"When All Our Troubles Will Be Forgotten": The Civil War Letters and Recollections of Captain George Henry Pettis

For Civil War enthusiasts, the collected writings of a long-neglected figure who was crucial to the pivotal Civil War years in New Mexico.

From Jerry Thompson, the preeminent historian of the Civil War in the American Southwest, “When All Our Troubles Will be Forgotten” presents the collected writings of an important and long-neglected Civil War–era figure in New Mexico.

As the unofficial historian of the California Column, George Henry Pettis was a firsthand witness to a series of important historic events, including the march of Californians to New Mexico, the Confederate invasion of New Mexico, and the Indian Wars in the region.

By the time Pettis arrived on the Rio Grande, the Civil War in the Southwest had evolved into a radically different conflict from what he envisioned when he enlisted in the Union Army in 1861. Over the course of five years and fifteen days in the California and New Mexico infantry, Pettis marched an astonishing 4,245 miles across Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas while suffering through sweltering summer heat and frigid winter cold—likely a greater distance than any soldier in the entire Union Army. The climax of Pettis’s career came at the Battle of Adobe Walls when he found himself in command of two small artillery pieces in Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson’s vain, ill-advised, and far-reaching punitive expedition on the Texas plains against the Comanche and Kiowa.

Pettis adeptly records the monotony of garrison life at remote military posts in the desert of West Texas as well as the army headquarters at Fort Marcy in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Union fortresses of Fort Craig and Fort Union. In his letters, Pettis details the high drama of a mutiny and hanging at Mesilla, the freeing of a young Indigenous woman at Algodones, the tragic drowning of soldiers in a Rio Grande flood, and the defense of a colleague in a Santa Fe murder trial.

Jerry D. Thompson’s introductory essay provides a definitive biography of Pettis, and his invaluable annotations offer detailed background on the people, places, and events mentioned in Pettis’s writings.

Jerry D. Thompson is the Regents and Piper Professor of History at Texas A&M International University in Laredo and an award-winning historian. A former president of the Texas State Historical Association, Thompson has published over thirty books on the Civil War in the Southwest. His acclaimed works include A Civil War History of the New Mexico Volunteers and Militia; Wrecked Lives and Lost Souls: Joe Lynch Davis and the Last of the Oklahoma Outlaws, and Under the Piñon Tree: Finding a Place in Pie Town (winner of the Historical Society of New Mexico's Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Award).