Action, Peralta

Near the close of General Henry Hopkins Sibley's Confederate campaign in New Mexico in 1862, a small clash unfolded at Peralta, notable more for its place in the campaign's final stages than for its scale.

Battle

After the fighting at Glorieta Pass, Green's 5th Texas Mounted Volunteers pulled back and set up camp at Peralta, New Mexico Territory, intending to push across a string of irrigation canals when morning came. Across the Rio Grande, the remainder of the Confederate force lay encamped at Los Lunas.

Canby's Union troops, who had been trailing the Confederates, closed the distance on April 14. Union horsemen struck at first light, overrunning the Confederate wagon train and killing or capturing the men guarding it. In response, Green's soldiers turned the town's squat adobe houses into makeshift strongholds. Canby also seized a Confederate supply train that was drawing near Peralta at the time, then dispatched John Chivington and Gabriel R. Paul to close off any escape routes and keep reinforcements from reaching Green. Yet the thick adobe walls and the tangle of irrigation ditches ringing the settlement made Canby wary of pressing a direct attack. Word of the clash reached Sibley, who brought the 4th and 7th Texas Mounted Rifles across the river to join the fight. Cannon fire raged between the two sides until a sudden dust storm swept through, giving the Confederates cover to pull back across to the western bank of the Rio Grande. What they left behind was a town battered into ruins.

By four in the morning the Confederate force had made it to Los Lunas, pausing there briefly before resuming its withdrawal. Canby's men stayed on their heels, with cavalry harrying the retreating column the whole way.