A Confederate Point of View

When historians want to know what it was like to be part of the Confederate invasion of New Mexico, one of the people they turn to is Alfred Brown Peticolas.

Peticolas was was born on May 27, 1838, in Richmond, Virginia.. In 1859, he came west to Victoria, Texas, where he set up a law partnership with Samuel White.

On September 11, 1861, he joined the Confederate Army. Peticolas enlisted in Company C of the Fourth Regiment of Texas Mounted Volunteers,. This was part of Henry Hopkins Sibley's Army of New Mexico, a brigade with which Sibley intended to capture the rich Colorado gold fields, then secure the gold and harbors of California for the Confederacy. Throughout his time in New Mexico, Peticolas kept a diary in which he set down his keen observations about the country through which he traveled. He was also an artist and sketched his surroundings. The diary filled several books, the first of which was destroyed when the wagon in which is was stored was burned. Peticolas sketched the San Miguel mission church in Socorro, New Mexico. After the Civil War, Bishop Lamy remodeled this adobe church.. .  He also drew San Felipe church, in Albuquerque's Old Town. In his sketch, the Confederate flag flies from a flag pole in the center square of the village, right in front of the church. 

The Confederate, Mexican, Spanish, and American flags, flew over Albuquerque's Old Town representing all the governments that had controlled the town. In 2015, deemed too controversial, the stars and bars were taken down. Departing Albuquerque, Peticolas' unit traveled through Tijeras Canyon, then turned north, taking the road now known as N14 towards Santa Fe. They camped for over a week in the mountain village of San Antonio. The church, the building at the far left of the picture, burned down and was rebuilt in 1957. The Confederate tents and wagons are on the far right of the picture.  After Sibley's retreat back to San Antonio Texas, Peticolas participated in the Louisiana Campaign. Finally, illness led to his reassignment as a clerk at the quartermaster headquarters, and he finished the war behind a desk.  ​Rebels on the Rio Grande: the Civil War Journal of A.B. Peticolas, edited by Don E. Alberts, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1984 is a compilation of the passages from the diary that related to New Mexico. 

While he is not represented in Jennifer Bohnhoff's trilogy of novels about the Civil War, his material was instrumental in shaping the narrative and illuminating it with the little details that make historical fiction feel accurate. 
Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author and educator who lives very close to the mountain town that Peticolas sketched. Valverde, the first novel in her triology Rebels Along the Rio Grande, came out in 2017. The second, Glorieta, will be published in the spring of 2020, and Peralta will follow.