Canby and Sibley at Fort Craig

Canby and Sibley at Fort Craig. . Colonel Edward Richard Sprigg Canby and Colonel Henry Hopkins Sibley were seasoned soldiers and leaders with many Indian campaigns under their belts by the time they confronted one another in the 1862 Civil War Battle of Valverde, a few miles from Fort Craig., Canby, son of a Kentucky country doctor and graduate of the American Military Academy, had served in military campaigns against the Seminoles, Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Navajos prior to coming to Fort Craig. His was an illustrious career. He had been named colonel of the Nineteenth Infantry at Fort Defiance in New Mexico Territory soon after the Civil War began. In a series of battles at Valverde, Apache Canyon, and Glorieta, Canby's troops effectively prevented a Confederate expansion from Texas into the greater Southwest. After the Civil War, he aided reconstruction efforts in the South. He supervised the process that gave blacks the right to vote in Texas, and he was widely known for the judiciousness of his political appointments. Canby was killed by Modoc Indians in California during an attempt to parley with them, making him the only army general killed in the Trans-Mississippi Indian Wars., Sibley, graduate of West Point and veteran soldier from Nacogdoches, Louisiana, had served in the Mexican-American War and on the frontier in New Mexico against the Navajos. He resigned from serving the North at Fort Union in New Mexico in 1861 to join the Confederacy. His first objective was to take the Colorado gold fields, which he hoped would provide support for the Southern cause. His second objective was to establish a supply port on the Pacific Coast that the Union could not blockade. However, his expeditions were doomed by miscalculations and the poor state of his own health. He failed to gain the support he expected from New Mexico Hispanics, who had become tired of ill treatment at the hands of the Texans, and he was unable to acquire anticipated supplies along the western route. During the Battle of Valverde, Sibley suffered miserably from kidney-stone pain, and he was known to frequently become incapacitated from the alcohol he drank to dull this pain. Sibley never matched the achievements of his fellow West Point graduates during the Civil War, or afterward. One report has him dying in 1883 in Egypt, where he served as an officer in their army. Another claims that he died in Louisiana, in poor health and spirits., Captions , Colonel Canby (left) , Museum of New Mexico (negative #54169) , Colonel Sibley (right) , Museum of New Mexico (negative #50541)