1861 Letter from Mary Frances Green Lewis in Albuquerque to Her Mother, Describing Her Husband Martin Van Buren Lewis’s Impatience to Go to War: “He is crazy to get back to the states where there is something to do.”
Albuquerque, New Mexico Territory: May 31, 1861. Single three-page letter measuring 7 ¾ x 9 ¾ inches, postmarked Santa Fe N.M. Near Fine. Item #List3721
A letter from Mary Frances Green (1841–1927) in Albuquerque, New Mexico Territory, to her mother Nancy Howe in North Bloomfield, Ohio. Green had come to New Mexico with her first husband, Martin Van Buren Lewis (1835–1862), a West Point graduate who had been posted at Fort Craig and Fort Marcy.[1] Green writes that Lewis, who would fight with the 8th US Infantry, was “crazy to get back to the states where there is something to do. He does not like this inactive life”, and would “write to Col. Loring by the express today for orders for a more impatient person I never saw.”
Green hoped that Lewis’s service would bring them home to the North, writing that “I wish Mr. Lincoln would order the troops in from the territories I want to get home so bad” and that “you may rest assured that we shall [return] unless Mart is taken prisoner and I don’t think that very likely for we shall take the most northern route.” Much of southern New Mexico was loyal to the Confederacy, while the northern part of the territory was loyal to the Union, hence Green’s worries. New Mexico Territory would contribute about seven or eight thousand troops to the Union Army; shortly after Green’s letter, the Confederacy would claim the southern portion as Arizona Territory (Confederate Arizona) in an attempt to control the Southwest and gain access to Colorado and California. The following year would commence the New Mexico campaign, which led to Confederate retreat and loss of Arizona. Lewis was to join the 8th US Infantry, which was then being reorganized in New York following its capture by the Confederate Army in Texas—after which several of its officers joined the Confederates.[2]
Lewis would die of disease in Winchester, Virginia, in 1862. Of interest to historians of New Mexico territory in the Civil War.
[1] Mary Frances Green Lewis correspondence, 1860-1861, BANC MSS 2014/175, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Price: $950.00