Civil War Historian to Speak on March 1

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. Drawing on material from her book, The Three-Cornered War (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2021), Dr. Nelson will describe four phases of warfare in this often-overlooked theater, explaining how U.S. troops were able to push the Confederates back to Texas without winning a single battle. She will then talk about how, in the fall of 1862, U.S. troops under General James Henry Carleton turned their attention to extermination campaigns against Chiricahua Apaches and Navajos. She will introduce several of the protagonists in her book—including Carleton, Confederate officer John Baylor, and the Navajo civilian Juanita—and discuss several of the sources she used to write about their wartime actions and experiences.

Order your copy of The Three-Cornered War from your favorite book retailer and get it signed at the program.

A.K. Smiley Public Library is located at 125 W. Vine Street in Redlands. This program is free and open to the public. To view from home, please use the following link on the day of the program: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81873723684?pwd=GEJxY2LiAl2G5Bn9DjaOCoLaRNQj4y.1. For more information on Dr. Nelson, visit News & Events at www.lincolnshrine.org. If you have any questions, please contact the Heritage Room at (909)798-7632. Program subject to change.

About the Speaker…

Megan Kate Nelson is a historian and writer based in Boston, with a BA from Harvard and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa. She is the author of four books, including Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America (Scribner 2022; winner of the 2023 Spur Award for Historical Non-Fiction) and The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (Scribner 2020; 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist in History). Dr. Nelson writes about the Civil War, the U.S. West, and American culture for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Slate, and TIME. She is the 2024-2025 Rogers Distinguished Fellow in Nineteenth-Century American History at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.