After the war, W.P. Laughter, a private in the 2nd Texas Mounted Rifles, described the morning of the battle of Valverde:
“As we were marching along with some glee at the prospect of getting a square drink of water, of which the cottonwood trees near at hand gave promise, we spied some tents in the timber on the east bank of the river. If there was anything we wanted worse than a brush with the enemy it was water. The dry beef we had for supper needed moisture. The fact was, if one of us coughed you could see the dust fly.” 1
To put it mildly, the New Mexican desert is not where you want to run out of water. So how did Private Laughter find himself, 160 years ago this month, desperately trying to fight his way through to the Rio Grande for a drink of water?
Through the fall and early winter of 1861 into 1862, Laughter and the rest of the 2nd Texas Mounted Rifles had made a grueling march of hundreds of miles from San Antonio, across the West Texas desert, and up into modern-day New Mexico. They were led by Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley, who had served in the territory before the war, and convinced Confederate President Jefferson Davis that with just a few thousand troops, he could secure not just New Mexico and Arizona for the Confederacy, but also the gold mines of Colorado and California, and an open port to the Pacific that would evade the Union blockade.2
