New Mexico Territory Information & New Mexico Territory Links at HealthHaven.com

	Territory of New Mexico
	Organized incorporated territory of the United States
	Flag
	A map of the Arizona and New Mexico territories, showing existing counties.
Capital	Santa Fe
Government	Organized incorporated territory
	Governor
- 1851-1852	James S. Calhoun
- 1910-1912	William J. Mills
Legislature	New Mexico Territorial Legislature
History
- Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo	May 30, 1848
- Organic Act	September 9, 1850
- Gadsden Purchase	June 24, 1853
- Arizona Territory split off	February 24, 1863
- Statehood	January 6, 1912

The Territory of New Mexico was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from September 9, 1850, until January 6, 1912, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of New Mexico.

[edit] Statehood proposals

The Congressional Compromise of 1850 halted a bid for statehood under a proposed antislavery constitution.

The status of slavery during the territorial period provoked considerable debate. The granting of statehood was up to a Congress sharply divided on the slavery issue. Some (including Stephen A. Douglas) maintained that the territory could not restrict slavery, as under the earlier Missouri Compromise, while others (including Abraham Lincoln) insisted that older Mexican legal traditions, which forbade slavery, took precedence. Regardless of its official status, slavery was rare in antebellum New Mexico. Black slaves never numbered more than about a dozen^[1].

The South refused House Republicans' proposal approved by committee on December 29, 1861 to admit New Mexico as a state immediately. ^[2] On 24 February 1863, during the American Civil War, Congress divided the territory and created the new Arizona Territory along current boundaries between the states. The act of establishment abolished slavery in the Arizona Territory.

[edit] Territorial evolution

Gadsden Purchase 1853^[3]

New Mexico Territory 1866

Mexico ceded the region to the U.S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, except for the area of the Gadsden Purchase of 1853. This added today's southern Arizona and a smaller area in today's southwestern New Mexico.^[4] Texas claimed (but never controlled) the area from the Rio Grande to the present New Mexico-Texas border, bisecting historic New Mexico and slightly over half of today's New Mexico, until ceding it as part of the Compromise of 1850. This awarded Texas El Paso and the Texas Panhandle, which had been parts of the Spanish and Mexican territories of Santa Fe de Nuevo México.

The original 1850 New Mexico Territory included most of future Arizona (known as Santa Ana County), a small part of Colorado, and Nevada south of 36° 30' N.^[5] The establishment of Colorado Territory on February 28, 1861 and of Arizona Territory on February 24, 1863 (west of the 109th meridian) left New Mexico with its present boundaries.^[6]

[edit] Civil War

As the route to California, New Mexico and Arizona were disputed territory during the American Civil War, resulting in Gadsden settlers willingly joining the Confederate States of America. The Battle of Glorieta Pass gave the area primarily to the Union. Confederate Arizona Territory was the first American incarnation of Arizona.^[7]