Enchanting Stories of New Mexico - New Mexico boundaries and a funny incident

The Fresh Chile Company Podcast

After the Mexican-American War ended in 1848 Congress wrestled with the slavery issue. The compromise addressed slavery in the newly established territories. President Millard Fillmore signed five bills that first allowed California to enter the United States as a state without slavery. The state of Texas had its northern and western borders defined giving back to New Mexico what is now Eastern New Mexico. Utah was established as a territory as was New Mexico which didn’t have a restriction on being free or a slave state. It is hard to realize that at the time New Mexico was established as a United States territory there was not what we now call Arizona. New Mexico all the way went from Texas to California. If you lived in Yuma, when it was in, New Mexico and needed to go to the capital of New Mexico, that was a 660-mile trip by buckboard, walking or horseback. No trains yet and paved highways wasn’t even dreamt yet. It would be a month or more of travel. Twelve years later the Confederate soldiers took over southern New Mexico and they went west and designated a state they called Arizona. California volunteers for the Union pushed the Confederates out of New Mexico but Abraham Lincoln like it being two states so the territory of Arizona was voted in Congress. New Mexico had some of what is now Colorado, and it was restored to Colorado. The first thing New Mexico needed was well defined boundaries, but it took a while for that.

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