percent of which involved railroad speculation. At the height of the Porfiriato, foreigners collectively owned 120 million acres of Mexican land and controlled more than 90 percent of the nation’s commercial agriculture output. By 1910—the last year that Díaz ruled—57 percent of Mexico’s imports came from the United States. This in turn provided a market for 76 percent of Mexican exports, nearly all of which traveled via American-owned railways whose four trunk lines crossed the border at Nogales, El Paso, Eagle Pass, and Laredo.6

Conclusion

161

The U.S.-Mexico border became a backdrop for illicit activity long before Díaz rose to power in 1876, and remains so more than one hundred years after Don Perpetuo’s regime crumbled. For much of the nineteenth century, a multidirectional system of transnational human trafficking proliferated through a captive trade wherein thousands of women and children were abducted from their families in Mexico and incorporated into Southwestern Indian tribes as fictive kin. Mexicans reciprocated by enslaving captured Indians and implementing state-sponsored cash bounty systems to incentivize the killing and scalping of indigenous enemies.7 In the twenty-first century, similar types of movement continue through undocumented immigration and sex trafficking, and governments have frequently militarized the border in an attempt to curb such practices. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, as part of the Greater Reconstruction goal to control the borderlands and its diverse peoples, U.S. troops manned dozens of forts and camps along the international line, from Fort Brown in southeast Texas to Fort Yuma in southwest Arizona. In 1924 the U.S. Border Patrol began monitoring the region on horseback and eventually established highway checkpoints all along the extensive boundary.8 Federal programs like Operation Gatekeeper, first implemented in 1994, have bolstered the modern Border Patrol’s power in an attempt to deter undocumented immigration by saturating the line with manpower and surveillance technology.9 On occasions when federal law enforcement officers seem insufficient for the task, National Guard units are dispatched to the border; in April 2018, Governors Doug Ducey of Arizona and Greg Abbott of Texas each sent out several hundred Guardsmen in their respective states.10 Yet even these extreme tactics usually fail to secure the border, prompting armed civilian “Minutemen” to take matters into their own hands by watching over some of the most remote areas in attempts to interdict traffickers and stifle migration.11 Smuggling is another carryover from the Civil War–era borderlands. In the mid-nineteenth century, bandits plied both sides of the Rio Grande in search of plunder, rustling livestock from ranches and stealing merchandise from caravans on the wagon roads of South Texas. The Civil War and its attendant demand for supplies gave rise to an unlawful arms trade wherein Confederates imported war matériel through Mexico as a means of circumventing the U.S. naval blockade. At the same time, Juaristas tried to sustain their fight against French imperialists by purchasing rifles and ammunition in the United States and shipping them to the battlefields of Mexico, in direct defiance of President Lincoln’s wartime prohibition of munitions exports.

162

Conclusion

Postbellum congressional investigations of the zona libre, or free trade zone, along the eastern stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border resulted in a special report declaring that “it is simply an impossibility to prevent smuggling on such a line as that formed by the Rio Grande.” One Texas merchant who participated in the international arms trade during the Civil War told his interviewers that more smuggling occurred in the lower Rio Grande Valley than anywhere else in the United States. The long-term effect of the zona libre, according to federal detectives, was to corrupt American businessmen while lining the pockets of Mexican opportunists. “Honest merchants, unable to compete with the smugglers, have been compelled to abandon the country or to engage in the illicit trade themselves,” they concluded, “and the whole country on both sides of the river has become so thoroughly demoralized that smuggling is generally considered a legitimate and honorable business.”12 Decades later little had changed. In the revolutionary turmoil that ousted Díaz, Mexican insurgents like Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata supplied their armies with American-made guns and ammunition, once more transforming border towns like El Paso, Laredo, and Brownsville into epicenters of illegal arms trading.13 More recently, the focus of smuggling has shifted to drugs and undocumented immigrants. Perhaps the most significant difference between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries is not the nature or the scope of smuggling but rather the mechanisms used to combat it. During the Civil War era, private citizens, local politicians, army officers, and foreign diplomats often acted independently and spontaneously in response to events in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Today, the federal government has formalized its approaches to border security through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Migración also works to manage immigration. The most earnest efforts of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City notwithstanding, these borderlands remain just that: a place where state power is blurred by the physical realities of a border line spanning nearly two thousand rugged miles from east to west. Borderlands diplomacy, in all of its peculiar permutations, continues to be a vexing issue. The Civil War Era represented a high-water mark of irregular diplomatic interaction between the United States and Mexico, largely because of the simultaneous participation of Unionists, Confederates, Mexicans, Europeans, Indians, and bandits. Even after the Civil War and the French Intervention subsided, the relationship between the United States and

Conclusion

163

Mexico remained politically and economically uneven, although some cooperative diplomatic inroads did occur. In 1882, after years of failed negotiations at the local and national levels, the Mexican government abetted one of Greater Reconstruction’s longest-lasting borderlands initiatives by allowing U.S. troops to enter the country in pursuit of Chiricahua Apaches.14 General George Crook led a cavalry campaign into the craggy Sierra Madre of northwest Mexico—precisely the type of operation that James H. Carleton and John R. Baylor wanted to pursue during the Civil War—and three years later Geronimo and his followers surrendered, bringing an end to the decadeslong Apache Wars in September 1886. This newfound spirit of mutualism between the two national governments owed in part to the fact that Mexican leaders no longer harbored fears of U.S. territorial expansion, and their close economic ties to American corporations also influenced the decision to sign such an agreement.15 The heavily factionalized Mexican Revolution that erupted in 1910 and claimed the lives of an estimated two million people over the next decade complicated diplomatic relations once more.16 Following the example of Lincoln, Seward, and Grant—who sought to sustain American empire in the Far Southwest by recognizing Juárez as the legitimate president of Mexico and supporting his fight against European imperialists—Woodrow Wilson’s administration unofficially sided with the constitutionalist leader Venustiano Carranza in 1914. At Wilson’s behest, the U.S. Navy occupied the port at Vera Cruz, drove back the forces of Victoriano Huerta, and facilitated arms exports to aid the Carrancistas.17 The president’s de facto recognition of Carranza irked competing revolutionaries like Pancho Villa, who retaliated for the perceived sleight by attacking the small border town of Columbus, New Mexico, in the early morning hours of March 9, 1916.18 Villistas killed eight U.S. soldiers and fifteen civilians during the raid on American soil, prompting a massive military buildup along the entire border and leading to General John J. Pershing’s year-long “Punitive Expedition” into Mexico. Carranza consolidated power through the Constitution of 1917, Villa was killed during an ambush in Chihuahua on July 20, 1923, and Mexico settled into a greater semblance of peace and stability as counterrevolutionary measures subsided in the late 1920s.19 U.S. foreign policy toward Mexico remained fluid as the twentieth century wore on. Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted the Good Neighbor Policy during the Great Depression, and increased demand for labor during World War II ushered in the Bracero guest-worker program from 1942–64, with one notable reverberation to restrictive immigration during the ill-named

164

Conclusion

Operation Wetback in 1954.20 In the 1990s, as populations boomed in border cities and maquiladora plants expanded in size and output, the growing economic interdependency between Mexico and the United States in an increasingly globalized world seemed irreversible. In some ways resembling the zona libre of the nineteenth century, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect on January 2, 1994, to “strengthen the special bonds of friendship and cooperation” between the United States, Mexico, and Canada, but in December 2018 President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the pact, and on January 29, 2020, he fulfilled that promise by signing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).21 It would be an understatement to say that relations between the United States and Mexico have always been complicated. But that fraught relationship has undergone considerable diplomatic normalization since the Civil War Era, when independent-minded operatives from several nations, states, cities, factions, and tribes vied for control in a multidimensional borderland that invited fierce competition for political power and economic resources. At no time before or since the 1860s has the diplomatic situation in the U.S.Mexico borderlands been more complicated from the standpoint of the national and independent actors involved. For a brief period from 1861 to 1867, the fates of Southern secessionists, Northern unionists, Mexican republicans, and French imperialists hinged in part on the outcome of surreptitious acts of abnormal diplomacy and intrigue in a remote area where no single entity could claim control. Representatives from all four groups recognized the region’s importance to their campaigns, and to that end they expended considerable effort toward operations along the border as a strategy for realizing their grandiose illusions of empire. When Jefferson Davis, Robert Toombs, Henry Hopkins Sibley, and Hamilton Bee dreamed of alliances with Mexican governors during the Civil War, they did so with the conviction that success in that arena would meaningfully contribute to the movement for Confederate independence and a slave empire extending into Latin America and the Pacific World. As Abraham Lincoln, William Seward, James Carleton, and George Wright contemplated schemes to preempt Rebel intrigue south of the border and curtail Apache raiding north of it, they did so with an awareness that Mexican leaders could undermine Union war efforts against Confederates and Indians. Benito Juárez, Matías Romero, Ignacio Pesqueíra, and Luis Terrazas fought to save the Mexican Republic in the face of an imperial onslaught from across the

Conclusion

165

Atlantic, and in so doing they repeatedly acknowledged the importance of American assistance not only by soliciting aid from the U.S. government but also by rebuffing the diplomatic overtures of Southern operatives like William Gwin, John Pickett, and William Preston. Napoleon III, Maximilian I, Marshal Bazaine, and Marquis de Montholon installed a monarchy in Mexico but realized that the permanency of that endeavor depended largely on the outcome of the Civil War, because a divided America could not effectively intervene in the French enterprise. Regional strongmen like Santiago Vidaurri, Patricio Milmo, Albino López, and Juan Cortina, as well as indigenous figureheads like Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Victorio acted on their own impulses to take advantage of multifarious power struggles, further complicating the nature of warfare along the border. The intense competition for political, economic, and military primacy that arose in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands during the 1860s, and the amount of intellectual energy that rival entities expended while trying to outfox one another through furtive acts of diplomacy and intrigue, reaffirmed the region’s prominent place in the broader strategies for winning the Civil War, defeating the French Intervention, and instituting Greater Reconstruction. In a larger sense, it also reveals many of the mechanisms whereby governments, factions, and individuals attempt to capitalize on the porosity of borderlands, and it informs our understanding of modern issues involving an international border line that remains a frustrating enigma for Americans and Mexicans still seeking in vain to assert absolute power over it.

NOTES

The following abbreviations appear in the notes: OR

ORN

Reg. Deb.

The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1, 2, and 4. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1882–1900. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies. Series 2. Vol. 3. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1922. Register of Debates in Congress. Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1824–37.

Introduction 1. Don H. Doyle, The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 54–82. 2. William H. Seward to Thomas Corwin, March 30, April 6, and May 7, 1861, all in NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, M77, Roll 113 (Mexico, Vol. 17, 1854–1867); “C. M. Clay and Thomas Corwin,” New-York Daily Tribune, March 13, 1861; “Mr. Corwin’s Nomination,” ibid. 3. James Morton Callahan, American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relations (New York: Cooper Square, 1967), 280–83; Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 47–57; Jay Monaghan, Diplomat in Carpet Slippers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1972), 64–66; Jasper Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez (London: Constable, 1993), 112; Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999), 110–21; Peter Guardino, The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 205–6. On Corwin’s speech, see John T. Pickett to Robert Toombs, June 15, 1861, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 4. 4. Patrick J. Kelly, “The Cat’s-Paw: Confederate Ambitions in Latin America,” in Don H. Doyle, ed., American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 58–77. 5. Toombs to Pickett, May 17, 1861, in James D. Richardson, ed., The Messages and Papers of Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy, Including Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861–1865 (New York: Chelsea House–Robert Hector, 1966), 2:20–24; John Forsyth to Davis, March 20, 1861, in Lynda Lasswell Crist, ed., The Papers of Jefferson Davis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,

168

Notes to Pages 2–4

1992), 7:74–76; Davis to Benito Juárez, May 17, 1861, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 4. See also Mary Wilhelmine Williams, ed., “Letter from Colonel John T. Pickett, of the Southern Confederacy, to Señor Don Manuel de Zamacona, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review 2, no. 4 (November 1919): 612–17; Pickett to Toombs, June 15, 1861, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 4. On Toombs’s comparison between slavery and peonage, see William M. Burwell to Toombs, March 14, 1861, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 4; Pickett to Toombs, August 16, 1861, ibid., Reel 5. 6. Pickett to John Forsyth, March 13, 1861, ibid., Reel 4. 7. Quotation in Pickett to Corwin, December 16, 1861, ibid., Reel 5. On Pickett’s activities in Mexico City, see Corwin to Manuel María de Zamacona, November 10, 1861, and Zamacona to Corwin, November 12, 1861, both in NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 29; Pickett to Zamacona, November 1, 1861, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 5; Pickett to Toombs, November 29, 1861, ibid., Reel 4; Pickett to William M. Browne, December 31, 1861, ibid., Reel 5; Pickett to Davis, January 11, 1864, ibid., Reel 5; “Col. J. T. Pickett,” Mexican Extraordinary (Mexico City), November 28, 1861. See also Darryl E. Brock, “José Agustín Quintero: Cuban Patriot in Confederate Diplomatic Service,” in Phillip Thomas Tucker, ed., Cubans in the Confederacy: José Agustín Quintero, Ambrosio José Gonzales, and Loreta Janeta Velazquez (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002), 45–47. 8. Pickett to Toombs, October 12, 1861, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 5; Pickett to Browne, December 31, 1861, ibid. On Pickett’s disguised correspondence, see Pickett to Browne, September 6, 1861, ibid., Reel 4; Pickett to Toombs, July 28, 1861, ibid., Reel 5. 9. Pickett to Toombs, August 1, 1861, ibid.; Pickett to Zamacona, August 3, 1861, ibid.; Zamacona to Toombs, August 16, 1861, ibid.; Pickett to Toombs, September 28, 1861, ibid.; Williams, ed., “Letter from Colonel John T. Pickett,” Hispanic American Historical Review 2, no. 4 (November 1919): 614. See also Kelly, “The Cat’s-Paw,” 59–60, 65–69. 10. Zamacona to Juan Antonio de la Fuente, September 29, 1861, in Jorge L. Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez: Documentos, Discursos y Correspondencia (Mexico City: Editorial Libros de México, 1973), 5:102; Zamacona to Pickett, November 6, 1861, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 5; Pickett to Browne, December 31, 1861, ibid. On Pickett’s departure, see Pickett to Toombs, February 4, 1862, ibid. 11. Pickett to Davis, February 22, 1862, ibid. On Pickett’s mission, see Doyle, Cause of All Nations, 120–22. 12. Nathan J. Citino, “The Global Frontier: Comparative History and the FrontierBorderlands Approach in American Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History 25, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 677–93, quotation on 688. 13. On nineteenth-century U.S.-Mexico diplomacy, see William R. Manning, Early Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Mexico (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1916); J. Fred Rippy, The United States and Mexico (New York: F. S. Crofts, 1931); Burton J. Hendrick, Statesmen of the Lost Cause: Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet (Boston: Little, Brown,

Notes to Pages 4–6

169

1939), 107–38; Martin Hardwick Hall, “Colonel James Reily’s Diplomatic Missions to Chihuahua and Sonora,” New Mexico Historical Review 31 (July 1956): 232–45; Callahan, American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relations; Thomas Schoonover, “Confederate Diplomacy and the TexasMexican Border, 1861–1865,” East Texas Historical Journal 11, no. 1 (1973): 33–39; Karl M. Schmitt, Mexico and the United States, 1821–1973: Conflict and Coexistence (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974), 73–90; Gene M. Brack, Mexico Views Manifest Destiny: An Essay on the Origins of the Mexican War (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1975); Thomas David Schoonover, Dollars over Dominion: The Triumph of Liberalism in Mexican–United States Relations, 1861–1867 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978); Harry Thayer Mahoney and Marjorie Locke Mahoney, Mexico and the Confederacy: 1860–1867 (San Francisco: Austin and Winfield, 1998); Josefina Zoraida Vázquez and Lorenzo Meyer, México frente a Estados Unidos: Un ensayo histórico, 1776–2000 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006); Juan Pablo Ortiz Dávila, “Visiones desde la prensa: Las relaciones entre los conservadores y los confederados durante el Segundo Imperio, 1863–1866,” Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México 52 (2016): 18–38. 14. On the borderlands methodology, see Michiel Baud and Willem Van Schendel, “Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands,” Journal of World History 8, no. 2 (Fall 1997): 211–42; Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, NationStates, and the Peoples in Between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (June 1999): 814–41; Pekka Hämäläinen and Samuel Truett, “On Borderlands,” Journal of American History 98, 2 (September 2011): 338–61; Brian DeLay, ed., North American Borderlands (New York: Routledge, 2013), 1–5. On border lines, see Alice L. Baumgartner, “The Line of Positive Safety: Borders and Boundaries in the Rio Grande Valley, 1848–1880,” Journal of American History 101, no. 4 (March 2015): 1107. On transnationalism, see David Thelen, “Rethinking History and the Nation-State: Mexico and the United States,” Journal of American History 86, no. 2 (September 1999): 438–52. 15. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Jane T. Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 16. On Mexican regionalism, see Ronnie C. Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1973), 13–40; Arturo Gálvez Medrano, Regionalismo y Gobierno General: El Caso de Nuevo León y Coahuila, 1855–1864 (Monterrey: Gobierno del Estado, 1993). On Mexican centralism, see William Fowler and Humberto Morales Moreno, eds., El Conservadurismo Mexicano en el Siglo XIX (1810–1910) (Puebla: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 1999), 11–21; Andrés Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 146–70, 173–96. 17. Coleman Hutchison, ed., A History of American Civil War Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), i; Carolyn Kellogg, “For President’s Day, a Tower of Lincoln Books,” Los Angeles Times, February 20, 2012. 18. On the Civil War in the Far Southwest, see Ray C. Colton, The Civil War in the Western Territories: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959); Martin Hardwick Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign (Austin: University of Texas Press,

170

Notes to Page 6

1960); Jerry D. Thompson, Colonel John Robert Baylor: Texas Indian Fighter and Confederate Soldier (Hillsboro, TX: Hill Junior College Press, 1971); Martin Hardwick Hall, The Confederate Army of New Mexico (Austin, TX: Presidial, 1978); Jerry D. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley: Confederate General of the West (Natchitoches, LA: Northwestern State University Press, 1987); Alvin M. Josephy Jr., The Civil War in the American West (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991); John Taylor, Bloody Valverde: A Civil War Battle on the Rio Grande, February 21, 1862 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995); L. Boyd Finch, Confederate Pathway to the Pacific: Major Sherod Hunter and Arizona Territory, C.S.A. (Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1996); Don E. Alberts, The Battle of Glorieta: Union Victory in the West (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998); Thomas S. Edrington and John Taylor, The Battle of Glorieta Pass: A Gettysburg in the West, March 26–28, 1862 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998); Donald S. Frazier, Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995) ; Jerry D. Thompson, A Civil War History of the New Mexico Volunteers and Militia (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015); Andrew E. Masich, Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861–1867 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017); Megan Kate Nelson, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (New York: Scribner, 2020). 19. For Civil War diplomacy, see James Morton Callahan, The Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1901); Frank Lawrence Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931); Robin W. Winks, Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960); Henry Blumenthal, “Confederate Diplomacy: Popular Notions and International Realities,” Journal of Southern History 32, no. 2 (May 1966): 151–71; Lynn M. Case and Warren F. Spencer, The U.S. and France: Civil War Diplomacy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970); D. P. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974); D. P. Crook, Diplomacy During the American Civil War (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1975); Norman B. Ferris, Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward’s Foreign Policy, 1861 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976); Howard Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999); Mahin, One War at a Time; Charles M. Hubbard, The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000); Gerardo Gurza Lavalle, Una vecindad efímera: Los Estados Confederados de América y su política exterior hacia México (Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 2001); Edwin De Leon, Secret History of Confederate Diplomacy Abroad, ed. William C. Davis (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005); Phillip E. Myers, Caution and Cooperation: The American Civil War in British-American Relations (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2008); Howard Jones, Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Michael Hogan, Abraham Lincoln and Mexico: A History of Courage, Intrigue and Unlikely Friendships (San Diego: EgretBooks, 2016); Stéve Sainlaude, France and the American Civil War: A Diplomatic History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019). 20. For examples of the transnational turn, see David T. Gleeson and Simon Lewis, eds., The Civil War as Global Conflict: Transnational Meanings of the American Civil War (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014); Doyle, Cause of All Nations; Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur, eds., The World the Civil War Made (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Notes to Pages 6–10

171

Press, 2015); Don H. Doyle, ed., American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017). On the French Intervention, see Egon Caesar, Maximilian and Charlotte of Mexico, trans. Catherine Alison Phillips (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1928); José Luis Blasio, Maximilian Emperor of Mexico: Memoirs of His Private Secretary (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1934); Jack A. Dabbs, The French Army in Mexico, 1861–1867 (The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton, 1963); Wilfrid Hardy Callcott, Liberalism in Mexico, 1857–1929 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1965), 43–76; Ernesto de la Torre Villar, ed., La Intervención francesa y el triunfo de la República (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1968); Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico; Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 333–43; Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez; Gastón García Cantú, La intervención francesa en México (Mexico City: Clio, 1998); José Manuel Villalpando César, Maximiliano (Mexico City: Clío, 1999); Michele Cunningham, Mexico and the Foreign Policy of Napoleon III (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Konrad Ratz and Amparo Gómez Tepexicuapan, Los viajes de Maximiliano en México (1864–1867) (Mexico City: Dirección General de Publicaciones, 2012); M. M. McAllen, Maximilian and Carlota: Europe’s Last Empire in Mexico (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2014); Stéve Sainlaude, “France’s Grand Design and the Confederacy,” in Doyle, ed., American Civil Wars, 107–20. 21. Brian DeLay, “Indian Polities, Empire, and the History of American Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History 39, no. 5 (November 2015): 927–42. 22. Elliott West, “Reconstructing Race,” Western Historical Quarterly 34, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 6–26, quotation on 20. For the classic account of Reconstruction, see Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988). On the “Greater Reconstruction,” see Richard White, The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 103–35. 23. Pekka Hämäläinen, “Reconstructing the Great Plains: The Long Struggle for Sovereignty and Dominance in the Heart of the Continent,” Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 4 (December 2016): 481–509, quotation on 481. 24. Steven Hahn, A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830–1910 (New York: Penguin, 2016), 1–8, quotation on 4. 25. Steven Hahn, “The Widest Implications of Disorienting the Civil War Era,” in Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States, ed. Adam Arenson and Andrew R. Graybill (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 265–74.

Chapter 1 1. Jack Jackson, ed. Texas by Terán: The Diary Kept by General Manuel de Mier y Terán on his 1828 Inspection of Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 1–5. See also José María Sánchez, “A Trip to Texas in 1828,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 29, no. 4 (April 1926): 249– 88; Ohland Morton, Terán and Texas: A Chapter in Texas-Mexican Relations (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1948); Gary Clayton Anderson, The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820–1875 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 70–72. 2. Jackson, ed., Texas by Terán, 178. 3. Jean Louis Berlandier, Journey to Mexico During the years 1826 to 1834, trans. Sheila M. Ohlendorf, Josette M. Bigelow, and Mary M. Standifer, 2 vols. (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1980), 2:297.

172

Notes to Pages 10–12

4. José María Sánchez quoted in Christopher Conway, ed., The U.S.-Mexican War: A Binational Reader, trans. Gustavo Pellón (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2010), 10. 5. Lucas Alamán al Congreso de la Unión, March 9, 1830, in Carlos Bosch García, ed., Documentos de la relación de México con los Estados Unidos, 4 vols. (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1983), 2:204. 6. Stanley C. Green, The Mexican Republic: The First Decade, 1823–1832 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987), 92. 7. Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 191–92. 8. 1822 Lipan Apache Treaty, Eberstadt Collection, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. See also Sherry Robinson, I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2013), 175–76. 9. Jaime E. Rodríguez O., ed., The Independence of Mexico and the Creation of the New Nation (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1989); Timothy E. Anna, The Mexican Empire of Iturbide (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990). On the 1824 constitution, see “Constitución Federal de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos,” October 4, 1824, in Miguel Angel Porrúa, ed., Documentos para la Historia del México Independiente, 1808–1938 (Mexico: Miguel Angel Porrúa, 2010), 436–65; Green, The Mexican Republic, 31–51. 10. Thomas D. Hall, Social Change in the Southwest, 1350–1880 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989), 197. 11. Donald Fithian Stevens, Origins of Instability in Early Republican Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 13–27. 12. Jaime E. Rodríguez O., “Mexico’s First Foreign Loans,” in Jaime E. Rodríguez O., ed., The Independence of Mexico and the Creation of the New Nation (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1989), 223, 226; Barbara A. Tenenbaum, The Politics of Penury: Debts and Taxes in Mexico, 1821–1856 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), 52. On Mexican debts, see Araceli Ibarra Bellon, El comercio y el poder en México, 1821–1864: La lucha por las fuentes financieras entre el Estado central y las regiones (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998), 83–164; “Mexico in 1852,” DeBow’s Review (New Orleans), October 1852, 352–53. 13. Waddy Thompson, Recollections of Mexico (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846), 191. 14. Rodríguez O., “Mexico’s First Foreign Loans,” in Rodríguez O., ed., The Independence of Mexico and the Creation of the New Nation, 216–17. 15. Joel R. Poinsett, “The Republic of Mexico,” DeBow’s Review (New Orleans), July 1846, 32. For a similar account, see Charles Lempriere, Notes in Mexico in 1861 and 1862: Politically and Socially Considered (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1862), 2–3. 16. Tenenbaum, Politics of Penury, 17–40; Rodríguez O., “Mexico’s First Foreign Loans,” in Rodríguez O., ed., The Independence of Mexico and the Creation of the New Nation, 235. On the Pastry War, see George Lockhart Rives, The United States and Mexico, 1821–1848: A History of the Relations Between the Two Countries from the Independence of Mexico to the Close of the War with the United States (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 1:436–450; Michael P. Costeloe, The Central Republic in Mexico, 1835–1846: Hombres de Bien in the Age of Santa Anna (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 144–46. 17. Stevens, Origins of Instability in Early Republican Mexico, 16, 26; Peter Guardino, The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 7–18.

Notes to Pages 13–14

173

18. See Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 1–15. 19. Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 20, 37–38; Hämäläinen, Comanche Empire, 193–96; Thomas W. Kavanagh, Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective, 1706–1875 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 198–201. 20. Matthew Babcock, Apache Adaptation to Hispanic Rule (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 172–73, 189–205; Shelley Bowen Hatfield, Chasing Shadows: Indians Along the United States-Mexico Border, 1876–1911 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 12. 21. For an eyewitness account, see George F. Ruxton, Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1848), 156–59. For the 1837 attack, see Rex W. Strickland, “The Birth and Death of a Legend: The Johnson ‘Massacre’ of 1837,” Arizona and the West 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1976): 257–86. On Mexican scalp bounties, see Ralph Adam Smith, Borderlander: The Life of James Kirker, 1793–1852 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999). On genocidal massacre, see Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 10, 59; Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 13–16. 22. See William B. Griffen, Utmost Good Faith: Patterns of Apache-Mexican Hostilities in Northern Chihuahua Border Warfare, 1821–1848 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 43–111, 181–94; Victor Orozco, ed., Las Guerras indias en la historia de Chihuahua: Antología (Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua: Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, Instituto Chihuahuense de la Cultura, 1992), 237–39; Cynthia Radding, Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers in Northwestern Mexico, 1700–1850 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 293–98; Hämäläinen, Comanche Empire, 190–238; DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts, 109, 208–9; Jorge Chávez Chávez, “Los Apaches y la frontera norte de México, siglo XIX,” in Jorge Chávez Chávez, ed., Visiones históricas de la frontera (Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua: Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, 2010), 25–51; Lance R. Blyth, Chiricahua and Janos: Communities of Violence in the Southwestern Borderlands, 1680–1880 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 123–54. 23. David J. Weber, ed. and trans., Arms, Indians, and the Mismanagement of New Mexico: Donaciano Vigil, 1846 (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1986), 6–7, 18. See also Ward A. Minge, “Frontier Problems in New Mexico Preceding the Mexican War, 1840–1846” (PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 1965); Daniel Tyler, “Mexican Indian Policy in New Mexico,” New Mexico Historical Review 55, no. 2 (April 1980): 101–16. On disparities between central and northern Mexico, see Torcuato S. Di Tella, National Popular Politics in Early Independent Mexico, 1820– 1847 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 139. 24. DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts, 154–56, quotation on 154. On federalist factionalism, see Stevens, Origins of Instability in Early Republican Mexico, 28–45, 76–82, 110–12; David A. Brading, “Creole Nationalism and Mexican Liberalism,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 15 (August 1973): 139–90. 25. DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts, 74–75, 166; Anderson, The Conquest of Texas, 153–211. 26. Anthony Mora, Border Dilemmas: Racial and National Uncertainties in New Mexico, 1848–1912 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 43–60.

174

Notes to Pages 14–17

27. George Wilkins Kendall, Dispatches from the Mexican War, ed. Lawrence Delbert Cress (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 86. 28. “Report of the Commissioners,” October 27, 1827, in Kate L. Gregg, ed., The Road to Santa Fe: The Journal and Diaries of George Champlin Sibley and Others Pertaining to the Surveying and Marking of a Road from the Missouri Frontier to the Settlements of New Mexico, 1825– 1827 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1952), 204; “Internal Trade with Mexico,” Gales and Seaton’s Register of Debates in Congress, 18th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 26, 1825, p. 356. 29. “Internal Trade with Mexico,” Gales and Seaton’s Register of Debates in Congress, 18th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 25, 1825, pp. 359–61; Henry Pickering Walker, The Wagonmasters: High Plains Freighting from the Earliest Days of the Santa Fe Trail to 1880 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 19–22. 30. Henry Clay to Joel Poinsett, September 24, 1825, in American State Papers, Foreign Relations (Cornelius Wendell, 1859), 6:581–82; “Alphonso Wetmore’s Report,” October 11, 1831, in Message from the President of the United States, 22nd Cong., 1st Sess., Senate Doc. No. 90, 32. See also William R. Manning, Early Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Mexico (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1916), 166–89. 31. David J. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 147–57; William S. Kiser, Coast-to-Coast Empire: Manifest Destiny and the New Mexico Borderlands (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), 15–39. On corruption, see Thompson, Recollections of Mexico, 189–90. 32. Manning, Early Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Mexico, 190–204, 349–77; John M. Belohlavek, “Let the Eagle Soar!”: The Foreign Policy of Andrew Jackson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 20–21, 215–17. 33. “Guadalupe Victoria al cerrar las sesiones de las Cámaras,” May 23, 1829, in García, Documentos de la relación de México con los Estados Unidos, 1:403. 34. “Artículo firmado por ‘Un Mexicano,’” September 28, 1829, ibid., 1:434. See also José Fuentes Mares, Poinsett: Historia de una gran intriga (Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1964); Gene M. Brack, Mexico Views Manifest Destiny: An Essay on the Origins of the Mexican War (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1975), 15–16, 28–37. 35. Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 158–78. 36. Belohlavek, “Let the Eagle Soar!” 20–22, 218. See also David M. Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973), 39–40; Nettie Lee Benson, “Texas as Viewed from Mexico, 1820–1834,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 90, no. 3 (January 1987): 219–91; Douglas M. Astolfi, Foundations of Destiny: A Foreign Policy of the Jacksonians, 1824–1837 (New York: Garland, 1989), 143–80; Ana Rosa Suárez Arguello and Carlos Bosch García, eds., En el nombre del destino manifiesto: guía de ministros y ambajadores de Estados Unidos en México, 1825–1993 (Mexico: Instituto Mora, 1998), 15–22. 37. Miguel Soto, “Texas en la mira: Política y negocios al iniciarse la gestión de Anthony Butler,” in Ana Rosa Suárez Argüello and Marcela Terrazas Basante, eds., Política y Negocios: Ensayos sobre la relación entre México y Los Estados Unidos en el Siglo XIX (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1997), 19–56. 38. Lucas Alamán al Congreso de la Unión, March 9, 1830, “Minuta de su primera conversación con el señor Alamán sobre el tema de Texas,” July 2, 1832, and “Conferencia número dos entre Butler y Alamán sobre la cession de Texas,” July 10, 1832, all in García, Documentos de la relación de México con los Estados Unidos, 2:201, 290–93.

Notes to Pages 17–19

175

39. Andrew Jackson to Anthony Butler, October 10, 1829, in John Spencer Bassett, ed., The Correspondence of Andrew Jackson (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute, 1929), 4:79. 40. Hunter Miller, ed., Treaties and other International Acts of the United States of America, 8 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1933), 3:599–640. 41. Belohlavek, “Let the Eagle Soar!” 218–29, quotation on 227; Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800–1850 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 137–76. For Mexican perspectives, see Brack, Mexico Views Manifest Destiny, 57–71. 42. Hämäläinen, Comanche Empire, 193–94, 199–200. 43. Manuel Mier y Terán to Guadalupe Victoria, March 28, 1828, in Jackson, ed., Texas by Terán, 31–33; Lorenzo de Zavala, Viaje a los Estados Unidos del Norte América (Paris: Imprenta de Decourchant, 1834), 140–42. For the Imperial Colonization Law, see Stephen Fuller Austin, Translation of the Laws, Orders, and Contracts on Colonization, from January, 1821, up to This Time (San Felipe de Austin, TX: Goodwin B. Cotton, 1829), 41–48. On Texan independence, see Andreas V. Reichstein, Rise of the Lone Star: The Making of Texas, trans. Jeanne R. Willson (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1989), 61–147. 44. José C. Valadés, México, Santa Anna y la Guerra de Texas (Mexico: Editores Mexicanos Unidos, 1965); Andrés Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800–1850 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 146–70; Timothy J. Henderson, A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), 75–101. For the original text, see “The Declaration of Independence Made by the Delegates of the People of Texas,” March 2, 1836, in H. P. N. Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas, 1822–1897 (Austin, TX: Gammel, 1898), 1:1063–66. 45. “The Public and Secret Treaties of Velasco, May 14, 1836,” in Kenneth R. Stevens, ed., The Texas Legation Papers, 1836–1845 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2012), 40–44; Stevens, Origins of Instability in Early Republican Mexico, 2. See also Kenneth R. Stevens, “The Diplomacy of the Lone Star Republic, 1836–1845,” in Kenneth W. Howell and Charles Swanlund, eds., Single Star of the West: The Republic of Texas, 1836–1845 (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2017), 273–74. 46. José María Tornel y Mendívil, “Relations Between Texas the United States and the Mexican Republic,” in Carlos E. Castañeda, trans. and ed., The Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution (Dallas, TX: P. L. Turner, 1928), 370. See also Brack, Mexico Views Manifest Destiny, 74–85. 47. Antonio López de Santa Anna, “Manifesto which General Antonio López de Santa Anna Addresses to his Fellow-Citizens,” March 11, 1837, in Castañeda, trans. and ed., Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution, 5–6. 48. Hämäläinen, Comanche Empire, 224–28, 231; DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts, 115–18. 49. Hämäläinen, Comanche Empire, 214–15; “Treaty Between Texas and Lipan Indians,” January 8, 1838, in Dorman Winfrey and James M. Day, The Indian Papers of Texas and the Southwest, 1825–1916, 4 vols. (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1966) 1:30–32. 50. Stephen F. Austin to William H. Wharton, November 18, 1836, in Stevens, ed., Texas Legation Papers, 20, 24–25, 29; Wharton to Austin, December 2, 1836, ibid., 45. 51. Robert Anderson Irion to Memucan Hunt, December 31, 1837, ibid., 267. 52. J. M. Bocanegra to Daniel Webster, May 12, 1842, in Thompson, Recollections of Mexico, 285–86; Webster to Waddy Thompson, July 8, 1842, ibid., 293–303.

