Rugged and Sublime: The Civil War in Arkansas 1557283567, 1557283575

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Contributors
Preface
Introduction: The Cultural Landscape of Arkansas in 1860
1861: ''The Die Is Cast''
1862: ''A Continual Thunder''
1863: ''We Must Stand or Fall Alone''
1864: ''A Strange, Wild Time''
1865: ''A State of Perfect Anarchy''
Appendix: Civil War Sites
Notes
Index

Citation preview

Rugged and Sublime

Rug ged and Sublime THE CIVIL WAR IN ARKANSAS

Edited by Mark K. Christ

The University of Arkansas Press Fayetteville 1994

Copyright 1994 by the Department of Arkansas Heritage All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America 02 01 00 99 98

5 4 3

Designed by John Coghlan

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials 239.48-1984.8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rugged and sublime: the Civil War in Arkansas / edited by Mark Christ. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexs. ISBN 1-55728-356-7 (alk. paper). -ISBN 1-55728-357-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Arkansas-History-Civil War, 1861-1865. I. Christ, Mark. E496.9.R84 1994 973.7'09767-dc20 94-15017 CIP

Contents List of Contributors Preface

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ix

Introduction xi Kenneth Story 1861: "The Die Is Cast" Carl Moneyhon

1

1862: "A Continual Thunder" William L. Shea

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1863: "We Must Stand or Fall Alone" Thomas A. DeBlack 1864: ''A Strange, Wild Time" Daniel E. Sutherland

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1865: ''A State of Perfect Anarchy" Carl Moneyhon Appendix 163 Notes 173 Index 197

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Contributors Mark K. Christ is the Director of Development for the Department of Arkansas Heritage in Little Rock, where he is coordinating Arkansas's involvement in the American Battlefield Protection Program. He formerly worked as a reporter and editor at the Memphis Commercial Appeal and the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock. Thomas A. DeBlack is a graduate of Southern Methodist University currently completing the Ph.D. program in history at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He is specializing in the history of the American South and is writing his dissertation on the history of the Johnson family of Lakeport Plantation in Chicot County, Arkansas. Carl Moneyhon is a professor of history at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. He has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and the Lucille Westbrook Award of the Arkansas Historical Association for his studies of Arkansas history. His previous works include The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on Arkansas, 1850-1874: Persistence in the Midst of Ruin, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, and a series of books that he has coauthored entitled Portraits of Conflict. William L. Shea is a professor of history at the University of Arkansas, Monticello. He is the author of The Virginia Militia in the Seventeenth Century and coauthor of Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West. Kenneth Story is the National Register/Survey Coordinator at the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program in Little Rock, a position he has held since 1988. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Fine Arts with a concentration in the history of American architecture from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Arts from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

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Contributors

Daniel E. Sutherland is a professor of history at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He is the author or editor of four books on American history, including Reminiscences ofa Private: William E. Bevens ofthe First Arkansas Infantry, C. S.A.

Preface When one thinks of the American Civil War, such names as Vicksburg, Gettysburg, or Chancellorsville come immediately to mind. Few people remember the fighting at Ditch Bayou, Poison Spring, Cache River, or Helena, though these too were desperate struggles where American fought American with the same fury as their cousins fought east of the Mississippi River. While often denigrated as a side show to the big show in the East, it must be remembered that thousands of soldiers fought and died in Arkansas and the Trans-Mississippi theater, civilians here suffered the privations of war, and this region, too, was devastated for decades following the war. According to the National Park Service, there were at least 771 Civil War military actions in Arkansas-a relatively high number of the 10,000 or so engagements recorded throughout the course of the war. Many of the places where these actions took place have been lost to development. Others, simply forgotten over the years, lie waiting to be rediscovered, looking much as they did when they sat in mute witness to terrible engagements. When the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program became involved in the Secretary of the Interior's American Battlefield Program in 1990, among the first tasks identified was the need to promote education on the important role Arkansas played in the Civil War and the need to preserve those sites where armies clashed. This volume is intended as a starting point for that education. This book is also part of a larger, ongoing program, the development of the Arkansas Civil War Heritage Trail, which will bring public and private groups together to locate, interpret, protect, and preserve battlefields and other Civil War-related properties in Arkansas before they are lost forever. Many people have shared their time and expertise in the creation of this book. Special thanks to the following people: Cathy Slater, Don Baker, and Kim Gable of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program; Richard Davies of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism and

