Essays

The Second Battle of Glorieta
by Cheryle Mitchell

March 29,1862, was a cold day in hell for the Confederate soldiers who had survived the Battle of Glorieta the day before. The men - all Texans who had been recruited to capture the Southwest for the Confederate cause - woke that morning to face the sad task of burying their dead comrades in the frosty ground of northern New Mexico.

Although the Battle of Glorieta was a Confederate victory, it marked the end of the Confederate campaign in the Southwest. During the battle, several hundred Union troops circled through the mountains surrounding the battlefield and burned the supply wagons the Confederates had left behind. With no supplies, the Confederates were soon forced to head home to Texas 1. Left behind were 31 Confederate dead, remembered for their ultimate sacrifice but buried in a place soon forgotten.

June 23,1987, was a typical summer day in northern New Mexico. At Glorieta, 27 miles from Santa Fe, a miles from Santa Fe a backhoe operator began digging a foundation for the log house Kip and Beth Siler were building on a piece of property not far from where the Civil War battle had been fought.

"The land has been in my family since the 1920s,' Kip Siler explained. "We had a summer cabin on it, and my brother and I and our cousins used to go there when we were kids. We'd go out there for a couple of weeks every summer."

Siler's grandfather, Roland Siler for whom Siler Road in Santa Fe is named, purchased the land in 1926. The Siler patriarch lived on the property after his retirement in the mid-1960s, but he returned to Santa Fe when his advancing age made it difficult for him to live alone so far from town.

Kip Siler took over approximately four of the Siler family's 50-plus acres, moving onto it in 1976. "I had an old trailer out there for about eight years;' he said. "Then I got married and we decided to build our own house."

Siler decided to build his cabin in a location that would take advantage of the support footings for a sunken greenhouse he had built next to the trailer five years earlier. The size of the house, which the Silers were designing themselves, changed several times, growing larger with each discussion.

Size and location put the home closer to Glorieta Creek than the Silers wanted, and the deep footings required extra digging. But the advantages of the old greenhouse's southern exposure and solar warmth, as well as the existing footings, outweighed any disadvantage.

That afternoon, as the backhoe shovel neared the desired depth for the footings, Siler reviewed the work. "I said, 'Let's take about another half inch out.'" And that's when the shovel hit bone.

"At first I thought that some animal had been buried there;' Siler said. "Then I started probing around and pulled out a human jawbone. I said, 'Uh, I don't think this is an animal.' I had my knife out and was probing around and suddenly could see a pair of eyeball sockets staring right back up. I said, 'Oh, no, this is human and there's more than one of them' "

Serendipity: The factors that determined where to dig and how deep placed the backhoe near the center of the long-lost mass Confederate grave. The shovel had scraped the top of some of the remains. "It was lucky," Siler said, "because if we had really been digging then, it would have torn them up."

Siler moved the backhoe to another spot. With its first scrape, the backhoe turned up more human remains. Siler spent the next few hours on the phone, eventually contacting the Museum of New Mexico. "I went out right away," Museum archaeologist Yvonne Oakes said. "We really didn't know that it was a Confederate burial. I don't think I even had that in mind until I saw more than one body."

The site turned out to be the grave of the 31 Confederate soldiers - the site historians had sought for nearly a century. There are several theories why the site had not been found sooner. According to one, a soldier's journal mistakenly placed the grave west of Pigeon's Ranch, which sent historians and Civil War buffs in the wrong direction. Another theory suggests that metal detectors, often used to find items carried or worn by soldiers, turned up nothing because the men were deeper than expected.

To dig or not to dig was never a question. "I felt kind of bad about taking (the remains) out," Siler said. "But they couldn't have stayed there, not with what I wanted to do ... with my property." Twenty-four hours after Museum archaeologists identified the site, Siler signed over the remains to the Museum with the understanding that he retained rights to any artifacts found.

A team of Museum archaeologists and other workers, equipped with dental picks and tiny trowels, spent the next four weeks removing buttons, buckles, boots, combs, pipes, and patches of clothing and blankets - as well as the bones the archaeologists called remains but thought of as men.

"It's hard to explain," said Oakes, "but seeing a single burial is not uncommon for an archaeologist. Seeing a mass grave is totally different. It almost shocks. Seeing that many men all laid side by side with their arms crossed left us in awe ... Standing there looking at them, it didn't feel as if it were 125 years ago. We knew they had names. We knew where they came from. We knew there were records on them. That made it a very personal thing."

