The method evolved for containing the vicious raids against friendly Indian, Spanish, and American communities was a series of forts placed at strategic passes or trails surrounding the traditional lands of the Apache. The Indian strongholds were located primarily in the mountainous regions of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona. The line of forts stretched along the Rio Grande south of Socorro to the vicinity of Las Cruces, and west along the southern edge of the mountain escarpment into Arizona. Then the defense complex ran north across the desert to an irregular line running east from Flagstaff through Gallup and back to the Rio Grande. These forts were well garrisoned and provisioned and began to carry the fight to the Indian. Early success was halted by the conflict generated by the American Civil War. The center of the Civil War in the west was in New Mexico. There was conflict, argument, and some small degree of fighting in other western states and territories as settlers from the north or south struggled to carry this territory or that state into the Union or the Confederacy. These were, however, local matters and as much political as military. In New Mexico, there was a war and there were battles, battles which deserve to be a part of the general Civil War story but that are usually forgotten in the smoke and roar of eastern cannon. Two major battles were fought in New Mexico, the first a Confederate victory, the second a Union victory which saved New Mexico, and the west, for the Union. The aim of the Confederate forces was to capture, intact if possible, the forts in New Mexico and Arizona with their great store of military provisions, provisions badly needed by the Confederate army. Also, there was a feeling among southern leaders that success in New Mexico might also lead to success in California, badly split on the question of secession, and in Colorado, rich in silver and gold. An army recruited in Texas and commanded by General Henry Sibley was sent to accomplish Confederate aims.