2014-04-15 07:00:00

John Stanley
 |  Special for The Republic

Imagine, for a moment, that the Civil War had gone a little differently.

Arizona would have ended up with Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands, Silver City, Las Cruces and Roswell. Not bad.

Of course, we would have lost the Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, Prescott, Payson, Meteor Crater and Lake Havasu City to New Mexico.

Not to be too provincial or anything, but things worked out well for Arizona.

The great territorial hoo-hah started in 1848, when much of what is now Arizona was ceded to the United States following the Mexican-American War.

In 1850, Arizona became part of the newly created Territory of New Mexico, which consisted of nearly all of present-day New Mexico, southern Colorado, southern Utah, southern Nevada (including the area that became Las Vegas) and all of present-day Arizona north of the Gila River, as well as a little chunk of land south of the river.

The Gadsden Purchase, negotiated mostly because Southern business interests were lobbying hard for a southern route for the proposed transcontinental railroad, added nearly 30,000 square miles south of the Gila River to the territory in 1854.

But the capital of the Territory of New Mexico was in Santa Fe, which many of those in the southern part of the territory felt was too far away for effective government. So in 1856, they held conventions in Tucson and Mesilla, calling for the creation of a separate territory of Arizona, which would consist of roughly the southern half of the New Mexico Territory.

Congress thought the population of that region was much too small to justify the creation of a separate territory.

Nevertheless, in 1858, the New Mexico Territorial Legislature passed a resolution supporting the creation of an Arizona territory. Its plan divided things differently — Arizona would be the territory west of a line of longitude regarding 32 degrees west of Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, with settlers pouring into the new lands, local advocates for Arizona held another convention in Tucson in 1860. They even drafted a constitution for a new Territory of Arizona, which they defined as the land south of the line of latitude at 34 degrees, which runs very roughly from Portales to Socorro to Luna (across modern New Mexico) and from Eagar to Parker (across modern Arizona).

The convention even selected Lewis Owings as its territorial governor and sent a delegate to Congress.

By then, the issue of slavery had polarized Congress. Abolitionists, who feared the new territory would become a slave state, blocked efforts to create a separate Arizona Territory.

But once the Confederate States of America officially established itself in February 1861, proponents of a separate Arizona Territory held yet another convention, once more in Mesilla, where they voted to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy.

After Confederate troops won the Battle of Mesilla on July 25, 1861, Col. John Robert Baylor declared himself the military governor of the Confederate Territory of Arizona. The Confederate Congress approved the declaration Jan. 13, 1862, and President Jefferson Davis signed it into law Feb. 14, 1862.

By that summer, though, virtually all Confederate troops had been withdrawn from the territory and the Confederate government of the Territory of Arizona was operating out of El Paso.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate had passed the Arizona Organic Act, using the north-south line originally proposed by the New Mexico Territorial Legislature. President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill Feb. 24, 1863, officially creating the Territory of Arizona.

Statehood came Feb. 14, 1912, exactly 50 years following Jefferson Davis had formally established the Confederate Territory of Arizona.

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