Jennifer Bohnhoff
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Divided Duty

4/4/2024

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Picturethe United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division. digital ID 04642
Recently, one of my fans let me know that there was a poem about Alexander McRrae, the Union officer who lost his battery of artillery pieces to the Confederates at the Battle of Valverde. Given that tidbit of information, I went down a rabbit hole and discovered not only a poem, but a couple of interesting people.
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The poet, it turns out, is a man named Theodore Marburg.  Marburg wrote a number of books. Some are poetry. Others are treatises on economics, government, the Spanish American War, and The League of Nations. He was also the United States Minister to Belgium from 1912 to 1914, the executive secretary of an organization called the League to Enforce Peace, and a prominent advocate of the League of Nations

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Marburg was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 10, 1862, which means that McRae was already dead when the poet was born. I found that interesting, and wondered what caused him to want to write a poem about someone he never knew. He died in Vancouver on March 3, 1946.
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The poem about Captain McRae, entitled DIVIDED DUTY, comes from In The Hills: Poems, a small volume that was privately printed in Paris 1893, then revised and reprinted by The Knickerocker Press, a division of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, in 1924.

The poem has a footnote, which says

When the American civil war began there happened to be in the regular service a young officer whose home, with all that the word implies, was the South. There were many such. His story is but a type. Is it difficult to picture the struggle that came to them with the sense of a divided duty? This one, with the clearer vision which events have justified, felt that the higher duty was the preservation of the nation; but the thought of fighting against his kindred and the friends of his boyhood so preyed on his mind that he is believed to have courted the death which soon came to him. When the element of fate enters, hurrying the just and the brave to a tragic end, the story must always excite our interest and sympathy. At the battle of Val Verde in New Mexico, February 21, 1862, our hero met his death. The battery, of which, although a cavalry officer, he had been given command for the day, was overwhelmed by the Texans. He remained seated on one of the guns, defending himself until the enemy shot him down. They did him the honor to give his name to one of our forts and to take him back to West Point, to the quiet cemetery in the hills. 
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McRae's tombstone. It is just four stones down from that of George Armstrong Custer
The poem is almost as much about the beautiful setting of the West Point Cemetery as it is about the man buried there.  It made me wonder if the tombstone inspired the poet to research the man buried beneath it.
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McRae, a native North Carolinian, commanded Company I, 3rd United States Regular Cavalry. His commanding officer, Colonel Edward R.S. Canby, had given him an artillery battery of six pieces. During the Battle of Valverde, February 21, 1862, McRae's battery performed with great success until about 750 Confederate Texans led by Colonel Thomas Green charged the Union guns. Screaming the Rebel yell, the three waves of confederates were poorly armed  with short-range shotguns, pistols, muskets, and bowie knives. Green had instructed his men to drop to the ground whenever they saw flashes from the artiller's muzzles. The Union men thought they were inflicting great casualties on the Rebels, but the fact that they just kept coming spooked the New Mexico Volunteers supporting McRae and his officers. Many fled the battery and ran panic-stricken across the Rio Grande, unnerving the Volunteer troops who were then being held in reserve.

The Texans fell upon the battery and fierce hand-to-hand fighting swirled around the artillery pieces. Samuel Lockridge, a Texan officer leading the charge is reported to have shouted, "Surrender McRae, we don't want to kill you!" to which the North Carolinian replied, "I shall never forsake my guns!" Both men then suffered fatal bullet wounds. The loss of the battery caused Colonel Canby to issue orders for a full retreat to Fort Craig. The captured guns, thereafter known as the Valverde Battery, continued to fire against Union troops for the remainder of the war.

 After the war, Confederate Gen. Henry Sibley, who led the Confederate forces into New Mexico, wrote a letter to Alexander McRae’s father. In it, he said  "The universal voice of this Army attests to the gallantry of your son. He fell valiantly defending the battery he commanded. There are few fallen soldiers that are admired by both armies of a conflict. Capt. Alexander McRae was one."

DIVIDED DUTY 

OH, plateau the eagle's brood has known
 What potent dead you hold!
In fear of God, in duty's light,
 For country and for human right
 On varied fields they fought the fight
And, while you claim their mould,
 
They live and will live through the year,
Though deaf to drum and fife,
For manly deeds are fertile seeds
That spring again to life.
 
What peace, what perfect peace broods o'er
The soldiers ' burial - ground
Here in the heart of the silent hills
With Hudson flowing round.
 
A stately guard, these mighty hills,
Close crowding one another,
Gigantic Storm King locking arms
With Old Cro ' Nest, his brother!
 
Their summits command to the North a range
Where a sleeping figure lies
Stretched on its back on the mountain tops
Against the changing skies.
 
There Rip Van Winkle, the children know,
Beheld with exceeding wonder
The queer little men whose ninepin balls
Create the summer thunder.
 
Down from the Donderberg scurried the winds
That tossed the Dutch sailor of yore.
Down from the highlands the captains came
When trembled and strained a nation's frame,
When all the fair land was aflame,
Aflame with civil war.
 
Far in the South was the home of one '
Twas there he had spent life's morn-
Where winds are soft and women are kind
And gentleness is born;
 
Where the grey moss waves from the great live - oak
And the scarlet tanager flutters;
Where the mocking - bird, hid in the bamboo- vine,
Its passionate melody utters.
 
The boom of the gun upon Sumter that caused
A million hearts to sicken,
That rolled o'er the land and grew as it rolled
While a knell in the mother's breast was tolled
And city and meadow and mountain old
With the spirit of war were stricken,
 
Brought from the hills of the Hudson one
Whose home was the South, ' tis true,
But o'er him the flag of his fathers waved:
He marched in command of the blue.
Oh, the sad story, the story they tell,
The story of duty and death!
The comfort of heaven, the anguish of hell,
Surging with every breath!
 
