"It's a Civil War because people are all fighting one another," said Andrew Masich, author of "The Civil War in Arizona: The Story of the California Volunteers, 1861-1865."
The Civil War in the Southwest "is kind of separate from this other war" in the East, said Masich, formerly of Tucson and now president and chief executive of the John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center.
With a climate that could kill you and the hatred that simmered among those groups, this war was, Masich said, less about the evils of slavery and more about day-to-day survival.
The Californians may have been better equipped to handle the adversity, Masich said. They were "bigger, rougher and stronger," he said, so much so that their hat and shoe sizes were larger and trouser lengths longer than for troops in the East. Besides the physical differences, there was a mind-set too, especially in those Californians who were from elsewhere, as most were.
"You need a good deal of self-confidence to take on a jour-ney through 3,000 miles of dangerous territory, whether that's through the isthmus of Panama or overland," Masich said. "You need to be strong and fit and believe in your ability to accomplish things. You also might be more aggressive."
A handy trait in the bloodiest war in U.S. history and especially in the West, where the enemy came in many guises.
Bloody turning points
The reenactors were gearing up for the Battle of Valverde, played out on a roped-off field slightly larger than a gridiron. Artillery fire began, and viewers clapped their hands over their ears to muffle the sound. Guns fired, and one of the rebels shouted, "Welcome to Arizona!"
The Arizona he spoke of is not the Arizona we know today. In 1848, under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico gave the U.S. more than a half a million square miles of land, of which Arizona, New Mexico and California were parts. The Gadsden Purchase, which Congress ratified in 1854, added a far southern slice of land to the Arizona Territory.
One of the rebel reenactors, clearly unimpressed with the Union's effort, yelled, "Is that all you got, Billy?"
The Confederates may have been feeling cocky. History says — and the reenactors made it clear — that they were the victors at Valverde, which occurred Feb. 20 and 21, 1862, less than a week after Jefferson Davis claimed the Arizona Territory for the South.
A little more than a month later, the battle of Glorieta Pass was a different story. It was sometimes called the "Gettysburg of the West," not for the size of the encounter — the feds' 1,300 soldiers outnumbered the Confederates' by about 200 — but for the impact. More artillery fire on the reenactment field, louder this time, and more gunfire. Clouds of smoke (created by flour, a reenactor told me) billowed overhead in the Arizona sky. This time, the Union won. From March 26-28, 1862, the real battle of Glorieta Pass, with Coloradans and regulars, proved a psychological blow for the South, one that was only partly reversed with the action at Picacho.
Back on the makeshift battlefield, it was time to reenact it.
On April 15, 1862, Barrett and his men captured three Confederate pickets and tied them up. For reasons that are unclear, Barrett fired his weapon — perhaps to spur on his men — but succeeded only in making himself a target. Attacked by rebel troops, he was shot in the neck and was killed instantly, along with two other Union soldiers. The rebels lost no one, save the three captured soldiers, and the Union retreated.
That ended the reenactment action for the day but not, alas, the real war. After the Picacho fiasco, federal troops withdrew to the west, and though the South got a boost from its victory at Picacho, it wasn't long before those rebel troops were retreating to Texas.
The Union troops, meanwhile, confronted an unflinching new enemy even better at warfare. A battle was fought in July 1862, about 100 miles northeast of Tucson, but this time it was Union troops and the Apache who tangled. The Union so desperately needed the water at Apache Springs — a pleasant trickle when I hiked there last month — that it engaged in a two-day fight with the Chiricahua Apache of Cochise and Mangus Coloradus, both legendary warriors.
Using howitzers, the feds eventually repulsed them, although more Californians were lost in the engagement. But the victory opened the way for the establishment of Ft. Bowie nearby (now a national historic site), part of the federal government's initiative to make these lands safe for settlers. The discussion of Manifest Destiny — that the U.S. should expand coast to coast — is for another debate about who we were and who we have become and why.
Amid the ruins of the fort, on a small, dusty plateau, a stiff afternoon wind whipped an American flag to attention, snapping a song of angst for a war that would not end for almost three more years or — some would say — a war that still goes on.