Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861–1867

by Andrew E. Masich

Still the least-understood theater of the Civil War, the Southwest Borderlands saw not only Union and Confederate forces clashing but Indians, Hispanos, and Anglos struggling for survival, power, and dominance on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. While other scholars have examined individual battles, Andrew E. Masich is the first to analyze these conflicts as interconnected civil wars. Based on previously overlooked Indian Depredation Claim records and a wealth of other sources, this book is both a close-up history of the Civil War in the region and an examination of the war-making traditions of its diverse peoples.

Along the border, Masich argues, the Civil War played out as a collision between three warrior cultures. Indians, Hispanos, and Anglos brought their own weapons and tactics to the struggle, but they also shared many traditions. Before the war, the three groups engaged one another in cycles of raid and reprisal involving the taking of livestock and human captives, reflecting a peculiar mixture of conflict and interdependence.

When U.S. regular troops were withdrawn in 1861 to fight in the East, the resulting power vacuum led to unprecedented violence in the West. Indians fought Indians, Hispanos battled Hispanos, and Anglos vied for control of the Southwest, while each group sought allies in conflicts related only indirectly to the secession crisis. When Union and Confederate forces invaded the Southwest, Anglo soldiers, Hispanos, and sedentary Indian tribes forged alliances that allowed them to collectively wage a relentless war on Apaches, Comanches, and Navajos. Mexico’s civil war and European intervention served only to enlarge the conflict in the borderlands. When the fighting subsided, a new power hierarchy had emerged and relations between the region’s inhabitants, and their nations, forever changed.

Masich’s perspective on borderlands history offers a single, cohesive framework for understanding this power shift while demonstrating the importance of transnational and multicultural views of the American Civil War and the Southwest Borderlands.

Genres: American Civil War, Civil War

468 pages, Paperback

Published January 29, 2018

About the author

Andrew E. Masich is President and CEO of the Smithsonian-affiliated Senator John Heinz History Center, chair of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and teaches history at Carnegie Mellon University.

Reviews

[Chris]

More than one civil war here. Martial masculinity on display by all cultures. Native Americans went on raids to steal and also for vengeance. However, it took Anglo’s to take it to extermination.

Logistics was the key to the Union Army’s success. General Carleton in Arizona and New Mexico seems to have thought of everything. He was a master organizer. The Confederates might have had elan but they were poor logisticians. Plus California provided all volunteer forces that were some of the most self reliant men in the country. Time and time again Californians turned back CSA or Indians.

Also the French invasion of Mexico is covered as well. Some fascinating appendices covering claims by settlers against Indians too.

[MrsAReader]

I learned a great deal from this book, and it revealed many things I didn't know I didn't know. Excited to continue learning about this time period, the Southwest, and borderlands studies more generally.

[Pete Smith]

This books covers some potentially interesting concepts, but I didn’t feel it came together into a readable narrative. Some concepts (masculinity, war-making traditions, superior Union logistics) were covered and repeatedly mentioned, but didn’t fully connect with the more nuts-and-bolts content around maneuvers and battles.

Also I got personally caught up in the very confusing interplay of different tribes and sub-groups within those tribes. No doubt it is very challenging to try explain how they all were actors in a sort of mini regional Civil War, but it was a slog trying to follow who was raiding who and why.

[Brian]

This book offered some interesting insights. The parts I enjoyed best were the framing of the conflict on different levels and from different viewpoints. There were a number of discussions of concepts such as masculinity, but I don't know that the author really connected those to the story - they were named and linked, but not explained. There also was a tendency to repeat some concepts multiple times throughout the book.