Out from the North, the awakening North,
Came comrades whose step was light.
Ah! that was their home, and a mother's prayer
Went with them into the fight.
 
Measureless plains of the wide South - west
Ye shook ' neath the tread of men.
Nor winds of the prairie, though mighty they be,
That fashioned your reaches like waves of the sea,
Nor rush of the bison once roaming you free
Have caused you to tremble as when
Through all the long day the sulphureous smoke
Hung heavy over the field
And man from his brother the hand of God
Seemed powerless to shield.
 
The battle is lost.
What use to stay When his men are slain or fled!
Did anguish too great for the brave to bear
Bring longing to lie with the dead?
 
His battery silenced, on one of the guns
Alone he sat ' mid the rout,
Unmoved as the cliff that the ocean in anger
Whirls its white surges about
 
A whirlwind of dust, a whirlwind of men,
 A whirlwind of lead therefrom,
A vain pistol shot from the figure alone
And the coveted end had come.
 
What peace, what perfect peace broods now
O'er the beautiful burial - ground,
Up in the hills, the stately hills,
With the river flowing round.
Picture1916: Captain Marburg and his first wife
 In researching the poet, I found that Theodore Marburg had an interesting son. Captain Theodore Marburg Jr. was born November 27, 1893 in France and attended Oxford University. When World War I broke out, he joined the Royal Flying Corps, which required him to take the oath of allegiance to the British Government. While on a mission to photograph the German lines in 1915, his plane crashed and a strut pierced his left knee, requiring the leg to be amputated. Marburg wanted to return to the US to get an American-made artificial leg, but the U.S. government refused to issue him a passport since, according to their interpretation of law, he had broken his allegiance to the United States by taking the oath in Britain. His widely publicized case led President Wilson to a bill in October 1917 that restored US citizenship to US citizens who enlisted in Canadian, British, and French services before the US declaration of war if they took an oath of allegiance at a US consulate. Marburg then came back to the U.S. and was treated at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Marburg’s life did not go well after the war. Believing an outdoor life would be good for his health, Marburg moved to Arizona, where he purchased a cattle ranch. His first wife, Baroness Gesell de Vavario of Belgium, did not like ranch life and divorced him. He had only been married a month when he shot himself in the head on February 17, 1922. He was buried in Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville, Maryland. It would be interesting to learn more about Marburg Jr. and his struggles. 


Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of a number of historical novels for middle grade and adult readers. Where Duty Calls, the first in the trilogy Rebels Along the Rio Grande, includes the scene where McRae's battery is charged by the Confederates. A Blaze of Poppies tells the story of a young, female rancher from New Mexico who serves as a nurse in World War I and comes back to marry a wounded American soldier. 
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Civil War Weaponry: Mountain Howitzers

3/30/2022

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PictureThe youngest reenactor at Glorieta. His father told me that this was his first encampment.
Last weekend, the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Glorieta Pass was observed. I drove up to Pecos National Historic Site on Saturday morning to witness the observation. 

The weekend was pretty low key. A group of Union reenactors attended. They put up tents and spend the night. No Confederate reenactors were there.

I was walking up from the parking lot when I heard gun fire. The reenactors gave some black powder displays, but there was no reenactment of the battle. The one and only artillery piece, a mountain howitzer, was going to be fired at noon, but I didn't stay around long enough to hear it. 

PictureFort Union's Mountain Howitzer
The New Mexico Artillery Company has several cannons they bring to reenactments. However, the Park Service demands that all cannons brought on to their property are accurate reproductions. Most of the ones used by the Artillery Company have smaller bores than authentic Civil War cannons. Smaller bores are cheaper to fire. The one present this past weekend was a mountain howitzer which was brought down from Fort Union for the day. This replica, like the actual gun, was made of bronze and had a smooth bore. It could fire an explosive shell, a cannon ball, or canister 1,005 yards.​

PictureA mule carrying cannon wheels.
The mountain howitzer was first created in 1837. The United States Army used it  during the Mexican–American War (1847–1848), the American Indian Wars, and during the American Civil War, (1861–1865). It was used primarily in the more rugged parts of the West. It was designed to be lightweight and very portable, even in difficult, mountainous terrain. The carriage design allowed it to be broken down into three loads, that could then be loaded onto a pack animal for transport where other guns could not go. When broken down, the tube could be carried by one horse or mule, the carriage and wheels by another, and ammunition on a third. This made it well suited for Indian fighting and mountain warfare.

​.Although mountain howitzers provided artillery support for mobile military forces ion the move through rugged country, their shorter range made them unsuitable for dueling with other heavier field artillery weapons. They were replaced by other guns by the 1870s.


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Author Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical fiction for middle grade readers and adults.

Where Duty Calls, the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War, will be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, in June 2022 and is available for preorder from Amazon or Bookshop.

​For class sets or other bulk orders, contact Artemesia Publishing. A teacher's guide will be available this summer from the publisher. 

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Mules in the Civil War

3/16/2022

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PictureMule carrying parts of a cannon
Mules did much of the heavy hauling for both the Confederate and Union Armies during the American Civil War.

They pulled the supply wagons, the limbers and caissons for cannons. They pulled the ambulances. The fearlessness and tenacity that many mules demonstrate made them ideal for the difficult conditions of war. 

More than one soldier found them better and more reliable mounts than horses. The bond between a man and his mule could become very strong, indeed.

