The fighting at Valverde was a Confederate victory in February 1862, recalled by Violate Lacey as the crisis that brought the war to her family’s doorstep. Colonel John Lacey rode with Canby and his men to engage Sibley’s brigade; as the Confederates marched toward Santa Fe, Robert Lacey’s body arrived by wagon along the Santa Fe Trail. For the Laceys, the battle’s significance lay not only in its military result but in the collision of an advancing army, a son’s burial, and the prospect of having to flee.

Background and Stakes

Robert had joined the army without his mother knowing. He was too young to serve and feared Colonel Lacey would use his influence to have him dismissed, so he did not want the family to discover where he was. By the time they located him, he had been killed at Ball’s Bluff in Virginia in the fall of 1861.

Colonel Lacey used his position and connections to have Robert’s body exhumed and sent west. The journey took months. The family was at Fort Craig on the Rio Grande when John rode with Canby’s force against Sibley’s brigade at Valverde in February 1862. The account gives no detailed description of the fighting; it establishes the battle through the route of John’s service and the consequences that followed for his family.

The Battle and the Arrival of Robert’s Body

The Confederates won at Valverde and were marching to take Santa Fe when Robert’s body arrived by wagon on the Santa Fe Trail. The timing joined two kinds of loss in one episode: the battlefield had already taken Robert, and the Confederate advance threatened the place where his family hoped to bury him. His return was not a homecoming but the final stage of a long effort to bring his remains to New Mexico.

The arrival also fixed the battle within Violate Lacey’s private history. Her recollection moves from John’s military service to the wagon carrying Robert, making the family’s bereavement inseparable from the changing military situation around them. The account does not claim that the battle caused Robert’s death: he had been killed months earlier at Ball’s Bluff. Valverde instead forms the tense backdrop to his burial and the family’s decision about whether to stay.

Retreat, Reversal, and Aftermath

With the Confederates advancing toward Santa Fe, the Laceys were ready to flee. Their decision changed when they heard that the Confederates had been defeated at Glorieta Pass in New Mexico. John was assigned to remain, and the family stayed. Thus Valverde’s victory opened a period of immediate danger, but the later reversal at Glorieta and John’s orders resolved the question of their departure.

Violate Lacey’s account presents the battle through this sequence of expectation and reversal: the Confederates win, the family prepares to escape, and news of their defeat allows the Laceys to remain. Robert’s body arrives during the advance, so the family’s mourning unfolds under the pressure of possible flight rather than in settled peace.

Memory and Historical Meaning

Violate Lacey recounts the episode while explaining her son’s death and burial to Lizzy. Her account places a named Civil War engagement alongside the intimate history that official military outcomes cannot settle: Robert was dead, his remains had taken months to reach the family, and his mother’s grief persisted after the immediate danger passed. In her later reflection, she says that memory keeps both sides hostage. That judgment gives the Valverde episode a reach beyond the battle itself: military fortunes shift, but the losses they leave behind continue to shape the living.