We have already seen what happened on February 15, 1861, when General Twiggs handed over to the State authorities all the army posts in Texas. On the first of the following August Captain John R. Baylor, who had been forming a little Confederate army under pretext of a big buffalo hunt, proclaimed himself Governor of New Mexico (south of 34°) and established his capital at Mesilla. In the meantime the Confederate Government itself had appointed General H. H. Sibley to the command of a brigade for the conquest of all New Mexico. Not ten thousand men were engaged in this campaign, Federals and Confederates, whites and Indians, all together; but a decisive Confederate success might have been pregnant of future victories farther west. Some Indians fought on one side, some on the other; and some of the wilder tribes, delighted to see the encroaching whites at loggerheads, gave trouble to both. On February 21, 1862, Sibley defeated Colonel E. R. S. Canby at Valverde near Fort Craig. But his further advance was hindered by the barrenness of the country, by the complete destruction of all Union stores likely to fall into his hands, and by the fact that he was between two Federal forts when the battle ended. On the twenty-eighth of March there was a desperate fight in Apache Cañon. Both sides claimed the victory. But the Confederates lost more men as well as the whole of their supply and ammunition train. After this Sibley began a retreat which ended in May at San Antonio. His route was marked by bleaching skeletons for many a long day; and from this time forward the conquest of California became nothing but a dream. The "War in the West" was a mere twig on the Trans-Mississippi branch; and when the fall of Vicksburg severed the branch from the tree the twig simply withered away. The sword that ultimately severed branch and twig was firmly held by Union hands before the year was out; and this notwithstanding all the Union failures in the last six months. Grant and Porter from above, Banks and Farragut from below, had already massed forces strong enough to make the Mississippi a Union river from source to sea, in spite of all Confederates from Vicksburg to Port Hudson. CHAPTER V LINCOLN: WAR STATESMAN