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Both lead characters in Where Duty Calls have connections to mules. To protect his family's mules after they are sold to the Confederate Army, Jemmy joins on as a packer. Raul Atencio uses mules to haul supplies to Fort Craig. On the night before the battle at Valverde Ford, he sells two of his mules to, a Union spy captain named Paddy Graydon,  who loads them with ammunition and attempts to goad them into the Confederate lines in an attempt to destroy the Confederate's supply chain. The explosion caused the mules, who were already thirsty, to stampede down to the Rio Grande, where Union soldiers rounded them up. 
​In Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, Civil War veteran John D. Billings shares the story of another mule stampede. During the night of Oct. 28, 1863, Union General John White Geary and Confederate General James Longstreet were fighting at Wauhatchie, Tennessee. The din of battle unnerved about two hundred mules, who stampeded into a body of Rebels commanded by Wade Hampton. The rebels thought they were being attacked by cavalry and fell back.

To commemorate this incident, one Union soldier penned a poem based on Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade.
Charge of the mule brigade

Half a mile, half a mile,
Half a mile onward,
Right through the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.
“Forward the Mule Brigade!”
“Charge for the Rebs!” they neighed.
Straight for the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.

“Forward the Mule Brigade!”
Was there a mule dismayed?
Not when the long ears felt
All their ropes sundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to make Rebs fly.
On! to the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.

Mules to the right of them,
Mules to the left of them,
Mules behind them
Pawed, neighed, and thundered.
Breaking their own confines,
Breaking through Longstreet's lines
Into the Georgia troops,
Stormed the two hundred.

Wild all their eyes did glare,
Whisked all their tails in air
Scattering the chivalry there,
While all the world wondered.
Not a mule back bestraddled,
Yet how they all skedaddled--
Fled every Georgian,
Unsabred, unsaddled,
Scattered and sundered!
How they were routed there
By the two hundred!

Mules to the right of them,
Mules to the left of them,
Mules behind them
Pawed, neighed, and thundered;
Followed by hoof and head
Full many a hero fled,
Fain in the last ditch dead,
Back from an ass's jaw
All that was left of them,--
Left by the two hundred.

When can their glory fade?
Oh, the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Mule Brigade,
Long-eared two hundred!

Where Duty Calls, the first in a trilogy of middle grade novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War, is scheduled to be released by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing in June 2022 and is now available for preorder on Amazon and Bookshop. 
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The Battle for the Valverde Guns

2/24/2022

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Not many people know about the Civil War Battle of Valverde these days. Most people assume that all the battles in the Civil War happened east of the Mississippi. Some might include Kansas. But there were battles out here in the Southwest, and one of the biggest and most important was the Battle of Valverde Ford, fought on February 21, 1862.
 
The Battle of Valverde, fought a few miles north of Fort Craig, along the Rio Grande in New Mexico Territory, was a victory for the Confederates, who were trying to fulfill a manifest destiny for the south that would stretch all the way to California. Like all battles, its story is made up of many smaller, poignant stories. One of the most dramatic is the taking of the Federal guns.
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This etching, from a Harper’s Weekly that came out soon after the battle, shows a Union soldier perched atop of cannon while Confederate soldiers threaten him. It’s a fanciful and dramatic picture, and it fevered the minds of Northerners throughout the Union, but it’s factually untrue. The man depicted on the cannon is Captain Alexander McRae, and though he did not actually sit on his artillery piece, his story is compelling. 

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Alexander McRae was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina on September 4, 1829, and he was educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point. After graduating, he served in Missouri and Texas.. In 1856, he was posted to New Mexico in 1856. McRae spent some time at Bent's Fort, in what is now Colorado, then was moved south to Fort Union, Fort Stanton, and finally, Fort Craig. He steadily rose up the promotion ladder, becoming Captain of Company I, 3rd Cavalry Regiment in August of  1861.

When the Civil War broke out, McRae's father wrote to him, urging him to change sides. ​Captain McRae retained his commission and stayed faithful to his country. His four brothers, James, Thomas, John, and Robert, served the Confederacy. 

As reports began to trickle into New Mexico of a Southern invasion, Colonel Edward R.S. Canby, the commander of forces in New Mexico Territory, hastily formed an artillery battery. He placed six pieces at Fort Craig, the most southerly of the forts held by the Union Army, and gave Captain McRae charge of this unit. 
On the day of the battle, McRae's battery was dragged out of the fort and up toward the small town of Valverde, where a low spot in the Rio Grande created a natural crossing point which the Confederates wished to cross in their march north. McRae’s battery was placed on the western side of the river, and for the morning hours managed to keep the Confederates pinned down behind a sandy berm 800 hundred feet east of the river. During the afternoon, Colonel E.R.S. Canby, the commander of Union forces in New Mexico Territory, ordered the battery to cross the river. Soon after, the Confederates charged the guns. 


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One of the men leading the charge was Samuel A. Lockridge. Lockridge had been a Colonel in the private army of William Walker, an American physician, lawyer, journalist and mercenary, who was trying to establish an English-speaking colony in Nicaragua, but he and Walker had parted ways before Walker was defeated by a coalition of Central American armies and executed. He was also part of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret Southern society that advocated the extension of Southern institutions into new territory. When the Civil War broke out, Lockridge joined the Fifth Texas Cavalry, one of the divisions in Sibley’s Army of New Mexico. He was given the rank of Major.    

At the Battle of Valverde, Lockridge led one of the in three separate waves that stormed the Union battery.  Screaming the Rebel yell, the nearly 750 man force advanced on the guns. Athough they were armed with only short-range shotguns, pistols, muskets, and bowie knives, the Confederates had been told to dive to the ground whenever they saw a flash from the artillery. This strategy made them appear to be suffering a high casualty rate even though they avoided being hit. This spooked the men manning the Union guns, particularly the inexperienced and ill-trained New Mexico Volunteers. Both Volunteers and regular Army broke and splashed across the Rio Grande in a disorganized retreat.