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Preface

Bobby Roberts, who both helped in every phase of the project from conception to publication; T. Harri Baker and Jerry Russell for their service on the project review committee; Jamye Landis and Tommy Jameson of the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas; Barbara Heffington of the Department of Arkansas Heritage; Steve Scallion; Willard B. Gatewood, Charles West, and Betty Jo Hayes of the Department of Arkansas Heritage Publications Revolving Fund Committee; Linda Pine of the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, Special Collections: Department; Thomas E. "Pete" Jordan of the Washington County Historical Society; Ed Smith of Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park; Steve Adams and Doug Keller of Pea Ridge National Military Park; Pamela Smith and Stan Graves at Arkansas State Parks; Miller Williams and Scot Danforth of the University of Arkansas Press; and Robert E. Bailey of the Arkansas Humanities Council for his assistance and support throughout this project. Thanks are also due to Ken Story, Carl Moneyhon, William L. Shea, Tom DeBlack, and Dan Sutherland for their hard work and patience in preparing their chapters. William L. Shea wishes to thank Earl J. Hess of Lincoln Memorial University. Tom DeBlack wishes to gratefully acknowledge the following persons for their aid in preparing his chapter: Kim Scott, the head of processing services for the special collections division at the University of Arkansas, on ·the Battle of Fayetteville; Ron Phelps of Malden, Missouri, on the Battle of Chalk Bluff; Ronnie Nichols, director of the Old State House Museum in Little Rock, on the Battle of Helena; Larry Puckett of Fort Smith on the Battle of Devil's Backbone; Bill Cotham of Scott and Talmage Deeter of Little Rock on the Little Rock Campaign; James Ginnett and Lynn Gaines of Pine Bluff on the Battle of Pine Bluff; Dan Sutherland for general assistance; and Kathy Nutt of the Razorback Academic Support Staff at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, for editing and typing. This project is supported in part through a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Mark K. Christ Department of Arkansas Hertitage

Introduction: The

Cultural Landscape of Arkansas in 1860 Kenneth Story Arkansas Historic Preservation Program In spite of the relatively dramatic increase in population and the booming economic prosperity that prevailed throughout most of the state in the decade before the Civil War, Arkansas remained largely rural by 1860, as were virtually all the states in the Union at that time. Any real urbanization of the state occurred after the Civil War with the arrival of a steadily growing and expanding statewide railroad network and the virtual revolution it brought in both settlement patterns and the state's economic structure. This predominantly rural character was certainly encouraged by considerable abundance of rich agricultural land, located pristate's the marily in the Mississippi Alluvial Plain to the east, the Gulf Coastal Plain to the south, and the Arkansas River Valley, which runs roughly northwest between Little Rock and the state's western border. Many of the smaller valleys nestled within both the Ozark plateau to the north and the Ouachita Mountains to the west also supported considerable agricultural activity. Yet, it was the status of the state's principal transportation networks that had the greatest influence upon the -cultural landscape of the state before the onset of the Civil War, and so it is with these transportation networks that any understanding of the cultural landscape must begin. The first Europeans to arrive in the area that would later be the state of Arkansas, like the Native Americans who lived there before them, came via boats that plied the state's navigable rivers. Most of these

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Introduction

rivers run roughly west to east and empty into the Mississippi River, and European settlers established settlements along their banks. 1 The first permanent, documented community was Arkansas Post, located on the northern banks of the Arkansas River approximately twenty-five miles north of its confluence with the Mississippi. The other permanent settlements of the early nineteenth century-Davidsonville, Batesville, and Little Rock-also clung to the banks of the Black, the White, and the Arkansas rivers, respectively. These rivers provided the settlers' principal c~nnection to the outside world at a time when Arkansas was still a wilderness and very much a part of the American frontier. These early settlements tended to have a necessarily defensive character, due not only to the frequent presence of hostile Indians but also to the violent and lawless pioneer atmosphere that prevailed throughout Arkansas Territory. Simple, rude structures, usually constructed of hewn logs, were surrounded by walled fortifications of various construction. As the nineteenth century proceeded, the purchase of the Louisiana Territory by President Thomas Jefferson and the subsequent forced removal by the United States government of Native-American populations from the southeastern United States largely eliminated the need for the defensive features of these settlements. However, the rivers remained their principal lifeline for settlement and, as importantly, for commerce. While some of the earliest known European explorers of the central United States-Hernando DeSoto and Francisco Coronado, for example-were drawn by fantastic myths boasting of the vast wealth to be found there, more sober and hard-working visitors, such as hunters and trappers, found an abundance of other riches. Furs and hides, in particular, were among the chief incentives, as they brought very good money if they could be shipped back to the cities of both the eastern United States and Europe. Reports of the land's natural bounty resulted in a governmental system that saw the earliest territorial governors at Arkansas Post-French, Spanish, and later American-function not only as agents of their respective governments but also as entrepreneurs and capitalists who were expected and encouraged to exploit whatever riches the land offered. Therefore, a market aspect also characterized many of these communities. Among the governmental, military, and residential buildings were also interspersed mercantile buildings and other complementary service businesses, though many structures fre-

