Comments on: Arizona’s Confederate Roots

By: RonFCCC

RonFCCC — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 05:05:35 +0000

I don’t read the date of Arizona’s admission to the Union as the Confederates getting the last laugh. In fact, just the opposite. Congress was figuratively rubbing Confederate sympathizers’ faces in the fact that the Confederacy’s attempted theft of that territory had been utterly overthrown by the Union. After all, February 14, 1912 is associated totally with Arizona becoming a state of the U.S. Nobody now thinks of the Confederacy in connection with that date.

By: Sedgwick

Sedgwick — Sat, 12 May 2012 19:03:55 +0000

During the period of 1861-1862, the territory of confederate arizona was in a state of chaos as the apache, after being riled up by the bascom affair, went on the war path and attacked whites,mexicans and even the pima indians.Confederate aligned militias would fight them in a series of not so well known engagements such as tubac,cooke’s canyon and placito just to name a few. Even after union troops from the california column arrived,the apache wars continued until 1886 though sporadic violence would occur as late as 1924. all in all an intresting if tragic part of the southwest’s civil war\ general history

By: Edwin Thompson

Edwin Thompson — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:29:18 +0000

Pretty good history lesson on the southwest. But it doesn’t sound like the confederates got the last laugh? Your explanation indicates that the territroy was divided north to south to make states that would dilute the southern influence. If true, then the rest of the country had the last laugh on the southerners.

In return, southerners joined the union on the day they offically decided to fight for slavery. That’s not funny – that’s sad. It says a lot more about the southern culture of the time of Arizona’s statehood.

By: Brad

Brad — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:54:04 +0000

What Professor Shaffer and David talked about is treated in today’s NYT Disunion post. Fascinating reading. David shows what is one of the highlights of the Disunion article: racial extermination. Of course, this wasn’t something that one section of white America had a monopoly on.

By: Pat Young

Pat Young — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:50:29 +0000

The Arizona story is not unrelated to the larger purposes of your blog. The “secession” of Arizona was not declared by the residents of the southern part of Az, most of whom were Latino, but by a few hundred transplanted Southerners. The declaration, along with the Confederate invasion of the territory, were part of a longer tradition of white Southerners using military force to extend slavery into Latino lands from Nicaragua to New Mexico.

By: Donald R. Shaffer

Donald R. Shaffer — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:33:14 +0000

Hi David. Thanks for the story. It brings to mind the fact a big reason the small Anglo population in southern New Mexico Territory became alienated from the Union by 1861 was they did not think the U.S. government was doing enough to eliminate the Apache threat. They hoped the Confederacy would do more.

By: David Woodbury

David Woodbury — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:20:15 +0000

This puts me in mind of a gentleman from Arizona who once engaged me in some heated discussions in the Civil War Forum. He was one of those angry, League of the South types who claimed both Confederate and Apache heritage. Somehow he had it in his head that the Apache were brothers in arms with Confederates in the Southwest, trying to throw off the yolk of Yankee tyranny. It was a fantasy — legions of Apache warriors joining the ranks of Johnny Rebs — of which he could not be disabused.

He has hard pressed to explain passages I was quoting him from the O.R. — missives from John Baylor, Confederate Governor of Arizona, to Richmond, recommending the best way to deal with the Apache menace. Baylor figured the adult Apache could not be rehabilitated. His idea was to kill all adult men, women and older children among the Apache, and move the small children into American schools where, in a generation, they could be assimilated.

That’s another example of an enduring mythology about the Confederacy. Even though the highest Confederate authority in the region was promoting the near-extermination of Apaches, this modern day neo-Confederate is posting treatises on the internet about the mutual respect shared by all the Yankee-hating heroes in the Territories.