Fourth of July on the Rio Grande: The California Column’s Triumphant Arrival

During the Civil War, the Fourth of July marked some of the Union’s most important successes. In 1863, the Army of the Potomac cautiously manned its lines after its victory at Gettysburg, though neither exhausted army in Pennsylvania knew if more fighting loomed on the horizon. Some thousand miles away, Confederate Lieutenant General John Pemberton surrendered his army, and the city of Vicksburg, to Ulysses S. Grant.

One year earlier, a much smaller Union force marked the nation’s birthday with its own triumph of sorts. Known as the California Column, these troops had been mustered as a response to Confederate Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley’s invasion of Arizona and New Mexico. Over the course of several months, the Californians slogged hundreds of miles across the Southwestern desert, skirmishing with Confederate cavalry and Apaches. Operating at the extreme end of what 19th century logistics could manage, they had to carefully stockpile and husband supplies before each new step forward.

By late June of 1862, rumors swirled that Sibley’s force was retreating down the Rio Grande toward Texas. The California Column’s commander, Brigadier General James Henry Carleton, pushed a detachment of cavalry forward to intercept the Confederates. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Edward E. Eyre, 140 troopers of the 1st California Cavalry rode as much as 46 miles each day. They traveled in the morning and evening, and occasionally overnight, to avoid the worst of the heat as they hopscotched between wells and watering holes.

Despite their best efforts, they arrived too late to cut off Sibley’s retreat. But finally, on July 4, 1862, having traveled all the way from the Pacific Coast, the vanguard of the California Column rode triumphantly into Fort Thorn, a pre-war Army post that had been occupied by Confederates since early on in their invasion of the region.

Eyre wrote, “Immediately on making camp the national colors were raised amid the loud and continued cheers of the assembled command. This was the first time the Stars and Stripes floated on the Rio Grande below Fort Craig since the occupation of the country by the Confederate troops, and it being the anniversary of our National Independence, was not calculated to dampen the ardor of the command.”^[1]

It was hardly the most important event of the Civil War. Most readers may not have even heard of the California Column. But for those troopers, it was the culmination of a truly epic journey, and a fitting way to mark the nation’s birthday.

^[1] United States. War Records Office, et al.. The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union And Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume IX, Chapter XXI. 1880, 121-127.