Looking at the Civil War from Apache Pass

As Union soldiers approached the western slopes of the Chiricahua Mountains in July 1862, Captain Thomas L. Roberts was worried about what awaited them. He and his men were trying reach Apache Spring, the only water source within sixty miles, and in an area controlled by Cochise and his band of Chokonen Apaches.

The spring—and the Pass that wound up through the mountains toward it—had been the site of several battles between U.S. military personnel and Apaches in the previous year. The American Civil War had put thousands of soldiers and civilians on the move through southern New Mexico Territory and Apache Spring was on a well-traveled mail route between Tucson and Las Cruces. Apaches attacked wagon trains from the mountainsides, taking horses, mules, food and weapons from the Americans.

This July day was no different; as Roberts and his men rode up over a rise and into Apache Pass, bullets began to fly. Through that day and into the next, Roberts’ company managed to fend off the Apache attack, bring up their wagons, and take control of the spring.

The Battle of Apache Pass (July 15-16, 1862), its origins and its outcome, are not widely known – and most Civil War historians would not consider it a Civil War battle at all. But what if we looked at the war from here, from the high desert mountains of the Southwest? How might this change our view of the conflict, the extent of its actions, its goals, and its meanings? This paper will suggest that viewing the Civil War from Apache Pass allows us to reframe the war in new ways, and to see it as a conflict fought over slavery but also over control of the West, over its indigenous communities and its natural resources.