When archaeologists excavate prehistoric sites, Oakes said, they know little about the individuals buried there. But historic sites are different, she added. "Sometimes I'll know so much about the people that it's like saying to them, 'I'm in your house. I know where you slept. I know games you played at night.' I feel that way now ... like I know (these Confederate soldiers), and I felt it almost immediately when we uncovered them."

In the beginning, the Museum's attention was focused on the scientific information that might be gathered and the history that might be corrected and clarified by the discovery. But Oakes knew the importance of the find would add another, possibly uncomfortable, element: "You're aware ... the world will be watching you. "

As soon as the site was identified as the Confederate mass grave, news reporters began calling Museum of New Mexico director Thomas A. Livesay, and on June 29, 1987, the Associated Press sent news of the find out to all its member papers. The world was watching, particularly the eyes of Texas.

The burgeoning interest in the find added another dimension: "I immediately warned the Office of Archaeological Studies (then called the Research Section) that the biggest question coming up was going to be the disposition of the remains," Livesay said. "That was when there was going to be a really big problem."

Had Livesay - once a soldier, now a civilian; once a Texan, now a New Mexican - known how big the problem would become and how emotional the issue and how long the resolution, he would have preferred the Confederates had never been found. What happened next has been called the Second Battle of Glorieta. in the ensuing struggle, the remains were referred to as "bones of contention," and archaeologists trying to identify the dead became "sleuths." The phrases were clever but not funny to anyone who took a direct hit. Some of those who disagreed over where to reinter the unidentified Confederate remains are as serious, and some of them as unbending, about the conflict as they were when the first verbal salvo was fired.

"It was the most logical thing in the world, I thought, to follow the policy of the Museum, which was to identify the cultural group most closely attached to the remains which meant the state of Texas - and contact them;' said Livesay, "so I picked up the phone and called the Texas Historical Commission."

The Museum's board of regents had adopted guidelines governing the collection and display of sensitive materials on March 20, 1986. The rules read: "Whenever possible, curators will make a serious effort to obtain the approval of the cultural group involved before acquiring or placing sensitive materials in the collections. If there are serious objections to sensitive materials in the collections, the Museum of New Mexico will consider legal return or exchange of such items upon written request from groups having a legitimate historical claim upon the objects' '

Livesay thought he had followed the guidelines to the letter. "The next thing I knew, the governor of Texas, Bill Clements, was calling, wanting to know what we could do about the situation and how they could get them back. I told him that things were extremely premature, that we didn't even know how many remains we had yet, but there certainly was a possibility." Livesay suggested the governor put his request in a letter to the board of regents.

"The next thing I read was the newspapers reporting, 'Livesay wants to give the remains back,' all because I made the contact. In fact, as soon as I made any overtures to the state of Texas, some people here became extraordinarily proprietary about what had been found. There were calls to the newspapers and letters to the governor saying, 'Send Livesay back to Texas; keep the remains.'"

Meanwhile, Texans were grouping to persuade the regents to return the remains for interment at a state cemetery in Austin where other Confederates, state dignitaries, and famous Texans were buried. Leading the charge was the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group, like the Daughters of the American Revolution, whose members must prove their ancestry. The Sons have 15,000 members in twenty-six cities, called "camps," including 1,500 in its Texas division. Texas members wanted the Texas Historical Commission to help them get the remains back.

"That's why the governor's office became involved," said Curtis Tunnell, director of the commission. "The governor responded to the Sons, who felt very strongly and emotionally that these remains should be returned."

"There was an article that came out somewhere in New Mexico that said, 'Texas doesn't want their dead," "recalled Peter Orlebeke, immediate past president of the Sons' Texas Division. The article, in the July 3, 1987, issue of THE ALBUQUERQUE TRIBUNE, said Texas did not have the money to transport and reinter the Confederates in Texas. "That isn't true," Orlebeke said. "We very much want our dead. We really do think that they belong in Texas....They were killed on foreign soil. We wanted, and we felt like they wanted, to be buried on Texas soil." And, he added, his organization always was prepared to bear the expense.