176

Notes to Pages 19–21

53. James Webb to Barnard E. Bee, February 20, 1839, in George P. Garrison, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the Republic of Texas (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1908), 2:432–37. 54. Stevens, “Diplomacy of the Lone Star Republic,” in Howell and Swanlund, eds., Single Star of the West, 285. 55. Hämäläinen, Comanche Empire, 215–19; DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts, 77–78. 56. David G. Burnet to James Treat, August 9, 1839 and Treat to Mirabeau B. Lamar, January 7, 1840, both in Garrison, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the Republic of Texas, 2:470–72, 527–29. On attempts to retake Texas, see Joseph Milton Nance, After San Jacinto: The Texas-Mexican Frontier, 1836–1841 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963), and Joseph Milton Nance, Attack and Counterattack: The Texas-Mexican Frontier, 1842 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964). 57. Richard Pakenham to Webb, June 10, 1841, in Garrison, ed., Diplomatic Correspondence of the Republic of Texas, 2:755–57; Sebastian Camacho to Unspecified Recipient, June 8, 1841, ibid., 757–58; Webb to Lamar, June 29, 1841, ibid., 760–66, emphasis in original. On the relationship between Mexico and Texas, see Richard Bruce Winders, Crisis in the Southwest: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle over Texas (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002), 30–68. 58. Stevens, “Diplomacy of the Lone Star Republic,” in Howell and Swanlund, eds., Single Star of the West, 294. On Texas annexation, see Brack, Mexico Views Manifest Destiny, 119–31; Thomas R. Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 10–54; Joel H. Silbey, Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 28–90; Henderson, A Glorious Defeat, 133–56; Torget, Seeds of Empire, 244–54. 59. Luis Cuevas, Reflexiones sobre la memoria del ministerio de relaciones en la parte relativa á Tejas (Mexico: Impreso en papel mexicano, en la calle de la Palma número 4, 1845), 3–8. 60. Juan N. Almonte to John C. Calhoun, March 6, 1845, and James Buchanan to Almonte, March 10, 1845, both in García, Documentos de la relación de México con los Estados Unidos, 4:452, 457. 61. James K. Polk Inaugural Address, March 4, 1845, in James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1897), 4:381; First Annual Message of James K. Polk, December 2, 1845, ibid., 387–89. 62. On the Mexican-American War, see John H. Schroeder, Mr. Polk’s War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846–1848 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973); Robert W. Johannsen, To The Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); John S. D. Eisenhower, So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (New York: Random House, 1989); Robert W. Merry, A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009); Amy S. Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico (New York: Knopf, 2012). For Mexican perspectives on the war, see Carlos María de Bustamante, El Nuevo Bernal Diaz del Castillo, o sea, História de la Invasión de los Anglo-Americanos en México (Mexico: Secretaria de Educación Pública, 1949); Jesús Márquez Velasco, La Guerra del ’47 y la opinion pública (Mexico: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1975); Gastón García Cantú, Las invasiones norteamericanas en México (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996); Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, ed., México al tiempo de su guerra con Estados Unidos, 1846–1848 (Mexico: Secretaría de Exteriores, 1997).

Notes to Pages 21–23

177

63. Third Annual Message of Polk, December 7, 1847, in Richardson, ed., Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 4:537–42. See also DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts, 249; Guardino, Dead March, 34–35. 64. J. R. Pacheco to Buchanan, August 20, 1847, Winfield Scott to Antonio López Santa Anna, August 21, 1847, and Secretario de la Guerra to Scott, August 21, 1847, all in García, Documentos de la relación de México con los Estados Unidos, 4:751–54. 65. Nicholas Trist to Buchanan, February 2, 1848, in García, Documentos de la relación de México con los Estados Unidos, 4:926; Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 16–28; Kendall, Dispatches from the Mexican War, 263. 66. Griswold del Castillo, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 30–55. For the treaty, see Miller, ed., Treaties and Other International Acts, 5:207–36. For Peña y Peña’s perspective on the treaty, see “Message of the Provisional President of the Republic, 1848” in Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 30th Cong., 2nd Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 50, 62–72. On political turmoil during the war, see Pedro Santoni, Mexicans at Arms: Puro Federalists and the Politics of War, 1845–1848 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1996), 129–230. 67. Polk to Senate of the United States, February 23, 1848, in The Treaty Between the United States and Mexico, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. No. 52, 3–4. 68. Polk to the Senate of the United States, July 6, 1848, in Richardson, ed., Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 4:587–88. 69. Manuel Crescencio Rejón, Observaciones de Disputado Saliente Manuel Crescencio Rejón, contra los Tratados de Paz firmados en la Ciudad de Guadalupe el 2 del próximo pasado febrero (Mexico: Imprenta de J. M. Lara, 1848), 33–36; Manuel Gómez Pedraza quoted in Conway, ed., The U.S.-Mexican War, 133–35. 70. J. Fred Rippy, “The Indians of the Southwest in the Diplomacy of the United States and Mexico, 1848–1853,” Hispanic American Historical Review 2, no. 3 (August 1919): 363–96; DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts, 145–47, 294–303; Hämäläinen, Comanche Empire, 232–35. 71. Luis de la Rosa to John M. Clayton, March 20, 1850, in Wild Indians on the Frontiers of Mexico, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 62, 2. 72. John Russell Bartlett, Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora and Chihuahua, 1850–1853. 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1856); José Salazar Ylarregui, Datos de los trabajos astronómicos y topográficos, dispuestos en forma de diario, practicados durante el año de 1849 y principios de 1850 por la Comisión de Límites Mexicana en la Línea que Divide esta Republica de la de los Estados Unidos (Mexico: Imprenta de Juan R. Navarro, 1850). For scholarly analyses, see Joseph Richard Werne, The Imaginary Line: A History of the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, 1848–1857 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2007); William S. Kiser, Turmoil on the Rio Grande: The Territorial History of the Mesilla Valley, 1846–1865 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011), 47–69; Rachel St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 12–38. 73. José M. Gonzales de la Vega to Webster, January 1852, in Message from the President of the United States Communicating . . . the Notes of Mr. Luis de la Rosa and Mr. J. M. Gonzales de la Vega, 32nd Cong., 1st Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. No. 120, 3. 74. Proclamation of William Carr Lane, March 13, 1853, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Consuls in Ciudad Juárez, 1850–1906, M184, Roll 1.

178

Notes to Pages 24–25

75. “Angel Trías to William Carr Lane, March 28, 1853,” Alcance al Centinela (Ciudad Chihuahua), March 29, 1853. See also “Agresión Americana en Chihuahua,” El Siglo Diez y Nueve (Mexico City), April 10, 1853; “Ministerio de Relaciones,” ibid., April 27, 1853; “Noticias Nacionales: La Cuestión de Mesilla en Chihuahua,” ibid., May 13, 1853; “La Cuestión de La Mesilla,” ibid., June 6, 1853. 76. J. Miguel Arroyo to Alfred B. Conkling, April 8, 1853, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from U.S. Ministers to Mexico, 1821–1906, M97, Roll 17. 77. D. R. Diffendorfer to William L. Marcy, March 23, 1853, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Consuls in Ciudad Juárez, 1850–1906, M184, Roll 1. 78. Kiser, Turmoil on the Rio Grande, 72–79; Werne, Imaginary Line, 159–63. 79. Conkling to Marcy, June 14, 1853, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from U.S. Ministers to Mexico, 1821–1906, M97, Roll 17. 80. Marcy to James Gadsden, July 15, 1853, in Miller, ed., Treaties and Other International Acts, 6:342–47. See also Paul N. Garber, The Gadsden Treaty (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1923), 11–63; Kiser, Turmoil on the Rio Grande, 71–96. 81. Gadsden to Jefferson Davis, July 19, 1854, in “Captured Correspondence: Letter from Gen. Gadsden of South Carolina to Jeff. Davis,” New York Times, October 10, 1863. 82. Manuel González Cosío to Valentín Gómez Farías, February 11, 1848, in Mercedes de Vega and María Cecilia Zuleta, eds., Testimonios de una Guerra: México, 1846–1848, 2 vols., (Mexico: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2001), 1:23. 83. For the Gadsden Treaty, see Miller, ed., Treaties and International Acts, 6:293–302. 84. Garber, Gadsden Treaty, 155; Tenenbaum, Politics of Penury, 133–35, 138–40. 85. Message of the President of the United States . . . Calling for Information Relating to the Boundary Line and the Payment of the $3,000,000 Under the Treaty with Mexico of June 30, 1853, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. No. 57. 86. See David C. Keehn, Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013). 87. On filibustering, see J. Fred Rippy, “Anglo American Filibusters and the Gadsden Treaty,” Hispanic American Historical Review 5, no. 2 (May 1922): 155–80; Rufus Kay Wyllys, The French in Sonora (1850–1854): The Story of French Adventurers from California into Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1932); Luis G. Zorrilla, Historia de las Relaciones entre México y Los Estados Unidos de America, 1800–1958 (Mexico: Editorial Porrua, 1965), 1:293–313; Robert E. May, The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973); Charles H. Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Leon C. Metz, Border: The U.S.-Mexico Line (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1989), 119–28; Lorena Careaga Viliesid, “Filibusteros, mercenarios, y voluntarios: Los soldados Norteamericanos en la Guerra de castas de Yucatán,” in Ana Rosa Suárez Argüello and Marcela Terrazas Basante, eds., Política y Negocios: Ensayos sobre la relación entre México y Los Estados Unidos en el Siglo XIX (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1997), 123–92; Robert E. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Joseph A. Stout Jr., Schemers and Dreamers: Filibustering in Mexico, 1848– 1921 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2002); Ana Lilia Nieto Camacho, Defensa y Política en la Frontera Norte de México, 1848–1856 (Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2012), 85–94; Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), 330–94.

Notes to Pages 25–28

179

88. On American exceptionalism, see Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 79–186, 208–48; Hietala, Manifest Design, 173–214. 89. George Fitzhugh, “Acquisition of Mexico—Filibustering,” DeBow’s Review (New Orleans), December 1858, 613–26, quotations on 613, 615–16, 619, 625–26. 90. Joseph E. Chance, José María de Jesús Carvajal: The Life and Times of a Mexican Revolutionary (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2006), 101–66. 91. Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny, 147–218; Stout, Schemers and Dreamers, 14–48. On Crabb’s expedition, see Stuart F. Voss, On the Periphery of Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Sonora and Sinaloa, 1810–1877 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982), 130–32, 138–41; St. John, Line in the Sand, 46–50; Andrew E. Masich, Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861–1867 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), 32–33. For firsthand accounts, see “Execution of Colonel Crabb,” in Message from the President of the United States, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 64; John C. Reid, Reid’s Tramp, or a Journal of the Incidents of Ten Months Travel Through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Sonora, and California (Austin, TX: Steck, 1935), 209–15. 92. Datos históricos sobre filibusteros de 1857, en Caborca (Caborca, Son.: Comité Organizador de las Fiestas del 6 de Abril, 1926), 10; “Filibusters,” La Voz de Sonora (Ures, Sonora), February 27, 1856. 93. Correspondence Between the late Secretary of War and General Wool, March 25, 1858, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 88, 27–62. 94. Seward to Matías Romero, April 3, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Notes to Foreign Legations in the United States from the Dept. of State, 1834–1906, M99, Roll 70 (Mexico, 1854–1873). See also Stout, Schemers and Dreamers, 19; C. Gilbert Storms, Reconnaissance in Sonora: Charles D. Poston’s 1854 Exploration of Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015), 41, 161n20. 95. On the War of the Reform, see Luis Alberto García, Guerra y Frontera: El Ejército del Norte entre 1855 y 1858 (Nuevo León: Archivo General del Estado, 2006), 55–95; Emilio Martínez Albesa, La Constitución de 1857: Catolicismo y Liberalismo en México (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 2007), 3:1777–1853; Artemio Benavides Hinojosa and Pedro Torres Estrada, La Constitución de 1857 y el Noreste Mexicano (Monterrey: Archivo General del Estado, 2007). 96. Jerry D. Thompson, Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007), 8–31. 97. Juan Nepomuceno Cortina to the Inhabitants of the State of Texas, September 30, 1859, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. 98. On the Cortina War, see Thompson, Cortina, 67–95; Jerry D. Thompson, ed., Juan Cortina and the Texas-Mexico Frontier, 1859–1877 (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1994); Jerry D. Thompson, ed., Fifty Miles and a Fight: Major Samuel Peter Heintzelman’s Journal of Texas and the Cortina War (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1998). 99. Richard Fitzpatrick to Lewis Cass, January 6, 1860, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. 100. On Benito Juárez, see Charles Allen Smart, Viva Juárez!: A Biography (New York: Lippincott, 1963); Ralph Roeder, Juárez and his Mexico: A Biographical History, 2 vols. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968); José Fuentes Mares, Juárez y la Intervención (Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1972); Armando Fuentes Aguirre Catón, Juárez y Maximiliano: La Roca y el Ensueño (Mexico:

180

Notes to Pages 28–30

Editorial Diana, 2006); Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, ed., Juárez: Historia y Mito (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2010). 101. Memoranda of Charles Lennox Wyke and Alphonse de Saligny, July 25, 1861, both in NA, RG59, U. S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823– 1906, M97, Roll 29; “Tratado de la Soledad y circular anexa,” February 1862, in Miguel Angel Porrúa, ed., Documentos para la Historia del México Independiente, 1808–1938 (Mexico: Miguel Angel Porrúa, 2010), 593–95. See also Robert Ryal Miller, Arms Across the Border: United States Aid to Juárez During the French Intervention in Mexico (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1973), 5–6. 102. Kathryn Abbey Hanna, “The Roles of the South in the French Intervention in Mexico,” Journal of Southern History 20, no. 1 (February 1954): 3; Howard Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 163–86. 103. Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 5–9, 58, 79–80; Stéve Sainlaude, “France’s Grand Design and the Confederacy,” in Don H. Doyle, ed., American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 107–13. See also Matías Romero, ed., Correspondencia de la Legacion Mexicana en Washington durante la intervencion extranjera, 1860–1868: Coleccion de documentos para formar la historia de la intervencion (Mexico: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1870), 2:7–8, 75, 119–22, 153, 286, 396, and 3:86, 123–24. 104. Jack A. Dabbs, “French Imperial Policy in Mexico,” in W. Dirk Raat, ed., Mexico: From Independence to Revolution, 1810–1910 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 178–85. 105. “Recapitulation: The Motives and Promise of the Intervention,” New York Times, January 3, 1862. 106. Seward to Thomas Corwin, April 6, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, M77, Roll 113 (Mexico, Vol. 17, 1854–1867). 107. Artemio Benavides Hinojosa, Santiago Vidaurri: Caudillo del noreste mexicano (1855– 1864) (Mexico: Tusquets Editores, 2012), 12. 108. Dr. A. Wislizenus, Memoir of a Tour to Northern Mexico, Connected with Col. Doniphan’s Expedition, in 1846 and 1847 (Washington, DC: Tippin and Streeper, 1848), 48, 83–84. 109. Ruxton, Adventures in Mexico, 106. Emphasis in original. 110. Gustavus Schmidt, “Mexico—Its Social and Political Condition,” DeBow’s Review (New Orleans), February 1846, 131. 111. Stevens, Origins of Instability in Early Republican Mexico, 5, 59–60, 120–26. One Mexico City newspaper counted seventy-four leadership changes up to 1861. See “The Government of Mexico,” Mexican Extraordinary (Mexico City), May 25, 1861. 112. DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts. 113. Zorrilla, Historia de las Relaciones entre México y Los Estados Unidos de America, 1:4. 114. Edmundo O’Gorman, Seis estudios históricos de tema mexicano (Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 1960), 133. 115. Bellon, El comercio y el poder en México, 452. 116. See Charles A. Hale, Mexican Liberalism in the Age of Mora, 1821–1853 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 1–7; Josefina Vázquez de Knauth, Mexicanos y norteamericanos

Notes to Pages 30–35

181

ante la Guerra del ’47 (Mexico: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1972), 11; Richard N. Sinkin, The Mexican Reform, 1855–1876: A Study in Liberal Nation-Building (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979); Miguel Angel Centeno, Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 60. On the 1857 Constitution, see Ricardo García Granados, La Constitución de 1857 y las leyes de reforma: estudio históricosociológico (Mexico: Tipografía Económica, 1906); Wilfrid Hardy Callcott, Liberalism in Mexico, 1857–1929 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1965), 1–13; Jan Bazant, “From Independence to the Liberal Republic, 1821–1857,” in Leslie Bethell, ed., Mexico Since Independence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 31–48. 117. Isidro Vizcaya Canales, Tierra de Guerra Viva: Invasión de los Indios Bárbaros al Noreste de México, 1821–1885 (Monterrey: Academia de Investigaciones, 2001), 383.

Chapter 2 1. For Sibley’s resignation, see Jerry D. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley: Confederate General of the West (Natchitoches, LA: Northwestern State University Press, 1987), 208–09. For his meeting with Davis, see Samuel Cooper to H. H. Sibley, July 8, 1861, in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (hereafter cited as OR) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1882), Series 1, Vol. 50 of 53, Part 1, 825–26; Donald S. Frazier, Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995), 46–50, 75; Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley, 216–19. For Sibley’s objectives, see T. T. Teel, “Sibley’s New Mexican Campaign—Its Objects and the Causes of its Failure,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (New York: Century, 1887), 2:700. On Confederate expansion, see J. Fred Rippy, The United States and Mexico (New York: F. S. Crofts, 1931), 230–51; Leon C. Metz, Border: The U.S.-Mexico Line (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1989), 136–44; Megan Kate Nelson, “Death in the Distance: Confederate Manifest Destiny and the Campaign for New Mexico, 1861–1862,” in Adam Arenson and Andrew R. Graybill, eds., Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 33–52. On Davis’s scheming, see Kevin Waite, “Jefferson Davis and Proslavery Visions of Empire in the Far West,” Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 4 (December 2016): 536–58; William S. Kiser, Coast-to-Coast Empire: Manifest Destiny and the New Mexico Borderlands (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), 148–49. 2. “Mexican Affairs,” New York Times, January 30, 1861. 3. For data on Comanche and Kiowa raiding, see Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 313–40, casualty figure on 318. 4. Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 292–320; Sherry Robinson, I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2013), 227, 239–50. On antebellum Indian policy in Texas, see Gary Clayton Anderson, The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820–1875 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 226–317. 5. On the Mescaleros, see William S. Kiser, Dragoons in Apacheland: Conquest and Resistance in Southern New Mexico, 1846–1861 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), 232–71. 6. Ralph A. Smith, “Scalp Hunting: A Mexican Experiment in Warfare,” Great Plains Journal 23 (1984), 73nn11–13. See also Miguel Tinker Salas, In the Shadow of the Eagles: Sonora and

182

Notes to Pages 35–37

the Transformation of the Border During the Porfiriato (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 63. On the Seris, see Cynthia Radding, Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers in Northwestern Mexico, 1700–1850 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 268–70, 283–88; C. Gilbert Storms, Reconnaissance in Sonora: Charles D. Poston’s 1854 Exploration of Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015), 59–60. 7. For the Chiricahua Apache population, see Edwin R. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas: Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 7. On the Western Apaches, see Keith Basso, ed., Western Apache Raiding and Warfare: From the Notes of Grenville Goodwin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1971), 12–24, population figure on 12. 8. William S. Kiser, “‘We Must Have Chihuahua and Sonora’: Civil War Diplomacy in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands,” Journal of the Civil War Era 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 196–222. 9. Thomas Corwin to William H. Seward, June 29, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 29 (emphasis in original); Corwin to Seward, July 29, 1861, ibid.; Corwin to Seward, May 30, 1862, ibid., Roll 30; Matías Romero to Manuel María de Zamacona, October 7, 1861, in Jorge L. Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez: Documentos, Discursos y Correspondencia (Mexico City: Editorial Libros de México, 1973), 5:116–18. 10. Zamacona to Juan Antonio de la Fuente, September 29, 1861, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 5:102. 11. Seward to Corwin, October 2, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S. Department of State, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, M77, Roll 113 (Mexico, Vol. 17, 1854–1867); Romero to Minister of Foreign Relations, December 3, 1861, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 5:319–20. On Corwin’s negotiations, see Frank Lawrence Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931), 109–19; Glyndon G. Van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 366; Ernest N. Paolino, The Foundations of the American Empire: William Henry Seward and U.S. Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973), 17–19; Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999), 111–13. 12. Norman B. Ferris, Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward’s Foreign Policy, 1861 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976), 155–57. 13. Seward to Corwin, August 24, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, M77, Roll 113 (Mexico, Vol. 17, 1854–1867); Zamacona to De la Fuente, October 29, 1861, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 5:152; Zamacona to Romero, October 29, 1861, ibid., 5:153. 14. Seward to Corwin, May 28, 1862, June 7, 1862, and June 24, 1862, all in NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, M77, Roll 113 (Mexico, Vol. 17, 1854–1867); De la Fuente to Romero, October 4, 1861, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 5:114–15; Romero to Manuel Doblado, April 13, 1862, ibid., 6:254; “The Mexican Question: Important Documents Transmitted to Congress from the State Department. The Offer of Pecuniary Assistance to Mexico,” New York Times, April 17, 1862. See also D. P. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974), 93–94. 15. Richard C. Drum to Albemarle Cady, June 28, 1861, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 1, 524; Cady to Don C. Buell, July 15, 1861, ibid., 536.

Notes to Pages 37–42

183

16. Gene C. Armistead and Robert D. Arconti, “An Arch Rebel Like Myself ”: Dan Showalter and the Civil War in California and Texas (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018), 3, 6, 86–109. 17. Seward to Corwin, June 3, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, M77, Roll 113 (Mexico, Vol. 17, 1854–1867). 18. Thomas Sprague to Seward, May 3, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 29. 19. Corwin to Seward, August 28, 1861, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 1, 626–27. 20. Zamacona to Romero July 29, 1861, in The Present Condition of Mexico, 37th Cong., 2nd Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 100, 54. 21. Harry Bernstein, Matias Romero: 1837–1898 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1973); Robert Ryal Miller, Arms Across the Border: United States Aid to Juárez During the French Intervention in Mexico (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1973), 8–16. 22. Romero to Mexican Minister of Exterior Relations, March 18, 1864, in Matías Romero, A Mexican View of America in the 1860s: A Foreign Diplomat Describes the Civil War and Reconstruction, ed. and trans. Thomas Schoonover (London: Associated University Presses, 1991), 159; “La Legacion Juarista en Washington,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), March 2, 1866. See also Thomas D. Schoonover, ed. and trans., Mexican Lobby: Matías Romero in Washington, 1861–1867 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1986), 2–27; Robert Ryal Miller, “Matias Romero: Mexican Minister to the United States During the Juarez-Maximilian Era,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 45, no. 2 (May 1965): 228–45. On federal policy, see Donald Stoker, The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 58, 310. 23. Matías Romero, Diario personal: 1855–1865, ed. Emma Cosío Villegas (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 1960), 400; Romero to Mexican Minister of Exterior Relations, July 5, 1861, March 21, 1862, and May 6, 1862, in Romero, Mexican View of America in the 1860s, 63, 108, 113; James Morton Callahan, American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relations (New York: Cooper Square, 1967), 279. For Mexican attitudes, see Josefina Zoraida Vázquez and Lorenzo Meyer, México frente a Estados Unidos: Un ensayo histórico, 1776–2000 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006), 85–88. 24. Martin Hardwick Hall, The Confederate Army of New Mexico (Austin, TX: Presidial, 1978), 23, 44. 25. Hall, Confederate Army of New Mexico, 51–53; Martin Hardwick Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1960), 35, 50; Frazier, Blood and Treasure, 78. Quotation in Francis Richard Lubbock, Six Decades in Texas, or, Memoirs of Francis Richard Lubbock, Governor of Texas in Wartime, 1861–63 (Austin, TX: Ben C. Jones, 1900), 407. On Reily’s activities, see Charles Swanlund, “Anson Jones: The Forgotten President of Texas,” in Kenneth W. Howell and Charles Swanlund, eds., Single Star of the West: The Republic of Texas, 1836–1845 (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2017), 253–54. 26. William S. Kiser, Turmoil on the Rio Grande: The Territorial History of the Mesilla Valley, 1846–1865 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011), 156–88. 27. Proclamation of Henry H. Sibley, December 20, 1861, OR, Series 1, Vol. 4, 89–90. 28. Frazier, Blood and Treasure, 134–35. 29. Alexander M. Jackson to James Reily, December 23, 1861, in John P. Wilson and Jerry  D. Thompson, eds., The Civil War in West Texas and New Mexico: The Lost Letterbook of Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 2001), 90; Jackson to

184

Notes to Pages 42–44

Reily, December 31, 1861, OR, Series 1, Vol. 4, 167–68; Sibley to Cooper, January 3, 1862, ibid., 167; Lubbock, Six Decades in Texas, 407–9. On Simeon Hart, see Jackson to Reily, January 27, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 4, 114; John R. Baylor to Hart, October 24, 1861, ibid., 128–29. See also Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, 119–20; Rippy, United States and Mexico, 236–38. 30. Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign, 50–51; Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley, 239–42. 31. Reuben W. Creel to Seward, November 28, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls at Chihuahua, 1826–1906, T167, Roll 1. 32. Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, 87; Nelson, “Death in the Distance,” 33–52. 33. Thompson, Henry Hopkins Sibley, 239–42. 34. Reily to Reagan, January 26, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 1, 825–26. See also W. Claude Jones to L. Pope Walker, June 30, 1861, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 704; Judah P. Benjamin to Jefferson Davis, December 14, 1861, OR, Series 4, Vol. 1 of 3, 791. 35. Rodolfo F. Acuña, Sonoran Strongman: Ignacio Pesqueíra and His Times (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974), 26–39; Charles H. Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 147–218; Joseph A. Stout Jr., Schemers and Dreamers: Filibustering in Mexico, 1848–1921 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2002), 14–48. On Crabb’s expedition, see Stuart F. Voss, On the Periphery of Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Sonora and Sinaloa, 1810–1877 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982), 130–32, 138–41; Andrew E. Masich, Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861–1867 (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), 32–33. 36. William M. Browne to Juan A. Quinterro [sic], September 3, 1861, in James D. Richardson, ed., The Messages and Papers of Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy, Including Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861–1865 (New York: Chelsea House–Robert Hector, 1966), 2:77–80; W. W. Kincheloe to Jefferson Davis, August 22, 1861, in Lynda Lasswell Crist, ed., The Papers of Jefferson Davis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 7:302. See also Ronnie C. Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1973), 41–60. 37. Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 245–47; Richard Blaine McCornack, “Los Estados Confederados y México,” Historia Mexicana 4, no. 3 (March 1955): 337–52. 38. On Riddells, see Florence C. Lister and Robert H. Lister, Chihuahua: Storehouse of Storms (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1966), 113; Adelaide R. Hasse, Index to United States Documents Relating to Foreign Affairs, 1828–1861 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1921), 3:1734. 39. Lister and Lister, Chihuahua, 140–41, 149–51; Mark Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution: The Native Elite and Foreign Enterprise in Chihuahua, Mexico, 1854–1911 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 4–5, 15, 26–70; Ana María Alonso, Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico’s Northern Frontier (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995), 133. For biographical accounts, see Francisco R. Almada, Gobernadores del Estado de Chihuahua (Mexico City: Imprenta de la H. Cámara de Diputados, 1950), 219–71; José Fuentes Mares, Y México se Refugió en el Desierto: Luis Terrazas, Historia y Destino (Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1954); Francisco R. Almada and Guillermo Porras, Luis Terrazas: Una Polémica Histórica (Chihuahua: Ediciones de Azar, 1999); Héctor Chávez Barron, Luis Terrazas (Mexico: Editorial Clío, 2004).

Notes to Pages 44–47

185

40. Reily to Sibley, January 20, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 4, 173–74. 41. Ibid. 42. Edward H. Jordan to J. A. Quintero, March 18, 1862, in John P. Wilson, ed., When the Texans Came: Missing Records from the Civil War in the Southwest, 1861–1862 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 233. 43. Terrazas to Sibley, January 11, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 4, 171–72. See also “The Texans,” Santa Fe Weekly Gazette, June 21, 1862. 44. Jordan to Quintero, March 18, 1862, in Wilson, ed., When the Texans Came, 233. 45. Reily to Sibley, January 20, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 4, 170–74. On Mexico and the Confederacy, see Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, 87–133; Thomas David Schoonover, Dollars over Dominion: The Triumph of Liberalism in Mexican-United States Relations, 1861–1867 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), 78–100; Harry Thayer Mahoney and Marjorie Locke Mahoney, Mexico and the Confederacy: 1860–1867 (San Francisco, CA: Austin and Winfield, 1998). The only official recognition of the Confederacy by a foreign power came from the Pope, who in 1863 addressed a single letter to “the Illustrious and Honorable Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America.” Mahin, One War at a Time, 212. 46. Reily to Reagan, January 26, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 1, 825–26. 47. Testimony of John Greiner, July 1865, in Condition of the Indian Tribes, 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 156, 328. See also Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 102–3, 107–36, 188. 48. Ross Calvin, ed., Lieutenant Emory Reports: Notes of a Military Reconnaissance (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1951), 100. See also Lance R. Blyth, Chiricahua and Janos: Communities of Violence in the Southwestern Borderlands, 1680–1880 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 141–44. 49. Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 35. 50. On US campaigning in the 1850s, see Kiser, Dragoons in Apacheland. For an Apache perspective on the Civil War, see Eve Ball, ed., In the Days of Victorio: Recollections of a Warm Springs Apache (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1970), 45. 51. Basso, ed., Western Apache Raiding and Warfare, 16. 52. For an eyewitness account, see Don E. Alberts, Rebels on the Rio Grande: The Civil War Journal of A. B. Peticolas (Albuquerque, NM: Merit Press, 1993), 31. On the Arizona Guards, see Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 420–22, 427–28; Edwin R. Sweeney, Cochise: Chiricahua Apache Chief (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 185; Martin Hardwick Hall, “Thomas J. Mastin’s ‘Arizona Guards,’” New Mexico Historical Review 49 (April 1974): 143–51. 53. Jordan to Quintero, March 18, 1862, in Wilson, ed., When the Texans Came, 233; Juan B. Méndez to Civil Political Chief of the District of Brazos, March 26, 1862, ibid., 234–35; Terrazas to Sibley, March 17, 1862, ibid., 231–32. See also Sweeney, Cochise, 194. 54. “Invasión al Estado de Chihuahua,” El Veracruzano Libre (Vera Cruz), May 9, 1862; Sibley to Terrazas, May 17, 1862, in Wilson, ed., When the Texans Came, 235. 55. Judah P. Benjamin to Terrazas, January 20, 1863, ibid., 237–38; Terrazas to Benjamin, April 9, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. On Benjamin’s activities, see Robert Douthat Meade, Judah P. Benjamin: Confederate Statesman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1943), 244–71. 56. For the orders, see John R. Baylor to Thomas Helm, March 20, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol.  50, Part 1, 942, and Baylor to John B. Magruder, December 29, 1862, ibid., Vol. 15, 918.

186

Notes to Pages 48–49

On the incident generally, see Martin Hardwick Hall, “Planter vs. Frontiersman: Conflict in Confederate Indian Policy,” in Essays on the American Civil War, ed. Frank E. Vandiver, Martin Hardwick Hall, and Homer L. Kerr (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), 58–60; Jerry D. Thompson, Colonel John Robert Baylor: Texas Indian Fighter and Confederate Soldier (Hillsboro, TX: Hill Junior College Press, 1971), 78. 57. Reily to Ignacio Pesqueíra, March 14, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls in Guaymas, 1832– 1896, T210, Roll 1. 58. Baylor to Sherod Hunter, February 10, 1862, in Wilson, ed., When the Texans Came, 182; Hunter to Sibley, March 19, 1862, ibid., 185; James H. Tevis, Arizona in the ’50s (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1954), 231. See also Oscar Haas, “The Diary of Julius Gieseke, 1861–1862,” Military History of Texas and the Southwest 18 (October 1988): 55; L. Boyd Finch, “Sherod Hunter and the Confederates in Arizona,” Journal of Arizona History 10, no. 3 (Autumn 1969): 165–67. 59. Hall, Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign, 50–51. For the Guaymas population, see E. de Fleury, “Noticias Geologicas, Geograficas y Estadisticas sobre Sonora y Baja California,” in Genaro García, ed., Documentos inéditos o muy raros para la historia de México, 36 vols. (Mexico City: Vda. de C. Bouret, 1909), 22:210. 60. “Consular and Diplomatic Bill,” Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 3rd Sess., January 28, 1863, 566; Sylvester Mowry, Arizona and Sonora: The Geography, History, and Resources of the Silver Region of North America (New York: Harper Brothers, 1864), 49. For an eyewitness description, see J. Ross Browne, Adventures in the Apache Country: A Tour Through Arizona and Sonora with Notes on the Silver Regions of Nevada (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1871), 244–45. 61. Sibley to Pesqueíra, December 16, 1861, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 1, 766–68. 62. Jackson to Reily, January 27, 1862, in Wilson and Thompson, eds., The Civil War in West Texas and New Mexico, 114; Jackson to Baylor, January 27, 1862, ibid., 115; Jackson to Reily, February 8, 1862, ibid., 127. 63. Acuña, Sonoran Strongman, 15–25, 40–46; Ramón Eduardo Ruiz, The People of Sonora and Yankee Capitalists (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988), 121–22, 169–70, 199–200. For biographical sketches, see Stuart F. Voss, On the Periphery of Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Sonora and Sinaloa, 1810–1877 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982), 136–42, 148–54; Rachel St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 42–43. For Pesqueíra’s resistance to Yaquis, see Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival: The Struggle for Land and Autonomy, 1821–1910 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 74–91. 64. Mowry, Arizona and Sonora, viii–ix, 102. 65. Sweeney, Cochise, 135. 66. Reily to Pesqueíra, March 14, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls in Guaymas, 1832–1896, T210, Roll 1; Reily to Pesqueíra, March 15, 1862, ibid.; Reily to Pesqueíra, March 17, 1862, ibid.; Reily to Pesqueíra, March 18, 1862, ibid.; Reily to Pesqueíra, March 24, 1862, ibid. 67. Romero, Diario personal, 401; Seward to Romero, May 7, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Notes to Foreign Legations in the United States from the Department of State 1834–1906, M99, Roll 70 (Mexico, 1854–1873); Seward to Corwin, May 9, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S.

