The Civil War in the American West: Civil War Sesquicentennial - Bibliography

Chappell, Gordon

The key purpose of this bibliography is to demonstrate the complexity and extent of the Civil War in the American West through a listing of published books on the subject, including recent scholarship accomplished since publication of Alvin Josephy’s general work. To most Americans, the Civil War means a geographical focus on the region from the Atlantic Seaboard and the Gulf Coast to the Mississippi Valley. Indeed, the term “Civil War in the West” often is construed to mean the war in Kentucky, Tennessee and the Mississippi Valley and the other states flanking it, and even the Atlanta campaign. It would never occur to many Americans that anything connected with the Civil War happened farther “out West.” Yet New Mexico Territory was an active theater of the war with two major battles and a number of lesser engagements, the Gulf Coast of Texas was under Union assault periodically, Confederate guerrillas operated in Colorado Territory, Confederate soldiers occupied the cities of Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Tucson; and the westernmost combat in the war occurred southwest of Phoenix in what now is Arizona at Picacho Pass when a detachment of Confederate Texas Mounted Riflemen ambushed a patrol of the Union 1st California Volunteer Cavalry. In 1865, the Confederate States Navy commerce raider C.S.S.Shenandoah destroyed part of the civilian Union whaling fleet in north Pacific waters, scaring the living daylights out of the populace of San Francisco, which feared they and their banks full of gold from the Mother Lode mines would be raided next.