![]() Southern politicians and elites wanted to expand slavery into this newly acquired land. In 1848 the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and added almost one million square miles to the United States. The tensions that eventually placed Colorado in the western theatre of the Civil War were tied to the same issue that caused the war: the expansion of slavery. Before the war was even over, Union troops committed the Sand Creek Massacre, one of the worst atrocities on US soil and an event that would influence future conflicts between Americans and Indigenous people.Īs it has elsewhere, the Civil War left a complicated legacy in Colorado, one that laid the foundation for the successes and struggles of the state to the present day. The Homestead Act, passed during the war in part to promote free labor over slave labor in western territories, was a direct assault on Indigenous people’s sovereignty that increased tensions between whites and Native nations. The Civil War had wide-reaching effects, especially on Indigenous people. This paved the way for further conquest and development in Colorado and the rest of the West. Although the territory was largely pro-Union, the Confederacy and its local sympathizers immediately realized Colorado's strategic and monetary value and wanted to take advantage of it.įederal troops from Colorado turned back the Confederate invasion in New Mexico, ensuring that the Rocky Mountain gold mines remained under US control. The war began in 1861, just two years after the Colorado Gold Rush and mere months after Congress established the Colorado Territory. Colorado’s role in the American Civil War (1861–65) was part of a broader geopolitical contest: control of the American Southwest.
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