Notes to Pages 49–51

187

State Department, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, M77, Roll 113 (Mexico, Vol. 17, 1854–1867); “Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs,” in Message of the President of the United States, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 1, Pt. 3, 535–42. 68. “Memorandum of Proceedings in the Mexican Congress . . . for transit of United States troops from Guaymas to Arizona,” June 21, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1832–1906, M97, Roll 29; G. Valle and E. Robles Gil to Chief Clerk of Office of Relations, June 21, 1861, ibid.; Lucas de Palacio y Margarda to Corwin, June 27, 1861, ibid.; Corwin to Seward, September 7, 1861, ibid.; F. W. Seward to Romero, August 27, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Notes to Foreign Legations in the United States from the Deptartment of State, 1834–1906, M99, Roll 70 (Mexico, 1854–1873); Seward to Romero, August 19, 1861, ibid. See also Schoonover, ed. and trans., Mexican Lobby, 8. 69. Juan de D. Arías to Corwin, May 13, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 30. 70. “From Arizona: A Transit for American and Foreign Goods Through Sonora,” New York Times, January 18, 1861; “Importations into Arizona,” ibid., February 28, 1861; “Our Interests in Mexico: A Gleam of Sunshine,” ibid., August 3, 1861. 71. Mary Wilhelmine Williams, ed., “Letter from Colonel John T. Pickett, of the Southern Confedaracy, to Señor Don Manuel de Zamacona, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mexico,” Hispanic American Historical Review 2, no. 4 (November 1919): 612. For Pickett’s anxiety, see Pickett to Toombs, June 27, 1861, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 4; Pickett to Toombs, July 11, 1861, ibid., Reel 5; Memoranda of John T. Pickett and John S. Cripps, August 17, 1861, ibid., Reel 4; Pickett to Toombs, August 25, 1861, ibid., Reel 5; Pickett to Toombs, August 28, 1861, ibid., Reel 5; Pickett to William M. Browne, September 6, 1861, ibid., Reel 4; Pickett to Toombs, October 12, 1861, ibid., Reel 5; Romero to Zamacona, October 1, 1861, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 5:110. 72. Pickett to Zamacona, August 26, 1861, and September 16, 1861, both in Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859– 1868, MSS16550, Reel 5. 73. Quintero to R. M. T. Hunter, November 4, 1861, ibid., Reel 8; Browne to Quintero, December 9, 1861, in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies (hereafter cited as ORN), Series 2, Vol. 3 of 8, 308; Browne to Quintero, January 14, 1862, ibid., 316–17. 74. Doblado to Corwin, May 13, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 30. 75. Arías to Corwin, May 13, 1862, ibid. 76. Corwin to Doblado, May 17, 1862, ibid. 77. Corwin to Seward, July 28, 1862, ibid. 78. “Organization of Arizona Territory,” New York Times, April 6, 1862. 79. Martin Hardwick Hall, “Colonel James Reily’s Diplomatic Missions to Chihuahua and Sonora,” New Mexico Historical Review 31 (July 1956), 241–42. 80. Reily to Reagan, April 17, 1862, in Wilson, ed., When the Texans Came, 199–201; Anonymous letter from “One of the Escort,” April 17, 1862, ibid., 186–88; “Secession Intrigue in Sonora,” New York Times, May 24, 1862. 81. Frazier, Blood and Treasure, 257–58.

188

Notes to Pages 51–55

82. “Mexico and Havana: Rumors of Hostilities Between the French and Mexicans. The Raid of Rebels into Chihuahua. Effect of Secretary Seward’s Circular on Events in Mexico,” New York Times, May 29, 1862. 83. “Letter from Thomas Robinson,” January 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 9, 628. 84. Darlis A. Miller, The California Column in New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), xi. 85. James H. Carleton to George Wright, March 22, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 1, 944. 86. On Ures and Hermosillo, see De Fleury, “Noticias Geologicas, Geograficas y Estadisticas sobre Sonora y Baja California,” in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 22:212–14. 87. Benjamin C. Cutler to E. A. Rigg, March 17, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 1, 938; William L. Baker to Seward, March 21, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls in Guaymas, 1832–1896, T210, Roll 1; Baker to Seward, April 14, 1862, ibid. 88. Rigg to Carleton, March 30, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 1, 963–64; F. H. Waterman to Wright, April 7, 1862, ibid., 988–90; W. G. Moody to Farrelly Alden, April 7, 1862, ibid., 990– 91. On Brady, see Francis P. Brady, “Portrait of a Pioneer: Peter R. Brady, 1825–1902,” Journal of Arizona History 16, no. 2 (Summer 1975): 180–81. 89. Wright to Lorenzo Thomas, April 30, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 1, 1035. 90. Waterman to Wright, April 7, 1862, ibid., 988–90; Moody to Alden, April 7, 1862, ibid., 990–91; Baker to Seward, April 14, 1862, NA, RG59, U S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls in Guaymas, 1832–1896, T210, Roll 1. 91. Voss, On the Periphery of Nineteenth-Century Mexico, 142. 92. “Secession Intrigue in Sonora,” New York Times, May 24, 1862, originally published in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin on April 15, 1862. This report likely came from W. G. Moody, the Bulletin’s correspondent in Sonora and one of the Union spies operating there. 93. Wright to Thomas, April 28, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 1, 1035; Alden to Wright, with six enclosures, April 26, 1862, ibid., 1030–33. 94. Rigg to Carleton, March 30, 1862, ibid., 963–64. 95. Wright to Thomas, April 30, 1862, ibid., 1041. See also Masich, Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 163. 96. Wright to Carleton, April 30, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 1, 1042. 97. Carleton to Pesqueíra, May 2, 1862, ibid., 1044–45. 98. Wright to Pesqueíra, May 3, 1862, ibid., 1047–48. 99. Pesqueíra to Carleton, June 2, 1862, ibid., 1117–18. 100. Pesqueíra to Wright, August 29, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 93. See also “News of the Day: The Rebellion,” New York Times, July 8, 1862. 101. Carleton to Creel, April 23, 1863, NA, RG393, U.S. War Department, Letters Sent, Ninth Military Department, Department of New Mexico, and District of New Mexico, 1849– 1890, M1072, Roll 3. 102. Carleton to Richard C. Drum, May 14, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 1, 1071. 103. Don E. Alberts, The Battle of Glorieta: Union Victory in the West (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998); Thomas S. Edrington and John Taylor, The Battle of Glorieta Pass: A Gettysburg in the West, March 26–28, 1862 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998). 104. Sibley to Cooper, May 5, 1862, in Wilson and Thompson, eds., The Civil War in West Texas and New Mexico, 143. See also Lubbock, Six Decades in Texas, 409.

Notes to Pages 55–58

189

105. “Secession Schemes in Northern Mexico,” New York Times, May 24, 1862; “Arizona Reclaimed,” ibid., June 27, 1862. 106. William F. M. Arny to Terrazas, October 21, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, New Mexico Territorial Papers, 1851–1872, T17, Roll 2; “Trade with Chihuahua,” Santa Fe Weekly Gazette, October 25, 1862. 107. José María Uranga to William McMullen, December 24, 1862, in C. L. Sonnichsen, “Major McMullen’s Invasion of Mexico,” Pass-Word 2, no. 2 (May 1957): 39; McMullen to Uranga, December 25, 1862, ibid., 40–41; Joseph R. West to McMullen, January 1863, ibid., 43. 108. Arny to Terrazas, March 17, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, New Mexico Territorial Papers, 1851–1872, T17, Roll 2. 109. Terrazas to Arny, March 24, 1863, ibid. 110. Henry J. Cuniffe to Seward, October 1, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Consuls at Ciudad Juarez (Paso del Norte), 1850–1906, M184, Roll 1. 111. Arny to Terrazas, April 6, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, New Mexico Territorial Papers, 1851–1872, T17, Roll 2. 112. Spruce M. Baird to Edmund P. Turner, May 12, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 431; “From the Rebel States: Texas, a Curious Story from Chihuahua,” New York Times, July 3, 1863. 113. West to Pesqueíra, January 30, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 299–300; West to José María Uranga, January 30, 1863, ibid., 299; West to Pesqueíra, March 3, 1863, ibid., 335; West to Terrazas, March 3, 1863, ibid., 334–35. 114. On the Bascom Affair, see Sweeney, Cochise, 142–65; Blyth, Chiricahua and Janos, 171–81. For Apache versions of the event, see Ball, ed., In the Days of Victorio, 155; Ruth McDonald Boyer and Narcissus Duffy Gayton, Apache Mothers and Daughters: Four Generations of a Family (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 46–47. For the Geronimo quote, see S. M. Barrett, ed., Geronimo’s Story of His Life (New York: Duffield, 1906), 117. On power and the Apache ethos, see Basso, ed., Western Apache Raiding and Warfare, 270–75; Sherry Robinson, Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival as Told to Eve Ball (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 181–84. For Apache perspectives on Cochise, see Eve Ball, ed., Indeh: An Apache Odyssey (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1980), 22–28. 115. Sweeney, Cochise, 206–8. 116. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 455–62. For Carleton’s orders, see Carleton to Christopher Carson, October 12, 1862, NA, RG393, U.S. War Department Letters Sent, Ninth Military Department, Department of New Mexico, and District of New Mexico, 1849–1890, M1072, Roll 3, and Carleton to Joseph Rodman West, March 13, 1863, in Condition of the Indian Tribes, 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 156, 105. On scientific racism and the Greater Reconstruction, see Elliott West, “Reconstructing Race,” Western Historical Quarterly 34, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 15–20. 117. Quotations in Ball, ed., In the Days of Victorio, 48, and Barrett, ed., Geronimo’s Story of His Life, 118. See also Ball, ed., Indeh, 11–12, 20–21. 118. Sweeney, Cochise, 205, 209–12. On Victorio, see Dan L. Thrapp, Victorio and the Mimbres Apaches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974); Ball, ed., In the Days of Victorio, 48. On Lozen, see ibid., 11, 128; Boyer and Gayton, Apache Mothers and Daughters, 54–55. For the quotations, see ibid., 31, 54. 119. West to William McCleave, June 21, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 490; Carleton to Thomas, June 29, 1863, in Condition of the Indian Tribes, 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 156, 119. See also Sweeney, Cochise, 213.

190

Notes to Pages 58–61

120. Mowry, Arizona and Sonora, 68; Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas, 210–12, 275–78; Sweeney, Cochise, 215. 121. “Apaches,” La Alianza de la Frontera (Ciudad Chihuahua), January 8, 1863, in Periódico Oficial de Chihuahua, Jan. 3, 1861–July 22, 1865, Microfilm Reel 7. For a firsthand account, see D. Joaquín Terrazas, Memorias (Ciudad Juárez: El Agricultor Mexicano, 1905), 41–43. On Joaquín Terrazas, see Thrapp, Victorio and the Mimbres Apaches, 293–304; Blyth, Chiricahua and Janos, 178; Edwin R. Sweeney, From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches, 1874–1886 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 119; Paul Andrew Hutton, The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History (New York: Crown, 2016), 253–59. 122. “La Paz a Los Apaches,” La Alianza de la Frontera (Ciudad Chihuahua), January 31, 1863. See also Janne Lahti, Wars for Empire: Apaches, the United States, and the Southwest Borderlands (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), 174–75. 123. Sweeney, Cochise, 215–17 (quotation from La Estrella de Occidente, March 4, 1864). 124. Sweeney, Cochise, 230. 125. Carleton to John Evans, January 28, 1863, NA, RG393, U.S. War Department, Letters Sent, Ninth Military Department, Department of New Mexico, and District of New Mexico, 1849–1890, M1072, Roll 3. 126. Carleton to Thomas, February 1, 1863, ibid. On Sonora, see Samuel Truett, Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 56–59. 127. Carleton to Seward, February 20, 1863, NA, RG393, U.S. War Department, Letters Sent, Ninth Military Department, Department of New Mexico, and District of New Mexico, 1849–1890, M1072, Roll 3; Carleton to David Fergusson, January 13, 1863, NA, RG59, U. S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Chihuahua, 1826–1906, Microcopy T167, Roll 1; Fergusson to Carleton, February 14, 1863, ibid. See also George P. MacManus to Seward, March 24, 1861, ibid.; Creel to Seward, November 9, 1863, ibid.; Creel to Seward, November 26, 1863, ibid. 128. Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution, 5, 30, 43–70. 129. Memorandum of Verbal Instructions Given to Maj. Fergusson by Joseph Rodman West, January 3, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 635; West to Fergusson, January 3, 1863, ibid., 635–36. On Fergusson’s mission, see Jerry D. Thompson, ed., New Mexico Territory During the Civil War: Wallen and Evans Inspection Reports, 1862–1863 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 25–28. On Skillman, see Jerry D. Thompson, Civil War History of the New Mexico Volunteers and Militia (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015), 239–40. 130. Richard H. Orton, Record of California Men in the War of the Rebellion, 1861 to 1867 (Sacramento, CA: J. D. Young, 1890), 87. 131. Fergusson to West, February 13, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 674–75; Fergusson to West, February 13, 1863, ibid., 682–86; Fergusson to U.S. Consuls at Matamoros and Monterrey, January 27, 1863, ibid., 686; Terrazas to Carleton, April 11, 1863, ibid., 701; Carleton to Creel, April 23, 1863, ibid., 708–709; “Fuerza Extrangera,” La Alianza de la Frontera (Ciudad Chihuahua), January 24, 1863, in Periódico Oficial de Chihuahua, Jan. 3, 1861–July 22, 1865, Microfilm Reel 7. On Showalter, see Armistead and Arconti, “An Arch Rebel Like Myself,” 109, 116–20. 132. Carleton to Terrazas, February 20, 1863, NA, RG393, U.S. War Department, Letters Sent, Ninth Military Department, Department of New Mexico, and District of New Mexico, 1849–1890, M1072, Roll 3; Carleton to Thomas, February 23, 1863, ibid.

Notes to Pages 61–65

191

133. Carleton to Pesqueíra, April 20, 1864, in Condition of the Indian Tribes, 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 156, 177; Carleton to Terrazas, April 20, 1864, ibid., 178. 134. Masich, Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 247–49; Henry Pickering Walker, “Freighting from Guaymas to Tucson, 1850–1880,” Western Historical Quarterly 1, no. 3 (July 1970): 293–95. 135. Fergusson to Pesqueíra, August 22, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 86; West to Cutler, October 12, 1862, ibid., 166–67; Fergusson to Drum, August 19, 1862, ibid., 76–78; Fergusson to Cutler, ibid., 78–80; “Affairs in Arizona,” New York Times, August 6, 1862. 136. “Report of Major Ferguson [sic],” Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., Special Sess., March 14, 1863, 1564. 137. “La Libertad,” Santa Fe New Mexican, April 18, 1863. 138. Fergusson to Pesqueíra, September 15, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 121–22. 139. “Attitude of France in Mexico: A Chance for Southern Recognition,” New York Times, September 26, 1862. See also Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 69–83. 140. “The War in the Far West,” New York Times, October 3, 1863; “The New Territory of Arizona,” ibid., March 10, 1863. 141. “The Proceedings of Congress: Important Debate in the Senate on the Course of the French in Mexico,” New York Times, February 4, 1863. 142. Carleton to Seward, March 8, 1863, NA, RG393, U.S. War Department, Letters Sent, Ninth Military Department, Department of New Mexico, and District of New Mexico, 1849– 1890, M1072, Roll 3. 143. Carleton to Seward, September 13, 1863, ibid. 144. Carleton to Henry W. Halleck, March 13, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 34, Part 2, 591–92. 145. Henry Connelly to Seward, August 23, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, New Mexico Territorial Papers, 1851–1872, T17, Roll 2. 146. Callahan, American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relations, 293. On Seward’s foreign policy, see ibid., 278–333; Glyndon G. Van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 365–70; Stephen J. Valone, “‘Weakness Offers Temptation’: William H. Seward and the Reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine,” Diplomatic History 19, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 583–99; Patricia Galeana, “Estados Unidos frente a la Intervención Francesa en México,” in Galeana, ed., El impacto de la Intervención Francesa en México (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 2011), 159– 77; Steven Hahn, A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830–1910 (New York: Penguin, 2016), 398–400. 147. Brian DeLay, ed., North American Borderlands (New York: Routledge, 2013), 3. 148. Pesqueíra to Juárez, February 17, 1863, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 7:339–40; Acuña, Sonoran Strongman, 39. 149. See Toombs to Pickett, May 17, 1861, with enclosed “Memorandum of Instructions,” in Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers of Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy, 2:20–26; Browne to Quinterro [sic], January 14, 1862, ibid., 2:151–52.

Chapter 3 1. Hamilton P. Bee to Judah P. Benjamin, October 12, 1861, OR, Series 1, Vol. 4, 119. On localized Confederate policies, see Gerardo Gurza Lavalle, Una vecindad efímera: Los Estados Confederados de América y su política exterior hacia México (Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 2001),

192

Notes to Pages 65–67

73–110. On the Rio Grande border during the Civil War, see Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga, War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830–1880 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020), 176–249. 2. Henry E. McCulloch to Samuel Cooper, October 17, 1861, OR, Series 1, Vol. 4, 123. 3. Paul O. Hébert to Benjamin, October 31, 1861, OR, Series 1, Vol. 4, 130. 4. Richard I. Lester, Confederate Finance and Purchasing in Great Britain (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975), 3–26. 5. Udolpho Wolfe to J. F. Minter, February 27, 1862, Confederate States Army, Texas Infantry 6th Regiment Letterbook, 71, DeGolyer Library Special Collections, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. See also Wolfe to Samuel J. Garland, March 31, 1862, ibid., 106; Wolfe to S. C. Bardin (?), May 3, 1862, ibid., 118. 6. Leonard Pierce Jr. to William H. Seward, June 8, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4; J. A. Quintero to William Browne, March 8, 1862, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Benjamin to C. G. Memminger, December 2, 1861, OR, Series 4, Vol. 1, 774; Benjamin to Francis R. Lubbock, February 11, 1862, ibid., 922–23; Eliza McHatton-Ripley, From Flag to Flag: A Woman’s Adventures and Experiences in the South During the War, in Mexico, and in Cuba (New York: D. Appleton, 1889), 95. 7. “Interesting from Texas: Importation of Supplies and Exportation of Cotton; Union Men Ready to Rise,” New York Times, February 8, 1863. On imports, see Quintero to Benjamin, September 7, 1862, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 8. William F. Hutchinson, Life on the Texan Blockade (Providence: Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society, 1883), 21. 9. Report to Accompany Bill S. No. 783, May 16, 1870, 41st Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 166, 15. See also John A. Adams Jr., Conflict and Commerce on the Rio Grande: Laredo, 1755– 1955 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008), 89–94. 10. McHatton-Ripley, From Flag to Flag, 121–22. 11. Bee to A. G. Dickinson, February 3, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 965–66. 12. “Decree establishing the Zona Libre,” March 17, 1858, in Report to Accompany Bill S. No. 783, May 16, 1870, 41st Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 166, 5–7; Peter Seuzeneau to Lewis Cass, March 21, 1858, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. On the zona libre, see Matías Romero, Mexico and the United States: A Study of Subjects Affecting Their Political, Commercial, and Social Relations, Made with a view to their Promotion (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1898), 433–79; Samuel E. Bell and James M. Smallwood, The Zona Libre 1858–1905: A Problem in American Diplomacy (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1982); Octavio H. Pérez, La Zona Libre: Excepción fiscal y conformación histórica de la frontera norte de México (Mexico City: Dirección General del Acervo Histórico Diplomático, 2004); Daniel S. Margolies, Spaces of Law in American Foreign Relations: Extradition and Extraterritoriality in the Borderlands and Beyond, 1877–1898 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 58–59; George T. Díaz, Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015), 30–31. 13. Hunter Miller, ed., Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, 8 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1931): 5:217.

Notes to Pages 67–70

193

14. Philip Leigh, Trading with the Enemy: The Covert Economy During the American Civil War (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2014), 43. 15. Ibid., 41–58. On Texas cotton, see Tom Lea, The King Ranch (Boston: Little, Brown, 1957), 1:175–235; Ronnie C. Tyler, “Cotton on the Border, 1861–1865,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73, no. 4 (April 1970): 456–77; Craig H. Roell, Matamoros and the Texas Revolution (Denton: Texas State Historical Association, 2013), 27–37. On naval operations, see Walter E. Wilson, “Rebels at the Rio Grande: Naval Actions on the International Border in 1863,” in Milo Kearney, Anthony Knopp, Antonio Zavaleta, and Thomas Daniel Knight, eds., New Studies in Rio Grande Valley History (Edinburg: University of Texas–Rio Grande Valley, 2018), 125–65. 16. Quintero to Browne, August 22, 1861, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. See also James A. Irby, Backdoor at Bagdad: The Civil War on the Rio Grande (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1977). 17. C. C. Peck, Incidents and Notes By The Way (unpublished pocket diary, 1860), 70–75, DeGolyer Library Special Collections, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. 18. Leonard Pierce Jr. to Seward, September 30, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. 19. Pierce Jr. to Seward, June 8, August 2, and September 19, 1862, all in ibid. 20. Report to Accompany Bill S. No. 783, May 16, 1870, 41st Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 166, 10, 12–13, 17; Myndert M. Kimmey to Seward, June 4, 1863, NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906, M165, Roll 1; Quintero to Benjamin, October 19, 1862, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Blood to Seward, March 28, 1862, NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906, M165, Roll 1; Blood to Seward, June 9, 1862, ibid. 21. Leigh, Trading with the Enemy, 41–42, 47–48. 22. Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 292–320; Sherry Robinson, I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2013), 227, 239–50. 23. William Watson, The Adventures of a Blockade Runner, or, Trade in Time of War (New York: MacMillan, 1892), 18–31, quotation on 21. 24. Leigh, Trading with the Enemy, 43, 48–54; Delaney, “Matamoros,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 58, no. 4 (April 1955): 479–80. See also Pierce Jr. to Seward, September 21, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4; Richard Fitzpatrick to Benjamin, March 12, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. On Southern cotton exports, see Thomas M. Settles, John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009), 259–67; Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999), 83–94. 25. John Pickett once offered to replace Quintero in Nuevo León, telling Davis that he did not think “a foreigner by birth and one of the Latin race” should “represent us near his kindred people,” but the Confederate president wisely declined the proposal. John Pickett to Jefferson

194

Notes to Pages 71–72

Davis, February 22, 1862, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 5. 26. Tyler, “Cotton on the Border,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73, no. 4 (April 1970), 458, 472–73; Darryl E. Brock, “José Agustín Quintero: Cuban Patriot in Confederate Diplomatic Service,” in Phillip Thomas Tucker, ed., Cubans in the Confederacy: José Agustín Quintero, Ambrosio José Gonzales, and Loreta Janeta Velazquez (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002), 9–41; Kirsten Silva Gruesz, “Subject to the Border: The Strange Case of José Agustín Quintero,” in Kenya Dworkin y Méndez and Agnes Lugo-Ortiz, eds., Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage (Houston, TX: Arte Público Press, 2006), 5:23–32; Jorge A. Marbán, Confederate Patriot, Journalist, and Poet: The Multifaceted Life of José Agustín Quintero (Victoria, BC: FriesenPress, 2014), 23–93. 27. Ronnie C. Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1973), 13–40, 51–53; Santiago Roel, ed., Correspondencia particular de D. Santiago Vidaurri, gobernador de Nuevo León (1855–1864) (Monterrey: 1946), i–xix; Arturo Gálvez Medrano, Regionalismo y Gobierno General: El Caso de Nuevo León y Coahuila, 1855– 1864 (Monterrey: Gobierno del Estado, 1993); Juan Mora-Torres, The Making of the Mexican Border: The State, Capitalism, and Society in Nuevo León, 1848–1910 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 45–51. 28. Gálvez Medrano, Regionalismo y Gobierno General, 11. 29. Artemio Benavides Hinojosa, Santiago Vidaurri: Caudillo del noreste mexicano (1855– 1864) (Mexico: Tusquets Editores, 2012), 12. On Vidaurri, see Oscar Flores Tapia, Coahuila: La Reforma, La Intervención, y El Imperio, 1854–1867 (Mexico: Talleres Gráficos del Gobierno del Estado, 1966); Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy, 22–24; Richard N. Sinkin, The Mexican Reform, 1855–1876: A Study in Liberal Nation-Building (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), 105–9; María Elena Santoscoy, Laura Gutiérrez, Martha Rodríguez, and Francisco Cepeda, Breve Historia de Coahuila (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2000), 213–23; Mario Treviño, Entre Caciques y Caudillos: Nuevo León, Siglo XIX (Monterrey: Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, 2009), 27–45; Ana Lilia Nieto Camacho, Defensa y Política en la Frontera Norte de México, 1848–1856 (Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2012), 260–68; Jesús Avila, Leticia Martínez and César Morado, Santiago Vidaurri: La formación de un liderazgo regional desde Monterrey (1809–1867) (Monterrey: Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, 2012). For Vidaurri’s influence on Texas slavery, see Ronnie C. Tyler, “Fugitive Slaves in Mexico,” Journal of Negro History 57, no. 1 (January 1972): 7–11. 30. Artemio Benavides Hinojosa, ed., Sociedad, Milicia y Política en Nuevo León, Siglos XVIII y XIX (Monterrey: Archivo General del Estado, 2005), 122; Benavides Hinojosa, Santiago Vidaurri, 251. 31. Santiago Vidaurri to Benito Juárez, July 4, 1861, in Artemio Benavides Hinojosa, ed., Historia del Noreste Mexicano: Correspondencia Benito Juárez—Santiago Vidaurri, 1855–1864 (Monterrey: Archivo General del Estado, 2004), 110; Robert Toombs to Quintero, May 22, 1861, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 217; Quintero to Browne, June 1, 1861, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 32. Browne to Josiah Gorgas, August 29, 1861, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 252; Browne to Quintero, September 3, 1861, ibid., 253–54; John M. Coe to Franklin Chase, January 2, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 9, 642. See also J. Fred Rippy, The United States and Mexico (New York: F. S. Crofts, 1931), 238–42; Robert W. Delaney, “Matamoros, Port for Texas During the Civil War,” Southwestern

Notes to Pages 72–75

195

Historical Quarterly 58, no. 4 (April 1955): 473–87; Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 155–66; Lavalle, Una vecindad efímera, 73–110. 33. Toombs to Vidaurri, May 22, 1861, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 217–18. 34. “Important Diplomatic Correspondence: Letters on the Subject of the Texan Frontier Between the Rebel Secretary of State, Gen. Vidaurri, Governor of Nueva Leon and Coahuila, and Col. Baylor, of the Texan Army,” New York Times, October 31, 1861. Vidaurri’s correspondence originally appeared in “Ministerio de Relaciones,” El Siglo Diez y Nueve (Mexico City), September 26, 1861. 35. “Events in Mexico: A Trap for Recognition,” New York Times, October 31, 1861. 36. Thomas Corwin to Seward, September 29, 1861, NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 29, emphasis in original; Corwin to Seward, October 29, 1861, ibid. 37. “To the People of Texas: Plan for Concluding an Arrangement with the Authorities of Mexico, for the Reclamation of Fugitive Slaves,” Broadside (1858), DeGolyer Library Special Collections, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. 38. James David Nichols, The Limits of Liberty: Mobility and the Making of the Eastern U.S.Mexico Border (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 204–5, 219–20. 39. Frank Lawrence Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931), 115. 40. Quintero to Browne, July 14, 1861, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. See also Quintero to R. M. T. Hunter, August 16, 1861, August 17, 1861, and August 19, 1861, all in ibid.; Quintero to Browne, June 1, 1861 and August 22, 1861, both in ibid.; Vidaurri to Davis, January 25, 1862, in Avila, Martínez, and Morado, Santiago Vidaurri, 304. 41. Smith P. Bankhead to Edmund P. Turner, April 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 1066–67; Vidaurri to Magruder, April 24, 1863, ibid., 1067. 42. Quintero to Benjamin, July 8, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Kimmey to Seward, September 21, 1863, NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906, M165, Roll 1. 43. John T. Pickett to Assistant Secretary of State, October 2, 1861 (written in cipher), Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 5; Pickett to Toombs, October 29, 1861, ibid., Reel 4. 44. Rippy, United States and Mexico, 234–36; James D. Richardson, ed., The Messages and Papers of Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy, Including Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861–1865 (New York: Chelsea House–Robert Hector, 1966), 2:77–81, 151. 45. Fitzpatrick to Lewis Cass, October 1, 1859, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. 46. Quintero to Browne, March 21, 1862, March 24, 1862, and April 17, 1862, all in Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Benjamin to Quintero, April 30, 1862, ibid., Reel 10; Quintero to Benjamin, August 30, 1862, ibid. See also Joseph E. Chance, José María de Jesús Carvajal: The Life and Times of a Mexican Revolutionary (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2006),

196

Notes to Pages 75–77

173–77; Richard B. McCaslin, Fighting Stock: John S. “Rip” Ford of Texas (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2011), 127–30; Jerry D. Thompson, Tejano Tiger: José de los Santos Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823–1891 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2017), 108–15; Brock, “José Agustín Quintero,” 56–57. 47. C. R. Rock to Seward, February 13, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. 48. Quintero to Vidaurri, April 4, 1862, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Juárez to Vidaurri, March 8, 1862, in Jorge L. Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez: Documentos, Discursos y Correspondencia (Mexico City: Editorial Libros de México, 1973), 6:66; Vidaurri to Juárez, February 19, 1862, and April 28, 1862, both in Benavides Hinojosa, ed., Historia del Noreste Mexicano, 158, 177. See also John Salmon Ford, Rip Ford’s Texas, ed. Stephen B. Oates (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963), 331; McCaslin, Fighting Stock, 130. 49. Vidaurri to Quintero, April 5, 1862, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 50. August Santleben, A Texas Pioneer: Early Staging and Overland Freighting Days on the Frontier of Texas and Mexico (New York: Neale Publishing, 1910), 32–33. 51. Pierce Jr. to A. J. Hamilton, December 9, 1862, in “Interesting from Texas: Importation of Supplies and Exportation of Cotton; Union Men Ready to Rise,” New York Times, February 8, 1863. 52. Quintero to Vidaurri, June 19, 1861, in “Important Diplomatic Correspondence: Letters on the Subject of the Texan Frontier Between the Rebel Secretary of State, Gen. Vidaurri, Governor of Nueva Leon and Coahuila, and Col. Baylor, of the Texan Army,” New York Times, October 31, 1861. On Cortina, see Jerry D. Thompson, Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007); Jane Clements Monday and Frances Brannen Vick, Petra’s Legacy: The South Texas Ranching Empire of Petra Vela and Mifflin Kennedy (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007), 72–78, 104–8. On border raiding, see Armando C. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734–1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 194–96. 53. John R. Baylor to Vidaurri, June 21, 1861, in “Important Diplomatic Correspondence: Letters on the Subject of the Texan Frontier Between the Rebel Secretary of State, Gen. Vidaurri, Governor of Nueva Leon and Coahuila, and Col. Baylor, of the Texan Army,” New York Times, October 31, 1861. On Mexican diplomacy with Lipan Apaches, see Nichols, The Limits of Liberty, 170–71. 54. Vidaurri to Baylor, June 29, 1861, in “Important Diplomatic Correspondence: Letters on the Subject of the Texan Frontier Between the Rebel Secretary of State, Gen. Vidaurri, Governor of Nueva Leon and Coahuila, and Col. Baylor, of the Texan Army,” New York Times, October 31, 1861. For Vidaurri’s struggles to contain Indian raiding, see Isidro Vizcaya Canales, Tierra de Guerra Viva: Invasión de los Indios Bárbaros al Noreste de México, 1821–1885 (Monterrey: Academia de Investigaciones, 2001), 349–61. 55. Richard Fitzpatrick to John Black, March 2, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4; Leonard Pierce Jr. to Seward, November 18, 1861, ibid.; Walter Lord, ed., The Fremantle Diary: Being the Journal of Lieutenant Colonel James Arthur Lyon Fremantle, Coldstream Guards, on his Three Months in the Southern States (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954), 10. See also Chance, José María de Jesús Carvajal, 173.

Notes to Pages 77–81

197

56. Caleb H. Blood to Vidaurri, June 7, 1862, in Report to Accompany Bill S. No. 783, May 16, 1870, 41st Cong., 2nd Sess., Report No. 166, 10; Pierce Jr. to Seward, March 1, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. 57. Pierce Jr. to Seward, May 5, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 9, 685; Caleb H. Blood to Seward, May 23, 1862, ibid., 686; “Interesting from Texas: Importation of Supplies and Exportation of Cotton; Union Men Ready to Rise,” New York Times, February 8, 1863; Lord, ed., The Fremantle Diary, 18. See also Jerry D. Thompson, Mexican Texans in the Union Army (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1986), 10–15; James Marten, Texas Divided: Loyalty and Dissent in the Lone Star State, 1856–1874 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990), 86–105; Thompson, Tejano Tiger, 118–20. 58. Randolph B. Campbell, Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 265; Pierce Jr. to Seward, September, 22, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. 59. McCulloch to Samuel Boyer Davis, March 25, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 9, 704; McCulloch to S. B. Davis, March 31, 1862, ibid., 705. See also Marten, Texas Divided, 27–32, 113–21. On Tejanos and Mexicans in the Civil War, see Omar S. Valerio-Jiménez, River of Hope: Forging Identity and Nation in the Rio Grande Borderlands (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 247–59. On European immigrants, see Dale Baum, The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State During the Civil War Era (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998), 53–54. 60. Nichols, The Limits of Liberty, 7–12, 64–65. 61. Pierce Jr. to Seward, March 1, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. See also “Loyal Refugees from Texas,” Congressional Globe, 38th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 23, 1865, 1031–32. 62. Pierce Jr. to Seward, March 21, March 24, April 8, and April 30, 1862, all in NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4; Pierce Jr. to Corwin, April 26, 1862, ibid. 63. Pierce Jr. to Commander of U.S. Ship at Boca Chico, April 21, 1862, ibid.; Charles Hunter to Pierce Jr., April 23, 1862, ibid.; Pierce Jr. to Seward, March 26, 1863, ibid. 64. Vidaurri to Manuel Doblado, May 18, 1862, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Volume 29, Roll 30; Doblado to Corwin, June 2, 1862, ibid.; Corwin to Doblado, June 4, 1862, ibid.; Juárez to Vidaurri, December 23, 1862, in Benavides Hinojosa, ed., Historia del Noreste Mexicano, 203; Quintero to Benjamin, January 30, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 65. Bee to S. S. Anderson, November 30, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 881–83; Bee to A. G. Dickinson, February 10, 1863, ibid., 973; L. Olivier to J. A. Quintero, February 1, 1863, ibid., 974; Bee to Edmund P. Turner, April 27, 1863, ibid., 1057. 66. Thompson, Tejano Tiger, 57. 67. Quintero to Benjamin, November 2, 1862, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. For the Bee-López proceedings, see Lavalle, Una vecindad efímera, 97–103. 68. Vidaurri to Juárez, January 21, 1863, in Benavides Hinojosa, ed., Historia del Noreste Mexicano, 219–20; Juárez to Vidaurri, February 16, 1863, ibid., 227.