Once the Texans reached the battery, fierce hand-to-hand fighting ensued among the remaining Union soldiers and the advancing Confederates. According to eyewitness accounts, Samuel Lockridge shouted, "Surrender McRae, we don't want to kill you!" McRae supposedly replied, "I shall never forsake my guns!" Soon after, McRae was shot. Some sources suggest that Lockridge himself shot him. 
Supposedly, Lockridge then laid his hand on the muzzle of one of the cannons and shouted “This one is mine!” He was shot dead soon after, perhaps by McRae.

The captured guns went to San Antonio when the Confederate forces retreated. They became known as the Valverde Battery and were used against Union troops for the remainder of the war.

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Because he fought for the Union, McRae's service record went unrecognized in his home state. In their story on the battle at Valverde, the Fayetteville Observer did not even report his death. However, McRae became an honored figure in New Mexico history. There are streets named after him in the New Mexican towns of Las Cruces and Las Vegas, and a canyon named for him in Sierra County. The remains of Fort McRae, a late Civil War and Indian War Army post named for him, now lay beneath the waters of Elephant Butte Lake. I could find some earlier reports of it being a destination for scuba divers, but the adobe walls have probably succumbed to time and water by now.  ​

Alexander McRae's body was exhumed in 1867 and transported to West Point for burial. McRae’s large black tombstone is only four markers away from the one dedicated to George Armstrong Custer. Guides frequently note it as the resting place of one who stayed with the Union.

Lockridge was buried on the battlefield. The whereabouts of the grave is unknown.



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The story of McRae and Lockridge meeting at the battery is told in Jennifer Bohnhoff's historical novel Where Duty Calls. This book is written for middle grade readers and will be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, in June 2022. It is available for preorder here. 

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Of Palaces and Drummer boys

2/23/2022

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PictureAn old post card of the Palace of the Governors, It has looked similar throughout its 400 year history.
I don’t think any other state in the United States has a history museum that’s quite as storied as the one in New Mexico. Housed in a building called The Palace of the Governors, it is the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States.
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The Palace of the Governors was built in 1610, soon after the King of Spain appointed Pedro de Peralta to be the governor of New Mexico. The territory covered most of the American Southwest. Including what is now the states of Texas, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.
In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain and the Palace became the center of administration for the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México.
  

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​It became New Mexico's first territorial capitol on August 14,1846, when General Stephen W. Kearny rode his troops into Santa Fe during the Mexican American War. He claimed the New Mexico Territory for the United States without a shot being fired. 

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The museum houses artifacts dating back to man’s first entrance into the land, thousands of years ago, and it houses artifacts from recent history. These artifacts inspire museum goers to think about what New Mexico was like in the past. One of the artifacts on display, this snare drum, helps inform viewers about the Civil War in New Mexico. During the Civil War, drums were important for giving commands on the battlefield, and drummers were required to learn a standardized system of marches and signals. As the label indicates, this one was found in the Pecos River about a decade after the Battle of Glorieta Pass. 

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Willie, the Confederate Drummer Boy in my novel Where Duty Calls, would have carried a drum similar to this one. Willie is a fictional character, but this is exactly what I think he looked like: small and dark eyed, with a pale, round face. He drummed (at least in my story) during the charge at the Battle of Valverde in which the Confederate forces overtook the Union artillery position commanded by Captain Alexander McRae.

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Although most drummers were actually adult men, some drummers were children.  Some, like John Lincoln Clem, known by the nickname of Johnny Shiloh, ran away to join the army. Clem was only nine years old when he became a drummer boy. He continued in the Army, coming the youngest noncomissioned officer in history and retiring in 1915 as a brigadier general. 

Other boys who served as drummer boys were the sons of soldiers serving in the same unit. Still others, like my Willie, were orphans. An orphan from Louisianna, Willie would have joined the army to be fed and clothed, and to have a sense of belonging.  Like many of the boys who joined young, Willie became a kind of mascot for the men, who made sure that he was taken care of. 


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We Willie the drummer is one of the characters in Jennifer Bohnhoff's trilogy of middle grade novels, Rebels Along the Rio Grande. The first novel,WhereDutyCalls was released in June 2022 by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing. Book 2, The Worst Enemy, will come out in August 2023 and can be preordered here. Book 3, The Famished Country, will be released in 2024.

You can contact Ms. Bohnhoff at [email protected]

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A General with a Plan

2/22/2022

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PictureJemmy and his home, as depicted by illustrator Ian Barstow
The main character Where Duty Calls, my Civil War novel set in New Mexico, is Jemmy Martin, a gentle farm boy from San Antonio, Texas. Jemmy loves his humble home and his family, but has a very special relationship with the farm animals, especially the two mules. 

Jemmy's brother, Drew, is a little flightier. When Drew sneaks into town to join the Confederate army, Jemmy is tasked with finding him and bringing him back. While he is in town, a group of riders passes, and Jemmy is impressed:
 

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​"At their center was a fine-looking man with silver hair that caught the morning sun and made him look as if a halo circled his head. He had a great, bushy mustache, sideburns, and sad, drooping eyes that made Jemmy feel as if this man had seen all the sorrow the world had to offer and had learned how to push through it. Jemmy instantly felt as if he could follow the man anywhere."

