Changes

Robert E. Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, and Ulysses S. Grant are names synonymous with the American Civil War. Henry Hopkins Sibley and James Carleton are less familiar or altogether unknown names yet their importance to the outcome of the Civil War cannot be overstated. In 1862, General Sibley of the Confederate States of America (CSA) Army marched his brigade from Texas, along the Rio Grande, and was destined for California. Colonel Carleton, commander of the Union's California Column, led his troops eastward from Fort Yuma with the mission of preventing the Sibley Brigade from reaching California. The leaders in Washington, D.C. and Richmond both understood the importance of possessing New Mexico and Arizona territories as they were the gateway to the ports of California.  The Union blockade of the southern Atlantic ports and the rapidly declining financial resources of the CSA were two of the reasons Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered his troops to move west from Texas. If the CSA had been successful the outcome of the war, and certainly the duration, may have been quite different. The natural resources found in the region, the Pacific ports of California, and openness to slavery were factors that had the ability to drastically change the outcome of the Civil War.