198

Notes to Pages 81–85

69. Quintero to Benjamin, January 30, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Bee to Albino López, February 3, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 966–67; “La Guerra en Nuestras Puertas: Invasion de Texas por Bandidos Mexicanos,” Bandera Americana (Brownsville, TX), January 2, 1863; “Guerra de Tamaulipas Contra Tejas,” ibid.; “Texas,” Boletín Oficial (Monterrey), November 30, 1862. On Zapata, see Thompson, Tejano Tiger, 123–26, 132–33. 70. Bee to A. G. Dickinson, February 10, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 973; Quintero to Benjamin, February 26, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 71. Vidaurri to Juárez, January 21, 1863, in Benavides Hinojosa, ed., Historia del Noreste Mexicano, 219; Quintero to Benjamin, February 26, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Thompson, Mexican Texans in the Union Army, 7–10; Thompson, Cortina, 109. 72. P. N. Luckett to A. G. Dickinson, January 26, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 960–61. 73. Lopez to Bee, February 11, 1863, ibid., 975–78; Bee to “My Dear General,” February 15, 1863, ibid., 980; Quintero to Benjamin, February 26, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 74. Bee to Dickinson, February 25, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 991–92. 75. Fitzpatrick to Benjamin, May 1, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 76. Bee to López, February 18, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 992–94. 77. López to Bee, February 22, 1863, ibid., 994–95. 78. Irby, Backdoor at Bagdad, 24–26; Michael L. Collins, A Crooked River: Rustlers, Rangers, and Regulars on the Lower Rio Grande, 1861–1877 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), 20–22. 79. López to Bee, February 23, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 996. 80. Bee to López, February 26, 1863, ibid., 997–98; Albino López Proclamation, undated, ibid., 1007–8. 81. Secret Circular of Albino López, February 28, 1863, ibid., 1126–27; “Comandancia Militar del Estado de Tamaulipas,” El Guardia Nacional (Matamoros, Tamaulipas), March 2, 1863. 82. Pierce Jr. to Seward, March 4, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. 83. Bee to Dickinson, March 7, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 1006. 84. Bee to López, March 10, 1863, ibid., 1127–28. 85. Magruder to Cooper, March 31, 1863, ibid., 1031–32; Thomas M. Settles, John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009), 241; Gene C. Armistead and Robert D. Arconti, “An Arch Rebel Like Myself ”: Dan Showalter and the Civil War in California and Texas (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018), 110–11. 86. Bee to Dickinson, March 15, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 1016–17; López to Bee, March 15, 1863, ibid., 1128–29; Pierce Jr. to Seward, March 26, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4; Fitzpatrick to Benjamin, March 12, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel  8; Quintero to Benjamin, March 21, 1863, ibid. See also B. P. Gallaway, ed., The Dark

Notes to Pages 85–87

199

Corner of the Confederacy: Accounts of Civil War Texas as Told by Contemporaries (Dubuque, IA: Wm. C.  Brown, 1968), 92. 87. R. H. Williams, With the Border Ruffians: Memories of the Far West, 1852–1868, ed. E. W. Williams (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 293–98. See also Lord, ed., The Fremantle Diary, 8, 16, 19. 88. López to Bee, March 15, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 1128–29; López to Bee, March 17, 1863, ibid., 1130–32; López to Bee, March 23, 1863, ibid., 1025–26; Bee to Quintero, March 16, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; López to Citizen Minister of Foreign Affairs, March 15, 1863, ibid. See also Tyler, “Cotton on the Border,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73, no. 4 (April 1970), 473–74. 89. Juan Antonio de la Fuente to López, April 1, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 90. Bee to Lopez, March 16, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 1129–30; Bee to Lopez, March 18, 1863, ibid., 1132. See also Carl H. Moneyhon, Edmund J. Davis of Texas: Civil War General, Republican Leader, Reconstruction Governor (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2010), 53–55. 91. Bee to Quintero, March 16, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 69–70; Quintero to Benjamin, March 21, 1863, ibid., 67–69; Quintero to Benjamin, April 20, 1863, ibid., 48–49; López to Citizen Minister of Foreign Relations, March 15, 1863, ibid., 49–50; De la Fuente to López, April  1, 1863, ibid., 51–52. 92. Romero to Seward, June 2, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 9, 675; Juan Bustamante to Romero, May 31, 1862, ibid., 675–76. 93. Bee to López, March 22, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 1134–35; Bee to Dickinson, March  26, 1863, ibid., 1024–25. 94. Edward Younger, ed., Inside the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973), 59–60. 95. Vidaurri to Juárez, June 3, 1863, in Benavides Hinojosa, ed., Historia del Noreste Mexicano, 254. 96. William O. Yager to Santos Benavides, August 22, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 178. 97. Thompson, Tejano Tiger, 2, 59, 66–72, 113–14, 134. Quotation is from Lubbock to Hébert, December 10, 1861, quoted in ibid., 102. 98. López to Bee, March 15, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 1128–29; Bee to Quintero, March 16, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 69–70. 99. López to Bee, March 17, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 1130–32. 100. Benavides to E. F. Gray, April 13, 1863, ibid., 1040–41. 101. López to Bee, April 17, 1863, ibid., 1044–45; Bee to López, April 22, 1863, ibid., 1051–53. 102. Benavides to Yager, September 3, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 1, 284–85; Bee to Turner, September 11, 1863, ibid., 284. See also Gilberto Miguel Hinojosa, A Borderlands Town in Transition: Laredo, 1755–1870 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1983), 81–86; Jerry D. Thompson, Vaqueros in Blue and Gray (Austin, TX: State House Press, 2000), 51–55; Thompson, Tejano Tiger, 127–34. 103. Benjamin to Quintero, April 15, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 10.

200

Notes to Pages 88–91

104. Enrique A. Mejía to Juárez, July 20, 1863, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 7:840–42; Jesús Fernández García to Juárez, June 18, 1863, ibid., 7:777. See also Octavio Herrera, Breve Historia de Tamaulipas (México: El Colegio de México, 1999), 172–78. 105. Mejía to Juárez, July 20, 1863, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 7:841; Juan Fidel Zorrilla, Gobernadores, Obispos y Rectores (Ciudad Victoria: Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, 1979), 22. 106. Report to Accompany Bill S. No. 783, May 16, 1870, 41st Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 166, 15. 107. Bee to Manuel Ruiz, August 14, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 167–68; Nathaniel P. Banks to Henry W. Halleck, November 6, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 1, 400; Quintero to Benjamin, September 16, 1863, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 899–902. 108. Gabriel Saldívar, Historia Compendiada de Tamaulipas (Mexico: Editorial Beatriz de Silva, 1945), 212–39; Herrera, Breve Historia de Tamaulipas, 179–85. 109. Francis Richard Lubbock, Six Decades in Texas, or, Memoirs of Francis Richard Lubbock, Governor of Texas in Wartime, 1861–63 (Austin, TX: Ben C. Jones, 1900), 514. 110. A. Superviéle to Bee, July 31, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 140–51. I have not been able to determine Superviéle’s full name. Documents bearing his name include only the abbreviated “A.” Secondary sources likewise identify him only by first initial and last name. 111. Corwin to Seward, December 26, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 31. 112. Superviéle to Bee, July 31, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 140–51. On Superviéle, see Juan Pablo Ortiz Dávila, “Visiones desde la prensa: Las relaciones entre los conservadores y los confederados durante el Segundo Imperio, 1863–1866,” Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México 52 (2016): 25n48. 113. Younger, ed., Inside the Confederate Government, 87. On the Texas scheme, see D. P. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974), 336; Howard Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 166. On Juárez’s flight, see Benito Juárez Proclamation, June 10, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 31. 114. Bee to Turner, August 6, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 140. See also Patrick J. Kelly, “The North American Crisis of the 1860s,” Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 3 (September 2012): 353–54. 115. James A. Seddon to Bernard Avegno, December 22, 1862, OR, Series 4, Vol. 2, 257. 116. Magruder to S. S. Anderson, December 15, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 15, 900–901; Nelson Clements to Jefferson Davis, August 1, 1864, OR, Series 4, Vol. 3, 565; Clements to Simeon Hart, December 16, 1862, ibid., 566. One “stand” of arms included a musket, bayonet, cartridge box, and all accoutrements. 117. Joseph Denegre to James A. Seddon, September 17, 1864, OR, Series 4, Vol. 3, 565–66. 118. Clements to John H. Reagan, August 6, 1864, ibid., 572–74; Charles Ricker to Charles J. Helm, July 20, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 177; Juan A. Zambrano to Juárez, October 2, 1863, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juarez, 8:231–32; François Achille Bazaine to French Minister of Foreign Affairs, October 1863, in Genaro García, ed., Documentos inéditos o muy raros para la historia de México, 36 vols. (Mexico City: Vda. de C. Bouret, 1908), 16:152–53. 119. Pierce Jr. to Seward, September 30, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4.

Notes to Pages 92–94

201

120. Bee to Clements, October 3, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 286–87. 121. Bee to Turner, October 3, 1863, ibid., 287–88; Ruiz to Juárez, October 1863, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juarez, 8:218–19. 122. Ricker to Helm, July 31, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 177–78; Bee to Superviéle, October 13, 1863, ibid., 308–9. 123. “Proclamation to the People of Texas,” Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, July 20, 1863. 124. Benjamin to John Slidell, January 8, 1864, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 991. 125. On Slidell’s activities, see Beckles Willson, John Slidell and the Confederates in Paris (1862–1865) (New York: AMS Press, 1970), 204–31. 126. Magruder to Slidell, October 14, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 313–15. 127. Slidell to M. Drouyn de Lhuys, November 27, 1863, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 971–72. 128. Denegre to Seddon, September 17, 1864, OR, Series 4, Vol. 3, 565–66. 129. Bee to Slidell, September 29, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 272–73. 130. Abraham Lincoln to Ulysses S. Grant, August 9, 1863, quoted in John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (New York: Century, 1890), 7:401. 131. Seward to Edwin M. Stanton, March 13, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 9, 648; P. H. Watson to Seward, March 19, 1862, ibid., 650; Seward to Stanton, April 25, 1862, ibid., 667. 132. Corwin to Seward, October 26, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 31. 133. Quintero to Benjamin, November 9, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Mahin, One War at a Time, 225; Patrick Kelly, “The Lost Continent of Abraham Lincoln,” Journal of the Civil War Era 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 234–35. 134. E. R. Tarver to Bee, October 28, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 1, 447–48; Bee to Turner, October 28, 1863, ibid., 448–49. See also Thompson, Tejano Tiger, 147–48. 135. Fitzpatrick to Benjamin, March 8, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Bee to Ruiz, October 28, 1863, ibid.; Ruiz to Bee, October 28, 1863, ibid.; Bee to Ruiz, October 30, 1863, ibid. On Vidal, see Marten, Texas Divided, 125–26; Thompson, Vaqueros in Blue and Gray, 71–79; Monday and Vick, Petra’s Legacy, 100–104, 121–24, 132–33; Jerry D. Thompson, “Mutiny and Desertion on the Rio Grande: The Strange Saga of Captain Adrian J. Vidal,” Military History of Texas and the Southwest 12 (1974): 159–70. On Kenedy’s bribery, see Thompson, Cortina, 156–57. 136. Ruiz to Juárez, November 4, 1863, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 8:293–94; Quintero to Benjamin, November 9, 1863, and November 26, 1863, both in Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Monday and Vick, Petra’s Legacy, 107–13. 137. Bee to Quintero, November 9, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 399–400. See also Tyler, “Cotton on the Border,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73, no. 4 (April 1970), 468–69. 138. Quintero to Benjamin, November 26, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 34, Part 2, 888–90; Quintero to Benjamin, July 5, 1862, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 139. Ben E. Pingenot, ed., Paso del Águila: A Chronicle of Frontier Days on the Texas Border as Recorded in the Memoirs of Jesse Sumpter (Austin, TX: Encino Press, 1969), 87; Kimmey to Seward, December 25, 1863, NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906, M165, Roll 1.

202

Notes to Pages 95–100

140. Hart to Seddon, November 18, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 913; Charles Russell to B. Bloomfield, November 28, 1863, ibid., 917; Russell to J. P. Johnson, January 1, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 566–70. 141. Nannie M. Tilley, ed., Federals on the Frontier: The Diary of Benjamin F. McIntyre, 1862–1864 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963), 255–56. On the federal occupation of Brownsville, see Stephen A. Townsend, The Yankee Invasion of Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006), 19–23; Thompson, Tejano Tiger, 144–57. 142. Ruiz to Juárez, October 1863, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juarez, 8:218. 143. Banks to Halleck, November 6, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 1, 399–401; José María Cobos to Citizens of Matamoras, November 6, 1863, ibid., 401–2. 144. Banks to Halleck, November 6, 1863, ibid., 400; Banks to Halleck, November 7, 1863, ibid., 402–4; Pierce Jr. to Banks, November 7, 1863, ibid., 404–5; Juan N. Cortina to the Public, November 8, 1863, ibid., 406–9; Pierce Jr. to Seward, January 16, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826– 1906, T18, Roll 4; Tilley, ed., Federals on the Frontier, 288–93. See also Thompson, Cortina, 113–27. 145. Bee to Dickinson, November 13, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 413. 146. Seward to Banks, November 23, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 1, 815. 147. Banks to Pierce Jr., November 13, 1863, ibid., 796–98; Banks to Halleck, December 11, 1863, ibid., 841. 148. Pierce Jr. to Francis J. Herron, January 12, 1864, in Papers Relative to Mexican Affairs: Communicated to the Senate June 16, 1864 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865), 62; Ruiz to Herron, January 12, 1864, ibid., 63; Herron to H. Bertram, January 12, 1864, ibid., 64; Herron to Banks, January 16, 1864, ibid., 62, 64; Andrés Treviño to Juárez, January 19, 1864, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 8:562–63; Juárez to Romero, February 1, 1864, ibid., 570; Pierce Jr. to Seward, January 16, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. 149. Tilley, ed., Federals on the Frontier, 287–93. 150. Herron to C. P. Stone, February 4, 1864, in Papers Relative to Mexican Affairs, 64–65. For Ruiz’s reports, see Ruiz to Juárez, January 6, January 8, January 12, January 14, and January 20, 1864, all in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 8:547–54, 564–65. 151. Tilley, ed., Federals on the Frontier, 324. See also Bazaine to French Minister of Foreign Affairs, February 9, 1864, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 17:219–22. 152. Romero to Seward, February 4, 1864, Papers Relative to Mexican Affairs, 59; Seward to Romero, March 12, 1864, ibid., 60; L. De Geofroy to Seward, March 11, 1864, ibid., 65–66. 153. Banks to Herron, December 25, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 1, 880–81. 154. Napoleon J. T. Dana to Kimmey, December 18, 1863, ibid., 865. 155. James H. Carleton to Banks, December 25, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 1, 879–80. 156. See, for example, John Hemphill and W. S. Oldham to L. P. Walker, March 30, 1861, OR, Series 1, Vol. 1, 618. 157. Lavalle, Una vecindad efímera, 110. 158. Benavides Hinojosa, Santiago Vidaurri, 12.

Chapter 4 1. Ignacio Pesqueíra to Benito Juárez, August 21, 1863, in Jorge L. Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez: Documentos, Discursos y Correspondencia (Mexico City: Editorial Libros de México, 1974), 8:62–64.

Notes to Pages 101–103

203

2. Kevin Waite, “Jefferson Davis and Proslavery Visions of Empire in the Far West,” Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 4 (December 2016): 553. 3. Rachel St. John, “The Unpredictable America of William Gwin: Expansion, Secession, and the Unstable Borders of Nineteenth-Century North America,” Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 1 (March 2016): 59–60; David C. Keehn, Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013), 129–30. On Gwin generally, see Joseph A. Stout Jr., Schemers and Dreamers: Filibustering in Mexico, 1848– 1921 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2002), 61–64; Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 167–80; Hallie M. McPherson, “The Plan of William McKendree Gwin for a Colony in North Mexico, 1863–1865,” Pacific Historical Review 2, no. 4 (December 1933): 357–86. 4. “Arrest of United States Senator Gwin,” Charleston Mercury, November 23, 1861; Matías Romero to Minister of Foreign Relations, November 16, 1861, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 5:292; St. John, “Unpredictable America of William Gwin,” 69–70. For Gwin’s arrest, see “Case of Gwin, Benham and Brent,” OR, Series 2, Vol. 2 of 8, 1009–20. 5. St. John, “Unpredictable America of William Gwin,” 70–72. 6. William M. Gwin to José María Gutiérrez de Estrada, October 1863, quoted in Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 167–68. 7. J. A. Quintero to Judah P. Benjamin, June 10, 1863, and December 30, 1863, both in Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; A. J. Grayson to Davis, August 21, 1863, ibid., Reel 10. In 1863, the Confederate State Department sent $1,000 to Quintero for the assistance of California secessionists migrating through Mexico. Benjamin to Quintero, September 30, 1863, ibid., Reel 10. 8. Farrelly Alden to William H. Seward, September 30, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls in Guaymas, 1832–1896, Microcopy T210, Roll 1; Report on the Commercial Relations of the United States with all Foreign Nations for the Year Ended September 30, 1864, 38th Cong., 2nd Sess., House Exec. Doc. 60, 719–20. See also Stuart F. Voss, On the Periphery of Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Sonora and Sinaloa, 1810–1877 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press), 156; Samuel Truett, Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 56. 9. John Slidell to Benjamin, June 2, 1864, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 1139–40. 10. Enrique A. Mejía to Romero, July 1, 1865, in The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 530–31. For correspondence related to Gwin’s activities in Mexico, see ibid., 529–44. 11. Journalist to Editor of N.Y. Daily News, May 19, 1865, ibid., 535. 12. Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 126, 171–73, 179; Napoleon III to Maximilian I, November 16, 1864, quoted in ibid., 175. For French perspectives on Sonora, see Napoleon  III to François Achille Bazaine, December 16, 1863, in Genaro García, ed., Documentos inéditos o muy raros para la historia de México, 36 vols. (Mexico City: Vda. de C. Bouret, 1909), 17:75–77; Bazaine to Napoleon III, February 25, 1864, ibid., 17:270–71; E. de Fleury, “Noticias Geologicas, Geograficas y Estadisticas sobre Sonora y Baja California,” ibid., 22:220–27; “Memoria anonima sobre . . . Chihuahua y Sonora,” October 1864, ibid., 22:124–52. 13. St. John, “Unpredictable America of William Gwin,” 73; Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 173.

204

Notes to Pages 104–110

14. Thomas D. Schoonover, ed. and trans., Mexican Lobby: Matías Romero in Washington, 1861–1867 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1986), 70–71, 74–75, quotation on 74. 15. William Corwin to William Seward, August 29, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 31. 16. Seward to John Bigelow, July 13, 1865, in The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 539. 17. Bigelow to Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys, August 1, 1865, ibid., 540–41; Drouyn de Lhuys to Bigelow, August 7, 1865, ibid., 541–42. 18. James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 250. 19. Napoleon III to Bazaine, March 31, 1865, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 27:106–7. See also “Colonizacion,” El Diario del Imperio (Mexico City), May 3, 1865. 20. St. John, “The Unpredictable America of William Gwin,” 73; Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 176–78, 209. 21. Seward to Bigelow, August 24, 1865, in The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 542. 22. William E. Hardy, “South of the Border: Ulysses S. Grant and the French Intervention,” Civil War History 54, no. 1 (March 2008): 69. 23. Ulysses S. Grant to Irvin McDowell, January 8, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 1118. 24. Bazaine to French Minister of War, March 28, 1865, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 27:96–97. 25. McDowell to Edwin M. Stanton, February 11, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 1131–33, General Orders No. 5, February 11, 1865, ibid., 1133; McDowell to Grant, March 12, 1865, ibid., 1158–60. 26. Robert Williams to McDowell, June 2, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 1254. 27. Thomas Franklin Andrews, “The Ambitions of Lansford W. Hastings: A Study in Western Myth-Making,” Pacific Historical Review 39, no. 4 (November 1970): 473–91. 28. James A. Seddon to Edmund Kirby Smith, February 4, 1864, OR, Series 4, Vol. 3, 76. 29. James A. Lucas to John S. Ford, January 20, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 954. On martial law, see William S. Kiser, Turmoil on the Rio Grande: The Territorial History of the Mesilla Valley, 1846–1865 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011), 189–209. 30. John R. Baylor to Seddon, December 21, 1864, OR, Series 4, Vol. 3, 960–61; Waite, “Jefferson Davis and Proslavery Visions of Empire in the Far West,” 555, 557; Martin Hardwick Hall, “Planter vs. Frontiersman: Conflict in Confederate Indian Policy,” in Essays on the American Civil War, ed. Frank E. Vandiver, Martin Hardwick Hall, and Homer L. Kerr (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), 55–72. 31. Seddon to Davis, December 30, 1864, OR, Series 4, Vol. 3, 961. 32. McPherson, Tried by War, 231–33, 250. 33. Davis to Seddon, January 5, 1865, OR, Series 4, Vol. 3, 961–62. 34. Baylor to Seddon, January 24, 1865, ibid., 1035–36; John W. Reily to Baylor, March 25, 1865, ibid., 1168–69. 35. Smith to Albert Pike, April 8, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2, 1266–69; Smith to J. W. Throckmorton, April 8, 1865, ibid., 1271; Smith to D. H. Cooper, April 8, 1865, ibid., 1270– 71; C. S. West to W. D. Reagan, April 15, 1865, ibid., 1279–80. See also Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 313.

Notes to Pages 110–116

205

36. Nelson H. Davis to Carleton, March 2, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 34, Part 2, 592–94. 37. Theodore A. Coult to Pesqueíra, March 5, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 793–95; Coult to Edward Conner, March 6, 1864, ibid., 795. 38. Nelson H. Davis to Carleton, March 2, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 34, Part 2, 592–94; Pesqueíra to Juárez, February 23, 1864, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 8:653–55. 39. James H. Carleton to Pesqueíra, April 20, 1864, in Condition of the Indian Tribes” 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 156, 177. 40. Nelson H. Davis to Carleton, October 17, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 41, Part 1, 125–31. 41. Edwin R. Sweeney, Cochise: Chiricahua Apache Chief (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 223. 42. Carleton to Pesqueíra, April 20, 1864, and Carleton to Luis Terrazas, April 20, 1864, both in Condition of the Indian Tribes, 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 156, 177–78. 43. Sweeney, Cochise, 228–30, 235, 240, 245–46 (quotation on 235). 44. Carleton to Coult, May 10, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 842. 45. Carleton to Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, February 22, 1865, NA, RG393, U.S. War Department, Letters Sent, Ninth Military Department, Department of New Mexico, and District of New Mexico, 1849–1890, M1072, Roll 3. 46. Carleton to Lorenzo Thomas, August 29, 1864, ibid.; Carleton to Michael Steck, October 29, 1864, ibid. On the Adobe Walls Campaign, see James Bailey Blackshear, Fort Bascom: Soldiers, Comancheros, and Indians in the Canadian River Valley (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 103–13; William S. Kiser, Coast-to-Coast Empire: Manifest Destiny and the New Mexico Borderlands (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018), 178–80. 47. Robert Ryal Miller, Arms Across the Border: United States Aid to Juárez During the French Intervention in Mexico (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1973), 13, 16–30; Voss, On the Periphery of Nineteenth-Century Mexico, 162–68. See also “Los Juaristas en California,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), July 22, 1865. 48. Alphonse Dano to Unidentified “Mexican Minister,” May 13, 1865, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 27:217–20. 49. Abraham Lincoln Executive Order, November 21, 1862, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 1071. 50. Plácido Vega to McDowell, November 2, 1864, ibid., 1038–44, quotation on 1039. 51. J. M. Aguirre de la Barrera to Jesús García Morales, September 7, 1864, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 9:398–400, quotation on 400; Miller, Arms Across the Border, 19, 27–28. 52. Edward F. Beale to Charles James, July 16, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 1090–92; James to Beale, July 20, 1864, ibid., 1092–93; Miller, Arms Across the Border, 19–20. 53. Vega to McDowell, November 2, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 1038–44, quotations on 1040 and 1044; Jonathan S. Mason to Richard C. Drum, November 25, 1864, ibid., 1069–70. 54. McDowell to Vega, November 26, 1864, ibid., 1073–75, quotation on 1073. 55. Miller, Arms Across the Border, 27. 56. Lerdo de Tejada to Vega, January 18, 1866, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:567–72; Miller, Arms Across the Border, 29. 57. See, for example, Romero to Minister of Foreign Relations, June 14, 1864, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 9:182–83; J. Zubiría to Juárez, June 15, 1864, ibid., 190–91. 58. W. Hunter to Romero, May 11, 1865, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Notes to Foreign Legations in the United States from the Dept. of State 1834–1906, M99, Roll 70 (Mexico,

206

Notes to Pages 116–120

1854–1873). See also Schoonover, Mexican Lobby, 69–70; Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 75–76. 59. Juárez to Romero, June 29, 1864, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 9:179. 60. “The French in Sonora,” New York Times, July 18, 1862. 61. “A Voice from the Wilderness,” Santa Fe Weekly Gazette, November 7, 1863. 62. “The French in Sonora,” Santa Fe Weekly Gazette, July 30, 1864. See also “Juarez,” Santa Fe Weekly Gazette, September 9, 1865. 63. George Wright to F. F. Low, March 18, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 791–92; Low to Wright, March 21, 1864, ibid., 797. 64. Wright to Drum, July 22, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 50, Part 2, 915. 65. Wright to E. D. Townsend, March 14, 1864, ibid., 788–89; Wright to Adjutant General, March 28, 1864, ibid., 800–801. 66. José María Patoni to Juárez, November 2, 1863, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 8:129–31. 67. “El Gobernador constitucional del Estado de Chihuahua á los habitantes del mismo,” La Alianza de la Frontera (Ciudad Chihuahua), May 1, 1862, in Periódico Oficial de Chihuahua, Jan. 3, 1861–Jul. 22, 1865, Microfilm Reel 7; Luis Terrazas to Patoni, December 1, 1863, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 8:447–48; Terrazas to Patoni, January 13, 1864, ibid., 8:530–31; Terrazas to Juárez, February 6, 1864, ibid., 8:598–600. See also Francisco R. Almada and Guillermo Porras, Luis Terrazas: Una Polémica Histórica (Chihuahua: Ediciones del Azar, 1999), 30–32. 68. Reuben Creel to James H. Carleton, February 3, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls at Chihuahua, 1826–1906, T167, Roll 1. See also “Late from Mexico,” Santa Fe Weekly Gazette, February 27, 1864. 69. Almada and Porras, Luis Terrazas, 5–9; Luis Aboites Aguilar, “Juárez en Chihuahua: La Dificultad de la Nación,” in Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, ed., Juárez: Historia y Mito (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2010), 495–96, 506–7. 70. Mark Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution: The Native Elite and Foreign Enterprise in Chihuahua, Mexico, 1854–1911 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 33–34. 71. D. Joaquín Terrazas, Memorias (Ciudad Juárez: El Agricultor Mexicano, 1905), 41–61; José Fuentes Mares, Y México se Refugió en el Desierto: Luis Terrazas, Historia y Destino (Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1954), 147. 72. Romero to Minister of Foreign Relations, March 24, 1864, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 8:707–8. 73. Patoni to Juárez, June 11, 1864, ibid., 9:164. See also Aguilar, “Juárez en Chihuahua,” 500–501; Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution, 33. 74. Henry Cuniffe to Seward, June 17, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Consuls at Ciudad Juarez (Paso del Norte), 1850–1906, M184, Roll 1; Untitled report on French in Mexico, Santa Fe Weekly Gazette, June 25, 1864. See also “The French Evacuate Chihuahua,” ibid., November 18, 1865; Almada and Porras, Luis Terrazas, 35. On Terrazas during the French Intervention, see Fuentes Mares, Y México se Refugió en el Desierto, 47–100. 75. Carleton to Terrazas, July 1, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 41, Part 2, 15; Patoni to Juárez, June 5, 1864 (two separate letters of the same date), both in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 9:153–54. 76. William Corwin to Seward, October 28, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 31. For the “pilgrim

Notes to Pages 120–124

207

president” quote, see Creel to Seward, December 10, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls at Chihuahua, 1826–1906, T167, Roll 1. 77. Miller, Arms Across the Border, 7. 78. Schoonover, Mexican Lobby, 28–29. 79. “The Proceedings of Congress: Important Debate in the Senate on the Course of the French in Mexico,” New York Times, February 4, 1863; “French Interference in Mexico,” Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 3rd Sess., February 3, 1863, 694–95; “French Interference in Mexico: Speech of Hon. J. A. McDougall of California,” ibid., Appendix, February 3, 1863, 94–100; “The Peace Conference,” ibid., 38th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 10, 1865, 733; “Loan Bill,” ibid., February 27, 1865, 1164. On Napoleon and Sonora, see Kathryn Abbey Hanna, “Roles of the South in the French Intervention in Mexico,” Journal of Southern History 20, no. 1 (February 1954), 15. 80. Patrick Kelly, “The Lost Continent of Abraham Lincoln,” Journal of the Civil War Era 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 238–39. 81. Edward Conner to Seward, March 25, 1865, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls in Guaymas, 1832–1896, T210, Roll 1. On the collaboration between Sonora, Sinaloa, and Chihuahua, see Pesqueíra to Angel Trías, September 9, 1864, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 9:400–401; Pesqueíra to Jesús G. Morales, September 9, 1864, ibid., 401–2; Pesqueíra to Juárez, September 10, 1864, ibid., 402–3. 82. Juárez to Pedro Santicilia, January 5, 1865, ibid., 612. 83. Conner to Seward, May 22, 1865, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls in Guaymas, 1832–1896, T210, Roll 1. 84. Conner to Seward, April 29, 1865, ibid.; Bazaine to French Minister of War, April 10, 1865, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 27:134–35. See also “Toma de Guaymas,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), April 26, 1865. 85. Bazaine to French Minister of War, May 10, 1865, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 27:206; Bazaine to Armand Alexandre de Castagny, May 21, 1865, ibid., 228–29; “Sonora,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), August 10, 1865. On the French Intervention in Sonora, see Rodolfo F. Acuña, Sonoran Strongman: Ignacio Pesqueira and His Times (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974), 78–93; Voss, On the Periphery of Nineteenth-Century Mexico, 168–75; Zulema Trejo, “Imperialistas y gobierno imperial en Sonora,” in Patricia Galeana, ed., El Imperio Napoleónico y la Monarquía en México (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 2012), 293–304. On Yaquis, see Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival: The Struggle for Land and Autonomy, 1821–1910 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 84–87. 86. Details of Lee’s surrender did not appear in Mexican newspapers until May 1865. See “Rendicion de Lee y de su ejército,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), May 1, 1865, and “EstadosUnidos,” ibid., May 2, 1865. 87. Conner to Seward, April 29, 1865, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls in Guaymas, 1832–1896, T210, Roll 1. 88. Creel to Seward, December 10, 1863, NA, RG59, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls at Chihuahua, 1826–1906, T167, Roll 1. 89. On Juárez in Chihuahua, see Francisco R. Almada, La ruta de Juárez (Chihuahua: Ediciones del Azar, 2007), 185–201; Patricia Galeana, Juárez en la historia de México (Mexico:

208

Notes to Pages 124–126

Miguel Angel Porrúa, 2006), 210–13; Moisés González Navarro, Benito Juárez, 2 vols. (Mexico: El Colegio de México, 2006), 1:568–75; Aguilar, “Juárez en Chihuahua,” 495–507. 90. Henry Cuniffe to Seward, October 10, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Consuls at Ciudad Juarez (Paso del Norte), 1850–1906, M184, Roll 1. 91. Creel to Carleton, September 18, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls at Chihuahua, 1826–1906, Microcopy T167, Roll 1. 92. “Spies Demolished,” Santa Fe Weekly Gazette, April 30, 1864; A. H. French to Carleton, undated report, in “The Capture of Skillman’s Party,” ibid., May 14, 1864. 93. Carleton to Lerdo de Tejada, February 22, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 1, 951–52. On Lerdo de Tejada, see Frank Averill Knapp Jr., The Life of Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada 1823–1889: A Study of Influence and Obscurity (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968) 76–118. 94. Creel to Carleton, July 27, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2, 1182–83; Carleton to Adjutant General, August 14, 1865, ibid., 1183. 95. “Fuga de D. Benito Juarez,” El Diario del Imperio (Mexico City), October 17, 1865; Cuniffe to Seward, January 12, 1866, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Consuls at Ciudad Juarez (Paso del Norte), 1850–1906, M184, Roll 1; Cuniffe to Seward, February 2, 1866 ibid.; Creel to Seward, February 28, 1866, ibid. Quotation in Cuniffe to Seward, October 10, 1864, ibid. 96. Carleton to Juárez, August 25, 1865, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:176; Juárez to Carleton, September 6, 1865, ibid., 176–77. 97. Cuniffe to Seward, February 2, 1866, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Consuls at Ciudad Juarez (Paso del Norte), 1850–1906, M184, Roll 1. 98. Lerdo de Tejada to Terrazas, November 1, 1865, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:341– 42. See also José Fuentes Mares, Y México se Refugió en el Desierto: Luis Terrazas, Historia y Destino (Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1954), 103–28; Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution, 33. 99. Creel to Seward, February 28, 1866, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Consuls at Ciudad Juarez (Paso del Norte), 1850–1906, M184, Roll 1; Creel to Seward, March 30, 1866, ibid. 100. Creel to Seward, August 18, 1866, ibid. Creel submitted his resignation as consul two months later. Creel to Seward, October 17, 1866, ibid. 101. “Noticias de Sonora,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), July 24, 1865; “Sonora,” ibid., September 27, 1865; “Sucesos de Sonora,” ibid., September 29, 1865; “Sonora,” ibid., September 30, 1865; Conner to Seward, September 25, 1865, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls in Guaymas, 1832–1896, Microcopy T210, Roll 1; Jesús Terán to Minister of Foreign Relations, October 10, 1865, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:307–8; Acuña, Sonoran Strongman, 87–93. 102. Pesqueíra to Juárez, July 31, 1866, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 11:173–74; Conner to Frederick W. Seward, August 14, 1866, and September 19, 1866, both in NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls in Guaymas, 1832–1896, Microcopy T210, Roll 1. 103. Sweeney, Cochise, 248–49, 251–58. For the quotation, see Terrazas, Memorias, 4. See also Francisco R. Almada, Diccionarrio de historia, geografía, y biografía Sonorenses (Chihuahua: Impresora Ruiz Sandoval, 1952), 76; Miguel Tinker Salas, In the Shadow of the Eagles: Sonora and the Transformation of the Border During the Porfiriato (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 276n40.