The regents also were getting an eyeful in the newspapers from those who advocated keeping the remains. Members of the Glorieta Battlefield Preservation Society - including Mike Pitel, with the New Mexico Economic Development and Tourism office, and Don E. Alberts, the author of REBELS ON THE RIO GRANDE - spoke out for keeping the Confederate remains for reburial on the battlefield, if possible, or at the National Cemetery in Santa Fe, if not.

The preservation group had pushed for ten years for the battlefield to become a federally protected site. The discovery of the Confederate remains fueled their desire. Now, members of the society thought, the soldiers who had died there could become part of the monument.

The discovery itself played no part in preservation efforts, but, in Alberts's mind, reburying the Confederates on the Civil War battlefield would affect the monument's historical interpretation and visitor interest. "Finding the remains," said Alberts, "was coincidence, but one that would enhance the battlefield...as well as provide as good a memorial for those men as any."

"My feeling has always been a very personal one," Pitel said. "It stems from my having visited Gettysburg, where remains of both Union and Confederate troops are buried." When visiting Gettysburg, Pitel was moved by the graves of those who died in that momentous battle. "As Don has said, having the remains buried there would give meaning to the battlefield and essentially humanize what otherwise would be a piece of historic real estate."

As Alberts explained: "A grave site on the Glorieta Battlefield would lend a human dimension... in the same manner that the burial site of the cavalry remains at Little Big Horn tends to be the center of attraction and lends a poignancy to that site that otherwise wouldn't exist."

At the beginning, New Mexico historian Marc Simmons lined up with fellow members of the Glorieta Battlefield Preservation Society. Later he changed his mind. When Simmons heard about the request from Texas, he first thought, "Well, that's fine, but they never showed any interest in the past. There were some remains in Santa Fe that they never requested." The prospect of a federally protected battlefield persuaded him that the remains should be reburied at Glorieta. After all, the surviving Confederates had chosen to bury their dead near the battlefield.

"Subsequently, there were two requests from the governor and memorials that the (Texas) Legislature passed," Simmons said. "They ... wanted the remains back. Then some hot words were said in the press." Simmons began to rethink his position.

In this climate of controversy, archaeologists continued to work at the site, Kip Siler tried to build those parts of his foundation that wouldn't interfere with the excavation, and the Museum of New Mexico Board of Regents prepared to meet to talk about the disposition of the Confederate remains.

On July 23, 1987, one month after Yvonne Oakes took trowel in hand to start the four-week excavation, the regents met. They had a letter from Governor Clements of Texas read into the record; they heard a report indicating that Governor Garrey Carruthers of New Mexico was in favor of returning the remains to Texas; they listened to Yvonne Oakes describe the grave site and what was found and what would be done to identify the soldiers; and they heard Don Alberts tell them the unidentified dead should be reburied at the battlefield. He asked the regents to postpone action in case the Confederates eventually could be reinterred on the battlefield his organization was trying to secure.

Such a monument to the dead soldiers was an appealing prospect. The board voted to wait.

Livesay was disappointed: "The board, in spite of a letter from the governor of Texas, in spite of verbal approval from Governor Carruthers to send them back, voted to table the issue. I thought we had a clear mandate from the governor of our state and from our own policies. It was clear these remains should be repatriated to their land of origin. Which was not New Mexico."

The regents' vote postponed formal discussion for a year and a half, but, in the intervening months, words were exchanged elsewhere, and many of them were reported in newspapers: The Sons of Confederate Veterans said bringing "our boys home" was the most important effort in the history of the organization since its formation in 1892. Don Alberts referred to "what appears to be the neo Klansmen leadership of the Texas organization" because the Sons wanted the Confederate soldiers buried under a Confederate flag at the Austin cemetery instead of the U.S. flag in New Mexico. Legislation designating the Glorieta Battlefield a historic site was introduced in Congress; it died in committee but was reintroduced later.

Meanwhile, Museum archaeologists were quietly working in laboratories, categorizing the 101 artifacts recovered from the burial site, and forensic studies were under way at the University of New Mexico to determine age, height, physical characteristics, previous injuries, and location of fatal wounds. There was still hope that further study might attach names to some of the remains.

Fifteen days before the regents met to discuss the Confederate remains, Clements wrote to Carruthers to reiterate his interest in the return of the remains.

