Civil War Weaponry: Mountain Howitzers

 

The youngest reenactor at Glorieta. His father told me that this was his first encampment. Last weekend, the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Glorieta Pass was observed. I drove up to Pecos National Historic Site on Saturday morning to witness the observation.  The weekend was pretty low key. A group of Union reenactors attended. They put up tents and spend the night. No Confederate reenactors were there. I was walking up from the parking lot when I heard gun fire. The reenactors gave some black powder displays, but there was no reenactment of the battle. The one and only artillery piece, a mountain howitzer, was going to be fired at noon, but I didn't stay around long enough to hear it.  Fort Union's Mountain Howitzer The New Mexico Artillery Company has several cannons they bring to reenactments. However, the Park Service demands that all cannons brought on to their property are accurate reproductions. Most of the ones used by the Artillery Company have smaller bores than authentic Civil War cannons. Smaller bores are cheaper to fire. The one present this past weekend was a mountain howitzer which was brought down from Fort Union for the day. This replica, like the actual gun, was made of bronze and had a smooth bore. It could fire an explosive shell, a cannon ball, or canister 1,005 yards.​ A mule carrying cannon wheels. The mountain howitzer was first created in 1837. The United States Army used it  during the Mexican–American War (1847–1848), the American Indian Wars, and during the American Civil War, (1861–1865). It was used primarily in the more rugged parts of the West. It was designed to be lightweight and very portable, even in difficult, mountainous terrain. The carriage design allowed it to be broken down into three loads, that could then be loaded onto a pack animal for transport where other guns could not go. When broken down, the tube could be carried by one horse or mule, the carriage and wheels by another, and ammunition on a third. This made it well suited for Indian fighting and mountain warfare. ​.Although mountain howitzers provided artillery support for mobile military forces ion the move through rugged country, their shorter range made them unsuitable for dueling with other heavier field artillery weapons. They were replaced by other guns by the 1870s. Author Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical fiction for middle grade readers and adults. Where Duty Calls, the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War, will be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, in June 2022 and is available for preorder from Amazon or Bookshop. ​For class sets or other bulk orders, contact Artemesia Publishing. A teacher's guide will be available this summer from the publisher.

Where are the People from Where Duty Calls Buried?

 

 

Some of the people in my middle grade novel Where Duty Calls are fictitious, and therefore have no grave markers. They were never born, and they will never die as long as readers keep them alive.

But other characters were real people, with lives that began long before I wrote about them - lives that were filled with events that I didn't include in my novels. ​

William Kemp was a real man, and Confederate records indicate he really died of pneumonia on Friday, February 7, 1862 somewhere on the Jornada del Muerto south of Fort Craig. He was buried by the side of the trail, but his resting place was unmarked and is now unknown. Information about young men who died without heirs is often difficult to track down.  In my novel, illustrator Ian Barstow has drawn Kemp's grave to look like this.

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Pedro Baca, Raul Atencio’s rich merchant uncle was a real man who lived in Socorro. He was indeed rich, and he was a merchant. Everything else in Where Duty Calls about him is fictitious. He was married, but not to the woman he is married to in my story. By all accounts, he was an upstanding citizen, and is buried in the local church, the same one that I have Raul and his family attend Christmas Eve mass in my novel.  Raul, his father, mother and siblings are all fictitious characters.

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Frederick Wade and John Norvell, who both served with the fictional Jemmy Martin, survived the war and went on to live long and full lives. Their memories, published in newspaper accounts, helped give life to my novel. Both men were characters with great senses of humor, which I tried to impart in the characters I created.

John Norvell's tombstone

​Captain James "Paddy" Graydon died three years after trying to use mules to blow up the Confederate mules and horses (a story that some historians question. This escapade might have been made up by Mark Twain!).

​After the war, Graydon was involved in controlling the Mescalero Apaches in southern New Mexico. After Surgeon John Whitlock accused him of needlessly killing a number of braves, the two ended up dueling at Fort Stanton. Graydon was killed, and Whitlock was then killed by Graydon's men.  He was buried at Fort Stanton, but twenty-four years later his remains were reinterred at the Federal Cemetery in Santa Fe. 