Notes to Pages 128–131

209

Chapter 5 1. Ronnie C. Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1973), 29n46, 122–27; Jerry D. Thompson, Tejano Tiger: José de los Santos Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823–1891 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2017), 138–39, 162–64; Ronnie C. Tyler, “Cotton on the Border, 1861–1865” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73, no. 4 (April 1970): 471–73. On Milmo Group, see www.milmogroup.com. 2. Clarence C. Thayer to E. Kirby Smith, December 20, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 931–32; José A. Quintero to Judah P. Benjamin, December 23, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Richard Fitzpatrick to Benjamin, March 8, 1864, ibid. 3. Patricio Milmo to Thayer, December 17, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 933. 4. Milmo to Simeon Hart, December 11, 1863, ibid., 936; Geo. T. Howard to Hart, September 10, 1863, ibid., 937; Quintero to Pedro Santacilia, January 29, 1864, in Jesús Avila, Leticia Martínez and César Morado, Santiago Vidaurri: La formación de un liderazgo regional desde Monterrey (1809–1867) (Monterrey: Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, 2012), 290; William G. Hale to Quintero, January 14, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Quintero to Vidaurri, January 21, 1864, ibid. On Hart’s debt, see Fitzpatrick to Benjamin, October 22, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 5. Quintero to Vidaurri, December 17, 1863, in Avila, Martínez, and Morado, Santiago Vidaurri, 301–2; Quintero to Benjamin, December 23, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Thayer to Smith, December 20, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 931–32. 6. Quintero to Santacilia, January 29, 1864, in Avila, Martínez, and Morado, Santiago Vidaurri, 290–92. 7. Quintero to Hart, December 20, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 943–44. 8. Report to Accompany Bill S. No. 783, May 16, 1870, 41st Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 166, 13; “From Mexico,” New-York Daily Tribune, May 21, 1864; Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri, 98. On Latham as a secret intermediary, see Quintero to R. M. T. Hunter, November 10, 1861, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 9. Quintero to Hart, December 20, 1863, ibid.; Thayer to Hart, December 20, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 943. 10. Quintero to Hart, December 20, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 11. Hart to Milmo, November 17, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 940; Hart to Milmo, December 1, 1863, ibid., 939; Hart to George Williamson, December 18, 1863, ibid., 944–46; Hart to Williamson, December 24, 1863, ibid., 933–35. See also Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri, 124–25. 12. Smith to Santiago Vidaurri, January 12, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 950–51. The three agents sent to Monterrey were Colonel Thomas F. McKinney, Judge Thomas J. Devine, and Captain Felix Ducayet. See Robert L. Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South, 1863–1865 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 196–99. 13. Vidaurri to Smith, February 2, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8.

210

Notes to Pages 131–135

14. Hart to Williamson, December 18, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 944–46; W. A. Broadwell to C. G. Memminger, January 28, 1864, ibid., 955–56. 15. Quintero to Vidaurri, January 21, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Quintero to Benjamin, January 23, 1864, ibid. Quotations in Quintero to Benjamin, February 1, 1864, ibid. 16. Special Orders No. 8, January 12, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 951; Quintero to Benjamin, February 1, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 17. Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri, 126. 18. Quintero to Benjamin, February 28, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri, 126–27. 19. “Annual Message of Jefferson Davis,” OR, Series 4, Vol. 2, 1026, 1034; “Maximilian,” Richmond Whig, October 29, 1862. See also Quintero to Benjamin, July 24, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 20. Thomas Corwin to William Seward, June 26, 1863, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 31. 21. Romero to Minister of Foreign Relations, June 30, 1864, in Jorge L. Tamayo, ed., Benito Juarez: Documentos, Discursos, y Correspondencia (Mexico City: Editorial Libros de México, 1974), 9:185–87. 22. Quintero to Benjamin, November 4, 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Quintero to Juan Almonte, November 4, 1863, ibid.; Alfred Jackson Hanna and Kathryn Abbey Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 119; Jasper Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez (London: Constable, 1993), 176–77. See also Quintero to Benjamin, March 8, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. The Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, a prince of the Hapsburg royal line, assumed the throne as Emperor Maximilian I in June 1864, but he had been appointed by Napoleon III several months earlier. Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999), 221–22. 23. Jefferson Davis to Maximilian, January 7, 1864, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 155. See also James Morton Callahan, American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relations (New York: Cooper Square, 1967), 294; Kathryn Abbey Hanna, “Roles of the South in the French Intervention in Mexico,” Journal of Southern History 20, no. 1 (February 1954): 14–15. 24. Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959), 246; John H. Eicher and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 434. 25. Four letters from Benjamin to William Preston, all dated January 7, 1864, in Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 10; John T. Pickett to William M. Browne, November 29, 1861, ibid., Reel 4. 26. Benjamin to John Slidell, June 23, 1864, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 1157.

Notes to Pages 135–137

211

27. Benjamin to William Preston, January 7, 1864, ibid., 988–89; Thomas Corwin to William Seward, July 29, 1861, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 29. 28. Benjamin to Preston, January 7, 1864, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 988–89; Benjamin to Slidell, January 8, 1863, ibid., 991. 29. Patrick J. Kelly, “The North American Crisis of the 1860s,” Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 3 (September 2012): 352–53. 30. Seward to Corwin, February 20, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, M77, Roll 113 (Mexico, Vol. 17, 1854–1867). 31. Slidell to Edouard Thouvenel, July 21, 1862, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 474. On Southern political power, see Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); William S. Kiser, Borderlands of Slavery: The Struggle over Captivity and Peonage in the American Southwest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 28–29. 32. Slidell to Benjamin, July 25, 1862, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 484, 486–87. Unbeknownst to Slidell, French leaders hatched a plot of their own, sending secret agents to Texas and Virginia in an attempt to separate Texas from the Confederacy and reattach it to Mexico, reconstituting the pre-1845 Mexican Republic under French rule. When Confederate officers discovered the conspiracy they expelled the French operatives. Benjamin to Slidell, October 17, 1862, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 556–58; A. Dudley Mann to Benjamin, January 29, 1863, ibid., 671. See also Mahin, One War at a Time, 223–25; Carland Elaine Crook, “Benjamin Théron and French Designs in Texas During the Civil War,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 68, no. 4 (April 1965): 432–54. 33. Henry Hotze to Benjamin, February 13, 1864, ORN, Series 2, Vol. 3, 1024; Slidell to Benjamin, September 22, 1863, ibid., 906; Hotze to Slidell, August 23, 1863, ibid., 868–70. See also Howard Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 179–80; Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 60–66. On French public sentiment, see David H. Pinkney, “France and the Civil War,” in Harold Hyman, ed., Heard Round the World: The Impact Abroad of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 99–118. The secret author of the pamphlet was originally thought to be Henry Hotze, a Confederate propagandist in Europe, although scholars have more recently argued that Michel Chevalier, an aide to Napoleon III, actually wrote it. Mahin, One War at a Time, 21; Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 66–67; Lonnie A. Burnett, Henry Hotze, Confederate Propagandist: Selected Writings on Revolution, Recognition, and Race (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008), 15–33. 34. Mahin, One War at a Time, 215. 35. Benjamin to Preston, July 22, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 10; Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 141–42. 36. Maximilian and Carlota left Europe on April 14, 1864 and arrived at Vera Cruz on May 28. Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 129, 133. 37. François Achille Bazaine to Vidaurri, February 15, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 38. John B. Magruder to Slidell, October 14, 1863, OR, Series 1, Vol. 26, Part 2, 313–15.

212

Notes to Pages 137–140

39. Quintero to Benjamin, January 23, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. 40. Baron Alphonse Edouard Aymard to Bazaine, March 17, 1864, in Genaro García, ed., Documentos inéditos o muy raros para la historia de México, 36 vols. (Mexico City: Vda. de C. Bouret, 1908), 18:10–13. 41. Bazaine to French Minister of War, March 18, 1864, ibid., 89–91; Bazaine to French Minister of War, March 26, 1864, ibid., 140; Bazaine to Mejía, March 11, 1864, ibid., 61–62. 42. Charles H. Harris III, A Mexican Family Empire: The Latifundio of the Sánchez Navarros, 1765–1867 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975), 298–306; Mario Treviño, Entre Caciques y Caudillos: Nuevo León, Siglo XIX (Monterrey: Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, 2009), 51–64. 43. Myndert M. Kimmey to Seward, February 12, February 23, and March 4, 1864, all in NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906, M165, Roll 1; Vidaurri to Juárez, February 14, 1864, in Avila, Martínez and Morado, Santiago Vidaurri, 289. See also Walter V. Scholes, Mexican Politics During the Juárez Regime, 1855–1872 (Columbia: University of Missouri Studies, 1957), 102–5; Jorge Pedraza, Juárez en Monterrey (Monterrey: Editorial Alfonso Reyes, 1972), 29–40. 44. Vidaurri Circular to the Alcaldes, February 16, 1864, NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906, M165, Roll 1. 45. Matías Romero to Minister of Foreign Relations, March 24, 1864, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juarez, 8:706–8. 46. Decree of Benito Juárez, March 5, 1864, in Avila, Martínez, and Morado, Santiago Vidaurri, 284–85. 47. Kimmey to Seward, May 9, 1864, NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906, M165, Roll 1. 48. Antonio de Castro y Carrillo, “La Cuestión Estrangera, Apendice” April 4, 1864, ibid. 49. “An Interesting Pair of Rebels—Vidaurri and Magruder Compliment Each Other in Public Speeches,” New Orleans Era, undated, in The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 513–14. 50. “From Mexico,” New-York Daily Tribune, May 21, 1864; “News from Mexico: Escape of Vidaurri Across the Rio Grande; Particulars of his Flight; Juarez and His Troops in Monterrey,” New York Times, May 14, 1864. See also Romero to Minister of Foreign Relations, June 30, 1864, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 9:185–87. 51. Kimmey to Seward, March 29 and April 4, 1864, both in NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906, M165, Roll 1. See also Arturo Gálvez Medrano, Regionalismo y Gobierno General: El Caso de Nuevo León y Coahuila, 1855–1864 (Monterrey: Gobierno del Estado, 1993), 169–73. 52. Proclamation of Benito Juarez, August 11, 1864, NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906, M165, Roll 1. 53. “From Mexico,” New-York Daily Tribune, May 21, 1864. 54. Ibid. 55. Miguel Negrete to Benito Juárez, March 30, 1864, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juarez, 8:732– 33; Quintero to Benjamin, April 3, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Quintero to

Notes to Pages 140–141

213

Negrete, March 30, 1864, ibid.; Negrete to Quintero, March 31, 1864, ibid. Quotation is from Memorandum of General C. J. Morehead, May 25, 1864, ibid. 56. Benjamin to Quintero, September 30, 1863, ibid., Reel 10. 57. “From Northern Mexico: Movements of Juarez, Feeling Toward Americans,” New York Times, April 24, 1864. On Confederate relations with Mexican conservatives, see Kelly, “The North American Crisis of the 1860s,” 337–62; Juan Pablo Ortiz Dávila, “Visiones desde la prensa: Las relaciones entre los conservadores y los confederados durante el Segundo Imperio, 1863–1866,” Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México 52 (2016): 18–38. 58. Kimmey to Seward, August 19 and August 27, 1864, both in NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906, M165, Roll 1; William Corwin to Seward, September 29, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 31. 59. Pierce to Seward, September 1, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4; John G. Walker to James Slaughter, October 1, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 41, Part 3, 972. On Cortina’s activities, see Jerry D. Thompson, Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007), 128–47; Stephen A. Townsend, The Yankee Invasion of Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006), 109–13; Gene C. Armistead and Robert D. Arconti, “An Arch Rebel Like Myself ”: Dan Showalter and the Civil War in California and Texas (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018), 136–37. 60. Seward to Corwin, September 19, 1864, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906, M77, Roll 113 (Mexico, Vol. 17, 1854–1867); Quintero to Smith, October 31, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State. 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8. After Corwin resigned, the US consul position in Mexico City remained vacant for more than eighteen months, until John A. Logan accepted the appointment in October 1865. Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 261, 264. 61. John F. Dayton to Tomás Mejía, September 28, 1864, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 9:416; Mejía to Dayton, September 28, 1864, ibid., 416–17; Quintero to Benjamin, November 5, 1864, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868, MSS16550, Reel 8; Quintero to Smith, October 31, 1864, ibid. 62. Eliza McHatton-Ripley, From Flag to Flag: A Woman’s Adventures and Experiences in the South During the War, in Mexico, and in Cuba (New York: D. Appleton, 1889), 114. 63. Slaughter to Thomas M. Jack, April 6, 1865, in The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 526–27. See also Thompson, Tejano Tiger, 170–76. 64. C. C. Peck, Incidents and Notes By The Way (unpublished pocket diary, 1860), 42, DeGolyer Library Special Collections, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. On the Union withdrawal, see Richard B. McCaslin, Fighting Stock: John S. “Rip” Ford of Texas (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2011), 168. 65. Tyler, “Cotton on the Border,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73, no. 4 (April 1970): 463, 476. 66. Vidaurri to Unknown, September 26, 1864, in Avila, Martínez and Morado, Santiago Vidaurri, 286–87; Slaughter to Jack, April 6, 1865, in The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 526–27; Vidaurri to Maximilian I, March 8, 1865, in

214

Notes to Pages 142–146

García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 27:10–13. See also “El Sr. Vidaurri,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), August 11, 1866. 67. Smith to W. G. Hale, January 25, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 1, 1343. 68. Smith to Florentino Lopez, February 10, 1865, ibid., 1379–80; Smith to J. M. Aguilar, February 10, 1865, ibid., 1380. 69. Articles of Extradition, December 19, 1864, ibid., 1329–30; Slaughter to Mejía, January 10, 1865, ibid., 1326–28; Mejía to Bazaine, May 24, 1865, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 27:242–43; quotation in Slaughter to Jack, April 6, 1865, in The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 527. On the collusion between Slaughter and Mejía, see Romero to William Hunter, April 20, 1865, with three enclosures, all in ibid., 519–21; Romero to Seward, July 4, 1865, with three enclosures, all in ibid., 523–28. 70. “Matamoros,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), May 14, 1865. 71. E. D. Etchison to F. W. Seward, January 10, 1865, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4; Mejía to Etchison, January 10, 1865, ibid.; Amzi Wood to F. W. Seward, February 18, 1865, ibid.; Wood to W. H. Seward, March 20, 1865, ibid.; Etchison to S. A. Hurlbut, February 27, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 1, 1048–49. 72. Kimmey to W. H. Seward, April 8, 1865, NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906, M165, Roll 1. 73. See, for example, Magruder to Juan N. Cortina, May 22, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 1002; P. Murrah to Magruder, June 23, 1864, ibid. 74. Kimmey to Seward, May 11 and May 21, 1864, both in NA, RG59, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906, M165, Roll 1 (emphasis in original); Decree of Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, May 7, 1864, ibid.; Seward to Nathaniel P. Banks, May 28, 1864, OR, Series 1, Vol. 53, 594–95. 75. S. S. Brown to Lew Wallace, January 13, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 1, 512–13; Etchison to S. A. Hurlbut, February 27, 1865, ibid., 1048–49; Amzi Wood to W. H. Seward, February 21, 1865, ibid.; Wallace to Ulysses S. Grant, January 14, 1865, ibid., 512. On Lew Wallace, see Robert Ryal Miller, Arms Across the Border: United States Aid to Juárez During the French Intervention in Mexico (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1973), 41–47. 76. Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 209–13; Mahin, One War at a Time, 235– 38; William E. Hardy, “South of the Border: Ulysses S. Grant and the French Intervention,” Civil War History 54, no. 1 (March 2008): 63–64. 77. Bazaine to French Minister of War, May 10, 1865, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 27:195–209, quotation on 202. 78. Louis Avery to Seward, August 19, 1865, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. 79. Report to Accompany Bill S. No. 783, May 16, 1870, 41st Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 166, 15–16. 80. Mejía to Francisco G. Casanova, April 11, 1865, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 27:136–38, quotation on 137. 81. Proclamation of Tomás Mejía, August 15, 1865, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4.

Notes to Pages 146–149

215

82. Michael Dolan to S. A. Hurlbut, April 16, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2, 106; John S. Ford to Mejía, May 28, 1865, in The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 528. See also Thompson, Cortina, 148. 83. “Matamoros,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), September 17, 1865; “Frontera del Norte,” ibid., October 4, 1865. See also Thompson, Cortina, 148–50. On Palmito Ranch, see Jeffrey Wm. Hunt, The Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002). 84. Mejía to Frederick Steele, October 12, 1865, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 33:138– 40; “Matamoros,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), October 11, 1865. 85. Marquis de Montholon to Seward, October 19, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2, 1241; “México y los Estados-Unidos,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), October 14, 1865. On the Bagdad raid, see Thompson, Cortina, 167–70. 86. Patrick Kelly, “The Lost Continent of Abraham Lincoln,” Journal of the Civil War Era 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 235–36, 240. 87. Ramón Eduardo Ruiz, ed., An American in Maximilian’s Mexico, 1865–1866: The Diaries of William Marshall Anderson (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1959), 42, 65. 88. Blondeel van Cuelebroeck to Bazaine, May 26, 1865, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 27:245–49, quotation on 247. 89. A. H. Cañedo to P. J. Osterhaus, June 4, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2, 771; Steele to Phil H. Sheridan, June 10, 1865, ibid., 875–76. 90. Magruder to “Citizens and Soldiers,” May 4, 1865, ibid., 1294. 91. Smith to Robert Rose, May 2, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2, 1292–93. For Smith’s activities, see Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy, 416–28. 92. W. C. Nunn, Escape from Reconstruction (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1956); Thomas M. Settles, John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009), 281–93; Hamilton P. Bee to Guy M. Bryan, May 15, 1865, Hamilton P. Bee Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. 93. A. W. Terrell to M. Douay, September 18, 1865, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 33:45–49, quotation on 49; Terrell to Douay, undated, ibid., 50–54. 94. “Terms of a military convention,” May 26, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2, 600–601; General Orders No. 61, May 26, 1865, ibid., 604–6. 95. For a list of ex-Confederates in Mexico, see The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 549–50. On Shelby, see John N. Edwards, Shelby’s Expedition to Mexico: An Unwritten Leaf of the War (Kansas City, MO: Kansas City Times, 1872); Daniel O’Flaherty, General Jo Shelby: Undefeated Rebel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954), 235–326; Edwin Adams Davis, Fallen Guidon: The Forgotten Saga of General Jo Shelby’s Confederate Command (Santa Fe, NM: Stagecoach Press, 1962); Anthony Arthur, General Jo Shelby’s March (New York: Random House, 2010). 96. “Actualidades,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), May 20, 1865. 97. Maximilian to Luis Robles Pezuela, September 27, 1865, in The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 556; Corwin to Seward, October 28, 1865, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 31. See also Alexander Watkins Terrell, From Texas to Mexico and the

216

Notes to Pages 149–151

Court of Maximilian in 1865 (Dallas: Book Club of Texas, 1933), 51–53. For appointments to the Colonization Council, see “Junta de Colonizacion,” El Diario del Imperio (Mexico City), October 13, 1865. 98. “Situacion de los Estados del Sur,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), September 21, 1865. 99. “Ley de Colonización,” September 5, 1865, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:224–26; “Parte Oficial,” El Diario del Imperio (Mexico City), September 9, 1865; “Plan General de Colonizacion,” ibid., September 12, 1865. See also Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 119. On Maury’s arrival in Mexico, see “El Sr. F. Maury,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), July 25, 1865. 100. Maximilian to Pezuela, September 24, 1865, in The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 556. For Maury’s boosterism, see M. F. Maury Circular, November 18, 1865, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:234–39. An English translation of Maury’s circular is in The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 561–66. 101. “Prospectus of the American and Mexican Emigrant Company,” in The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 568–72. 102. “Ley de Colonización,” September 5, 1865, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:224–26; “Junta de Colonizacion,” El Diario del Imperio (Mexico City), November 3, 1865. See also Andrés Reséndez, “North American Peonage,” Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 607–8. 103. Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 225. 104. Romero to Seward, October 5, 1865, Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:227–28. 105. The Condition of Affairs in Mexico, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73, 470–82, quotation on 479. 106. M. F. Maury Circular, November 18, 1865, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:234–39; “Terrenos Para Colonizacion,” El Diario del Imperio (Mexico City), October 10, 1865. 107. Isham G. Harris to George W. Adair, November 12, 1865, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:230–33. 108. Kathryn Abbey Hanna, “The Roles of the South in the French Intervention in Mexico,” Journal of Southern History 20, no. 1 (February 1954): 19–20; Nunn, Escape from Reconstruction, 57–76; Andrew F. Rolle, The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), 92–113; Todd W. Wahlstrom, The Southern Exodus from Mexico: Migration Across the Borderland After the American Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), xiv–xv, 13–24. See also “The American Colony in Mexico,” DeBow’s Review (New Orleans), June 1866, 623–30. Smaller groups of Confederates also went to Brazil. See William Clark Griggs, The Elusive Eden: Frank McMullan’s Confederate Colony in Brazil (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987). 109. Sheridan to Edwin M. Stanton, September 21, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2, 1196; Sheridan to Ulysses S. Grant, November 26, 1865, ibid., 1258; Bee to J. P. Crosby, January 4, 1869, Hamilton P. Bee Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. See also Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 221–35, 264–65; Nunn, Escape from Reconstruction, 74. 110. Elliott West, “Reconstructing Race,” Western Historical Quarterly 34, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 6–26; Elliott West, “The Future of Reconstruction Studies: Reconstruction in the West,” Journal of the Civil War Era 7 (March 2017): 14. 111. “Actualidades,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), May 4, 1865.

Notes to Pages 151–155

217

112. Romero to Minister of Foreign Relations, July 9, 1866, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 11:279–81; Hardy, “South of the Border,” 78. 113. Grant to Andrew Johnson, June 19, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2, 923–24; Grant to Johnson, July 15, 1865, ibid., 1080; Hardy, “South of the Border,” 67. For Grant’s “wicked war” quote, see John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant, 2 vols. (New York: American News Company, 1879), 2:447–48. On arms shipments to Juárez, see Miller, Arms Across the Border, 7, 53–59; John Mason Hart, Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 9–17. 114. “Actualidades,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), July 29, 1865. 115. Richard White, The Republic For Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 112. 116. Lucius Avery to Seward, October 26, 1865, January 15, 1866, and January 24, 1866, all in NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4; T. Wurtemberg to Bazaine, November 14, 1865, in García, ed., Documentos inéditos, 33:233–41; “From Monterrey: Defeat of Escobedo, Route and Pursuit,” Monitor of the Frontier (Matamoros, Tamaulipas), December 16, 1865; “El Sitio de Matamoros,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), February 22, 1866. 117. Sheridan to Grant, August 1, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2, 1147–49; Sheridan to Grant, November 5, 1865, ibid., 1252–53. On Showalter, see Armistead and Arconti, “An Arch Rebel Like Myself,” 168–74. 118. Grant to Johnson, September 1, 1865, OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2, 1221. 119. Grant to Sheridan, October 22, 1865, ibid., 1242–43. On Johnson’s role, see Hardy, “South of the Border,” 72. 120. Corwin to Seward, August 25, 1865, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823–1906, M97, Roll 31. 121. Gregory P. Downs, After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 27–28, 99. For an example of exaggerated Mexican reporting, see “Actualidades,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), August 3, 1865. 122. Romero to Negrete, July 9, 1865, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:100; Romero to Juárez, August 22, 1865, ibid., 178–79. 123. Sheridan to Grant, October 31, 1866, in John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 16:323. On Seward’s role, see Walter Stahr, Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 440–46. 124. On Seward’s Mexican policy, see James Morton Callahan, American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relations (New York: Cooper Square, 1967), 278–340. On Grant’s posture toward Mexico, see Brooks D. Simpson, Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 154–58; Mahin, One War at a Time, 270–72; Hardy, “South of the Border,” 63–86. 125. Grant to Sheridan, December 1 and December 19, 1865, both in OR, Series 1, Vol. 48, Part 2, 1258–60. 126. “Mexican Affairs,” Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., December 11, 1865, 18–19. 127. “Exposition at Paris,” ibid., 39th Cong., 1st Sess., June 20, 1866, 3305; “Loan to Republic of Mexico,” ibid., 39th Cong., 1st Sess., June 16, 1866, 3217–18. 128. “Provisional Governments,” ibid. 39th Cong., 1st Sess., January 10, 1866, 164.

218

Notes to Pages 155–157

129. Miller, Arms Across the Border, 59; Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 9, 106, 143. 130. Napoleon III to Maximilian, September 15, 1865, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:240; Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys to Marquis de Montholon, October 18, 1865, ibid., 353–54. See also Stahr, Seward, 464–66. 131. Maximilian to Napoleon III, December 27, 1865, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:361– 66; Napoleon III to Maximilian, January 15, 1866, ibid., 661; Napoleon III to Bazaine, February 16, 1866, ibid., 674–76; “Discurso del Emperador de Los Franceses,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), February 23, 1866. See also Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 271, 274–85; Hanna, “Roles of the South in the French Intervention in Mexico,” 21; Hardy, “South of the Border,” 79–80. 132. “Discurso del Emperador de Los Franceses,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), February 23, 1866; “Actualidades,” ibid., February 24, 1866. 133. “Matamoros,” ibid., March 7, 1866. 134. Avery to Seward, February 3, 1866, NA, RG59, Despatches U.S. State Department, Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4; A. M. Erhard to Avery, October 11, 1866, ibid. 135. Avery to Seward, June 18 and June 29, 1866, both in ibid. On the Battle of Santa Gertrudis, see Thompson, Cortina, 178–81. 136. Thomas North, Five Years in Texas; or, What You Did Not Hear During the War from January 1861 to January 1866 (Cincinnati, OH: Elm Street Printing, 1871), 170; Joseph E. Chance, José María de Jesús Carvajal: The Life and Times of a Mexican Revolutionary (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2006), 196–98. 137. Avery to Seward, August 13, 1866, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4; Avery to Seward, September 3, 1866, ibid.; “Actualidades,” La Sociedad (Mexico City), August 27, 1866; “Matamoros,” ibid., August 29, 1866. On Canales, see Juan Fidel Zorrilla, Gobernadores, Obispos y Rectores (Ciudad Victoria: Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, 1979), 23. 138. Avery to Seward, August 23, 1866, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4. See also Lew Wallace, Lew Wallace: An Autobiography (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1906), 2:867–76. 139. Avery to Seward, September 28, 1866, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906, T18, Roll 4; Sóstenes Rocha to Juárez, December 2, 1865, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 10:496–99, quotation on 496. 140. Miller, Arms Across the Border, 37–41. 141. Department of State Memorandum, June 15, 1867, NA, RG59, U.S. State Department, Notes to Foreign Legations in the United States from the Dept. of State 1834–1906, M99, Roll 70 (Mexico, 1854–1873). See also Romero to Minister of Foreign Relations, June 15, 1867, in Tamayo, ed., Benito Juárez, 12:34–35; Samuel Basch, Recollections of Mexico: The Last Ten Months of Maximilian’s Empire, ed. and trans. Fred D. Ullman (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001), 241–51; Hardy, “South of the Border,” 85. 142. “Loan to Republic of Mexico,” Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., June 16, 1866, 3218; “French Intervention in Mexico,” ibid., 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 15, 1867, 458–60;

Notes to Pages 157–161

219

“Maximilian’s Decrees in Mexico,” ibid., 40th Cong., 1st Sess., July 12, 1867, 598–99. See also Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 261–63; Miller, Arms Across the Border, 7. 143. Maximilian to Juárez, July 19, 1867, in Basch, Recollections of Mexico, 249. 144. Basch, Recollections of Mexico, 251–52. On Maximilian’s execution, see Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 274–85, 296, 300; José Manuel Villalpando César, Maximiliano (Mexico: Clío, 1999), 221–38; Konrad Ratz and Amparo Gómez Tepexicuapan, Los viajes de Maximiliano en México (1864–1867) (Mexico: Dirección General de Publicaciones, 2012), 343–417. 145. D. P. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974), 91–94; Patrick J. Kelly, “The North American Crisis of the 1860s,” Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 2 (September 2012): 337–62; Hanna and Hanna, Napoleon III and Mexico, 79–80. 146. Patricia Galeana, ed., El Imperio Napoleónico y la Monarquía en México (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 2012), 11. 147. See Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019).

Conclusion 1. Frederick W. Seward, Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat, 1830–1915 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916), 390–420; John M. Taylor, William Henry Seward: Lincoln’s Right Hand (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 291; Patrick Kelly, “The Lost Continent of Abraham Lincoln,” Journal of the Civil War Era 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 242–43. 2. Gorham D. Abbot, Mexico and the United States: Their Mutual Relations and Common Interests (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1869), 375. 3. John Mason Hart, Revolutionary Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 105–62. 4. Steven Hahn, “What Sort of World Did the Civil War Make?” in Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur, eds., The World the Civil War Made (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 339–40, quotation on 339. 5. Hart, Revolutionary Mexico, 105–28; Juan Mora-Torres, The Making of the Mexican Border: The State, Capitalism, and Society in Nuevo León, 1848–1910 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 56–59. On Cortinista raiding in the 1870s, see Jerry D. Thompson, Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007), 200–233. 6. Hart, Revolutionary Mexico, 49, 92, 132–33, 141, 188. On the borderlands economy, see Alicia M. Dewey, Pesos and Dollars: Entrepreneurs in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1880–1940 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014). For Porfirista politics, see Luis Medina Peña, Invención del sistema político Mexicano: Forma de gobierno y gobernabilidad en México en el siglo XIX (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004), 278–301. On US-Mexico relations during the Porfiriato, see Miguel Tinker Salas, In the Shadow of the Eagles: Sonora and the Transformation of the Border During the Porfiriato (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); John Mason Hart, Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 73–267. 7. On captivity, see Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.Mexican War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 90–95; Pekka Hämäläinen, The

220

Notes to Pages 161–163

Comanche Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 250–51. On scalp bounties, see William B. Griffen, Utmost Good Faith: Patterns of Apache-Mexican Hostilities in Northern Chihuahua Border Warfare, 1821–1848 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 121, 248; Edwin R. Sweeney, Mangas Coloradas: Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 170–71. 8. On the Border Patrol, see Kelly Lytle Hernández, Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 17–97. 9. Joseph Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (New York: Routledge, 2002), 2–8. 10. Maya Rhodan, “National Guard Troops Have Already Begun Patrolling the U.S.Mexico Border,” Time, April 12, 2018; Dave Montgomery and Manny Fernandez, “Texas Begins Sending National Guard Troops to Mexican Border,” New York Times, April 6, 2018. 11. On the Minuteman Project, see Tom K. Wong, The Politics of Immigration: Partisanship, Demographic Change, and American National Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 11. 12. Report to Accompany Bill S. No. 783, May 16, 1870, 41st Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 166, 1, 2–3, 19. On smuggling and banditry, see Robert D. Gregg, The Influence of Border Troubles on Relations Between the United States and Mexico, 1876–1910 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), 81–145. On the zona libre, see Oscar J. Martínez, Border Boom Town: Ciudad Juárez Since 1848 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975), 15–30. 13. On illicit arms trading, see Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler, The Secret War in El Paso: Mexican Revolutionary Intrigue, 1906–1920 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009). 14. Shelley Bowen Hatfield, Chasing Shadows: Apaches and Yaquis Along the United States– Mexican Border, 1876–1911 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 53–54. 15. Samuel Truett, Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 55–130. 16. Charles C. Cumberland, Mexican Revolution: The Constitutionalist Years (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972). 17. Douglas W. Richmond, Venustiano Carranza’s Nationalist Struggle, 1893–1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 47. 18. Mark T. Gilderhus, Diplomacy and Revolution: U.S.–Mexican Relations under Wilson and Carranza (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977), 1–31; Friedrich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 298–314. 19. On the U.S. military buildup, see Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler, The Great Call-Up: The Guard, the Border, and the Mexican Revolution (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015). For the Columbus Raid and Punitive Expedition, see Frank Tompkins, Chasing Villa: The Last Campaign of the U.S. Cavalry, 2nd ed. (Silver City, NM: HighLonesome Books, 1996); Joseph A. Stout Jr., Border Conflict: Villistas, Carrancistas, and the Punitive Expedition, 1915–1920 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1999); James W. Hurst, Pancho Villa and Black Jack Pershing: The Punitive Expedition in Mexico (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008). On counterrevolution in the 1920s, see Julian F. Dodson, Fanáticos, Exiles, and Spies: Revolutionary Failures on the U.S.–Mexico Border, 1923–1930 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019).

Notes to Page 164

221

20. On the Bracero Program, see Mireya Loza, Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), esp. 1–4. On Operation Wetback, see Hernández, Migra!, 169–95. 21. North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, Pub. L. No. 103–182, 107 Stat. 2057 (1993). On the impacts of NAFTA, see Mark T. Gilderhus, David C. LaFevor, and Michael J. LaRosa, The Third Century: U.S.–Latin American Relations Since 1889, 2nd. ed. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), 249–69. On Trump, see Glenn Thrush, “Trump Says He Plans to Withdraw from NAFTA,” New York Times, December 2, 2018; Ana Swanson and Emily Cochrane, “Trump Signs Trade Deal with Canada and Mexico,” New York Times, January 29, 2020.

BIBLIOGR APHY

Manuscript Collections and Unpublished Documents DeGolyer Library Special Collections. Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. University of Texas at Austin. Eberstadt Collection, 1699–1959. Hamilton P. Bee Papers, 1838–1894. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Confederate States of America Records, Department of State, 1859–1868. MSS16550. National Archives and Records Center, Washington, DC (NA). Record Group 59 (RG59). M77, Roll 113 (Mexico, Vol. 17, 1854–1867). U.S. State Department, Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State, 1801–1906. Microcopy. M97. U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Ministers to Mexico, 1823– 1906. Microcopy. M99, Roll 70 (Mexico, 1854–1873). U.S. State Department, Notes to Foreign Legations in the United States from the Department of State, 1834–1906. Microcopy. M165. U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Consuls in Monterrey, Mexico, 1849–1906. Microcopy. M184. U.S. State Department, Despatches from United States Consuls in Ciudad Juarez, 1850–1906. Microcopy. T17. Record Group 59 (RG59), U.S. State Department, New Mexico Territorial Papers, 1851– 1872. Microcopy. T18. U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Matamoros, 1826–1906. Microcopy. T167. U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from U.S. Consuls in Chihuahua, 1826–1906. Microcopy. T210. U.S. State Department, Despatches Received by the Department of State from United States Consuls in Guaymas, 1832–1896. Microcopy. National Archives and Records Center, Washington, DC (NA). Record Group 393 (RG393). M1072. U.S. War Department, Letters Sent, Ninth Military Department, Department of New Mexico, and District of New Mexico, 1849–1890. Microcopy.

Congressional Documents U.S. Congress. House. The Condition of Affairs in Mexico. 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 73. U.S. Congress. House. Correspondence Between the late Secretary of War and General Wool. 35th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 88.

