MOST OF THE consequential battles of the American Civil War were fought in the 95-mile sphere that separated the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, and the Union capital of Washington, DC. Names like Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Bull Run have dominated American historical memory, but the scope of the conflict beyond these famous battlefields tends to get shoved to the back of the traditional analysis of how the North ground out its victory, and how the conflict remade the landscape.
Megan Kate Nelson has made an invaluable contribution to broadening our understanding of the Civil War in her riveting new book, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West. She has looked far to the West to explore the undertold story of the war in the deserts and mountains of the New Mexico territory (modern-day Arizona and New Mexico). The evocative title of her book comes from a soldier’s observation that what was playing out in New Mexico was, in fact, a “three-cornered war” between Union, Confederacy, and Native peoples.
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