The fine-looking man that had impressed Jemmy so well was Confederate Brigadier General Henry H. Sibley, and while Jemmy Martin is a figment of my imagination, General Sibley was a real person who impressed many. Several contemporary records attest to his natural charisma and ability to inspire people with his words.
PictureThe coat of arms of the 2nd Dragoons
Henry Hopkins Sibley' came from a family that had served the United States since its inception. His grandfather, Dr. John Sibley, was a medical assistant in the Revolutionary War. When the war was over, he continued his training and became a surgeon. In 1803, after the United States bought the Louisiana Purchase, he left his native Massachusetts and joined an expedition to the Red River country of western Louisiana. He liked the new territory so well that he moved to Natchitoches, Louisiana, where he worked as a contract surgeon and was an Indian Agent for New Orleans. John Sibley also served as a Senator in the Louisiana State Senate, and was a colonel in the local militia, a cattle farmer, a cotton planter, and a salt manufacturer. His son Samuel Sibley served as a parish clerk.

Henry Hopkins Sibley was born in Natchitoches in 1816. His father, Samuel, died when he was only seven years old, after which lived with an uncle and aunt in Missouri. He was admitted to West Point when he was seventeen, and when he graduated in 1838, he was commissioned as second lieutenant in the 2nd U.S. Dragoons. Between 1840 and 1860 he fought Seminole Indians in Florida, served on the Texas frontier, fought in the Mexican–American War, was involved in trying to control conflict in Bleeding Kansas and quelling a Mormon uprising in Utah. In 1857, Sibley was assigned active service protecting settlers from Navajo and Apache attacks in New Mexico. 

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​During the 1850s, Sibley invented and patented a tent and stove for military purposes. The "Sibley tent", which was inspired by the teepees of Native American Plains Indians, was widely used by both the Union Army and Confederate Armies during the Civil War. The conical Sibley tent stove, pictured on the right side of this tent, was used by the Army into the early years of the second World War. Despite the popularity of both of these inventions, Sibley received little remuneration for them.

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Sibley tents in Camp Columbus, NM in 1916 during the build-up to the Punitive Expedition. The lower skirts have been removed from the one in the foreground to keep the air inside cool.
At the time that the Civil War began, Sibley was stations at Fort Union, in northern New Mexico. Like many soldiers who had been raised in the south, he resigned his commission to join the Confederate Army. Sibley resigned on May 13, 1861, the same day he was promoted to major in the 1st Dragoons. Had he not left, he would have been offered the command of the military department of New Mexico, since the man who had held that position, Colonel William Wing Loring, had also left to take a southern commission. 

Sibley took a stagecoach out of New Mexico. A diary of a Union soldier stationed in Albuquerque says that, while passing through in a stagecoach, Sibley stuck his head out the window and shouted “Boys, I'm the worst enemy you have!”

He passed through Texas and Louisiana on his way to Richmond, Virginia, where he talked Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, into commissioning him as a brigadier general. Davis authorized him to recruit a brigade of volunteers in central and south Texas. Sibley’s plan was to march to El Paso, then occupy New Mexico. From there, he would seize the rich mines of Colorado Territory, turn west through Salt Lake City, and capture the seaports of Los Angeles and San Diego and the California goldfields.

Sibley's battle cry, “On to California!” inspired 2,000 men to join his campaign. By early fall of 1861, Sibley had three regiments of what he named The Army of New Mexico, plus artillery and supply units, camped on the outskirts of San Antonio. One of them, at least in my story, was Jemmy Martin.

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Where Duty Calls is the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War and written for middle grade readers. It is scheduled to be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, on June 14, 2022.

It is available for preorder here.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former New Mexico history teacher. She is a native New Mexican and lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque. 

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160th Anniversary of a Significant Battle

2/21/2022

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PictureBrig. Gen H.H. Sibley
February 21, 2022 is the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Valverde, the first major battle of the American Civil War fought in New Mexico territory. It was a Confederate success, but did not give the invading southern army the advantages it had hoped to attain with such a victory.
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On January 3, 1862, Confederate brigadier general, Henry Hopkins Sibley left El Paso with a little more than three regiments of mounted Texans. This brigade, which he called the Confederate Army of New Mexico, totaled 2,510 officers and men. He headed north, with the intention of defeating the Union forces at Fort Craig, capturing the capital city of Santa Fe, taking the heavily provisioned Fort Union, and then marching into Colorado to take control of the gold and silver mines before finally heading westward to conquer California. If his plan had succeeded, Sibley would have fulfilled the Confederacy’s dreams of Manifest Destiny while giving the south warm water ports on the Pacific and a huge boost to its treasury.

PictureCol. E.R.S. Canby
​Fort Craig, 140 miles north of El Paso, was the first obstacle in Sibley’s path, and taking it was an important objective. Sibley’s army traveled light, with the hope of acquiring food, arms, ammunition, and other supplies as they went. He needed the provisions within Fort Craig to replenish his already dwindling supplies. However, Colonel Edmund R.S. Canby, the commander of Federal troops in New Mexico, was hunkered down in the fort, waiting with 3,800 men. Only 1,200 of Canby's men were professional soldiers. The remainder were militia and volunteers from New Mexico and Colorado. Kit Carson, the famous Indian fighter, mountain man and scout, commanded the largely Hispanic First Regiment of New Mexican volunteers.
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Sibley arrived at Fort Craig in the middle of February. Scouts, fooled by Canby’s use of “Quaker cannons,” logs painted black to imitate artillery pieces, reported that the fort was too heavily fortified to be taken. Hoping to lure the Federals into the open, Sibley moved his men into an arroyo south of the fort. The cautious Canby refused to be provoked. 