Seven people spoke at the September 23, 1988, meeting of the board of regents, all in favor of reburying the unidentified Confederates where they fought and died. After turning down, on a three-two vote, a motion to return the remains to Texas, the regents voted unanimously to bury them at the National Cemetery in Santa Fe unless legitimate descendants wished otherwise, or a National Historic Battlefield at Glorieta was created.

"I was surprised at the emotion involved," said Adrian Bustamante, who was president of the board at the time. He didn't have strong convictions about where the remains should be buried, he said, but he voted against returning the Confederates to Texas because he believed a Glorieta grave site would provide more honor for the soldiers.

After two and a half years, emotions cooled and factions closed ranks, although differences persisted.

"When the Museum voted not to return the bodies to Texas," said Orlebeke, "we stopped. We're trying to be as cooperative as possible."

"There were good arguments both ways," said Alberts. "There was nothing evil about the opposite viewpoints."

"There was some intemperate rhetoric on both sides;' said Simmons. "It got heated and it's too bad. The bones themselves are innocent of all this."

In fact, it was what he saw as "unseemly scrapping over the bones" that eventually caused Simmons to change his mind and recognize Texas's "valid moral claim to seek their return." The bones had been men, their names known from muster rolls in Texas, from casualty records taken at the scene of the battle, and from death notices printed in the SAN ANTONIO WEEKLY HERALD in the spring of 1862.

Such feelings were heightened in January 1990, when the bones of three of the soldiers were identified: Private S. L. Cotton, twenty, 4th Texas Regiment, Company E, identified by the inscription on a ring he had worn; Private Ebineezer Hanna, seventeen, 4th Texas Regiment, Company C, identified by his age at the time of his death, the groin wound that killed him, and the journal and writing implements he carried as the company's scribe; Major John S. Shropshire, twenty eight, 5th Texas Regiment, Field Staff, identified by his height, his spurs and the fact he was buried separately from his troops.

By board policy, the wishes of relatives now had to be considered. No one related to Private Cotton has been located, but the families of Private Hanna and Major Shropshire stepped forward. Abe Hanna's relatives decided he should be reburied with his comrades; the Santa Fe National Cemetery was as appropriate a place as any, they said. On May 12, 1990, the International Society of Shropshires announced it would rebury John Shropshire's remains in a family cemetery near Valley Forge, Kentucky, his birthplace. Last August, Shropshire was reinterred at an elaborate ceremony that included a 21 -gun salute.

The regents' vote in September 1988 put off resolving the issue long enough for the 101st Congress to change Pecos National Monument to Pecos Historical Park and to pass the Glorieta National Battlefield Establishment Act, for the Museum to find descendants of two of the soldiers, and for archaeologists to study further the remains of men who fought in a war that tore a country apart.

Glorieta is the only Civil War battlefield excavated in New Mexico. In fact, only a few others exist in the state. The grave site is an important find, not only for its historical importance, but for the information that can be gleaned from the excavation. For example, skeletal material can indicate the height and health of the soldiers and how they compared with other populations around the country at that time. "We learned a lot about the health of these people;' Oakes said. "For example ... they might have been skinny, but they weren't starving. We know they had a lot of tooth decay, and that quite a few of them had childhood injuries."

Artifacts found in the grave site were also interesting, Oakes said. "Those kinds of things help us determine what the Civil War soldier was wearing at the time and what he carried with him in his pockets. . . You can read that soldiers wore their finest off to war, but then you also read where they confiscated clothing along the way from dead Union soldiers. Now we actually have a good idea of what they chose to wear in battle because all of the skeletons still had boots on the feet, some of the shirt buttons were still there, some shirt fragments could be found, and pieces of pants that were not government issue."

On January 17, 1991, the board of regents again looked at the issue of the remains, an issue it had hoped to resolve by the end of 1990. Again it decided to wait, this time for the National Park Service to review the possibility of reinterring the Confederate remains in Pecos National Historical Park, which someday will include Glorieta Battlefield.

"We're right in the throes of our planning process," said Linda Stoll, superintendent of Pecos National Historical Park. "It would be difficult to make a decision right now about where the remains should be placed because we don't own any of the battlefield land."