Kenneth Story

XtU

quently served several uses simultaneously; e.g., a residence might also have served as an inn, a tavern, a post office, or a public meeting hall. c::;:::::::=y

The early years of the Arkansas Territory, which was created in 1819, heralded a gradual increase in the establishment of more commercially oriented communities, including Arkadelphia-which, like Batesville and Little Rock, was located at the intersection of both major navigable inland waterways and principle overland routes-and Fayetteville, which began as one of the larger regional communities in the northwestern part of the territory that lay strategically on several overland roads and stage routes that ran between southwestern Missouri and the Indian Territory to the west. 2 These communities grew largely through their regional importance as commercial and transportation hubs that served the growing populations around them and not by virtue of their military, protective capacity. Thus, all of these early territorial cities and towns featured the first organized commercial "downtowns" in the state, downtowns that consisted typically of both brick structures and wood-frame buildings constructed with common party walls to form a continuous streetscape of commercial enterprises. In Little Rock, for example, the main commercial section of the downtown was organized in a T shape, with the top formed by Markham Street, which ran east-west along the south bank of the Arkansas River, and the bottom formed by Main Street, the principal downtown avenue that ran north-south from Markham toward the residential area. Markham also served as the local section of the Southwest Trail, the principal overland route between St. Louis, Missouri, and Texas. Due to its location directly adjacent to the river bank, Markham Street featured wharves and warehouses on its northern side and a variety of other commercial concerns-offices, hotels, taverns, and mercantile stores-on its southern side. A more strictly mercantile and service character defined Main Street, as it hosted such businesses as livery stables, blacksmiths, more hotels, and various professional offices. This T-shaped commercial street plan was common for growing river towns in Arkansas during the early territorial and statehood periods, though it was by no means the only commercial plan, and the physical growth of such communities prior to the Civil War only extended outward from this downtown core without essentially changing it.

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Introduction

The advent of such transportation technologies as the steam engine and the various freight vessels employed to transport large quantities of ·goods along the state's waterways only increased the flow of river traffic during the middle of the century. Given the railroad's tentative foothold in the state in the years immediately preceding the Civil War, the state's navigable waterways remained the principal transportation and settlement avenues through 1860. Overland routes had existed since the earliest European settlement, though these were aiways less popular due to the arduous terrain and uncertain seasonal weather frequently encountered along these routes. 3 The Southwest Trail, by far the most famous of these overland routesthough not the first 4-ran from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Texas Territory, following the southeastern edges of both the Ozark plateau and Ouachita Mountain escarpments. However, this trail was frequently dangerous. Even after the threat of Indian attacks was eliminated, the traveler faced the possibility of floods that rendered miles of the trail impassable at its frequent river crossings, or the prospect oflittle, if any, game during droughts. Finally, there was virtually no official, regular maintenance of these roadways at any level, the only exception being the private toll roads and ferry crossings where the owner's self-interest motivated him to keep his particular facility clear and in good condition. 5 Yet, here again, the most successful and widely used overland routes tended to follow the river and creek valleys, where the terrain was less severe and where there was more level land. ~

The development of an active and organized plantation economy did not occur until about 1850. 6 But a plantation economy had been evolving since the first settlements had begun to spread out into the fertile lands that frequently surrounded them, particularly in the eastern and southern sections of the state. Most of the arable land throughout the state was forested when the first European settlers arrived and hence, was unfit for agricultural cultivation; yet, once the settlers felt sufficiently comfortable with their increasingly civilized surroundings to invest the considerable labor required, they proceeded apace with the massive undertaking of clearing the land. 7 Through the sweat and toil of these early yeoman farmers, enormous tracts of land in the state's