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Like most Federal Veteran's Cemeteries, the one in Santa Fe contains row upon row of white headstones, giving it a look as uniform as a rank of soldiers. But there are a few exceptions. The most unique marker does not come from the Civil War period, but it deserves notice. It belongs to a Private named Dennis O’Leary, who died at Fort Wingate in 1901. According to local legend, O'Leary himself carved the statue, then committed suicide on the date he had inscribed. However, military records say he died of tuberculosis, a common illness of the period. O'Leary is, of course, not in Where Duty Calls, but his story seems like it has many possibilities. 

Where Duty Calls is a novel about the Civil War in New Mexico. Written for middle grade readers, it is the first in a trilogy entitled Rebels Along the Rio Grande, and will be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, in June 2022. The author, Jennifer Bohnhoff, taught New Mexico history to 7th graders at two different middle schools in central New Mexico. She is a native New Mexican who is fascinated by the state's rich and diverse history.
If you'd like more information about her or her books, you can visit her website or sign up for her email list. 

Mules in the Civil War

 

 

Mule carrying parts of a cannon

Mules did much of the heavy hauling for both the Confederate and Union Armies during the American Civil War.

They pulled the supply wagons, the limbers and caissons for cannons. They pulled the ambulances. The fearlessness and tenacity that many mules demonstrate made them ideal for the difficult conditions of war. 

More than one soldier found them better and more reliable mounts than horses. The bond between a man and his mule could become very strong, indeed.

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Both lead characters in Where Duty Calls have connections to mules. To protect his family's mules after they are sold to the Confederate Army, Jemmy joins on as a packer. Raul Atencio uses mules to haul supplies to Fort Craig. On the night before the battle at Valverde Ford, he sells two of his mules to, a Union spy captain named Paddy Graydon,  who loads them with ammunition and attempts to goad them into the Confederate lines in an attempt to destroy the Confederate's supply chain. The explosion caused the mules, who were already thirsty, to stampede down to the Rio Grande, where Union soldiers rounded them up. 

Portrait by Ian Bristow in Where Duty Calls. Background picture by John D. Billings in Hardtack and Coffee

​In Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, Civil War veteran John D. Billings shares the story of another mule stampede. During the night of Oct. 28, 1863, Union General John White Geary and Confederate General James Longstreet were fighting at Wauhatchie, Tennessee. The din of battle unnerved about two hundred mules, who stampeded into a body of Rebels commanded by Wade Hampton. The rebels thought they were being attacked by cavalry and fell back.

To commemorate this incident, one Union soldier penned a poem based on Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade.

Charge of the mule brigade

Half a mile, half a mile,
Half a mile onward,
Right through the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.
“Forward the Mule Brigade!”
“Charge for the Rebs!” they neighed.
Straight for the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.

“Forward the Mule Brigade!”
Was there a mule dismayed?
Not when the long ears felt
All their ropes sundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to make Rebs fly.
On! to the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.

Mules to the right of them,
Mules to the left of them,
Mules behind them
Pawed, neighed, and thundered.
Breaking their own confines,
Breaking through Longstreet's lines
Into the Georgia troops,
Stormed the two hundred.

Wild all their eyes did glare,
Whisked all their tails in air
Scattering the chivalry there,
While all the world wondered.
Not a mule back bestraddled,
Yet how they all skedaddled--
Fled every Georgian,
Unsabred, unsaddled,
Scattered and sundered!
How they were routed there
By the two hundred!

Mules to the right of them,
Mules to the left of them,
Mules behind them
Pawed, neighed, and thundered;
Followed by hoof and head
Full many a hero fled,
Fain in the last ditch dead,
Back from an ass's jaw
All that was left of them,--
Left by the two hundred.

When can their glory fade?
Oh, the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Mule Brigade,
Long-eared two hundred!

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Where Duty Calls, the first in a trilogy of middle grade novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War, is scheduled to be released by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing in June 2022 and is now available for preorder on Amazon and Bookshop. 

Trapped and Having Fun: A middle grade book review

 

 

I'm not a video game girl; never have been, never will. But kids who are, especially those who are fans of  Minecraft should love Scott Charles’ new series, Video Game Elementary.

In Trapped in Class, Book 1 of the Video Game Elementary series,. Connor is a fourth grader at Video Game Elementary, an online elementary school built inside a fully immersive virtual reality video game. It's kind of a mash-up between Hogwarts and Tron, where kids become avatars while their physical bodies stay elsewhere. I'm not clear on how that happens, but I bet every middle grade reader out there will grasp it better than I do. 

