Chasing the Santa Fe Ring: Power and Privilege in Territorial New Mexico
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Book Overview
Winner of the 2015 Gaspar P rez de Villagr Award from the Historical Society of New Mexico
Winner of the 2014 Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association
Anyone who has even a casual acquaintance with the history of New Mexico in the nineteenth century has heard of the Santa Fe Ring-seekers of power and wealth in the post-Civil War period famous for public corruption and for dispossessing landholders. Surprisingly, however, scholars have alluded to the Ring but never really described this shadowy entity, which to this day remains a kind of black hole in New Mexico's territorial history. David Caffey looks beyond myth and symbol to explore its history. Who were its supposed members, and what did they do to deserve their unsavory reputation? Were their actions illegal or unethical? What were the roles of leading figures like Stephen B. Elkins and Thomas B. Catron? What was their influence on New Mexico's struggle for statehood? Caffey's book tells the story of the rise and fall of this remarkably durable alliance.
Caffey's book tells the story of the rise and fall of this remarkably durable alliance. The author examines the group's formative period and the cooperative ventures of presumed Ring members in acquiring land grants and public lands, stock raising, banking, railroad building, mining, and government contracting. He explores the ways they procured and maintained political control through much of the territorial period. In some ways the Santa Fe Ring was typical of Gilded Age business and politics and of the nature of U.S. territorial administration. Caffey's book is a study in the exercise and abuse of economic and political power in a culturally diverse western territory.
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