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Secretarial signature of President James Buchanan on printed and handwritten document.  1pg. 10 x 16”. Washington DC, Jan. 3, 1860. Assigned on verso to James M. Love. Signed by Buchanan’s Secretary, P.B.Leonard and M. Granger, Record of the General Land Office.  Such official documents concerning Hispanic Army officers from New Mexico in the antebellum period are rare.

Famed during the Civil War because it boasted more officers of Hispanic descent than any other regiment of the Union Army – and because one of its non-Hispanic officers was the legendary Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson – the New Mexico Volunteers, as this document attests, predated that conflict, being active in suppression of “Indian disturbances” of the 1850s. Captain Sanchez was an officer of one of those early companies, remaining in service during the battle against the Confederates who invaded New Mexico in 1862, and probably in the campaigns against the Apache and Navajo that followed. His Second regiment was commanded by Major Manuel Pino, while the First was led by Carson himself.

The transfer of this land recorded on the docketing note is a bit mysterious because the recipient, James M. Love, was a politician and federal judge in Iowa. And very faintly written in the margin in pencil is “Hon. Charles Mason, Burlington, Iowa”, another Iowa politician and judge who headed the US Patents Office under President Pierce, and during the Civil War, led the anti-Lincoln Democratic National Committee.