PictureThe black line on the horizon is Contadoria Mesa. The battle happened just to the left of it.
When the Confederate supplies could only hold out for a few more days, Sibley decided to abandon his plan to take the fort. Instead, he decided upon a “roundance on Yankeedom,” in which he would cross to the east side of the Rio Grande, flank the fort under cover from surrounding hills, including Contadoria Mesa, then recross the Rio Grande at Valverde ford, six miles north of Fort Craig and continue on to the town of Socorro. Sibley planned to be able to cut Union communications between the fort and their headquarters in Santa Fe this way, making further conquests more achievable. ​

PictureLt. Colonel William Read Scurry
​On the morning of February 21, Sibley sent an advance party consisting of four companies of the Major Charles Pyron’s  2nd Texas Mounted Rifles and Lieutenant Colonel William Read Scurry’s  4th Texas Mounted Rifles to scout the ford at Valverde. To their surprise, Canby had anticipated their move and had secured the ford with cavalry commanded by Major Thomas Duncan. The Texans took cover in an old river bed, which served as an excellent defensive position, with Scurry to Pyron's right, and their artillery on their left. The Confederates possessed numerical superiority, but were armed with short range shotguns and pistols which could not reach the Union positions three hundred yards away. The Confederate howitzers also could not reach the Union artillery, which had remained on the western bank of the river.
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As the day progressed, more soldiers arrived on both sides of the battle line. Colonel Benjamin S. Roberts reinforced the Union cavalry with the 5th New Mexico Infantry.  When Colonel Canby arrived with most of Fort Craig’s remaining garrison, he ordered all but First New Mexico Volunteers under Carson and the Second New Mexico Volunteers under Colonel Miguel Piño to cross to the eastern side of the river. 

PictureMaj Lockridge
​The remainder of the Confederate force, the 5th Texas Mounted Rifles under Colonel Thomas Green and a battalion of the 7th Texas Mounted Rifles under Lieutenant Colonel John Sutton, arrived at the battlefield early that afternoon. Sibley, who had fallen ill, most likely from drinking too much, relinquished command of the brigade to Green, who then handed over command of the 5th Texas over to Major Samuel Lockridge.

PictureIllustration by Ian Bristow in Where Duty Leads.
​Around 2:00 pm, Green authorized the first and last lancer charge of the American Civil War. Using lances they had captured from Mexico during the Mexican-American war, the lancers charged what they thought was an inexperienced company of New Mexico volunteers on the Union extreme right. They expected the New Mexicans to break and run. However, the Union soldiers were actually a company of rough and tumble Colorado miners, who withstood the charge. Twenty of the lancers and almost all of the horses were killed or wounded. 

PictureAn etching from a Harper's Weekly showing McRae defending his guns.
​By 4:00 p.m., when the Union appeared to have the advantage, Canby shifted his lines in order to attack the Confederate left. He ordered one of his batteries and several of his companies, including Carson's First New Mexico Regiment, to cross the river on his right. Unfortunately, weakened the center of the Union line, which Green then attacked with three successive waves which managed to overwhelm the Union guns.  Samuel Lockridge, who led the charge and Alexander McRae, who commanded the guns, were both killed, and six Union artillery pieces were captured as the Union battle line crumbled into a panic-stricken retreat across the river. Canby then sent out a white flag, asking for time to remove the dead and wounded from the battlefield, and moved his forces back into Fort Craig. 

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Map by Matt Bohnhoff. A similar one will appear in Where Duty Calls.
PictureIllustration by Ian Bristow, from Where Duty Calls.
​Since the Union left the Confederate forces in possession of the battlefield, the Battle of Valverde is technically a Confederate victory. However, it was a Pyrrhic victory at best. The Confederates suffered sizable casualties: 36 killed, 150 wounded, and one missing out of their 2,590 men. They  did not capture the fort’s supplies, which they desperately needed. And although they did cut Fort Craig off from their forces in the north, the Confederate supply chain to El Paso was also severed. Finally, the Texans had lost so many horses and mules in the battle and the days preceeding it that the 4th Texas cavalry had to dismount and become infantry and some of the Confederate supply wagons had to be abandoned. These loses, plus those which were to occur in the mountains east of Santa Fe a month later caused the Army of New Mexico to turn back to Texas before they fulfilled their goal. Sibley’s army had won the battle, but lost their war. 

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​The climax of Jennifer Bohnhoff’s novel Where Duty Calls occurs at the Battle of Valverde. Where Duty Calls is the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War and written for middle grade readers. It is scheduled to be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, on June 14, 2022. It is available for preorder here.

​Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former New Mexico history teacher. The native New Mexican lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque. 
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The First Song of the Civil War

2/20/2022

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PictureSoldiers sang a lot while sitting around their campfires. Illustration from Where Duty Calls by Ian Bristow
People sang a lot more at the time of the Civil War than they do now. There were no i-pods, no portable boom boxes, no radios to entertain soldiers as they traveled from place to place or sat around the campfire. Instead, they sang together. Singing helped boost morale and united the soldiers. Robert E. Lee, the greatest general on the Confederate side, said, "I don't think we could have an army without music."

In my middle grade historical novel Where Duty Calls, both the Confederate soldiers and the Union ones, as well as the Spanish-speaking residents of the town of Socorro, sing songs that are authentic to the period.

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​One song that was very popular at the time of the Civil War but not included in Where Duty Calls is "The First Gun is Fired: May God Protect the Right." Written by  George Frederick Root, it is recognized as the first song specifically written for the American Civil War, and was published and distributed just three days after the Battle of Fort Sumter.

"The First Gun is Fired: May God Protect the Right," isn't the most recognizable of Civil War songs to 21st century listeners, but it is likely that every Union soldier would have known it. Root went on to write many other songs that had a war theme. "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!" was also wildly popular at the time of the war. His most enduring song, "The Battle Cry of Freedom," continues to be well known.

