In the summer of 1861, Confederate troops invaded New Mexico from Texas, hoping to conquer that territory and then launch a campaign to win the entire West. Megan Kate Nelson, the author of the new book The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, explains why and how the far West became an important theater of the Civil War, and introduces its participants: men and women, Union soldiers and Confederate Texans, as well as Navajos and Apaches, and New Mexico civilians. Several of the major figures in the book, including Louisa Hawkins Canby, had Kentucky connections; Dr. Nelson’s talk will highlight the Canby Papers and other collections at the Filson Historical Society that helped her to tell their stories. “When the Civil War Went West” will illuminate a little-known chapter in Civil War and U.S. Western history.

Megan Kate Nelson was born and raised in Colorado; she is now a writer and historian living in Lincoln, Massachusetts. She earned her BA from Harvard University in History and Literature and her PhD from Iowa in American Studies. Her new book, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, was published by Scribner in February 2020. This project was the recipient of a 2017 NEH Public Scholar Award and a 2017 Filson Historical Society Fellowship. 

This event will be broadcast live online via Zoom, the cloud-based video conferencing provider, free of charge for the public.