Kenneth Story

xv

eastern and southern sections were cleared and made ready for planting, 8 as were the valleys and plateaus of the upland areas to the north and west, though on a necessarily smaller scale. This clearing process radically changed the appearance of large areas of the state, transforming entire regions of dense virgin forest into cleared fields that were ready for cultivation. The plantation system took hold in the 1840s and 1850s. The typical plantation was occupied by a single, white family of European ancestry and a number of slaves of African ancestry who served primarily as field hands in the planting and picking of cotton. Cotton was the single crop that rendered this entire agricultural system viable. The physical make-up of the plantation typically consisted of a principal residence for the owners that was surrounded by an assortment of such support structures as kitchens, privies, smokehouses, equipment storage buildings, root cellars, domestic livestock shelters, blacksmith shops, and barns of various types. In addition, the slaves lived nearby, though in a separate community, within more unfinished, crude structures. Other common structures related to the practice of cotton farming included wagon and cotton storage sheds, livestock barns for draught animals, and seed bins. Though the plantation system as such was largely limited to the Delta and to the Gulf Coastal Plain regions of the state, it should be noted that not only did significant agricultural production occur in the upland river valleys elsewhere, but also that there were some plantations in such areas as northwest Arkansas and north-central Arkansas. However, due to the relatively poor soil and climactic conditions for the growing of cotton on a large scale in the upland regions of the state, cotton farming as a commercial enterprise never took hold there as it did in the lowland sections. As a result, the crop production in these regions was far more diversified, and the land was made to grow such crops as wheat, corn, and other foodstuffs that served both domestic and commercial uses. Much of the land was turned into pasturage for livestock. Since the institution of slavery made economic sense only within the context of a cotton-growing plantation system, the AfricanAmerican population remained largely in the lowland areas. Industrial development in Arkansas prior to the Civil War-even during the booming prosperity of the decade immediately preceding its onset-remained largely limited to the processing of cotton and cleared lumber. Other industries commonly associated with Arkansas history-

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Introduction

such as commercial timber harvesting, mining, and petroleum exploration-experienced their greatest and most commercially viable period of growth after the turn of the century. In fact, until that time, Arkansas was never known as a particularly popular state for industry. 9 Yet, this is not to say that industry did not exist before the Civil War. On the contrary, industrial processing facilities existed all over the state; however, what must be understood is that they served small, local economies and, therefore, their operations and facilities were small-scale. Sawmills and grist~ills were probably the first industrial facilities to be constructed in Arkansas, and these, of necessity, were always constructed adjacent to a river or stream of sufficient flow to provide power. As land was cleared and crops were produced, local residents brought their lumber to the sawmill to make sawn lumber for construction and they brought their wheat to the gristmill to make flour for bread and other domestically prepared foodstuffs. A number of sawmills were constructed in the southern third of the state, probably due to the proportionately high number of rivers and streams that pass through it on their way to the Mississippi River from the uplands to the north and west. Gristmills were constructed throughout the state and were located upon streams of all sizes. By far the most prevalent industry, however, was cotton processing, which required important auxiliary facilities. The most common cotton-processing facility was the cotton gin, usually a structure that did little more than shelter the ginning equipment and the cotton being processed. Like the sawmills and gristmills, the gin buildings before the Civil War were of braced-frame construction and were sheathed with wood shingles on the roof and with vertical planks on the exterior walls. Like the mills, they were typically two stories high, a requirement of the cotton ginning and loading process. And though communal ginswhere local farmers could cart their raw cotton to have it ginned for a fee or a percentage of their profits-became popular after the Civil War, the larger size and self-sufficiency of the average pre-Civil War plantation demanded the construction ofits own gin. c:;::::::==r

Organized religion was surprisingly well established by 1860, in spite of the hardships that routinely attended travel throughout the state.

