Descubra el Desierto - Onset of the Civil War in New Mexico December 16, 2008

In a little over two years, this nation will begin a four-year-long commemoration of the American Civil War. Few who participate in the activities of that event will pause to consider the importance of New Mexicos central role in the coming of the war. Few will be aware that the New Mexico Territory was at the center of the Republican Partys platform, and that intra-party differences regarding the management of the territory split the Democratic Party in 1860. Representative Thomas Corwin of Ohio spoke for the political leaders in Congress when he observed in January after Lincolns election that New Mexico was "the great battlefield on which the South and North meet in wicked, foolish, fratricidal strife." The status of slavery in the New Mexico Territory was not the only issue upon which North and South failed to agree, but it was the most significant, and debates on the problem dominated deliberations in Congress and in the eleven state secession conventions in the months leading up to the war. Historian Dwight T. Pitcaithley will discuss how the fateful election of 1860 turned not upon the abolition of slavery in the states, but on the future of the slavery in the New Mexico Territory.

Dwight T. Pitcaithley is a Professor of History at New Mexico State University. He retired from the National Park Service in 2005 as Chief Historian, a position he held from 1995 until 2005. His research interests include Public History, Historic Interpretation, Civil War & the Western United States.

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