Henry Hopkins Sibley (25 May 1816-23 August 1886) was a brigadier-general in the Confederate States Army and Egyptian Army who commanded Confederate forces during the New Mexico campaign of the American Civil War.
Biography[]
Henry Hopkins Sibley was born in Natchitoches, Louisiana in 1816, a distant cousin of Henry Hastings Sibley. He graduated from West Point in 1838 and served in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican-American War, after which he invented the Sibley tent while serving on the Texas frontier. He later served in Bleeding Kansas and the Utah War, only to resign his commission on 13 May 1861 in order to join the Confederacy at the start of the American Civil War. He took command of a cavalry brigade in West Texas and planned to capture New Mexico and then the gold and silver mines of Colorado. He defeated the Union Army at the Battle of Valverde on 20-21 February 1862 before capturing Albuquerque and Santa Fe in early March. However, his supply train was destroyed at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, and the arrival of the California Column forced Sibley to retreat to Fort Bliss. He went on to lead the Arizona Brigade in Louisiana before being court martialed for alcoholism in 1863. After the war, he was hired by Egypt as a military advisor, but he was again dismissed due to his alcoholism. He retired to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he died in poverty in 1886.