Expedition
The objective of their commander, Colonel James Henry Carleton (promoted to brigadier general while the column was en route) was to drive Confederate troops out of New Mexico, which they had occupied the previous year. The soldiers of the California Column, both infantry and cavalry, often traveled by foot wearing woolen uniforms in the desert heat. They started out from Fort Yuma along the Colorado River. Much like the Confederate Army of New Mexico (also known as the Sibley Brigade), which had entered New Mexico from Texas in December 1861, they traveled in small groups at intervals of a few days so men and horses would not exhaust the springs and wells along the way. They followed the established route of the Butterfield Overland Mail, which had ceased operation the year before. The mail posts were filled with food and grain which Union spies had stockpiled there before the invasion.
Read more about this topic: California Column
Famous quotes containing the word expedition:
“Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.”
—Janet Frame (b. 1924)
“It is a sort of ranger service. Arnold’s expedition is a daily experience with these settlers. They can prove that they were out at almost any time; and I think that all the first generation of them deserve a pension more than any that went to the Mexican war.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)