On the day in which the story is set, Connor’s watching the clock, waiting for school to end so he can go to his first practice with the Swords Team. Suddenly there’s a strange hiss, bleep, crack, and the world fades into white. The next thing Connor knows, it’s morning again. Like some weird, middle school version of Groundhog’s Day, the day has restarted. Stuck in a time loop, Connor must fight Fanged Slime, Vampire Mold, and other monsters to keep the school’s power crystals from being destroyed. Luckily, he has a school custodian, a friend named Glitch, a girl who’s very good at hacking the system, and a cleaning ghost with an attitude to help him.

This book is easy to read and action packed. It should be a great hit with kids who’d rather hold a game controller than a book

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In an endless loop of her own, Jennifer Bohnhoff taught regular, body-in-class middle school for years. She is now staying home and writing for middle grade and adult readers. Her next book, Where Duty Calls, is the first in a trilogy for middle grade readers about the Civil War in New Mexico, and will be published in June 2022.

The Punitive Expedition Against Pancho Villa

 

 

The clock at the Columbus train station, stopped at the time of the attack by a bullet. It is now in the museum at Pancho Villa State Park.

Today marks the 106th anniversary of Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico. On March 9, 1916, at approximately 4:00 am, a group of just under 500 Mexican revolutionaries attacked the sleeping town while their leader, General Francisco “Pancho” Villa, watched from a nearby hill. The attack was the first and only ground invasion of the continental United States since the War of 1812. Ten American civilians and eight U.S. soldiers from the adjacent Camp Furlong lost their lives.

The attack came after a long period of Mexican political unrest and may have been caused by Villa's frustration that President Woodrow Wilson and the American government had chosen to recognize a political rival, Venustiano Carranza, and help him win the election and become President of Mexico. Villa, who had been supported by the U.S. in the past, was also desperate supplies for his beleaguered army and may have thought that Columbus and the nearby Army camp would be a good place to get what he needed.

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Much of Columbus burned to the ground during Villa's raid. Public Domain

​In response, Wilson ordered a punitive expedition into Mexico to capture Villa. General John J. Pershing began gathering troops at Camp Furlong (sometimes called Camp Columbus). Pershing planned a two-pronged attack. The quicker force, of mostly soldiers on horseback, went south from the village of Hachita, in New Mexico's bootheel. The slower force, which included wagons and trucks filled with gear and supplies, went south directly from Columbus.

​By April 8th, General Pershing's force of over six thousand had traveled four hundred miles into Mexico. There they established a base in the town of Colonia Dublan. The U.S. Army had never before attempted anything of this magnitude, and the logistics of supplying Camp Dublan proved difficult. 

​President Wilson had assumed that the Mexican government would support a raid intended to capture Pancho Villa. Instead, Mexico refused to offer the U.S. expedition any aid. This included denying the U.S. the use of the Mexican Northwestern Railway to transport supplies. Food and supplies were brought in by horse and mule trains. Soon, the whole operation was at a standstill.

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Jeffery quads in Mexico.

When U.S. Secretary of War Newton Baker found out about this dilemma, he found $450,000 of unappropriated funds and purchased 27 new trucks. The Jefferys had four wheel drive, and were as tough as mules. Even with the trucks,  moving supplies was not easy. Many of the roads depicted on available maps proved to be no more than trails that became impassable when wet. Army engineers found themselves busy rebuilding roads and restringing cut telegraph lines. 

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Officers breakfast, Camp Dublan

​The situation came to a head in the middle of April, when a detachment of troops from Carranza's army attacked the American troops at Parral. The Americans were able to drive back the Mexicans, killing fourteen of them, but one American was killed, and one wounded. From then on, Pershing kept the majority of his men at Camp Dublan, sending out only small scouting parties and detachments to locate Villa. 

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By February 1917, the Punitive Expedition to Mexico was over. Newton D. Baker, claimed that the Expedition had “fully and finally accomplished . . . a display of the power of the United States into a country disturbed beyond control of the constituted authorities of the Republic of Mexico as a means of controlling lawless aggregations of bandits and preventing attacks by them across the international frontier." 

General Black Jack Pershing crossed back into the United States and parade triumphantly through the streets of Columbus with 10,690 soldiers and some 2,700 refugees. Two hundred of the refugees were Americans who had owned ranches south of the border. Another five hundred were Chinese immigrants who faced discrimination in Mexico and were moving north in search of a better life. The remaining two thousand were Mexican citizens escaping the violence of their country’s long civil war. 