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In 1838, German traveler Friedrich Gerstaecker mentioned the presence of traveling "preachers" in even the most rural areas, 10 and Little Rock could boast of its first church building as early as 1829, though the congregation had formed five years earlier (as the earliest documented religious services were performed by itinerant preachers in private homes, so too formally established congregations tended to conduct their initial services in the private homes of members until the construction of a new building). 11 By 1850 Little Rock-by far the largest permanent community in the state during the years prior to the Civil War-was able to boast of active congregations of Presbyterians, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and a congregation identified only as a "Christian Church." 12 Other communities of any size and concentration usually contained at least one house of religious worship, and frequently several distinct congregations thrived in even small towns. Yet, it should be noted that the considerable growth and statewide pervasiveness of formal religion in Arkansas prior to the Civil War was almost entirely a Christian phenomenon. In fact, the nonChristian element within the state was almost exclusively limited to a small number ofJews, most of whom were merchants and traders, who stayed for only a relatively short time. 13 Formal education, both public and private, seems to have been less consistently established, though it certainly existed and in some surprising forms. 14 In Batesville, a larger community, the Batesville Male and Female Academywas established prior to 1860. The academy was apparently a Presbyterian school that was later incorporated into what would become Arkansas College, a private, sectarian undergraduate institution. 15 In 1850 the small community of Tulip in Dallas County observed the founding of the Arkansas Military Institute and the Tulip Female Collegiate Seminary, a private, co-ed secondary boarding school. 16 Exclusively women's schools could be found as early as 1836 with the establishment of a women's seminary in Fayetteville, while other communities around the state-Washington, Camden, and Little Rock among them-also hosted women's schools during the antebel· lum period.17 Enterprising educators like Milan W Serl also attempted to set up private "academies" to which parents would send their children by paying tuition to an independent instructor. Serl, a Wisconsin native, came to Arkansas through Missouri and settled in the Eudora area in Chicot

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Introduction

County. After being employed briefly to teach at an established academy some distance away from Eudora, he decided to establish a school closer to home. He apparently met with some success, but his efforts were interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War, which effectively halted formal educational efforts throughout the state. Generally speaking, the larger towns and cities were far more likely to have formally established educational institutions than the smaller, more rural communities that possessed neither the student population to support a school nor the sensitivity to any ~ducational training not already learned at home. Schools such as the one at Tulip-located on what was then a major overland road between the western Arkansas River Valley and southeastern Arkansas-remained more the exception than the rule. ~

The state's architecture prior to the Civil War was not all majestic, columned plantation houses and immaculately manicured grounds. Such residences certainly existed, and though few of them remain today, historic photographs reveal that many such elaborate, high-style houses existed in various parts of the state during this period. By far the most popular style for such construction all over the country was the Greek Revival, a Classical idiom that drew its inspiration directly from the architecture of ancient Greece made popular by the late eighteenthcentury British archeological excavations there. Though many variations and secondary influences are found within buildings of this style, common to most were the horizontal overall proportions and the employment of a heavy Doric colonnade on some part of the principal elevation, usually the entrance portico. Other characteristics common to this style were triangular pediments, "dog-ear" moldings, six-oversix sash windows, and tall, plain friezeboards. The only other formal architectural style that appears in Arkansas before the Civil War is the Italianate, derived largely from Italian Renaissance and Baroque buildings. However, during the antebellum period, the appearance of this style was largely limited to river towns like Little Rock and Helena, where popular architectural tastes arrived from the East Coast earlier than elsewhere. Far more common, however, was the simple, traditional (or "vernacular") folk architecture that most settlers of European background brought from their ancestral settlements farther east. Recent attempts

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XIX

to better understand folk architecture have resulted in the identification of vernacular floor plans, including the single-pen (typically a singlestory, gable-roof building oflog- or wood-frame construction that consisted of a single room with a single chimney placed in the center of one side-gable wall), the double-pen (also usually a single-story building that consisted of two single pens with a comr:non wall, usually connected by an entrance allowing passage between the pens), the saddlebag (a single-story, double-pen structure with a central chimney that featured fireboxes facing into both rooms), and, most common of all, the dog-trot (a single- or double-story structure characterized by a continuous gable roof that sheltered two enclosed pens that flanked a central, open passageway through the full width of the building). The dog-trot plan was especially popular in Arkansas-as it was throughout the entire southeastern region of the United States-because of the utility of the open passageway, which provided occupants with both shade and a natural source of air conditioning since it functioned as a wind tunnel. The oldest known building in the state-the Jacob Wolf House in Norfork (Baxter County)-is a two-story, log dog-trot built by its namesake, one of the earliest settlers of the White River valley. However, the dog-trot plan remained popular for years to come, and some extant examples have documented construction dates as late as the 1890s. Typically, the residence on such properties was only one structure among many, all of which were built by the same craftsman-or the same family-to support the entire farmstead. Subsistence farming to some extent always accompanied any commercial farming and thus supporting outbuildings were also required, as had been the case with the plantations. Here, however, the support structures served the needs of single-family subsistence farming only, as typically most such families could not afford slaves. Thus, the surrounding buildings included a privy or privies, chicken houses, equipment storage buildings, livestock barns (that included hay storage), well houses, root cellars, and various other such support structures, all of which were also constructed by hand. Considered together, these structures formed a living, working farmstead that reflected the particular lifestyle of its residents and created a visual pattern common to rural Southern states. Folk architecture displayed a wide variety of forms, materials, and scale, and it also frequently reflected the particular hand of the craftsman who constructed it. Though far less visually impressive than the larger,