224

Bibliography

U.S. Congress. House. “Execution of Colonel Crabb.” In Message from the President of the United States. 35th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 64. U.S. Congress. House. “Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs.” In Message of the President of the United States. 39th Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 1, Part 3. U.S. Congress. House. The Present Condition of Mexico. 37th Cong., 2nd Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 100. U.S. Congress. House. Report on the Commercial Relations of the United States with all Foreign Nations for the Year Ended September 30, 1864. 38th Cong., 2nd Sess., House Exec. Doc. 60. U.S. Congress. House. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. 30th Cong., 2nd Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 50. U.S. Congress. House. Wild Indians on the Frontiers of Mexico. 31st Cong., 1st Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 62. U.S. Congress. Senate. “Alphonso Wetmore’s Report.” In Message from the President of the United States. 22nd Cong., 1st Sess., Senate Doc. No. 90. U.S. Congress. Senate. Message from the President of the United States Communicating . . . the Notes of Mr. Luis de la Rosa and Mr. J. M. Gonzales de la Vega. 32nd Cong., 1st Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. No. 120. U.S. Congress. Senate. Message of the President of the United States . . . Calling for Information Relating to the Boundary Line and the Payment of the $3,000,000 Under the Treaty with Mexico of June 30, 1853. 34th Cong., 1st Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. No. 57. U.S. Congress. Senate. Report to Accompany Bill S. No. 783. 41st Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 166. U.S. Congress. Senate. The Treaty Between the United States and Mexico. 30th Cong., 1st Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. No. 52.

Government Publications American State Papers, Foreign Relations. Vol. 6. Cornelius Wendell, Printer, 1859. Condition of the Indian Tribes. 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., Senate Report No. 156. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1867. Congressional Globe. Washington, DC: 1846–73. Hasse, Adelaide R. Index to United States Documents Relating to Foreign Affairs, 1828–1861. Part 3. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1921. Miller, Hunter, ed. Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America. 8 vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1931–48. North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act. Pub. L. No. 103-182, 107 Stat. 2057 (1993). Papers Relative to Mexican Affairs: Communicated to the Senate June 16, 1864. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865. Register of Debates in Congress. Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1824–37. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series 1. 53 Vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1882–98. ———. Series 2. 8 Vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1894–99. ———. Series 4. 3 Vols. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies. Series 2. Vol. 3. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1922.

Bibliography

225

Published Primary Sources Abbot, Gorham D. Mexico and the United States: Their Mutual Relations and Common Interests. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1869. Alberts, Don E. Rebels on the Rio Grande: The Civil War Journal of A. B. Peticolas. Albuquerque, NM: Merit Press, 1993. Austin, Stephen Fuller. Translation of the Laws, Orders, and Contracts on Colonization, from January, 1821, up to This Time. San Felipe de Austin, TX: Goodwin B. Cotton, 1829. Ball, Eve, ed. Indeh: An Apache Odyssey. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1980. ———. In the Days of Victorio: Recollections of a Warm Springs Apache. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1970. Barrett, S. M., ed. Geronimo’s Story of His Life. New York: Duffield, 1906. Bartlett, John Russell. Personal Narrative of Explorations and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, California, Sonora, and Chihuahua, 1850–1853. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton, 1856. Basch, Samuel. Recollections of Mexico: The Last Ten Months of Maximilian’s Empire. Edited and translated by Fred D. Ullman. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001. Bassett, John Spencer, ed. The Correspondence of Andrew Jackson. Vol. 4. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute, 1929. Basso, Keith, ed. Western Apache Raiding and Warfare: From the Notes of Grenville Goodwin. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1971. Benavides Hinojosa, Artemio, ed. Historia del Noreste Mexicano: Correspondencia Benito Juárez–Santiago Vidaurri, 1855–1864. Monterrey: Archivo General del Estado, 2004. Berlandier, Jean Louis. Journey to Mexico During the Years 1826 to 1834. Translated by Sheila M. Ohlendorf, Josette M. Bigelow, and Mary M. Standifer. 2 vols. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1980. Boyer, Ruth McDonald, and Narcissus Duffy Gayton. Apache Mothers and Daughters: Four Generations of a Family. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. Browne, J. Ross. Adventures in the Apache Country: A Tour Through Arizona and Sonora with Notes on the Silver Regions of Nevada. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1871. Calvin, Ross, ed. Lieutenant Emory Reports: Notes of a Military Reconnaissance. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1951. Castañeda, Carlos E., trans. and ed. The Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution. Dallas, TX: P. L. Turner, 1928. Conway, Christopher, ed. The U.S.-Mexican War: A Binational Reader. Translated by Gustavo Pellón. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2010. Cuevas, Luis. Reflexiones sobre la memoria del ministerio de relaciones en la parte relativa á Tejas. Mexico City: Impreso en papel mexicano en la calle de la Palma número 4, 1845. Datos históricos sobre filibusteros de 1857, en Caborca. Caborca, Sonora: Comité Organizador de las Fiestas del 6 de abril, 1926. Edwards, John N. Shelby’s Expedition to Mexico: An Unwritten Leaf of the War. Kansas City, MO: Kansas City Times, 1872. Ford, John Salmon. Rip Ford’s Texas. Edited by Stephen B. Oates. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963. Gallaway, B. P., ed. The Dark Corner of the Confederacy: Accounts of Civil War Texas as Told by Contemporaries. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown, 1968. Gammel, H. P. N., comp. The Laws of Texas, 1822–1897. Vol. 1. Austin, TX: Gammel, 1898.

226

Bibliography

García, Carlos Bosch, ed. Documentos de la relación de México con los Estados Unidos. 4 vols. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1983–85. García, Genaro, ed. Documentos inéditos o muy raros para la historia de México. 36 vols. Mexico City: Vda. de C. Bouret, 1905–11. Garrison, George P., ed. Diplomatic Correspondence of the Republic of Texas. Vol. 2. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1908. Gregg, Kate L., ed. The Road to Santa Fe: The Journal and Diaries of George Champlin Sibley and Others Pertaining to the Surveying and Marking of a Road from the Missouri Frontier to the Settlements of New Mexico, 1825–1827. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1952. Hutchinson, William F. Life on the Texan Blockade. Providence: Rhode Island Soldiers and Sailors Historical Society, 1883. Jackson, Jack, ed. Texas by Terán: The Diary Kept by General Manuel de Mier y Terán on His 1828 Inspection of Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000. Kendall, George Wilkins. Dispatches from the Mexican War. Edited by Lawrence Delbert Cress. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. Lasswell Crist, Lynda, ed. The Papers of Jefferson Davis. Vol. 7. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Lempriere, Charles. Notes in Mexico in 1861 and 1862: Politically and Socially Considered. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1862. Lord, Walter, ed. The Fremantle Diary: Being the Journal of Lieutenant Colonel James Arthur Lyon Fremantle, Coldstream Guards, on his Three Months in the Southern States. Boston: Little, Brown, 1954. Lubbock, Francis Richard. Six Decades in Texas, or, Memoirs of Francis Richard Lubbock, Governor of Texas in Wartime, 1861–63. Austin, TX: Ben C. Jones, 1900. McHatton-Ripley, Eliza. From Flag to Flag: A Woman’s Adventures and Experiences in the South During the War, in Mexico, and in Cuba. New York: D. Appleton, 1889. Mowry, Sylvester. Arizona and Sonora: The Geography, History, and Resources of the Silver Region of North America. New York: Harper Brothers, 1864. North, Thomas. Five Years in Texas; or, What You Did Not Hear During the War from January 1861 to January 1866. Cincinnati, OH: Elm Street Printing, 1871. Pingenot, Ben E., ed. Paso del Águila: A Chronicle of Frontier Days on the Texas Border as Recorded in the Memoirs of Jesse Sumpter. Austin, TX: Encino Press, 1969. Porrúa, Miguel Angel, ed. Documentos para la Historia del México Independiente, 1808–1938. Mexico City: Miguel Angel Porrúa, 2010. Reid, John C. Reid’s Tramp, or a Journal of the Incidents of Ten Months Travel Through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Sonora, and California. Austin, TX: Steck, 1935. Rejón, Manuel Crescencio. Observaciones de Disputado Saliente Manuel Crescencio Rejón, contra los Tratados de Paz firmados en la Ciudad de Guadalupe el 2 del próximo pasado febrero. Mexico City: Imprenta de J. M. Lara, 1848. Richardson, James D., ed. A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Vol. 4. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1897. ———, ed. The Messages and Papers of Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy, Including Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861–1865. Vol. 2. New York: Chelsea House-Robert Hector, 1966. Robinson, Sherry. Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival as Told to Eve Ball. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.

Bibliography

227

Roel, Santiago, ed. Correspondencia particular de D. Santiago Vidaurri, gobernador de Nuevo León (1855–1864). Monterrey: 1946. Romero, Matías, ed. Correspondencia de la Legacion Mexicana en Washington durante la intervencion extranjera, 1860–1868: Coleccion de documentos para formar la historia de la intervencion. Vols. 2 and 3. Mexico City: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1870. ———. Diario personal: 1855–1865. Edited by Emma Cosío Villegas. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1960. ———. A Mexican View of America in the 1860s: A Foreign Diplomat Describes the Civil War and Reconstruction. Edited and translated by Thomas Schoonover. London: Associated University Presses, 1991. Ruiz, Ramón Eduardo, ed. An American in Maximilian’s Mexico, 1865–1866: The Diaries of William Marshall Anderson. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1959. Ruxton, George F. Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1848. Salazar Ylarregui, José. Datos de los trabajos astronómicos y topográficos, dispuestos en forma de diario, practicados durante el año de 1849 y principios de 1850 por la Comisión de Límites Mexicana en la Línea que Divide esta Republica de la de los Estados Unidos. Mexico City: Imprenta de Juan R. Navarro, 1850. Santleben, August. A Texas Pioneer: Early Staging and Overland Freighting Days on the Frontier of Texas and Mexico. New York: Neale Publishing, 1910. Schoonover, Thomas D., ed. and trans. Mexican Lobby: Matías Romero in Washington, 1861– 1867. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1986. Seward, Frederick W. Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat, 1830–1915. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916. Simon, John Y., ed. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. Stevens, Kenneth R., ed. The Texas Legation Papers, 1836–1845. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2012. Tamayo, Jorge L., ed. Benito Juarez: Documentos, Discursos y Correspondencia. Vols. 5–12. Mexico City: Editorial Libros de México, 1973–74. Terrazas, D. Joaquín. Memorias. Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua: El Agricultor Mexicano, 1905. Terrell, Alexander Watkins. From Texas to Mexico and the Court of Maximilian in 1865. Dallas: Book Club of Texas, 1933. Tevis, James H. Arizona in the ’50s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1954. Thompson, Jerry D., ed. Fifty Miles and a Fight: Major Samuel Peter Heintzelman’s Journal of Texas and the Cortina War. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1998. ———, ed. Juan Cortina and the Texas-Mexico Frontier, 1859–1877. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1994. ———, ed. New Mexico Territory During the Civil War: Wallen and Evans Inspection Reports, 1862–1863. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008. Thompson, Waddy. Recollections of Mexico. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846. Tilley, Nannie M., ed. Federals on the Frontier: The Diary of Benjamin F. McIntyre, 1862–1864. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963. Tompkins, Frank. Chasing Villa: The Last Campaign of the U.S. Cavalry. 2nd edition. Silver City, NM: High-Lonesome Books, 1996.

228

Bibliography

de Vega, Mercedes, and María Cecilia Zuleta, eds. Testimonios de una Guerra: México, 1846– 1848. 2 vols. Mexico City: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2001. Wallace, Lew. Lew Wallace: An Autobiography. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1906. Watson, William. The Adventures of a Blockade Runner, or, Trade in Time of War. New York: Macmillan, 1892. Weber, David J., ed. and trans. Arms, Indians, and the Mismanagement of New Mexico: Donaciano Vigil, 1846. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1986. Williams, R. H. With the Border Ruffians: Memories of the Far West, 1852–1868. Edited by E. W. Williams. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Wilson, John P., ed. When the Texans Came: Missing Records from the Civil War in the Southwest, 1861–1862. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001. Wilson, John P., and Jerry Thompson D., eds. The Civil War in West Texas and New Mexico: The Lost Letterbook of Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 2001. Winfrey, Dorman, and James M. Day. The Indian Papers of Texas and the Southwest, 1825–1916. 4 vols. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1966. Wislizenus, Dr. A. Memoir of a Tour to Northern Mexico, Connected with Col. Doniphan’s Expedition, in 1846 and 1847. Washington, DC: Tippin and Streeper, 1848. Young, John Russell. Around the World with General Grant. 2 vols. New York: American News Company, 1879. Younger, Edward, ed. Inside the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973. de Zavala, Lorenzo. Viaje a los Estados Unidos del Norte América. Paris: Imprenta de Decourchant, 1834.

Secondary Sources: Books Acuña, Rodolfo F. Sonoran Strongman: Ignacio Pesqueíra and His Times. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974. Adams, John A., Jr. Conflict and Commerce on the Rio Grande: Laredo, 1755–1955. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008. Alberts, Don E. The Battle of Glorieta: Union Victory in the West. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998. Almada, Francisco R. Diccionarrio de historia, geografía, y biografía Sonorenses. Chihuahua: Impresora Ruiz Sandoval, 1952. ———. Gobernadores del Estado de Chihuahua. Mexico City: Imprenta de la H. Cámara de Diputados, 1950. ———. La ruta de Juárez. Chihuahua: Ediciones del Azar, 2007. Almada, Francisco R., and Guillermo Porras. Luis Terrazas: Una Polémica Histórica. Chihuahua: Ediciones del Azar, 1999. Alonso, Ana María. Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico’s Northern Frontier. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995. Alonzo, Armando C. Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734–1900. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820– 1875. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005.

Bibliography

229

Anna, Timothy E. The Mexican Empire of Iturbide. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Arguello, Ana Rosa Suárez, and Carlos Bosch García, eds. En el nombre del destino manifiesto: guía de ministros y ambajadores de Estados Unidos en México, 1825–1993. Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 1998. Armistead, Gene C., and Robert D. Arconti. “An Arch Rebel Like Myself ”: Dan Showalter and the Civil War in California and Texas. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018. Arthur, Anthony. General Jo Shelby’s March. New York: Random House, 2010. Astolfi, Douglas M. Foundations of Destiny: A Foreign Policy of the Jacksonians, 1824–1837. New York: Garland, 1989. Avila, Jesús, Leticia Martínez, and César Morado. Santiago Vidaurri: La formación de un liderazgo regional desde Monterrey (1809–1867). Monterrey: Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, 2012. Babcock, Matthew. Apache Adaptation to Hispanic Rule. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Barr, Juliana. Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Basso, Keith H. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Baum, Dale. The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State During the Civil War Era. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998. Bell, Samuel E., and James M. Smallwood. The Zona Libre 1858–1905: A Problem in American Diplomacy. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1982. Bellon, Araceli Ibarra. El comercio y el poder en México, 1821–1864: La lucha por las fuentes financieras entre el Estado central y las regiones. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998. Belohlavek, John M. “Let the Eagle Soar!”: The Foreign Policy of Andrew Jackson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985. Benavides Hinojosa, Artemio. Santiago Vidaurri: Caudillo del noreste mexicano (1855–1864). Mexico City: Tusquets Editores, 2012. ———, ed. Sociedad, Milicia y Política en Nuevo León, Siglos XVIII y XIX. Monterrey: Archivo General del Estado, 2005. Benavides Hinojosa, Artemio, and Pedro Torres Estrada. La Constitución de 1857 y el Noreste Mexicano. Monterrey: Archivo General del Estado, 2007. Bernstein, Harry. Matias Romero: 1837–1898. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1973. Blackshear, James Bailey. Fort Bascom: Soldiers, Comancheros, and Indians in the Canadian River Valley. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Blasio, José Luis. Maximilian Emperor of Mexico: Memoirs of His Private Secretary. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1934. Blyth, Lance R. Chiricahua and Janos: Communities of Violence in the Southwestern Borderlands, 1680–1880. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012. Brack, Gene M. Mexico Views Manifest Destiny: An Essay on the Origins of the Mexican War. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1975. Brown, Charles H. Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. Burnett, Lonnie A. Henry Hotze, Confederate Propagandist: Selected Writings on Revolution, Recognition, and Race. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008.

230

Bibliography

de Bustamante, Carlos María. El Nuevo Bernal Diaz del Castillo, o sea, História de la Invasión de los Anglo-Americanos en México. México: Secretaria de Educacion Pública, 1949. Caesar, Egon. Maximilian and Charlotte of Mexico. Translated by Catherine Alison Phillips. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1928. Callahan, James Morton. American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relations. New York: Cooper Square, 1967. ———. The Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1901. Callcott, Wilfrid Hardy. Liberalism in Mexico, 1857–1929. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1965. Campbell, Randolph B. Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Canales, Isidro Vizcaya. Tierra de Guerra Viva: Invasión de los Indios Bárbaros al Noreste de México, 1821–1885. Monterrey: Academia de Investigaciones, 2001. Cantú, Gastón García. La intervención francesa en México. Mexico City: Clio, 1998. ———. Las invasiones norteamericanas en México. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996. Case, Lynn M. and Warren F. Spencer. The U.S. and France: Civil War Diplomacy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970. Catón, Armando Fuentes Aguirre. Juárez y Maximiliano: La Roca y el Ensueño. Mexico City: Editorial Diana, 2006. Centeno, Miguel Angel. Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002. Chance, Joseph E. José María de Jesús Carvajal: The Life and Times of a Mexican Revolutionary. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2006. Chávez Barron, Héctor. Luis Terrazas. Mexico City: Editorial Clío, 2004. Collins, Michael L. A Crooked River: Rustlers, Rangers, and Regulars on the Lower Rio Grande, 1861–1877. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018. Colton, Ray C. The Civil War in the Western Territories: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959. Costeloe, Michael P. The Central Republic in Mexico, 1835–1846: Hombres de Bien in the Age of Santa Anna. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Crook, D. P. Diplomacy During the American Civil War. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1975. ———. The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974. Cumberland, Charles C. Mexican Revolution: The Constitutionalist Years. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972. Cunningham, Michele. Mexico and the Foreign Policy of Napoleon III. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Dabbs, Jack A. The French Army in Mexico, 1861–1867. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton, 1963. Davis, Edwin Adams. Fallen Guidon: The Forgotten Saga of General Jo Shelby’s Confederate Command. Santa Fe, NM: Stagecoach Press, 1962. DeLay, Brian, ed. North American Borderlands. New York: Routledge, 2013. ———. War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. De Leon, Edwin. Secret History of Confederate Diplomacy Abroad. Edited by William C. Davis. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005.

Bibliography

231

Dewey, Alicia M. Pesos and Dollars: Entrepreneurs in the Texas–Mexico Borderlands, 1880–1940. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014. Díaz, George T. Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Di Tella, Torcuato S. National Popular Politics in Early Independent Mexico, 1820–1847. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Dodson, Julian F. Fanáticos, Exiles, and Spies: Revolutionary Failures on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1923–1930. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019. Downs, Gregory P. After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Downs, Gregory P., and Kate Masur, eds. The World the Civil War Made. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Doyle, Don H., ed. American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. ———. The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War. New York: Basic Books, 2014. Edrington, Thomas S., and John Taylor. The Battle of Glorieta Pass: A Gettysburg in the West, March 26–28, 1862. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher. Civil War High Commands. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Eisenhower, John S. D. So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848. New York: Random House, 1989. Ferris, Norman B. Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward’s Foreign Policy, 1861. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976. Finch, L. Boyd. Confederate Pathway to the Pacific: Major Sherod Hunter and Arizona Territory, C.S.A. Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1996. Flores Tapia, Oscar. Coahuila: La Reforma, La Intervención, y El Imperio, 1854–1867. Mexico City: Talleres Gráficos del Gobierno del Estado, 1966. Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper and Row, 1988. ———. The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution. New York: W. W. Norton, 2019. Fowler, William, and Humberto Morales Moreno, eds. El Conservadurismo Mexicano en el Siglo XIX (1810–1910). Puebla: Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 1999. Frazier, Donald S. Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995. Fuentes Mares, José. Juárez y la Intervención. Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1972. ———. Poinsett: Historia de una gran intriga. Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1964. ———. Y México se Refugió en el Desierto: Luis Terrazas, Historia y Destino. Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1954. Galeana, Patricia, ed. El Imperio Napoleónico y la Monarquía en México. Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2012. ———. Juárez en la historia de México. Mexico City: Miguel Angel Porrúa, 2006. Gálvez Medrano, Arturo. Regionalismo y Gobierno General: El Caso de Nuevo León y Coahuila, 1855–1864. Monterrey: Gobierno del Estado, 1993.

232

Bibliography

Garber, Paul N. The Gadsden Treaty. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1923. García, Luis Alberto. Guerra y Frontera: El Ejército del Norte entre 1855 y 1858. Nuevo León: Archivo General del Estado, 2006. Gilderhus, Mark T. Diplomacy and Revolution: U.S.-Mexican Relations under Wilson and Carranza. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977. Gilderhus, Mark T., David C. LaFevor, and Michael J. LaRosa. The Third Century: U.S.-Latin American Relations Since 1889. 2nd edition. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017. Gleeson, David T., and Simon Lewis, eds. The Civil War as Global Conflict: Transnational Meanings of the American Civil War. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014. González-Quiroga, Miguel Ángel. War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830–1880. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020. Granados, Ricardo García. La Constitución de 1857 y las leyes de reforma: estudio históricosociológico. Mexico City: Tipografía Económica, 1906. Green, Stanley C. The Mexican Republic: The First Decade, 1823–1832. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987. Greenberg, Amy S. A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico. New York: Knopf, 2012. Gregg, Robert D. The Influence of Border Troubles on Relations Between the United States and Mexico, 1876–1910. New York: Da Capo Press, 1970. Griffen, William B. Utmost Good Faith: Patterns of Apache-Mexican Hostilities in Northern Chihuahua Border Warfare, 1821–1848. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. Griggs, William Clark. The Elusive Eden: Frank McMullan’s Confederate Colony in Brazil. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. Griswold del Castillo, Richard. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990. Guardino, Peter. The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Hahn, Steven. A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830–1910. New York: Penguin, 2016. Hale, Charles A. Mexican Liberalism in the Age of Mora, 1821–1853. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968. Hall, Martin Hardwick. The Confederate Army of New Mexico. Austin, TX: Presidial, 1978. ———. Sibley’s New Mexico Campaign. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1960. Hall, Thomas D. Social Change in the Southwest, 1350–1880. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989. Hämäläinen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Hanna, Alfred Jackson, and Kathryn Abbey Hanna. Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971. Harris, Charles H., III, A Mexican Family Empire: The Latifundio of the Sánchez Navarros, 1765– 1867. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975. Harris, Charles H., III, and Louis R. Sadler. The Great Call-Up: The Guard, the Border, and the Mexican Revolution. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. ———. The Secret War in El Paso: Mexican Revolutionary Intrigue, 1906–1920. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009. Hart, John Mason. Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Bibliography

233

———. Revolutionary Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Hatfield, Shelley Bowen. Chasing Shadows: Apaches and Yaquis Along the United States–Mexican Border, 1876–1911. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. Henderson, Timothy J. A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007. Hendrick, Burton J. Statesmen of the Lost Cause: Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet. Boston: Little, Brown, 1939. Hernández, Kelly Lytle. Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Herrera, Octavio. Breve Historia de Tamaulipas. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1999. Hietala, Thomas R. Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985. Hinojosa, Gilberto Miguel. A Borderlands Town in Transition: Laredo, 1755–1870. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1983. Hogan, Michael. Abraham Lincoln and Mexico: A History of Courage, Intrigue and Unlikely Friendships. San Diego, CA: EgretBooks, 2016. Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. Hu-DeHart, Evelyn. Yaqui Resistance and Survival: The Struggle for Land and Autonomy, 1821– 1910. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. Hubbard, Charles M. The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000. Hunt, Jeffrey Wm. The Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Hurst, James W. Pancho Villa and Black Jack Pershing: The Punitive Expedition in Mexico. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008. Hutchison, Coleman, ed. A History of American Civil War Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Hutton, Paul Andrew. The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History. New York: Crown, 2016. Irby, James A. Backdoor at Bagdad: The Civil War on the Rio Grande. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1977. Johannsen, Robert W. To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985 Johnson, Walter. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013. Jones, Howard. Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. ———. Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Civil War in the American West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Karp, Matthew. This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Katz, Friedrich. The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

234

Bibliography

Kavanagh, Thomas W. Comanche Political History: An Ethnohistorical Perspective, 1706–1875. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Keehn, David C. Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire, Southern Secession, Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013. Kerby, Robert L. Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South, 1863–1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972. Kiernan, Ben. Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Kiser, William S. Borderlands of Slavery: The Struggle over Captivity and Peonage in the American Southwest. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. ———. Coast-to-Coast Empire: Manifest Destiny and the New Mexico Borderlands. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018. ———. Dragoons in Apacheland: Conquest and Resistance in Southern New Mexico, 1846–1861. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. ———. Turmoil on the Rio Grande: The Territorial History of the Mesilla Valley, 1846–1865. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011. Knapp, Frank Averill, Jr. The Life of Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada 1823–1889: A Study of Influence and Obscurity. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. Kuper, Leo. Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. Lahti, Janne. Wars for Empire: Apaches, the United States, and the Southwest Borderlands. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. Lavalle, Gerardo Gurza. Una vecindad efímera: Los Estados Confederados de América y su política exterior hacia México. Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 2001. Lea, Tom. The King Ranch. Vol. 1. Boston: Little, Brown, 1957. Leigh, Philip. Trading with the Enemy: The Covert Economy During the American Civil War. Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2014. Lester, Richard I. Confederate Finance and Purchasing in Great Britain. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975. Lister, Florence C., and Robert H. Lister. Chihuahua: Storehouse of Storms. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1966. Loza, Mireya. Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Mahin, Dean B. One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War. Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999. Mahoney, Harry Thayer, and Marjorie Locke Mahoney. Mexico and the Confederacy: 1860–1867. San Francisco, CA: Austin and Winfield, 1998. Manning, William R. Early Diplomatic Relations Between the United States and Mexico. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1916. Marbán, Jorge A. Confederate Patriot, Journalist, and Poet: The Multifaceted Life of José Agustín Quintero. Victoria, BC: FriesenPress, 2014. Margolies, Daniel S. Spaces of Law in American Foreign Relations: Extradition and Extraterritoriality in the Borderlands and Beyond, 1877–1898. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011. Marten, James. Texas Divided: Loyalty and Dissent in the Lone Star State, 1856–1874. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990.

Bibliography

235

Martínez Albesa, Emilio. La Constitución de 1857: Catolicismo y Liberalismo en México. Vol. 3. Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 2007. Martínez, Oscar J. Border Boom Town: Ciudad Juárez Since 1848. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975. Masich, Andrew E. Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861–1867. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. May, Robert E. Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. ———. The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854–1861. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. McAllen, M. M. Maximilian and Carlota: Europe’s Last Empire in Mexico. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2014. McCaslin, Richard B. Fighting Stock: John S. “Rip” Ford of Texas. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2011. McPherson, James M. Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief. New York: Penguin Press, 2008. Meade, Robert Douthat. Judah P. Benjamin: Confederate Statesman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1943. Medina Peña, Luis. Invención del sistema político Mexicano: Forma de gobierno y gobernabilidad en México en el siglo XIX. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004. Merritt, Jane T. At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Merry, Robert W. A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009. Metz, Leon C. Border: The U.S.-Mexico Line. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1989. Miller, Darlis A. The California Column in New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982. Miller, Robert Ryal. Arms Across the Border: United States Aid to Juárez During the French Intervention in Mexico. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1973. Monaghan, Jay. Diplomat in Carpet Slippers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1972. Monday, Jane Clements and Frances Brannen Vick. Petra’s Legacy: The South Texas Ranching Empire of Petra Vela and Mifflin Kennedy. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. Moneyhon, Carl H. Edmund J. Davis of Texas: Civil War General, Republican Leader, Reconstruction Governor. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2010. Mora, Anthony. Border Dilemmas: Racial and National Uncertainties in New Mexico, 1848–1912. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Mora-Torres, Juan. The Making of the Mexican Border: The State, Capitalism, and Society in Nuevo León, 1848–1910. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. Morton, Ohland. Terán and Texas: A Chapter in Texas-Mexican Relations. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1948. Myers, Phillip E. Caution and Cooperation: The American Civil War in British-American Relations. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2008.

236

Bibliography

Nance, Joseph Milton. After San Jacinto: The Texas-Mexican Frontier, 1836–1841. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963. ———. Attack and Counterattack: The Texas-Mexican Frontier, 1842. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964. Navarro, Moisés González. Benito Juárez. 2 vols. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2006. Nelson, Megan Kate. The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West. New York: Scribner, 2020. Nevins, Joseph. Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Making of the U.S.Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge, 2002. Nichols, James David. The Limits of Liberty: Mobility and the Making of the Eastern U.S.-Mexico Border. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Nicolay, John G., and John Hay. Abraham Lincoln: A History. Vol. 7. New York: Century, 1890. Nieto Camacho, Ana Lilia. Defensa y Política en la Frontera Norte de México, 1848–1856. Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2012. Nunn, W. C. Escape from Reconstruction. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1956. O’Flaherty, Daniel. General Jo Shelby: Undefeated Rebel. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954. O’Gorman, Edmundo. Seis estudios históricos de tema mexicano. Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 1960. Orozco, Victor, ed. Las Guerras indias en la historia de Chihuahua: Antología. Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua: Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, Instituto Chihuahuense de la Cultura, 1992. Orton, Richard H. Record of California Men in the War of the Rebellion, 1861 to 1867. Sacramento, CA: J. D. Young, 1890. Owsley, Frank Lawrence. King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931. Paolino, Ernest N. The Foundations of the American Empire: William Henry Seward and U.S. Foreign Policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973. Pedraza, Jorge. Juárez en Monterrey. Monterrey: Editorial Alfonso Reyes, 1972. Pérez, Octavio H. La Zona Libre: Excepción fiscal y conformación histórica de la frontera norte de México. Mexico City: Dirección General del Acervo Histórico Diplomático, 2004. Pletcher, David M. The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973. Radding, Cynthia. Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers in Northwestern Mexico, 1700–1850. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997. Ratz, Konrad, and Amparo Gómez Tepexicuapan. Los viajes de Maximiliano en México (1864– 1867). Mexico City: Dirección General de Publicaciones, 2012. Reichstein, Andreas V. Rise of the Lone Star: The Making of Texas. Translated by Jeanne R. Willson. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1989. Reséndez, Andrés. Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800– 1850. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Richmond, Douglas W. Venustiano Carranza’s Nationalist Struggle, 1893–1920. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. Ridley, Jasper. Maximilian and Juárez. London: Constable, 1993. Rippy, J. Fred. The United States and Mexico. New York: F. S. Crofts, 1931.

Bibliography

237

Rives, George Lockhart. The United States and Mexico, 1821–1848: A History of the Relations Between the Two Countries from the Independence of Mexico to the Close of the War with the United States. Vol. 1. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1913. Robinson, Sherry. I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2013. Rodríguez O., Jaime E., ed. The Independence of Mexico and the Creation of the New Nation. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1989. Roeder, Ralph. Juárez and His Mexico: A Biographical History. 2 vols. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. Roell, Craig H. Matamoros and the Texas Revolution. Denton: Texas State Historical Association, 2013. Rolle, Andrew F. The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965. Romero, Matías. Mexico and the United States: A Study of Subjects Affecting Their Political, Commercial, and Social Relations, Made with a View to Their Promotion. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1898. Ruiz, Ramón Eduardo. The People of Sonora and Yankee Capitalists. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988. Sainlaude, Stéve. France and the American Civil War: A Diplomatic History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Salas, Miguel Tinker. In the Shadow of the Eagles: Sonora and the Transformation of the Border During the Porfiriato. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Saldívar, Gabriel. Historia Compendiada de Tamaulipas. Mexico City: Editorial Beatriz de Silva, 1945. Santoni, Pedro. Mexicans at Arms: Puro Federalists and the Politics of War, 1845–1848. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1996. Santoscoy, María Elena, Laura Gutiérrez, Martha Rodríguez, and Francisco Cepeda. Breve Historia de Coahuila. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2000. Schmitt, Karl M. Mexico and the United States, 1821–1973: Conflict and Coexistence. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1974. Scholes, Walter V. Mexican Politics During the Juárez Regime, 1855–1872. Columbia: University of Missouri Studies, 1957. Schoonover, Thomas David. Dollars over Dominion: The Triumph of Liberalism in MexicanUnited States Relations, 1861–1867. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978. Schroeder, John H. Mr. Polk’s War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846–1848. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973. Settles, Thomas M. John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009. Silbey, Joel H. Storm over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Simpson, Brooks D. Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Sinkin, Richard N. The Mexican Reform, 1855–1876: A Study in Liberal Nation-Building. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. Smart, Charles Allen. Viva Juárez!: A Biography. New York: Lippincott, 1963.

238

Bibliography

Smith, Ralph Adam. Borderlander: The Life of James Kirker, 1793–1852. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. St. John, Rachel. Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Stahr, Walter. Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012. Stevens, Donald Fithian. Origins of Instability in Early Republican Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991. Stoker, Donald. The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Storms, C. Gilbert. Reconnaissance in Sonora: Charles D. Poston’s 1854 Exploration of Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015. Stout, Joseph A., Jr. Border Conflict: Villistas, Carrancistas, and the Punitive Expedition, 1915– 1920. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1999. ———. Schemers and Dreamers: Filibustering in Mexico, 1848–1921. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2002. Sweeney, Edwin R. Cochise: Chiricahua Apache Chief. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. ———. From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches, 1874–1886. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010. ———. Mangas Coloradas: Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. Taylor, John. Bloody Valverde: A Civil War Battle on the Rio Grande, February 21, 1862. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. Taylor, John M. William Henry Seward: Lincoln’s Right Hand. New York: Harper Collins, 1991. Tenenbaum, Barbara A. The Politics of Penury: Debts and Taxes in Mexico, 1821–1856. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. Thompson, Jerry D. A Civil War History of the New Mexico Volunteers and Militia. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015. ———. Colonel John Robert Baylor: Texas Indian Fighter and Confederate Soldier. Hillsboro, TX: Hill Junior College Press, 1971. ———. Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. ———. Henry Hopkins Sibley: Confederate General of the West. Natchitoches, LA: Northwestern State University Press, 1987. ———. Mexican Texans in the Union Army. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1986. ———. Tejano Tiger: José de los Santos Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823–1891. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2017. ———. Vaqueros in Blue and Gray. Austin, TX: State House Press, 2000. Thrapp, Dan L. Victorio and the Mimbres Apaches. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974. Torget, Andrew J. Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800–1850. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Townsend, Stephen A. The Yankee Invasion of Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006. Treviño, Mario. Entre Caciques y Caudillos: Nuevo León, Siglo XIX. Monterrey: Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, 2009.