The fact that Pershing’s Army brought back so many refugees proved that Mexico remained a dangerous place. Although depleted by casualties and desertion and not the menace they had been, Pancho Villa and his Villistas were still on the loose.

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The raid on Columbus and the expedition into Mexico are important parts of the story told in A Blaze of Poppies, Jennifer Bohnhoff's historical novel about life on a ranch in Southern New Mexico. It is available as a paperback or ebook from Amazon, or a signed paperback copy can be purchased directly from the author.

Why the Confederacy Couldn't Capture New Mexico

 

 

At the beginning of Where Duty Calls, a young Texan named Jemmy Martin, sees Major General Henry Hopkins Sibley riding into San Antonio with his adjutants:

"At their center was a fine looking man with silver hair that caught the morning sun and made him look as if a halo circled his head. He had a great, bushy mustache, sideburns, and sad, drooping eyes that made Jemmy feel as if this man had seen all the sorrow the world had to offer and had learned how to push through it. Jemmy instantly felt as if he could follow the man anywhere."



Many young men of the Confederacy were awestruck by Sibley. Many contemporary records attest to his natural charisma and ability to inspire people with his words.

​Sibley had just come back from talking Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, into commissioning him as a brigadier general and authorizing him to recruit a brigade of volunteers in central and south Texas. Sibley’s plan was to march to El Paso, then occupy New Mexico, seize the rich mines of Colorado Territory, turn west through Salt Lake City, and capture the seaports of Los Angeles and San Diego and the California goldfields, all while living off the land. His battle cry, “On to San Francisco!” inspired 2,000 men to join his campaign. By early fall of 1861, Sibley had three regiments of what he named The Army of New Mexico, plus artillery and supply units, camped on the outskirts of San Antonio.

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​But Sibley’s plan did not go as well as he had hoped. One reason is that the population did not respond to his invasion the way he had hoped. During his Army service in New Mexico, he had seen that both indigenous New Mexicans and Hispanic New Mexicans disliked the presence of the American Army in their territory. He therefore expected them to support him with food for both his troops and his pack animals and horses. He was convinced that recent immigrants from the southern states would join his ranks. He also forecast that the Union troops in New Mexico would desert to his banner. 

He was right to an extent on two of these three groups. Sibley was not the only Union soldier with ties to the south who had abandon their posts to join the south, and some did join Sibley's army. And particularly in the southern part of the state, which had seen an influx of settlers from Texas after the Gadsden Purchase, many citizens were Confederate sympathizers. However, most white settlers in the northern part of the state were allied with the North, and while most Hispanics and Indians didn’t like the Americans, they hated Texans even more. These people considered Sibley’s Army Texan, not Confederate. So with the exception of settlers in the southern part of the state, the citizens of New Mexico had no intention of supporting Sibley's troops.

Without the support of the local populace, Sibley had to rely of capturing supplies from the Union Army. This, too, proved more difficult than he had anticipated. Sibley was not able to capture Fort Craig and its supplies. By the time he arrived in Albuquerque, he found that the Union garrison had burned all its supplies before retreating north. What had escaped the fire had been squirreled away by a local population that wasn't inclined to share with an invading army.

Furthermore, Sibley had a little personal problem; Sibley drank. He drank so much that one of his officers later called him “a walking whiskey keg.” By the time the Army of New Mexico had reached El Paso, Sibley’s once brilliant speeches had become rambling, confused rants, and even the common soldiers knew that their leader was affected with a severe and recurring case of “barleycorn fever.” Halfway through the Battle of Valverde, Sibley turned the field over to his second in command and crawled into an ambulance, too incapacitated to lead. Sibley was not even present at the Battle of Glorieta Pass. While this battle, often called the Gettysburg of the West, was being fought, the General was nursing a hangover back in Santa Fe.

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Illustration from Where Duty Calls by Ian Bristow.

By the time the ragged remains of the Army of New Mexico had limped its way back to Texas, none of its embittered soldiers felt like Jemmy had on that first day he’d seen the General ride his horse through San Antonio. They had followed him into the wilderness, only to find that his grandiose dreams were nothing but a mirage. The Confederate dream of gold, deep water ports, and territory stretching to the Pacific had been shattered by the arid land, unhelpful citizens, and flawed leadership.

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Where Duty Calls is the first in a trilogy of historical novels about the Civil War in New Mexico. It will be published by Artemisia Press this June, and is available to preorder here. Its author, Jennifer Bohnhoff, is a New Mexico native who taught  New Mexico History at the middle school level.