Across The Fence: Battle of Valverde and The Texas Lancers

From the first shot fired upon the Union ship "Star of the West" at Fort Sumter, to the last shot fired from the Confederate warship the "CSS Shenandoah" near the Aleutian Islands, nearly 700,000 Union and Confederate soldiers would lay buried on or near the hundreds of battlefields from the banks of the Missouri to the eastern seaboard.

Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Bull Run, Manassas and scores more sound familiar to most who are scholars of the Civil War battles. But for every major battle there were perhaps a dozen minor skirmishes that claimed far fewer casualties but were...