Bibliography

239

Truett, Samuel. Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Tyler, Ronnie C. Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1973. Valadés, José C. México, Santa Anna y la Guerra de Texas. Mexico City: Editores Mexicanos Unidos, 1965. Valerio-Jiménez, Omar S. River of Hope: Forging Identity and Nation in the Rio Grande Borderlands. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Van Deusen, Glyndon G. William Henry Seward. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Vázquez, Josefina Zoraida, ed. El establecimiento del federalismo en México. Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 2003. ———, ed. Juárez: Historia y Mito. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2010. ———, ed. México al tiempo de su guerra con Estados Unidos, 1846–1848. Mexico City: Secretaría de Exteriores, 1997. Vázquez de Knauth, Josefina. Mexicanos y norteamericanos ante la Guerra del ’47. Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1972. Velasco, Jesús Márquez. La Guerra del ’47 y la opinion pública. Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1975. Villalpando César, José Manuel. Maximiliano. Mexico City: Clío, 1999. Villar, Ernesto de la Torre, ed. La Intervención francesa y el triunfo de la República. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1968. Voss, Stuart F. On the Periphery of Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Sonora and Sinaloa, 1810–1877. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982. Wahlstrom, Todd W. The Southern Exodus from Mexico: Migration Across the Borderland After the American Civil War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Walker, Henry Pickering. The Wagonmasters: High Plains Freighting from the Earliest Days of the Santa Fe Trail to 1880. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966. Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959. Wasserman, Mark. Capitalists, Caciques, and Revolution: The Native Elite and Foreign Enterprise in Chihuahua, Mexico, 1854–1911. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Weber, David J. The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982. Werne, Joseph Richard. The Imaginary Line: A History of the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, 1848–1857. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2007. White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ———. The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Willson, Beckles. John Slidell and the Confederates in Paris (1862–1865). New York: AMS Press, 1970. Winders, Richard Bruce. Crisis in the Southwest: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle over Texas. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002. Winks, Robin W. Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960.

240

Bibliography

Wong, Tom K. The Politics of Immigration: Partisanship, Demographic Change, and American National Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Wyllys, Rufus Kay. The French in Sonora (1850–1854): The Story of French Adventurers from California into Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1932. Zoraida Vázquez, Josefina, and Lorenzo Meyer. México frente a Estados Unidos: Un ensayo histórico, 1776–2000. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006. Zorrilla, Juan Fidel. Gobernadores, Obispos y Rectores. Ciudad Victoria: Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, 1979. Zorrilla, Luis G. Historia de las Relaciones entre México y Los Estados Unidos de America, 1800– 1958. Vol. 1. Mexico City: Editorial Porrua, 1965.

Secondary Sources: Journal Articles and Book Chapters Adelman, Jeremy, and Stephen Aron. “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History.” American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (June 1999): 814–41. Aguilar, Luis Aboites. “Juárez en Chihuahua: La Dificultad de la Nación.” In Juárez: Historia y Mito, edited by Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, 495–507. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2010. Andrews, Thomas Franklin. “The Ambitions of Lansford W. Hastings: A Study in Western Myth-Making.” Pacific Historical Review 39, no. 4 (November 1970): 473–91. Baud, Michiel, and Willem Van Schendel. “Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands,” Journal of World History 8, no. 2 (Fall 1997): 211–42. Baumgartner, Alice L. “The Line of Positive Safety: Borders and Boundaries in the Rio Grande Valley, 1848–1880,” Journal of American History 101, no. 4 (March 2015): 1106–22. Bazant, Jan. “From Independence to the Liberal Republic, 1821–1857.” In Mexico Since Independence, edited by Leslie Bethell. 1–48. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Benson, Nettie Lee. “Texas as Viewed from Mexico, 1820–1834.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 90, no. 3 (January 1987): 219–91. Blumenthal, Henry. “Confederate Diplomacy: Popular Notions and International Realities.” Journal of Southern History 32, no. 2 (May 1966): 151–71. Brading, David A. “Creole Nationalism and Mexican Liberalism.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 15 (August 1973): 139–90. Brady, Francis P. “Portrait of a Pioneer: Peter R. Brady, 1825–1902.” Journal of Arizona History 16, no. 2 (Summer 1975): 171–94. Brock, Darryl E. “José Agustín Quintero: Cuban Patriot in Confederate Diplomatic Service.” In Cubans in the Confederacy: José Agustín Quintero, Ambrosio José Gonzales, and Loreta Janeta Velazquez, edited by Phillip Thomas Tucker, 9–142. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002. Chávez, Jorge Chávez. “Los Apaches y la frontera norte de México, siglo XIX.” In Visiones históricas de la frontera, edited by Jorge Chávez Chávez, 17–51. Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua: Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, 2010. Citino, Nathan J. “The Global Frontier: Comparative History and the Frontier-Borderlands Approach in American Foreign Relations.” Diplomatic History 25, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 677–93. Crook, Carland Elaine. “Benjamin Théron and French Designs in Texas During the Civil War.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 68, no. 4 (April 1965): 432–54.

Bibliography

241

Dabbs, Jack A. “French Imperial Policy in Mexico.” In Mexico: From Independence to Revolution, 1810–1910, edited by W. Dirk Raat, 178–85. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Dávila, Juan Pablo Ortiz. “Visiones desde la prensa: Las relaciones entre los conservadores y los confederados durante el Segundo Imperio, 1863–1866.” Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México 52 (2016): 18–38. Delaney, Robert W. “Matamoros, Port for Texas During the Civil War.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 58, no. 4 (April 1955): 473–87. DeLay, Brian. “Indian Polities, Empire, and the History of American Foreign Relations.” Diplomatic History 39, no. 5 (November 2015): 927–42. Finch, L. Boyd. “Sherod Hunter and the Confederates in Arizona.” Journal of Arizona History 10, no. 3 (Autumn 1969): 137–206. Galeana, Patricia. “Estados Unidos frente a la Intervención Francesa en México.” In El impacto de la Intervención Francesa en México, Patricia Galeana, 146–77. Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2011. Gruesz, Kirsten Silva. “Subject to the Border: The Strange Case of José Agustín Quintero.” In Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage, vol. 5., edited by Kenya Dworkin y Méndez and Agnes Lugo-Ortiz, 23–34. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press, 2006. Haas, Oscar, ed. “The Diary of Julius Gieseke, 1861–1862.” Military History of Texas and the Southwest 18 (October 1988): 65–92. Hahn, Steven. “What Sort of World Did the Civil War Make?” In The World the Civil War Made, edited by Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur, 337–56. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. ———. “The Widest Implications of Disorienting the Civil War Era.” In Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States, edited by Adam Arenson and Andrew R. Graybill, 265–74. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015. Hall, Martin Hardwick. “Colonel James Reily’s Diplomatic Missions to Chihuahua and Sonora.” New Mexico Historical Review 31 (July 1956): 232–45. ———. “Planter vs. Frontiersman: Conflict in Confederate Indian Policy.” In Essays on the American Civil War, edited by Frank E. Vandiver, Martin Hardwick Hall, and Homer L. Kerr, 45–72. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. ———. “Thomas J. Mastin’s ‘Arizona Guards.’” New Mexico Historical Review 49 (April 1974): 143–51. Hämäläinen, Pekka. “Reconstructing the Great Plains: The Long Struggle for Sovereignty and Dominance in the Heart of the Continent.” Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 4 (December 2016): 481–509. Hämäläinen, Pekka, and Samuel Truett. “On Borderlands.” Journal of American History 98, no. 2 (September 2011): 338–61. Hanna, Kathryn Abbey. “The Roles of the South in the French Intervention in Mexico.” Journal of Southern History 20, no. 1 (February 1954): 3–21. Hardy, William E. “South of the Border: Ulysses S. Grant and the French Intervention.” Civil War History 54, no. 1 (March 2008): 63–86. Hernández Silva, Héctor Cuauhtémoc. “Las Provincias de Sonora y Sinaloa, 1821–1825: El Camino hacia el Federalismo.” In El establecimiento del federalismo en México, edited by Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, 555–82. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2003.

242

Bibliography

Kelly, Patrick J. “The Cat’s-Paw: Confederate Ambitions in Latin America.” In American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s, edited by Don H. Doyle, 58–81. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. ———. “The Lost Continent of Abraham Lincoln.” Journal of the Civil War Era 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 223–48. ———. “The North American Crisis of the 1860s.” Journal of the Civil War Era 2, no. 3 (September 2012): 337–68. Kiser, William S. “‘We Must Have Chihuahua and Sonora’: Civil War Diplomacy in the U.S.Mexico Borderlands.” Journal of the Civil War Era 9, no. 2 (June 2019): 196–222. McCornack, Richard Blaine. “Los Estados Confederados y México.” Historia Mexicana 4, no. 3 (March 1955): 337–52. McPherson, Hallie M. “The Plan of William McKendree Gwin for a Colony in North Mexico, 1863–1865.” Pacific Historical Review 2, no. 4 (December 1933): 357–86. Miller, Robert Ryal. “Matias Romero: Mexican Minister to the United States During the JuarezMaximilian Era.” Hispanic American Historical Review 45, no. 2 (May 1965): 228–45. Nelson, Megan Kate. “Death in the Distance: Confederate Manifest Destiny and the Campaign for New Mexico, 1861–1862.” In Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States, edited by Adam Arenson and Andrew R. Graybill, 33–52. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015. Pinkney, David H. “France and the Civil War.” In Heard Round the World: The Impact Abroad of the Civil War, edited by Harold Hyman, 97–144. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. Prieto, Cecilia Sheridan. “El Primer Federalismo en Coahuila.” In El establecimiento del federalismo en México, edited by Josefina Zoraida Vázquez, 385–415. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2003. Reséndez, Andrés. “North American Peonage.” Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 4 (December 2017): 597–619. Rhodan, Maya. “National Guard Troops Have Already Begun Patrolling the U.S.-Mexico Border.” Time, April 12, 2018. Rippy, J. Fred. “Anglo-American Filibusters and the Gadsden Treaty.” Hispanic American Historical Review 5, no. 2 (May 1922): 155–80. ———. “The Indians of the Southwest in the Diplomacy of the United States and Mexico, 1848– 1853.” Hispanic American Historical Review 2, no. 3 (August 1919): 363–96. Rodríguez O., Jaime E. “Mexico’s First Foreign Loans.” In The Independence of Mexico and the Creation of the New Nation, Jaime E. Rodríguez O., 215–35. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1989. Sainlaude, Stéve. “France’s Grand Design and the Confederacy.” In American Civil Wars: The United States, Latin America, Europe, and the Crisis of the 1860s, edited by Don H. Doyle, 107–24. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Sánchez, José María. “A Trip to Texas in 1828.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 29, no. 4 (April 1926): 249–88. Schoonover, Thomas. “Confederate Diplomacy and the Texas-Mexican Border, 1861–1865.” East Texas Historical Journal 11, no. 1 (1973): 33–39. Smith, Ralph A. “Scalp Hunting: A Mexican Experiment in Warfare.” Great Plains Journal 23 (1984): 41–81. Sonnichsen, C. L. “Major McMullen’s Invasion of Mexico.” Pass-Word 2, no. 2 (May 1957): 38–43.

Bibliography

243

Soto, Miguel. “Texas en la mira: Política y negocios al iniciarse la gestión de Anthony Butler.” In Política y Negocios: Ensayos sobre la relación entre México y Los Estados Unidos en el Siglo XIX, Ana Rosa Suárez Argüello and Marcela Terrazas Basante, 19–63. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1997. St. John, Rachel. “The Unpredictable America of William Gwin: Expansion, Secession, and the Unstable Borders of Nineteenth-Century North America.” Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 1 (March 2016): 56–84. Stevens, Kenneth R. “The Diplomacy of the Lone Star Republic, 1836–1845.” In Single Star of the West: The Republic of Texas, 1836–1845, edited by Kenneth W. Howell and Charles Swanlund, 271–303. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2017. Strickland, Rex W. “The Birth and Death of a Legend: The Johnson ‘Massacre’ of 1837.” Arizona and the West 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1976): 257–86. Swanlund, Charles. “Anson Jones: The Forgotten President of Texas.” In Single Star of the West: The Republic of Texas, 1836–1845, edited by Kenneth W. Howell and Charles Swanlund, 233–70. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2017. Teel, T. T. “Sibley’s New Mexican Campaign—Its Objects and the Causes of its Failure.” In Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. Vol. 2. New York: Century, 1887. Thelen, David. “Rethinking History and the Nation-State: Mexico and the United States.” Journal of American History 86, no. 2 (September 1999): 438–52. Thompson, Jerry D. “Mutiny and Desertion on the Rio Grande: The Strange Saga of Captain Adrian J. Vidal.” Military History of Texas and the Southwest 12 (1974): 159–70. Trejo, Zulema. “Imperialistas y gobierno imperial en Sonora.” In El Imperio Napoleónico y la Monarquía en México, edited by Patricia Galeana, 293–305. Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2012. Tyler, Daniel. “Mexican Indian Policy in New Mexico.” New Mexico Historical Review 55, no. 2 (April 1980): 101–20. Tyler, Ronnie C. “Cotton on the Border, 1861–1865.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73, no. 4 (April 1970): 456–77. ———. “Fugitive Slaves in Mexico.” Journal of Negro History 57, no. 1 (January 1972): 1–12. Valone, Stephen J. “‘Weakness Offers Temptation’: William H. Seward and the Reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine.” Diplomatic History 19, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 583–99. Viliesid, Lorena Careaga. “Filibusteros, mercenarios, y voluntarios: Los soldados Norteamericanos en la Guerra de castas de Yucatán.” In Política y Negocios: Ensayos sobre la relación entre México y Los Estados Unidos en el Siglo XIX, edited by Ana Rosa Suárez Argüello and Marcela Terrazas Basante, 123–200. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1997. Waite, Kevin. “Jefferson Davis and Proslavery Visions of Empire in the Far West.” Journal of the Civil War Era 6, no. 4 (December 2016): 536–65. Walker, Henry Pickering. “Freighting from Guaymas to Tucson, 1850–1880.” Western Historical Quarterly 1, no. 3 (July 1970): 291–304. West, Elliott. “The Future of Reconstruction Studies: Reconstruction in the West.” Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no. 1 (March 2017): 14. ———. “Reconstructing Race.” Western Historical Quarterly 34, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 6–26. Williams, Mary Wilhelmine, ed. “Letter from Colonel John T. Pickett, of the Southern Confederacy, to Señor Don Manuel de Zamacona, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mexico.” Hispanic American Historical Review 2, no. 4 (November 1919): 611–17.

244

Bibliography

Wilson, Walter E. “Rebels at the Rio Grande: Naval Actions on the International Border in 1863.” In New Studies in Rio Grande Valley History, edited by Milo Kearney, Anthony Knopp, Antonio Zavaleta, and Thomas Daniel Knight, 125–65. Edinburg: University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, 2018.

Newspapers and Periodicals Alcance al Centinela (Ciudad Chihuahua) “Angel Trías to William Carr Lane, March 28, 1853,” March 29, 1853. Bandera Americana (Brownsville, TX) “Guerra de Tamaulipas Contra Tejas.” January 2, 1863. “La Guerra en Nuestras Puertas: Invasion de Texas por Bandidos Mexicanos.” January 2, 1863. Boletín Oficial (Monterrey) “Texas.” November 30, 1862. Charleston Mercury “Arrest of United States Senator Gwin.” November 23, 1861. DeBow’s Review (New Orleans) “The American Colony in Mexico.” June 1866. Fitzhugh, George. “Acquisition of Mexico—Filibustering.” December 1858. “Mexico in 1852.” October 1852. Poinsett, Joel R. “The Republic of Mexico.” July 1846. Schmidt, Gustavus. “Mexico—Its Social and Political Condition.” February 1846. El Diario del Imperio (Mexico City) “Colonizacion.” May 3, 1865. “Fuga de D. Benito Juarez.” October 17, 1865. “Junta de Colonizacion.” October 13, 1865. “Junta de Colonizacion.” November 3, 1865. “Parte Oficial.” September 9, 1865. “Plan General de Colonizacion.” September 12, 1865. “Terrenos Para Colonizacion.” October 10, 1865. El Guardia Nacional (Matamoros, Tamaulipas) “Comandancia Militar del Estado de Tamaulipas.” March 2, 1863. El Siglo Diez y Nueve (Mexico City) “Agresión Americana en Chihuahua.” April 10, 1853. “La Cuestión de La Mesilla.” June 6, 1853. “Ministerio de Relaciones.” April 27, 1853. “Ministerio de Relaciones.” September 26, 1861. “Noticias Nacionales: La Cuestión de Mesilla en Chihuahua.” May 13, 1853. El Veracruzano Libre (Vera Cruz) “Invasión al Estado de Chihuahua.” May 9, 1862. Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph “Proclamation to the People of Texas.” July 20, 1863. La Alianza de la Frontera (Ciudad Chihuahua). Periódico Oficial de Chihuahua (Microfilm Records of Chihuahua Newspapers). “Apaches.” January 8, 1863. “Fuerza Extrangera.” January 24, 1863.

Bibliography

245

“El Gobernador constitucional del Estado de Chihuahua á los habitantes del mismo.” May 1, 1862. “La Paz a Los Apaches.” January 31, 1863. La Sociedad (Mexico City) “Actualidades.” May 4, 1865. “Actualidades.” May 20, 1865. “Actualidades.” July 29, 1865. “Actualidades.” August 3, 1865. “Actualidades.” February 24, 1866. “Actualidades.” August 27, 1866. “Discurso del Emperador de Los Franceses.” February 23, 1866. “El Sr. F. Maury.” July 25, 1865. “El Sr. Vidaurri.” August 11, 1866. “Estados-Unidos.” May 2, 1865. “Frontera del Norte.” October 4, 1865. “La Legacion Juarista en Washington.” March 2, 1866. “Los Juaristas en California.” July 22, 1865. “Matamoros.” May 14, 1865. “Matamoros.” September 17, 1865. “Matamoros.” October 11, 1865. “Matamoros.” March 7, 1866. “Matamoros.” August 29, 1866. “México y los Estados-Unidos.” October 14, 1865. “Noticias de Sonora.” July 24, 1865. “Rendicion de Lee y de su ejército.” May 1, 1865. “El Sitio de Matamoros.” February 22, 1866. “Situacion de los Estados del Sur.” September 21, 1865. “Sonora.” August 10, 1865. “Sonora.” September 27, 1865. “Sonora.” September 30, 1865. “Sucesos de Sonora.” September 29, 1865. “Toma de Guaymas.” April 26, 1865. La Voz de Sonora (Ures, Sonora) “Filibusters.” February 27, 1856. Los Angeles Times “For President’s Day, a Tower of Lincoln Books.” Carolyn Kellogg. February 20, 2012. Mexican Extraordinary (Mexico City) “Col. J. T. Pickett.” November 28, 1861. “The Government of Mexico.” May 25, 1861. Monitor of the Frontier (Matamoros, Tamaulipas) “From Monterrey: Defeat of Escobedo, Route and Pursuit.” December 16, 1865. New-York Daily Tribune “C. M. Clay and Thomas Corwin.” March 13, 1861. “From Mexico.” May 21, 1864. “Mr. Corwin’s Nomination.” March 13, 1861.

246

Bibliography

New York Times “Affairs in Arizona.” August 6, 1862. “Arizona Reclaimed.” June 27, 1862. “Attitude of France in Mexico: A Chance for Southern Recognition.” September 26, 1862. “Captured Correspondence: Letter from Gen. Gadsden of South Carolina to Jeff. Davis.” October 10, 1863. “Events in Mexico: A Trap for Recognition.” October 31, 1861. “The French in Sonora.” July 18, 1862. “From Arizona: A Transit for American and Foreign Goods Through Sonora.” January 18, 1861. “From Northern Mexico: Movements of Juarez, Feeling Toward Americans.” April 24, 1864. “From the Rebel States: Texas, a Curious Story from Chihuahua.” July 3, 1863. “Important Diplomatic Correspondence: Letters on the Subject of the Texan Frontier Between the Rebel Secretary of State, Gen. Vidaurri, Governor of Nueva Leon and Coahuila, and Col. Baylor, of the Texan Army.” October 31, 1861. “Importations into Arizona.” February 28, 1861. “Interesting from Texas: Importation of Supplies and Exportation of Cotton; Union Men Ready to Rise.” February 8, 1863. “Mexican Affairs.” January 30, 1861. “The Mexican Question: Important Documents Transmitted to Congress from the State Department. The Offer of Pecuniary Assistance to Mexico.” April 17, 1862. “Mexico and Havana: Rumors of Hostilities Between the French and Mexicans. The Raid of Rebels into Chihuahua. Effect of Secretary Seward’s Circular on Events in Mexico.” May 29, 1862. “News from Mexico: Escape of Vidaurri Across the Rio Grande; Particulars of his Flight; Juarez and his Troops in Monterrey.” May 14, 1864. “News of the Day: The Rebellion.” July 8, 1862. “The New Territory of Arizona.” March 10, 1863. “Organization of Arizona Territory.” April 6, 1862. “Our Interests in Mexico: A Gleam of Sunshine.” August 3, 1861. “The Proceedings of Congress: Important Debate in the Senate on the Course of the French in Mexico.” February 4, 1863. “Recapitulation: The Motives and Promise of the Intervention.” January 3, 1862. “Secession Intrigue in Sonora.” May 24, 1862. “Secession Schemes in Northern Mexico.” May 24, 1862. “Texas Begins Sending National Guard Troops to Mexican Border.” Dave Montgomery and Manny Fernandez. April 6, 2018. “Trump Says He Plans to Withdraw from NAFTA.” Glenn Thrush. December 2, 2018. “Trump Signs Trade Deal with Canada and Mexico.” Ana Swanson and Emily Cochrane. January 29, 2020. “The War in the Far West.” October 3, 1863. Richmond Whig “Maximilian.” October 29, 1862. Santa Fe Weekly Gazette “The Capture of Skillman’s Party.” May 14, 1864. “The French Evacuate Chihuahua.” November 18, 1865.

Bibliography

247

“The French in Sonora.” July 30, 1864. “Juarez.” September 9, 1865. “Late from Mexico.” February 27, 1864. “La Libertad.” February 21, 1863. “La Libertad.” April 18, 1863. “Spies Demolished.” April 30, 1864. “The Texans.” June 21, 1862. “Trade with Chihuahua.” October 25, 1862. Untitled report on French in Mexico. June 25, 1864. “A Voice from the Wilderness.” November 7, 1863.

Dissertations and Unpublished Papers Minge, Ward A. “Frontier Problems in New Mexico Preceding the Mexican War, 1840–1846.” PhD Diss. University of New Mexico, 1965.

Websites “Battle of Gettysburg Books.” Goodreads. www.goodreads.com/genres/battle-of-gettysburg Milmo Group. www.milmogroup.com

INDEX

Abbot, Gorham, 159 Abbott, Greg, 161 Abolitionists, 25, 120, 134, 136 Acapulco, Mex., 116 Adams-Onís Treaty, 9 Adams, John Quincy, 16 Alabama, 149 Alamán, Lucas, 10, 16 Alamo, 18, 92 Alexander the Great, 25 Almonte, Juan N., 21, 25, 133–34 American and Mexican Emigrant Company, 149 American Legion of Honor, 157 Anaconda Plan. See Naval blockade Anderson, William Marshall, 147 Apache Pass, AZ, 57 Apaches, 5, 7, 22, 31, 33, 38, 44–45, 48, 50–51, 56, 61, 97, 100, 113, 164; Apaches de paz, 13; as captives, 47, 57, 111, 126; ethos of, 46–47, 57–58; execution of, 57, 108, 126; oral history of, 57–58; raiding by, 112, 119; treaty with Chihuahua, 58. See also Chiricahua Apaches; Lipan Apaches; Mescalero Apaches; Western Apaches Appomattox, VA, 145 Arapahoes, 7 Arías, Juan de Dios, 50 Arista, Mariano, 21, 27 Arizona, 4, 6–8, 22, 33, 49–54, 57, 61, 62, 76, 99, 104–6, 108, 112, 117, 121–22, 126, 133, 154; as Confederate territory, 41, 50, 107–8; mining in, 59, 109; Union troops in, 110–11. See also District of Arizona Arizona Brigade (C.S.), 60 Arizona Exploring Expedition, 114 Arizona Guards, 47, 51, 57, 60 Arms trade. See Smuggling; War materiel Army of Northern Virginia, 106, 151

Arny, William F.M., 55–56, 59 Arroyo, J. Miguel, 24 Article XI. See Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Assimilation, 7 Atlanta, GA, 104 Austin, Moses, 17 Austin, Stephen F., 16, 19 Austin, TX, 20, 70, 148 Avegno, Bernard, 90 Avery, Louis, 146, 152, 156 Aymard, Alphonse Edouard, 137 Bacerac, Mex., 59 Bagdad, Mex., 66, 68, 140, 146 Baja California, Mex., 35, 37, 38, 101, 120, 135 Baker, William L., 52 Bandits, 3–5, 66, 70, 72, 75–77, 79, 81–83, 87, 98, 124, 143, 144, 146, 157, 160–62 Bankhead, Smith, 74–75 Banks, Nathaniel P., 95–97, 141 Barbaquista (Comanche), 11 Bargie, Ludam A., 58 Bartlett, John Russell, 23 Basch, Samuel, 157 Bascom Affair, 57, 109, 112 Bascom, George N., 57 Battle of Adobe Walls (First), 113 Battle of Antietam, 8 Battle of Bull Run (First), 32, 38, 157 Battle of Gettysburg, 8, 59, 91 Battle of Glorieta, 55 Battle of Guadalupe, 126 Battle of Palmito Ranch, 146 Battle of Puebla (First), 28, 62 Battle of Puebla (Second), 89, 92, 113 Battle of Rio Grande City, 27 Battle of Santa Gertrudis, 156 Battle of Shiloh, 8 Battle of Vicksburg, 59, 91, 102, 144

250

Index

Bavispe, Mex., 59, 111, 112 Baylor, John Robert, 41, 47, 51, 53, 56, 57, 76, 79, 85, 107–9, 163 Bazaine, François Achille, 103, 105–6, 120–22, 137–38, 145, 147, 148, 155, 165 Beale, Edward Fitzgerald, 114–15 Bee, Barnard E., 19 Bee, Hamilton, 65–66, 78, 91, 95, 98, 143, 164; diplomacy with Mexico, 79–88; evacuates Fort Brown, 93–94 Benavides, Santos, 86–87, 141 Benicia Arsenal, CA, 114 Benjamin, Judah P., 47, 85, 87, 92, 104, 134–36, 140 Berlandier, Jean Louis, 10, 11 Bickley, George W.L., 25 Bigelow, John, 104–5 Black Flag Decree, 157 Blair, Francis P., 145 Blair, Montgomery, 145 Blood, Caleb, 68 Bocanegra, José María, 19 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 25, 28 Border Patrol (U.S.), 161 Bosque Redondo Reservation, 34, 112 Boundary Surveys, 23–24 Bounty systems, 13, 57–58, 126, 161. See also Scalping Bracero Program, 163 Brady, Peter, 52–53 Brazil, 107 Brazos Santiago, TX, 93, 141, 146 British Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, 2 Brooks, James, 120–21 Brown, S. S., 144–45 Brown, Thomas, 114–15 Brownsville, TX, 68, 81, 83, 86, 90, 129, 146–47, 160, 162; occupied by U.S. troops, 92–97, 99, 128, 130, 140–41, 144 Buchanan, James, 21, 40, 134 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, 162 Butler, Anthony, 16–17 Butterfield Overland Mail Route, 57 Caborca, Mex., 26 Caddos, 20 Caesar, Julius, 25 California, 4, 14, 21–24, 38, 50, 51, 53, 100, 104, 106, 117–18, 120, 122, 149; filibustering in, 26, 100–104, 127; secessionists in, 101–8, 203n7; smuggling in, 113–16

California Column, 53–55, 57, 110, 124 Camargo, Mex., 27, 83, 94, 156 Canada, 134, 164 Canales, Servando, 156 Cananea, Mex., 111 Canby, Edward R.S., 148 Cañedo, A. H., 147 Capitalism, 8, 25, 27, 48 Captives. See Apaches; Indians; Mexicans Cardona, Gerónimo, 71 Caribbean, 7, 43 Carleton, James H., 33, 52–57, 59–63, 97, 105, 110, 119, 124–25, 163, 164; Indian policy of, 111–13 Carlota, 137, 211n36 Carlota, Mex., 150 Caroline Goodyear, 91 Carranza, Venustiano, 163 Carrizo, TX, 83 Carson, Christopher “Kit,” 34, 113 Carvajal, José María de Jesus, 26, 75, 84, 156 Casa Milmo, 128 Castagny, Armand Alexandre de, 121–22, 126, 140 Castro y Carrillo, Antonio, 138 Catholic Church, 43, 155 Cazotte, Charles de, 114–15 Centralism (Mexican), 3, 5, 27, 43, 48, 63, 71, 98, 157, 159 Chapultepec Palace, 149, 159 Cherokees, 20, 109 Chevalier, Michel, 211n33 Cheyennes, 7 Chickasaws, 101 Chihuahua, Mex., 3, 5, 11, 13, 14, 22, 29, 32–33, 35, 37, 50–51, 53, 56, 59, 62–63, 67, 74, 76, 83, 85, 90, 97–98, 100–101, 105, 107–8, 112, 113, 121, 125, 140, 163; Confederate diplomacy in, 40–46; French Intervention in, 118–20, 122–24; treaty with Apaches, 58. See also Ciudad Chihuahua Chiricahua Apaches, 6, 13, 14, 33, 42, 43, 46–48, 51, 55–59, 63, 76, 79, 83, 108–12, 119, 121, 126–27, 163; oral history of, 57–58; tribal organization of, 35. See also Cochise; Mangas Coloradas; Victorio Chiricahua Mountains, AZ, 59 Choctaws, 101 Científicos, 159 Cinco de Mayo, 28 Citibank, 160

Index Ciudad Chihuahua, 42, 43, 45, 56, 59–61, 119–20, 124–25 Civil War, 30, 36, 50, 51, 56, 64, 69, 71, 88, 91, 97–98, 100, 104–5, 109, 145, 165; embargo on weapons, 115–16; literary statistics on, 6; Trans-Mississippi Theatre, 71–72, 87, 97, 108, 130, 132, 147 Clay, Henry, 15, 16, 40 Clements, Nelson, 90–92 Coahuila, Mex., 3, 5, 14, 22, 67, 71, 73, 87, 94, 98, 107, 120, 128, 138 Coahuila y Tejas, Mex., 13 Cobos, José María, 95 Cochise (Apache), 6, 46–48, 57–59, 112, 121, 126–27, 165 Colegio Apostólico de San Fernando, 11 Collins, James L., 117–18 Colonization (of slaves), 36 Colorado River, 23, 122 Columbus, NM, 163 Comanches, 4, 6, 11, 13, 14, 17–20, 31, 70, 77, 113, 157; diplomacy with Confederacy, 109–10; raiding by, 22, 33 Compá, Juan José (Apache), 13 Confederate States of America, 29, 36, 42, 67, 70, 145, 147; army of, 44, 91–93; colonies in Mexico, 149–51; Congress of, 133; currency of, 65–66, 128–29; diplomacy with England, 47; diplomacy with France, 62, 88–92, 136–37, 140; diplomacy with Indians, 109–10; diplomacy with Mexico, 32–33, 40–51, 70–74, 79, 81–88, 107, 130–31, 133–37, 141–44; economy of, 53, 65–67, 69–70, 72, 75, 82, 86, 94–95, 97–98, 128, 131–32, 144–45; expansion schemes, 2–3, 32–33, 36–38, 43, 50–53, 59, 74–75, 89–90, 93, 98, 100–109, 133–35, 145, 147–51; foreign policy of, 43, 48, 133; Indian policy of, 110, 113; invasion of New Mexico, 32–33, 40–42, 48, 55, 107–9, 113; military strategy of, 66–68, 84–85, 110; relations with Indians, 46–47, 109–10. See also Arizona Brigade; Army of Northern Virginia; Cotton Bureau; Cotton trade; Department of Texas; State Department; Sub-District of the Rio Grande; Texas; Trans-Mississippi Department; War Bureau; War Department Confederates, flee to Mexico, 106, 147–52, 154 Conkling, Alfred B., 24 Connelly, Henry, 62–63, 97

251

Conner, Edward, 110, 121–22, 126 Contraband. See Smuggling Convention of London, 28 Cooper, Samuel, 65 Corpus Christi, TX, 18 Corralitos, Mex., 47 Cortina, Juan, 6, 27–28, 76, 95–97, 140–41, 144, 146–47, 152, 156, 160, 165 Cortina War, 27–28 Corwin Treaty, 135–36 Corwin, Thomas, 1, 2, 35–38, 40, 50, 73, 89, 104, 133, 141 Corwin, William, 104, 120, 213n60 Cotton Bureau (C.S.), 120, 129–30 Cotton trade, 3, 5, 65–66, 68, 70–71, 75–76, 79, 86, 89–90, 94–95, 97, 107, 128–29, 131–33, 139–41. See also Smuggling Coult, Theodore A., 110 Council Grove, I.T., 109 Council House Massacre, 20 Coyuntura (Apache), 57 Crabb, Henry, 26–27, 43, 53, 103, 134 Creeks, 109 Creel, Enrique, 60 Creel, Reuben W., 60, 119, 122–25, 208n100 Crimean War, 28 Crinolinos, 95 Crook, George, 163 Cruces, Mex., 112 Cuba, 24–25, 66 Cuba Libre Movement, 70 Cuelga de Castro (Lipan Apache), 11, 18 Cuevas, Luis, 21 Cuniffe, Henry, 124–25 Dano, Alphonse, 105 Davis, Edmund, 84–85 Davis, Jefferson, 1–3, 43, 47, 48, 59, 70, 75–76, 106, 108–9, 127, 133–34, 164, 185n45, 193n25; plans New Mexico invasion, 32; as secretary of war, 24, 32 Davis, Nelson H., 110–11 Dayton, John F., 141 De la Garza, Vicente, 129 Debt peonage. See Peonage Delawares, 14, 20 Democratic Party, 16, 40 Department of the Pacific (U.S.), 53, 55, 59, 105–6 Department of Texas (C.S.), 65, 84, 141 Devine, Thomas J., 209n12