Yet. Land pertinent to the historical park was designated in the Glorieta Battlefield Unit legislation passed by Congress last November. The unit includes 336.72 acres covering Canoncito and Johnson's Ranch and 345.04 acres surrounding Pigeon's Ranch. The U.S. Forest Service owns some of the acreage near Pigeon's Ranch and is expected to donate it to the Park Service in early 1992. The bulk of the acreage in the designated unit, however, is owned by private landowners, including Kip Siler, who must be persuaded to sell. Funds to purchase land in the historical park were in President George Bush's budget.

In addition to the land the Park Service must negotiate to buy, other property may be donated. The Richard King Mellon Foundation, based in Pittsburgh, has purchased Greer Garson Fogelson's Forked Lightning Ranch with the expressed purpose of donating it to the U.S. Department of the Interior for the historical park. Also, the Arlington, Virginia-based Conservation Fund, an environmental organization that helped negotiate the purchase of the Forked Lightning Ranch, owns rights to the 10.2-acre parcel with Pigeon's Ranch, which it plans to convey to the park sometime in the future.

"What we're trying to do is protect the battlefield," said William Debuys, a local representative of the Conservation Fund. The fund, which was formed five years ago, is interested in preserving Civil War battlefields because many are threatened by development, but the organization has taken no stand on what should be done with the remains of the Glorieta dead. "I view those remains as ... another arena altogether, as Anasazi remains would be. I mean, those are human beings, or the remains thereof, and I think it's important to take care of them as we would any ancestors. It's also important to protect the battlefield. I'm not too sure those two things intersect very much."

Stoll was not ready to agree or disagree. "Ultimately, the federal government will want to acquire all 682 acres of the designated Glorieta Unit," she said, "but it's going to be a time-consuming process, ten to fifteen years. We will accept the other parcels of land that are to be donated to us when we have the budget to run them and the human resources to protect them. It would be silly to accept them if we couldn't protect them."

But, Stoll said, she's not certain that the remains will be buried on the Historical Park after land is acquired. The Park Service first must answer the question: Is any of the land appropriate for reinterring the remains of 31 Confederate soldiers?

"If we decide to address the issue of the remains," said Stoll, "then we're going to have to listen to the various contingents who spoke to the Museum. All of those special interest groups and their clashes and concerns will have to be entertained ... to decide what would be best."

Had the Park Service chosen to open discussions, it would have heard some of the same arguments but in more measured tones. It also would have heard a few changes of heart.

Regent Bustamante said the battlefield was still his first choice, but he no longer has a second one. "Here or Texas doesn't matter to me anymore."

The Texas Historical Commission, which once supported the return of the remains, now considered the battlefield an appropriate spot for the men.

Alberts was willing to wait as long as the Park Service takes to decide whether it will play a role in the reinterrment of the remains. "If they decide, 'Hey, we don't want it.' that pretty well defines it. Our basic goal was to preserve the Glorieta Battlefield. The issue of the remains was secondary ... Still I have serious objections to returning the remains to Texas because many of their companions already are buried in the national cemetery here."2

Orlebeke still disagreed. "I think, if I were killed in a battle, I wouldn't want to be buried on site. I certainly think they'd rather be interred in a cemetery on their home ground. If a bunch of our soldiers were killed in Iraq and buried in Iraq and left there ... That's essentially the same thing."

Livesay was torn. "Understand straight out that I have a personal opinion, and I have a personal bias, and those things I bring to my job as Museum director. But the Museum of New Mexico and the board of regents, as the governing authority, are the Museum. That makes my professional opinion the same as their opinion and vice-versa. It also makes the situation somewhat more difficult. To see (the remains) in a cardboard box up on a shelf for years ... is morally objectionable to me. To wait even longer goes against not only my grain but, I think, the spirit of the Museum's policy regarding sensitive materials.

"The Museum is considering such situations a lot these days. If sensitive materials are going to be in harm's way, which the Confederate remains were, remove them, but reinter them in an appropriate, dignified manner. I don't see that happening. I don't think I'll see that happen while I'm director. I think it will take that long to resolve this issue."

END NOTES

1. Charles Bennett's story, "The Civil War in New Mexico," beginning on page 8, details the Confederate campaign in New Mexico.
2. According to burial records, six Confederates are buried at the Santa Fe National Cemetery; a number of Union dead from the battles at Valverde and Glorieta are also buried there.