Hysterical Journey To Historic Places

---

CAPTAIN SHERROD HUNTER

Fort Sumter, an Army outpost in Charleston Bay, was fired upon with artillery and pounded into submission by patriots of the Confederacy just two months after the Army started the Cochise War in Arizona. The War of Northern Aggression was underway and every soldier was needed to fight it back east. The Army soon abandoned Arizona and left the citizens to fend for themselves against the rampaging Apaches. When the Army left it also had a major economic impact on the area. Many settlers made their living by supplying the needs of the Army. When the Army left some of the outstanding contracts had not been paid. They simply skipped out on their obligations. When the Civil War broke out Butterfield lost its subsidy, and the stage coach route shut down. Citizens in Arizona had become completely isolated. Those who could afford to do so headed to a fresh start in California. Those who couldn’t afford to leave hunkered down in Tucson and cussed the government. Southern Arizona became a hotbed of rebel sympathy. A couple of years previously citizens of Arizona had applied for admission as an independent territory, they wrote a territorial constitution and elected territorial officers. The idea was that the proposed Territory of Arizona would occupy only the Gadsden Purchase lands south of the Gila River. New Mexico Territory would continue to extend north of the Gila River between Texas and California. The U. S. Congress ignored the petition and refused to seat the Arizona delegate. By 1861 Arizona attempted a new territorial petition, but this time with the Confederacy. Notions of manifest destiny all of their own began in the Southern States as soon as gold was discovered in California. The Confederacy still aspired, in 1861, to reach the West Coast. In February of 1862 Confederate forces under John Baylor arrived in Mesilla, New Mexico. At the time New Mexico Territory extended all the way from Texas to California and Jefferson Davis wanted to bring the whole territory into the Confederacy. Baylor sent Sibley’s Brigade up the Rio Grande to capture Santa Fe and the federal supply depot at Fort Union. He also sent a company of one hundred soldiers under Captain Sherod Hunter to capture Tucson and hold the Butterfield Trail. On February 28 Hunter raised the Confederate Flag over Tucson without opposition. Folks in Tucson were glad to see soldiers of any kind to help fight the Apaches. In the meantime a brigade of federal soldiers under Carleton was coming from California to counter the Confederate invasion of New Mexico. Hunter sent men to hinder the federal advance by gathering stock from the stations along the way and burn hay fields. A series of brief engagements were fought in April by pickets at Stanwyx Station, the Pima Village, and Picacho Pass Station west of Tucson. To the east of Tucson four of Hunter’s men were killed by Apaches at Dragoon Station on May 5. Hunter was forced to retreat and on May 14 the American Flag once again flew over Tucson. Arizona finally achieved territorial status in 1863, but was split off from New Mexico north to south as an extension of the boundary between Utah and Colorado. That split complicated further plans for the Confederacy to ever reach the West Coast. Those plans continued to exist until the end of the war. Sherrod Hunter was put in command of the Arizona Brigade but the war ended before the brigade could be fully put to use. Had he succeeded he might have been our first governor. He was well thought of in Arizona. The photo shows Confederate graves at Dragoon Springs Station.

---

Photos

CAPTAIN SHERROD HUNTER
The ruins of Dragoon Springs Station are on forest service land about 2.5 miles south of Dragoon, AZ. Follow signs along the dirt road on the south side of the railroad tracks.
While in the area of Dragoon visit the Amerind Museum.