The prolific songwriter 
was born August 30, 1820 in Sheffield, Massachusetts. He died in 1895, leaving behind a legacy of church hymns and popular parlor songs.

Here are the lyrics to the Civil War's first song:

1. The first gun is fired!
May God protect the right!
Let the freeborn sons of the North arise
In power’s avenging night;
Shall the glorious Union our father’s have made,
By ruthless hands be sunder’d,
And we of freedom sacred rights
By trait’rous foes be plunder’d?

​Chorus--
Arise! arise! arise!
And gird ye for the fight,
And let our watchword ever be,
“May God protect the right!”

2. The first gun is fired!
Its echoes thrill the land,
And the bounding hearts of the patriot throng,
Now firmly take their stand;
We will bow no more to the tyrant few,
Who scorn our long forbearing,
But with Columbia’s stars and stripes
We’ll quench their trait’rous daring.

3. The first gun is fired!
Oh, heed the signal well,
And the thunder tone as it rolls along
Shall sound oppression’s knell;
For the arm of freedom is mighty still,
But strength shall fail us never,
Its strength shall fail us never,
That strength we’ll give to our righteous cause,
And our glorious land forever.
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Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former New Mexico history teacher. The native New Mexican lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque. 

Her novel Where Duty Calls is the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War and is written for middle grade readers. It is scheduled to be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, on June 14, 2022 and is now available for preorder here
.


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The First - and Last- Lancer Charge of the Civil War

2/16/2022

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Illustration by Ian Bristow from Where Duty Calls.
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​When Confederate Major General H. H. Sibley invaded New Mexico in 1862, he brought with him two companies of lancers.

Handsome and chivalrous heirs of medieval knights, the lancers were the darlings of the parade through San Antonio on the day Sibley's force, which he named the Army of New Mexico headed west. Bright red flags with white stars snapped in the breeze as they rode past. Ladies swooned. Everyone thought the lancers were invincible. 

Lances had been used in battle for a long time. Common on Napoleonic battlefields, and were used by Mexican cavalry during the conflicts against the Texans in the 1830s and 1840s. The lances carried by the two companies that accompanied Sibley into New Mexico were war trophies that had been captured from the Mexicans during the Mexican American War thirteen years earlier.

PictureCol. Thom Green
On February 21, 1862 those two companies, along with the rest of Sibley's forces, had made it well into New Mexico. After finding E.R..S. Canby, the commander of Union forces in New Mexico, unwilling to come out of the heavily fortified Fort Craig, the Confederates had bypassed the fort and made their way to Valverde Ford, a crossing on the Rio Grande several miles north. There, they found Union forces blocking their way. The battle for that crossing, known as the Battle of Valverde, was over by that afternoon.

On the the day of the battle, Confederate Colonel Thomas Green's forces had taken shelter in the curve of a dried oxbow that the river had abandoned. He peered across the battlefield and saw uniforms that he couldn't identify. Knowing they weren't Union regulars, he guessed that these men on the Union extreme right were a company of  inexperienced New Mexico Volunteers whom he expected would break and run if faced with a lancer charge. 

PictureCaptain Lang
Green turned to the commanders of his two lancer companies, Captains Willis Lang and Jerome McCown. He asked which would like to have the honor of the first charge.

The first hand up belonged to the leader of the 5th Texas Cavalry Regiment's Company B.  Captain Willis L. Lang was a rich, 31 year old who owned slaves that worked his plantation near Marlin in Falls County, Texas.

​Lang quickly organized his men. Minutes later, he gave the signal and his company cantered forward, lowered their lances, and began galloping across the 300 yards that divided his men from the men in the unusual uniforms. The plan called for McCown's company to follow after the Union troops had broken, and the two lancer companies would chase the panicking Union men into the Rio Grande that stood at their back.

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But Colonel Green was wrong. The men in the strange uniforms were not New Mexican Volunteers. They were Captain Theodore Dodd’s Independent Company of Colorado Volunteers. Dodd's men were a scrappy collection of miners and cowboys who were reputedly low on discipline but high on fighting spirit. They formed into a defensive square, then coolly waited until the lancers were within easy range. Their first volley unhorsed many of the riders. Their second volley finished the assault. More than half of Lang's men were either killed or wounded, and most of the horses lay dead on the field.

​Lang himself dragged himself back to the Confederate lines because he was too injured to walk. 

Lang's charge was the only lancer charge of the American Civil War. The destruction of his company showed that modern firearms had rendered the ten-foot long weapons obsolete. McCown's men, and what remained of Lang's men threw their lances into a heap and burned them. They then rearmed themselves with pistols and shotguns and returned to the fight.
​
The day after the battle, Lang and the rest of the injured Confederates were carried north to the town of Socorro, where they had requisitioned a house and turned it into a hospital. A few days later, depressed and in great pain, he asked his colored servant for his revolver, with which he ended his suffering. Lang and the other Confederate dead were buried in a plot of land near the south end of town that has now become neglected and trash-strewn. The owners do not allow visitors.  
Picture
This field used to be a Confederate Cemetery.

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The Confederate lancer charge is one of the events detailed in Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel Where Duty Calls, an historical novel for middle grade readers which is scheduled to be released in June 2022 by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing. 

To commemorate the 160th anniversary of the battle, Ms. Bohnhoff is having a Preorder Party for Where Duty Calls from February 20-26th. Anyone who preorders a copy of the book and lets Ms. Bohnhoff know will be entered into drawings for prizes and book bling. 

You can contact Ms. Bohnhoff at [email protected]
Click here to preorder the book.