252

Index

Díaz, Porfirio, 159–62 Díez de Bonilla, Manuel, 24 Diffendorfer, David R., 24 Dilth-cleyhen (Apache), 58 Diplomacy, 4–5, 8, 35, 45, 59, 60, 63–64, 67, 74, 87, 98, 108, 115–16, 131–32, 144, 154, 160, 162–63. See also Confederate States of America; Indians; Texas; United States of America District of Arizona (U.S.), 59 Doblado, Manuel, 28, 50, 51, 78, 138 Dred Scott Case, 27 Drouyn de Lhuys, Edouard, 92, 104–5 Drug Enforcement Agency, 162 Drum, Richard, 55 Ducayet, Felix, 141, 209n12 Ducey, Doug, 161 Dukedom of Sonora, 103–4 Durango, Mex., 11, 13, 14, 22, 33, 120, 150 Eagle Pass, TX, 66, 86, 94, 97, 129, 144, 160 Edinburg, TX, 83 El Cojo (Lipan Apache), 11 El Monte, CA, 37 El Paso, Tex., 23, 37, 42, 83, 120, 160, 162 Elías, Angel, 126 Emancipation, 8, 36. See also Thirteenth Amendment Empresarios, 9, 10, 16 England, 28, 29, 35, 47, 133 Escalante, Eraclio, 59 Escalante, Manuel, 52 Escobedo, Mariano, 152, 156 Espionage, 2, 37, 52–53, 56, 71, 77, 83, 89, 93–94, 102, 118, 121, 130, 148 Establecimientos de paz, 13 Etchison, E. D., 143–44 Evans, John, 59 Federalism (Mexican), 3, 5, 14, 22, 27, 29–30, 35, 42, 43, 48, 53, 63, 67, 71, 82, 98, 123–24, 157, 159 Fergusson, David, 32–33, 60–61, 63, 104, 110 Ffrench, William, 110–11 Fifteenth Texas Infantry, 109 Fifth California Infantry, 110 Filibustering, 2–5, 23–27, 31, 36, 37, 43, 48, 50, 54–55, 63, 84, 110, 115, 117–18, 127, 134, 147, 160; in Sonora, 100–106, 121. See also Mercenaries First California Cavalry, 60, 124

First California Infantry, 56 First Texas Cavalry, 148 Fitzhugh, George, 25–26 Fitzpatrick, Richard, 28, 82–83 Florida, 16 Florida Mountains, NM, 47 Ford, John S. “Rip,” 27, 75–76, 140–41, 146 Fort Bliss, TX, 55 Fort Bowie, AZ, 112 Fort Brown, TX, 75–76, 79, 83, 93–95, 140, 161 Fort Buchanan, AZ, 57 Fort Clark, TX, 76 Fort Cummings, NM, 112 Fort Fillmore, NM, 41 Fort Goodwin, AZ, 112 Fort Leavenworth, KS, 109 Fort McLane, NM, 57 Fort Stanton, NM, 33–34 Fort Sumter, SC, 1, 97 Fort Thorn, NM, 34, 45 Fort West, NM, 112 Fort Yuma, AZ, 37, 54, 60, 152, 161 Fourth Arizona Brigade, 140 Fourth Texas Regiment, 40 France, 9, 12, 28, 29, 35–37, 51, 62, 89–90, 96, 105, 133, 141, 152, 153, 211n32; diplomacy with Confederacy, 88–92, 136–37, 140. See also French Army; French Intervention; French Navy; Grand Design; Maximilian I; Mexican Empire; Napoleon III Franklin, TX, 56 Fremantle, James, 77 Frémont, John C., 101 French and Indian War, 4 French Army, 75, 120–21, 126, 133, 137–38, 140, 148, 155; withdraws from Mexico, 155–57 French Intervention, 4, 6, 27–30, 36, 38, 56, 62–64, 67, 71, 78–79, 82, 88–90, 93, 96, 98, 100, 103, 105, 109, 112, 114–17, 125–27, 133, 136–38, 140–41, 145–46, 148, 150–57, 165; in Chihuahua, 118–20, 122–24; in Sonora, 121–22, 126–27. See also Grand Design; Maximilian I; Napoleon III French Navy, 90–92, 116, 117 French, Albert H., 124 Fronteras, Mex., 57, 59 Gadsden, James, 24–25, 53 Gadsden Purchase, 24–25, 31, 33, 62 Galveston, TX, 26 65

Index Gándara, Manuel, 48 García, Guadalupe, 77 García, Jesús Fernández, 88 García Conde, Pedro, 23 Genocide, 13, 46, 58, 97, 109–10, 126. See also Apaches; Indians Georgia, 145 German Empire, 155 German immigrants, 78 Geronimo (Apache), 57–58, 163 Gila River, 23 Gila Trail, 61 Gilded Age, 8, 160 Gold Rush, 101 Gomez, Florentino, 142–43 González Cosío, Manuel, 24 Good Neighbor Policy, 163 Grand Design (French), 3, 28, 155 Grant, Ulysses S., 92, 105–6, 108, 145, 163; and Greater Reconstruction, 151–55 Great Depression, 163 Great Lakes, 4 Great Plains, 7 Greater Reconstruction, 3, 5, 7, 29, 62, 93, 105–6, 150–55, 158, 159, 161, 163, 165; debated in Congress, 154–55; in Arizona, 112; in California, 115; in New Mexico, 112; in Texas, 145 Greeley, Horace, 1 Guanajuato, Mex., 141 Guardia Nacional de Tamaulipas, 27 Guaymas, Mex., 38, 43, 48, 49, 51–52, 106, 110–11, 116, 121–22, 126 Guerrero, Mex., 83, 87 Guerrero, Cipriano, 77 Guerrero, Vicente, 17 Gulf Coast, 17, 92, 94, 140, 152 Gulf of California, 52, 61, 62, 110 Gulf of Mexico, 52, 90 Guonique (Comanche), 11 Gwin, William M., 107, 111, 114, 118, 165; background, 101; filibustering of, 102–6, 121–22 Hale, W. G., 141–42 Halleck, Henry, 62 Hampton Roads Peace Conference, 145 Harris, Isham, 150 Harrison, James E., 109 Hart, Simeon, 42, 90, 94, 120, 125, 129–31 Hart’s Mill, TX, 125 Harvard University, 70, 134

253

Hastings, Lansford W., 107, 114 Havana, Cuba, 2, 70, 78, 88, 89 Hébert, Paul, 65 Heintzelman, Samuel, 27 Henry, Barclay, 106 Hermosillo, Mex., 49, 52, 112 Herron, Francis, 96–97, 140 Hill Country (Texas), 78 Hispanics, 7, 14, 27, 114, 118. See also Tejanos Honduras, 26 Hotze, Henry, 211n33 Houston, Sam, 18–20, 28, 40 Houston, TX, 40, 56, 70 Howe, Timothy, 154 Huerta, Victoriano, 163 Human trafficking, 161 Hunter, Charles, 78 Hunter, Sherod, 48 Hutchinson, William, 66 Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 162 Indian Territory, 109 Indians, 3, 4, 5, 7, 12, 17, 36, 61, 83, 86, 100, 162, 164; as captives, 11, 18, 47, 57, 126, 161; diplomacy of, 11, 14, 18–20, 57, 109–10; extermination of, 47–48, 51, 57–59, 97, 108, 110, 126; raiding by, 9, 16, 18, 22–23, 29–30, 33, 36, 42, 46–48, 50, 56, 57, 73, 76–77, 112, 119; relations with Confederacy, 46–47, 109–10; relations with Mexico, 12–14, 58; treaties with, 11, 13, 18–20. See also Apaches; Arapahoes; Caddos; Cherokees; Cheyennes; Chickasaws; Chiricahua Apaches; Choctaws; Comanches; Creeks; Delawares; Kiowas; Lakotas; Mayans; Mescalero Apaches; Navajos; Scalping; Seris; Shawnees; South Plains tribes; Tarahumaras; Wacos; Yaquis Institute of Arts and Sciences (Mexico), 38 Instituto Nacional de Migración, 162 Iturbide, Agustín de, 11, 17 Jackson, Alexander M., 48 Jackson, Andrew, 16–17, 19, 21, 24, 101 Jalisco, Mex., 150 James, Charles, 114–15 Janos, Mex., 13, 59, 112, 126 Jesup, Thomas, 122 Johnson, Andrew, 116, 151, 153–54 Johnson, John, 46 Jordan, Edward H., 45

254

Index

Juárez, Benito, 2, 28, 30, 36, 45, 51, 64, 74, 75, 77–78, 85, 86, 94, 100, 102–3, 111, 113, 116, 118–21, 127, 129, 132–33, 135–36, 140, 143–45, 151–52, 154, 156–57, 163–65; in Chihuahua, 122–26; flees Mexico City, 89, 120; at Monterrey, 138–40; relations with Confederacy, 70, 72–73; relations with U.S., 38–40, 63–64, 152–54 Juaristas, 62, 89, 91, 93, 113–14, 118–19, 122, 135, 137, 139, 145–46, 151, 153, 155–56, 161 Kaywaykla, James (Apache), 58 Kean, Robert, 86, 89–90 Kendall, George Wilkins, 14 Kenedy, Mifflin, 27, 84, 160 Kenedy, Stillman & King, 129 Kimmey, Myndert M., 66, 68, 138, 143–44 King, Richard, 27, 160 Kiowas, 6, 13, 14, 17, 18, 22, 33, 70, 113, 157 Kirker, James, 46 Knights of the Golden Circle, 25, 50, 75, 134 La Libertad, Mex., 61, 110 La Paz, Mex., 37 Labor. See Peonage; Slavery Lafuente, Manuel, 13 Lakotas, 7 Lamar, Mirabeau B., 19–20, 71 Lane, William Carr, 23–24 Laredo, TX, 81, 86, 94, 97, 141, 144, 160, 162 Latham, Francis, 66, 68–69, 88, 129–30, 146 Latin America, 43, 98, 158, 164 Lee, Robert E., 28, 106, 110, 145, 147, 148, 151, 153 Lerdo de Tejada, Sebastián, 113, 124, 127, 144, 160 Lewis, Samuel, 78 Lincoln, Abraham, 1, 3, 6, 40, 92, 96, 101–2, 104–6, 108, 112, 114–15, 127, 134–36, 145, 161, 163, 164 Lincoln administration, 38, 79 Lipan Apaches, 11, 13, 14, 17–20, 33, 70, 73, 76–77, 79, 157 Logan, John A., 213n60 London, England, 36, 90 López, Albino, 5, 89, 96, 98, 143, 165; diplomacy with Confederacy, 79–88 Los Angeles, CA, 37 Los Lobos, Mex., 61, 110 Louisiana, 149 Louisiana Purchase, 120

Louisville, KY, 134 Love Bird, 91 Low, Frederick, 114–15, 117–18 Lozen (Apache), 58 Lubbock, Francis, 40–41, 86, 88, 91 Lucas, James A., 107 MacManus, George, 59–60 Magruder, John B., 84, 86, 91–92, 137, 139–40, 147 Mangas Coloradas (Apache), 6, 46–47, 109, 112, 165; execution of, 57–58 Manifest Destiny, 16, 21–22, 25, 101 Maquiladoras, 164 March to the Sea, 145 Marcy, William L., 24 Martial law, 78, 83–84, 107 Maryland, 8 Mastin, Thomas J., 47 Matamoros, Mex., 60, 66–68, 70, 76–79, 81, 83–84, 86, 90–91, 98, 128, 131, 133, 143, 146, 147, 152, 154, 156; cotton trade at, 89; during Cortina War, 27–28; French forces at, 139–41; fugitive slaves in, 79; siege at, 95–97; smuggling at, 144–45 Maury, Matthew F., 149–50 Maximilian I, Emperor, 3, 28, 102–3, 105, 113–16, 118–22, 125–26, 133–37, 140–41, 143, 145, 151, 152, 154–57, 165; background, 210n22, 211n36; execution of, 157; welcomes Confederate immigrants, 147–52 Mayans, 26 Mazatlán, Mex., 26 McClellan, George B., 108 McCulloch, Henry E., 65 McDougall, James, 120 McDowell, Irvin, 59, 105–6, 114–15 McHatton-Ripley, Eliza, 66, 141 McIntyre, Benjamin, 95, 96 McKinney, Thomas F., 209n12 McLeod, Hugh, 20 McMullen, William, 56, 85 Mejía, Enrique, 88, 102 Mejía, Tomás, 138, 140, 143–44, 146, 152, 156–57 Mercenaries, 13, 25–27, 46, 93, 107, 114, 117, 146, 152. See also Filibustering Merchants War, 26 Mescalero Apaches, 13, 14, 33–34 Mesilla Valley, 23–24, 41, 107 Mesilla, NM, 41, 47, 48, 51, 57, 58

Index Mexican Aid Society, 145 Mexican-American War, 1, 21–22, 27, 29–30, 33, 63, 151–52 Mexican Army, 24, 26, 42, 48, 113, 119, 138; fighting Apaches, 58–59, 111–12, 126. See also Sinaloa Brigade Mexican Cession, 22, 25, 31 Mexican Empire, 102–3, 105, 122, 135, 141, 145–46, 148–49, 152–57. See also French Intervention; Grand Design; Maximilian I; Napoleon III Mexican Revolution, 162–63 Mexicans, as captives, 22 Mexico, 9, 70, 77, 96, 134; abolition of slavery, 17, 74; Colonization Law of, 149–50; commerce with United States, 11–12, 15; Confederate colonies in, 106, 147–51; Congress of, 18, 28, 49; constitution of 1824, 11; constitution of 1857, 27, 30, 44, 74, 75, 83, 95; Constitution of 1917, 163; diplomacy with Confederate States, 1–2, 32–33, 40–46, 48–51, 70–74, 79, 81–88, 107, 130–31, 133–37, 141–43; diplomacy with Texas, 19–20, 73–74; diplomacy with United States, 1, 17, 21, 22, 24–25, 32, 35–38, 49–50, 56, 59–63, 74, 77–78, 83–84, 115–16, 163; economy of, 160; independence, of, 11; national debt of, 12, 14, 28, 35–37; neutrality of, 45–46, 50, 51, 54, 60–61, 63, 68, 79, 81, 83–84, 96, 107, 139; people of, 2; political instability of, 29–31, 88; relations with Europe, 12, 28, 36–37, 51; relations with Indians, 12–14, 58; Supreme Court of, 30. See also Baja California; Centralism; Chihuahua; Coahuila; Durango; Federalism; Mexican Empire; Nuevo León; Sinaloa; Sonora; Tamaulipas Mexico City, 2, 11, 19, 20, 22, 24, 35, 37, 38, 48, 63, 70, 72–73, 75, 79, 83, 89, 98, 102–4, 133–34, 142, 146, 148, 152–53, 155, 157, 159, 213n60 Mier, Mex., 83, 87 Mier y Terán, Manuel, 9–11, 17, 22 Milmo Group, 128 Milmo, Patricio, 128–32, 139, 165 Mining, 48, 53, 59, 102–3, 109, 114 Minutemen, 161 Mississippi, 102 Mississippi River, 91, 97, 132, 144 Missouri, 149 Monroe, James, 11

255

Monroe Doctrine, 28–29, 40, 90, 115, 116, 121, 135, 145, 153 Monroe Doctrine Societies, 114 Monterrey, Mex., 60, 66, 68, 70–72, 74–75, 85, 94, 102, 119, 129–30, 132, 138–41, 143, 156 Montgomery, AL, 1 Montholon, Charles François Frédéric de, 103, 147, 165 Moody, W. G., 52, 188n92 Moral imperialism, 25 Morales, Jesús García, 113 Morehead, Joseph C., 26 Muguara (Comanche), 20 Munitions. See War materiel Murphy, Daniel, 42 Nacogdoches, TX, 10 Napoleon III, Emperor, 3, 28, 62, 89, 92, 102–6, 117, 121, 126, 136–37, 154, 156–57, 165, 210n22, 211n33 Nashville, TN, 93 National City Bank, 160 National Guard (U.S.), 161 Nativism, 14 Navajos, 97, 112, 113 Naval blockade (U.S.), 3, 42, 62, 65–70, 78, 86, 90–92, 97, 106, 132, 144, 145, 151, 161. See also United States Navy Negrete, Miguel, 139 New England, 70 New Mexico, 4, 6, 7–8, 11–14, 21–23, 33, 51, 61, 62, 76, 97, 99, 107, 111–12, 117, 122, 124; invaded by Confederate troops, 32–33, 40–42, 46, 48, 55, 100, 104, 107–9, 113 New Mexico Volunteers, 97 New Orleans, LA, 14, 26, 66, 78, 93, 139, 141, 146, 148 New South, 8, 151 New Virginia colonies (Mexico), 150 New York City, 102 New York State, 57, 144 New York Times, 116 Nicaragua, 26 Nineteenth Iowa Infantry, 95 Nogales, AZ, 160 North American Free Trade Agreement, 164 North Carolina, 149 Nueces Massacre, 78 Nueces River, 78 Nueces Strip, 21, 70, 160 Nuevo Laredo, Mex., 86, 94, 131, 140

256

Index

Nuevo León, Mex., 3, 5, 11, 14, 67, 71–72, 75, 87, 94, 98, 107, 120, 128, 132–33, 137, 143 Oaxaca, Mex., 30, 38 Occidente, Mex., 11 Ochoa, Gaspar Sánchez, 157 O’Dowd, Patrick. See Patricio Milmo Operation Gatekeeper, 161 Operation Wetback, 164 Orizaba, 102 Ozeta, Cayetano, 126 Pacific Coast, 32, 38, 48, 59, 67, 116, 117 Pacific Railway Surveys, 32 Pacific World, 7, 98, 118, 158, 160, 164 Pakenham, Richard, 20 Palacio, Mex., 150 Paris, France, 36, 62, 92, 102, 104–5, 136–37, 140, 155 Paruakevitsi (Comanche), 13 Paso del Norte, Mex., 24, 56, 119–20, 124–25, 127, 133 Pastry War, 12 Patoni, José María, 118–20 Pedraza, Manuel Gómez, 22 Peña y Peña, Manuel de la, 22 Pennsylvania, 8 Peonage, 1–2, 79, 149–50 Pershing, John J., 163 Pesqueíra, Ignacio, 5, 33, 42, 54, 57–58, 61, 63, 74, 79, 100, 113, 118–21, 126, 164–65; fights Apaches, 100, 111–12; fights filibusters, 26, 43, 100–106; meets Confederate agents, 48–51; meets with Gwin, 103–4; relations with U.S. officers, 52–55, 110–12 Pickett, John T., 2, 4, 38, 50, 70, 72–73, 75, 133–34, 165, 193n25 Piedras Negras, Mex., 94, 129, 131–32, 138 Pierce, Leonard Jr., 68, 76–78, 81, 85, 91, 96, 143 Pike, Albert, 110 Pisinampe (Comanche), 11 Plan de Tuxtepec, 160 Poca Ropa (Lipan Apache), 11 Poinsett, Joel, 11, 12, 15–16, 19 Polk, James K., 21–22 Porfiriato, 60, 159–60 Port Hudson, LA, 144 Potomac River, 67 Presidential election (1860), 101, 104, 106 Presidential election (1864), 108

Presidio de Mazatlán, Mex., 152 Presidio del Norte, TX, 124 Preston, William, 134–37, 142, 165 Propaganda (C.S.), 137, 140, 149, 211n33 Prussia, 155 Puebla, Mex., 88, 92 Punitive Expedition, 163 Quenoc (Comanche), 11 Querétaro, Mex., 157 Quintero, José Agustín, 75–78, 81, 82, 85, 93–94, 97–98, 137, 139–41, 193n25, 203n7; background, 70–71; diplomacy of, 72–74, 129–31 Quiroga, Julián, 140 Radical Republicans, 150 Raiding. See Apaches; Bandits; Comanches; Indians Railroads, 23, 24, 40, 59, 160 Rancho Clareño, TX, 81 Reagan, John H., 42–43, 51 Reconstruction. See Greater Reconstruction Refugees, 77–78, 81–82, 84–86, 88, 143 Regionalism. See Federalism (Mexican) Reily, James, 32–33, 47, 52–55, 59–61, 63, 79, 90, 104, 105, 118; background, 40–41; missions to Mexico, 40–51 Rejón, Crescencio, 22 Republic of Lower California, 26 Republic of Sierra Madre, 26, 71 Republic of Texas. See Texas Reservations (Indian). See Bosque Redondo; Establecimientos de paz Reynosa, Mex., 83 Richmond, VA, 2, 59, 65–66, 73, 88, 90, 92, 106, 109, 127, 130, 133, 135 Riddells, Bennett, 43 Ridge, Joseph Charles, 106 Ringgold Barracks, TX, 81 Rio Grande, 18, 21, 23, 27, 45, 53, 54, 56–58, 61, 65, 67–69, 74, 76, 79, 81–82, 84–85, 93–98, 124, 128, 131–32, 136, 141, 143–44, 146, 152, 154–56, 161–62 Rio Grande City, TX, 83 Rio Grande Valley, 7–8, 41, 66, 77, 152 Rocha, Sostenes, 156 Rojos, 95 Romero, Matías, 49, 85, 97, 104, 116, 119–20, 133, 135, 150, 154, 164–65; background, 38–40

Index Roosevelt, Franklin D., 163 Rosa, Luis de la, 23 Rose, Robert, 147–48 Ruiz, Manuel, 88–89, 91, 93, 95–97 Runnels, Richard Hardin, 74 Rusk, Thomas J., 40 Russell, Charles, 94–95, 129–30 Russia, 28, 40 Ruxton, George, 29 Sabine River, 10 Sacramento, CA, 118 St. Louis, MO, 149 St. Petersburg, Russia, 40 Saligny, Pierre Elizodor Alphonse Dubois de, 88–89 Saltillo, Mex., 119, 138 San Antonio, TX, 10, 11, 13, 20, 40, 56, 60, 66, 73, 75–76, 78, 88, 90, 94, 97, 120, 128, 130 San Bernardino, CA, 37 San Diego, CA, 26 San Elizario, TX, 13 San Francisco, CA, 53, 106, 113–16, 119, 122 San Jacinto, TX, 18 San Lorenzo, Mex., 150 San Luis Potosí, Mex., 89, 120, 137 Sánchez, José María, 10, 11 Santa Anna, Antonio López de, 14, 17–18, 21–22, 24–25 Santa Fe, NM, 15, 55, 60, 109, 117 Santa Fe Trade, 15 Santa Fe Trail, 61, 108, 113 Santacilia, Pedro, 129 Santleben, August, 76 Scalping, 13, 14, 34, 46, 57–58, 109, 126, 161. See also Bounty systems Schmidt, Gustavus, 30 Scott, Winfield, 21–22, 40 Scurry, William R., 42 Secession/secessionists, 1, 3, 27, 29, 37–38, 40, 53, 55, 57, 59, 78, 81, 89, 104, 114, 122, 125, 127, 134, 139, 150, 152, 164; in California, 101–8, 118, 203n7 Second French Empire, 28 Second Texas Cavalry, 146 Sectionalism, 23, 25, 46, 136 Seddon, James A., 90, 106–9, 127 Seris, 13, 34 Serna, Jesús de la, 77 Seuzeneau, Peter, 67

257

Seward, William H., 1, 3, 29, 36–38, 40, 49, 52, 62–63, 77, 85, 92–93, 95–96, 104, 105, 114, 116, 119, 122, 124–25, 127, 134, 136, 138, 144–45, 147, 151, 154–55, 159, 163, 164 Shawnees, 14, 20 Shelby, Jo, 148, 152 Sheridan, Phil, 150, 152–54 Sherman, William T., 104, 145 Showalter, Dan, 37, 60, 84, 140–41, 152 Sibley Brigade, 41–42, 45, 48, 55 Sibley, Henry Hopkins, 32–33, 40, 44–45, 47, 50, 52, 54–55, 63, 104, 107, 164 Sierra Madre, Mex., 163 Silva, Cayetano, 59 Silva, José María, 140 Sinaloa Brigade, 113 Sinaloa, Mex., 11, 35, 50, 113, 114, 120, 121, 135 Sioux. See Lakotas Skillman, Henry, 6, 60–61, 83, 124 Slaughter, James E., 143 Slavery, 1–2, 7, 8, 13, 16, 19, 25, 40, 46, 53, 78, 92, 103, 106, 121, 149–50; abolished in Mexico, 17, 74; abolished in United States, 120, 158; colonization of slaves, 36; conspiracies, 25; runaway slaves, 73–74, 78, 79, 82, 84, 149. See also Emancipation; Indians; Thirteenth Amendment Slidell, John, 4, 92, 102, 136–37, 140, 211n32 Smallpox, 13 Smith, Edmund Kirby, 109–10, 130–32, 142–43, 147–48 Smuggling, 66–70, 76, 90–91, 93, 113–16, 130, 139, 143–46, 161–62. See also Cotton trade; War materiel Sonora, Mex., 3, 5, 11, 13, 14, 22, 32, 34, 35, 37, 42, 48, 50–55, 59, 62–63, 67, 74, 83, 90, 97–98, 107–8, 112–14, 116–18, 120–21, 135, 152, 154; colonization of, 111, 118, 121–22; Confederate diplomacy in, 48–51; filibustering in, 26, 43, 100–106; French Intervention in, 121–22, 126–27; mining in, 48, 53, 102–3; proposed U.S. invasion of, 54–55, 59, 117; relations with Apaches, 58–59, 126; Union diplomacy in, 61, 110–11. See also Dukedom of Sonora South Carolina, 145, 149 South Plains tribes, 108, 109, 113 Spain, 9, 11, 28, 29, 134 Spies. See Espionage Sprague, Thomas, 37 Stanton, Edwin, 93

258

Index

State Department (C.S.), 74, 203n7 State Department (U.S.), 2–3, 23, 25, 60, 62, 73, 91, 104, 105, 115–16, 121, 125, 134, 146–47, 150, 154, 159 Steck, Michael, 34 Steele, Frederick, 146–47 Stephens, Alexander, 145 Stillman, Charles, 27, 160 Sub-District of the Rio Grande (C.S.), 75 Sumner, Charles, 121 Sumner, Edwin V., 102 Sumpter, Jesse, 94 Superviéle, A., 88–89, 91, 93 Tamaulipas, Mex., 3, 5, 11, 14, 26, 38, 66, 67, 79, 81, 84–85, 87–88, 95–98, 107, 138, 140–41, 143–44, 156. See also Matamoros Tampico, Mex., 12, 38, 133, 140, 156 Tarahumaras; 14 Tariffs, 15, 67, 71, 75–76, 79, 95, 139, 156 Taylor, Zachary, 21, 27, 152 Tejanos, 3, 9, 10, 13, 76, 78, 81, 86–87. See also Hispanics Tennessee, 8, 108 Terán, Jesús, 126 Terrazas, Joaquín, 58, 119, 126 Terrazas, Luis, 5, 33, 42, 47, 51, 55–57, 63, 74, 79, 100, 111–12, 125–26, 164–65; background, 43; fights Apaches, 119; meets with Confederate agents, 43–46; and French Intervention, 118–20; meets with Union agents, 60–61 Terrell, Alexander W., 148 Texas, 4, 5, 12, 14, 22, 24, 40, 41, 43, 56, 60–61, 67, 70, 77, 79, 82, 89–90, 92, 106, 108, 113, 120, 125, 131–33, 135, 146, 149, 152, 154, 156, 160, 211n32; American colonization of, 9–11, 17; annexation of, 10, 16–17, 20–21, 25, 31, 63, 93; army of, 20; boundaries of, 21; British colonization of, 17; Congress of, 18–19, 20, 71, 79; declaration of independence, 18; diplomacy with Indians, 18–20; diplomacy with Mexico, 19–20, 73–74; European immigration to, 17; filibustering in, 26; invaded by U.S. troops, 86, 92–96, 99, 153–54; militia of, 78; political conventions, 40; Reconstruction in, 85; Unionist refugees from, 77–78, 81–82, 84–86, 88, 143; Vidaurri banished to, 138–39. See also

Confederate States of America; Department of Texas; Hill Country Texas Rangers, 20, 27 Texas Revolution, 17–20, 71 Thayer, Clarence, 128–30 Thirteenth Amendment, 106, 150, 158 Thomas, Lorenzo, 52 Thouvenel, Edouard, 136 Throckmorton, James W., 109–10 Tiburon Island, Mex., 61 Toombs, Robert, 1–2, 72–73, 164 Tornel y Mendívil, José María, 18 Townsend, Edward D., 118 Trans-Mississippi Department (C.S.), 109, 130, 148 Trans–Pecos Texas, 33 Tratado de la Soledad, 28 Treat, James, 20 Treaties. See Indians Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 22–24, 33, 67 Treaty of Miramar, 103 Treaty of Tehuacana Creek, 20 Treaty of Velasco, 18 Trent Affair, 4 Trías, Angel, 23–24, 120 Tripartite Alliance, 28, 42 Trist, Nicholas, 21–22 Trump, Donald, 164 Tucson, AZ, 47, 48, 61, 110 Tuxpan, Mex., 150 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, 164 United States, commerce with Mexico, 15; Constitution of, 74, 150, 155, 158; diplomacy with Mexico, 1, 11, 17, 21, 24–25, 32–33, 35–38, 49–50, 56, 59–63, 74, 77–78, 83–84, 115–16, 163; economy of, 160; Executive Department of, 37, 105; expansion schemes, 9–10, 20–21, 25–27, 53, 67, 101, 118, 134–35, 163; foreign policy of, 62–63, 163; Indian policy of, 111–13. See also Department of the Pacific; Naval blockade; State Department; War Department United States Army, 21–22, 24, 27–28, 38, 45, 54, 57, 60, 61, 65, 70, 105, 146, 147, 151, 161; campaigns against Apaches, 111–12, 163; dragoons, 33; invades Texas, 86, 92–96, 99, 128, 130, 140, 144, 153–54; proposed invasion of Mexico, 142; proposed invasion of

Index Sonora, 54–55, 59, 105, 117; in New Mexico, 32, 52; occupation of New Orleans, 66; right of transit in Mexico, 42, 49–50, 60. See also California Column; New Mexico Volunteers United States Congress, 23, 25, 37, 61, 101, 120–21, 134, 162; debates on Greater Reconstruction, 154–55 United States Navy, 53, 61, 66, 105–6, 163; USS Montgomery, 68, 78. See also Naval blockade United States Supreme Court, 26 Uranga, José María, 56 Ures, Mex., 52, 126 Van Buren, Martin, 19 Van Cuelebroeck, Blondeel, 147 Vega, Plácido, 113–16, 157 Vela, Isidro, 81 Vera Cruz, Mex., 2, 12, 21, 47, 88, 90, 91, 133, 147, 156, 163, 211n36 Veracruz, Mex., 150 Victoria, Guadalupe, 16 Victoria, TX, 66 Victorio (Apache), 6, 46–47, 58, 112, 126–27, 165 Vidal, Adrián, 93–94, 96 Vidaurri, Prudencia, 128 Vidaurri, Santiago, 5, 50, 70, 78, 82, 85–87, 95, 98, 119, 141, 144, 147, 165; allies with French, 137–40; background, 71–72; commands Army of the North, 71; conspires against Confederacy, 129–31; diplomacy with Confederacy, 73–77, 79–81, 94–95; execution of, 157 Vigil, Donaciano, 14 Villa, Pancho, 162, 163 Virginia, 8, 108, 149, 211n32 Wacos, 20 Walker, John G., 141 Walker, William, 26, 43, 134 Wallace, Lew, 145 War Bureau (C.S.), 86, 89 War Department (C.S.), 79 War Department (U.S.), 38, 115, 118, 125, 150–51, 153

259

War materiel, 65–70, 75, 90–92, 97, 113–16, 119, 122, 125, 135, 140–41, 144, 145, 151, 160–63. See also Smuggling War of the Reform, 1, 27, 28, 35, 39, 43, 48, 63–64, 67, 71, 74, 113 Ward, Felix, 57 Washburn, Elihu, 154 Washington, D.C., 49, 56, 83, 98, 108, 118, 121, 160 Waterman, F. H., 52–53 Watson, William, 70 Webb, James, 20 Webster, Daniel, 19, 23, 40 West, Joseph Rodman, 56–59, 61 Western Apaches, 14, 33, 42, 48, 55, 57, 63, 76, 79, 83, 111; tribal organization of, 35 Wharton, William W., 19 Whig Party, 1, 19, 40 White Mountains, NM, 33 White, Joseph A., 26 Wilds, David G., 26 Will o’ the Wisp, 68 Wilson, Woodrow, 163 Wislizenus, Adolph, 29 Wolfe, Udolpho, 66 Women. See Captives; Carlota; Lozen; Eliza McHatton-Ripley; Prudencia Vidaurri Wood, Amzi, 143, 144 Wood, Fernando, 121 Wool, John E., 27 World War II, 163 Wright, George, 52–55, 105, 117–18, 120, 154, 164 Yaquis, 6, 13, 14, 34, 48, 122, 126 Yrigóllen, Miguel (Apache), 47 Yturría, Francisco, 68 Yucatán Peninsula, 26 Zacatecas, Mex., 24 Zamacona, Manuel María de, 2, 35–36, 38, 50 Zapata, Emiliano, 162 Zapata, Octaviano, 6, 79, 81–83, 85, 87 Zavala, Lorenzo de, 17 Zona libre, 67, 162, 164 Zubirán, José N., 56 Zuloaga, José María, 43, 111

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book owes debts to many friends and colleagues who helped along the way. The subject of Civil War diplomacy in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands was barely even on my radar until November 2016, when a conversation with Brian DeLay sparked the idea for what became this book. Along the way, he reviewed an early book proposal as well as the final manuscript, and for his ongoing support and guidance I am always most grateful. I especially want to thank Jerry Thompson and Ed Westermann for reading the entire manuscript and offering sage advice for revisions, as well as John P. Wilson, who sent transcripts of research materials and pointed me in the right direction for obscure primary sources. My gratitude also goes out to Patrick Kelly along with the attendees of a research workshop at Trinity University in San Antonio: Bill Bush, Catherine Clinton, Emilio de Antuñano, Francis Galan, Jason Johnson, Drew Konove, Gregg Michel, Aaron Navarro, Amy Porter, and Lauren Turek. All of these individuals read Chapter 4 of this book and shared their ideas about how to make it better. I also appreciate David Holtby and Robert Wooster, each of whom chaired conference panels on which I presented work related to this book. Finally, I thank Judy Giesberg, whose feedback shaped my Journal of the Civil War Era article on Civil War diplomacy in Chihuahua and Sonora, and Bob Lockhart, editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press, for believing in this project from the outset and ushering it through the publication process. In both cases, several anonymous peer reviewers deserve recognition for the valuable comments they provided. The research for this book would not have been possible without generous financial assistance from my home institution, Texas A&M UniversitySan Antonio. In particular, I thank president Cynthia Teniente-Matson, provost Mike O’Brien, and my department chair, Bill Bush, all of whom offer a continuous stream of encouragement and support. Additional research support came from the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. I thank Andrew Graybill, Neil Foley, Russell Martin,

262

Acknowledgments

and Ruth Ann Elmore for funding a week of travel to conduct research at SMU’s DeGolyer Library; I also appreciate the assistance of Christina Jensen, head of public services at the DeGolyer, who helped locate materials during my time there. Some of my research was conducted at UT-Austin’s Benson Latin American Center, where I enjoyed the assistance of Linda Gill and Adrian Johnson, among many others. Finally, Sarah Timm and Emily BlissZaks at the Texas A&M–San Antonio library graciously fulfilled dozens of Interlibrary Loan requests over the last three years. I am blessed with a supportive and loving family, including my parents Dan and Jerine, and my wife Nicole, without whom none of this would be possible. This is my fifth book, but it is the first one I have written as a father. My first daughter, Cassidy, was born in January 2018, about midway through my work on this project, and my second daughter, Allyson, was born in September 2020, just three weeks before I sent in the final manuscript. I dedicate this book to them, in hopes that they may one day enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed watching them grow up while I was writing it.