By Kristen Kauffman

In celebration of America’s 250^th birthday, Sharlot Hall Museum is drawing attention to Arizona’s involvement in American milestones. Many of our readers know that the histories of Prescott and Tucson are tied to the American Civil War.

Even before the Civil War, there were efforts to establish Arizona as a territory separate from New Mexico.  The territorial capital, Santa Fe, was so remote that administration was cumbersome and unreliable.  War created an urgency.  In April, 1861, the Confederate government declared New Mexico and Arizona to be territories of the Confederacy and sent an invading army.  Union forces from California countered the threat, and on May 2, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the act creating Arizona Territory.  To prove that timing is everything, the Joseph R. Walker party discovered gold in the Bradshaw Mountains in 1863.  Because Tucson and southern Arizona were known to be sympathetic to the Confederacy, the territory’s first governor, John N. Goodwin, established the new capital at Prescott, adjacent to the gold fields and next door to the Union’s Fort Whipple.  In 1867, with the war over,  Governor Goodwin’s successor, Richard McCormick, moved the capital south to Tucson, still the territory’s most populous city.