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Paddy Graydon, Wild and Crazy Spy Captain

2/9/2022

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Picture"A Jurilla" Library of Congress
There aren't too many Civil War characters more colorful Captain James (Paddy) Graydon. He was a hard drinking, disagreeable man who was quick with his fists and short on temper, but his recklessness has earned him a place in American history.

Graydon was born in 1832 Lisnakea a poor, isolated Irish village. He emigrated to the United States to escape the Potato Famine when he was 21 years old. Like many poor immigrants of the time, Graydon joined the army soon after arriving, and was posted to the southwest with the elite 1st Dragoons. They took the Santa Fe, and arrived in New Mexico in August of 1853. Graydon was posted to Los Lunas, a village south of Albuquerque along the Camino Real.

PictureRichard Stoddert Ewell in his Confederate Uniform
Grayson, a fair skinned, blue-eyed man who stood about 5 feet 7 inches tall, was quick to adapt to the rigor of military life. Under the command of Richard Stoddert Ewell, a West Point graduate who was to become a general in the Confederate Army, Graydon learned to speak Spanish and Apache. For five years, he fought Mescalero, Chiricahua, and Jicarilla Apaches, Navajos, bandits, renegades, and claim jumpers in an area that stretched from north and south from Santa Fe to the Mexican border and as far west as Fort Buchanan, in what is now Arizona. ​

​When he was discharged from the Army in 1858, the seasoned veteran opened a hotel and saloon a few miles south of Fort Buchanan in Sonoita, Arizona. The whitewashed adobe, which became known as “Casa Blanca,” or “The White House,” attracted a rough crowd of patrons. His establishment boasted round-the-clock poker games and housed the region’s top prostitutes. But all this was still too sedate for Graydon, who tracked horse thieves and murderers, rescued captives from the Indians, and guided army patrols and U. S. military expeditions in his spare time.

In 1861, when Confederate General Henry H. Sibley threatened to bring the Civil War into New Mexico, Graydon abandoned Casa Blanca and rode to Santa Fe to offer his services to the Union. Territorial Governor Henry Connelly awarded him with a commission to recruit a company of spies that would operate virtually independently of the Army. Graydon rounded up 100 of the “hardest cases” he could find, then reported to Colonel E.R.S Canby, the Commander of the Army in the territory, at Fort Craig. Many of the men Graydon recruited were former patrons of his saloon. They were an undisciplined lot, mean and nasty, but very good at collecting information and doing the kind of sabotage work that regular Army soldiers could not. Canby gave Grayson the mission of infiltrating the Confederate lines and sending back news about troop movements and numbers. 
Picture
​There are no pictures of Graydon or of his Company of spies, but the Library of Congress sketch entitled "A Jurilla" that is shown at the top of this article is probably a good representation of what a member of the spy company would look like.  They wore no uniforms, rarely bathed, and refused to participate in parades and drills like regular soldiers. The bottom corners of this lithograph, from an April 9, 1863 Harper's Weekly, shows a company of spies taking two sentries prisoners. Graydon's spies did this kind of work. They were also well known for wandering into the Confederate camp and sitting around the campfires, drinking coffee and gathering information.

But the action that Graydon is most famous for happened on a bitterly cold night in February, 1862. Sibley's Confederate Army was encamped about four miles east of Fort Craig, where Canby's Army and a large number of New Mexico Volunteers awaited. Under cover of darkness, Graydon and four of his roughest men left the fort and crossed the icy Rio Grande. When they got close to the corral that enclosed Sibley's pack train, Graydon lit the fuses on pack boxes filled with explosives that he had put on two old mules, then shooed them towards the Confederate lines.
Picture
From Steve Cottrell's book Civil War in Texas and New Mexico Territory.
Graydon's scheme did not go as planned. His mules turned back. As Graydon and his men rode for their lives, the explosives blew up, killing no one but the mules they were attached to. However, the explosion caused Confederate pack mules to stampede down to the Rio Grande, where Union troops rounded them up. The Confederate Army lost over 100 animals, and had to abandon many of the supplies that they desperately needed if they were going to conquer New Mexico and the rich gold fields of Colorado and California. Graydon’s outrageous scheme had not stopped the Confederate invasion of New Mexico, but it had seriously crippled it.
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also from Steve Cottrell's book Civil War in Texas and New Mexico Territory.
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Graydon continued to command his spy company for another year and a half. In October of 1862, he was involved in an altercation with Mescalero Apaches at Gallinas Springs. At least eleven Apaches, including their Chief, Manuelito, were killed. The next month, he was in Fort Stanton when Dr. John Marmaduke Whitlock, an Army surgeon and Graydon got into a fight over the killings. Whitlock shot Graydon, and then Graydon’s men shot Whitlock. Graydon is buried in the Veteran’s cemetery in Santa Fe. 


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James Graydon is one of the historical people who appear in Where Duty Calls, an historical fiction novel for middle grade readers by Jennifer Bohnhoff. It will be published in June 2022 by Kinkajou Press, an imprint of Artemesia Publishing.

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    ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

    I am a former middle school teacher who loves travel and history, so it should come as no surprise that many of my books are middle grade historical novels set in beautiful or interesting places.  But not all of them.  I hope there's one title here that will speak to you personally and deeply.

    What I love most: that "ah hah" moment when a reader suddenly understands the connections between himself, the past, and the world around him.  Those moments are rarified, mountain-top experiences.



    Can't get enough of Jennifer Bohnhoff's blogs?  She's also on Mad About MG History.  

    ​
    Looking for more books for middle grade readers? Greg Pattridge hosts MMGM, where you can find loads of recommendations.

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