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Introduction

more elaborate residences that have become so inextricably associated with the antebellum South, this rich folk architecture tradition prevailed throughout the state and thus tells us a great deal about the average Arkansan's lifestyle. While the cultural landscape of Arkansas before the Civil War remained primarily rural, the organized exploration, civilization, and settlement of the land that took place over the first few decades of the nineteenth century laid the groundwork for the dramatic expansion and growth of the agricQltural plantation economy that had transformed so much of the state by 1860. An extended pattern of large, commercial cotton plantations covered much of the state's eastern and southern regions; these plantations brought African-American slaves with them, the largest influx of minority settlement in the state prior to the Civil War. Those parts of the state where plantations were less prevalent-the mountainous northern and western sections-nevertheless benefited from the relative calm brought about by the legal authority that necessarily accompanied and protected the plantation system: the organized establishment of first a territorial government and then a state government. In particular, the forced removal of the Native-American populations at the hands of the United States government rendered these areas inhabitable by people of European descent for the first time. Though sparse settlement would be the norm and a more localized and less complex system of subsistence agriculture the prevalent feature of the economy in the north and west, these regions also reflected the influx of European settlement through the small farmstead complexes and even such occasional community buildings as churches or schools.

1861: "The Die Is Cast" Carl Moneyhon University ofArkansas, Little Rock Arkansas confronted a political crisis in the autumn of 1860. The national Union was on the verge of collapse and the course Arkansas should take in such an eventuality was unclear. This crisis had grown out of a decade of increasing tension between the North and the South, but, more immediately, it was the result of the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of the United States. During the campaign, Lincoln had been seen by many Southerners as an abolitionist who was hostile to them and their institutions. John Brown, a merchant in Camden, recognizing the perilous nature of the moment, wrote prior to the election, "The whole nation in a state of agitation about the Presidential election. Serious consequences [are] apprehended if the Northern candidate should be elected." 1 When Lincoln won the election, Brown concluded, "Confidence is lost between different sections and a panic is upon us." 2 Arkansas's future in the Union was now in question. The state of South Carolina took the lead and set a precedent for action by other Southern states on December 20, 1860, when it withdrew from the Union. While most Arkansans were sympathetic with their sister state, they were not certain that they should follow. Some of the state's leaders urged decisive and immediate action in support of South Carolina. On December 21, Gov. Henry M. Rector addressed the state's general assembly and called for secession. "I am convinced," he told the legislators, "that the Union of these States, in this moment is practically severed, and gone forever. "3 The next day the house of representatives passed an act that provided for a state convention to consider action. The senate moved more cautiously, but pressure to act was so great that on January 15, 1861, it approved a convention, too. The

2

1861: "The Die Is Cast"

"I am convinced that the Union of these States, in this moment is practically severed, and gone forever." Gov. Henry M. Rector called for Arkansas to secede from the Union following the secession of South Carolina on December 20, 1860, and later led the state's preparations for war under the banner of the Southern Confederacy. Photo courtesy of UALR Archives

Carl Moneyhon

3

voters were to go to the polls on February 18, decide whether or not to have a convention, and at the same time elect delegates. 4 Arkansans who supported secession saw no alternative and viewed Lincoln's election as a dear threat to the security of the South and its entire way of life. U. S. Sen. Robert W Johnson, who stridently advocated immediate action, expressed his concerns and those of many white Arkansans in an address to the people of the state made in February 1861. His reasoning was philosophical and asserted the need for Arkansans to defend "our equality in the Union, our social system, our property, our liberties, everything" or face the prospects of "our absolute submission to a northern fanatical majority." 5 The fears of Johnson and others, however, were not simply based on concerns about the protection of abstract principles. Ultimately, he and others were afraid that Lincoln's election spelled the doom of slavery in the South. The state had to secede before President Lincoln took office, according to Johnson, because the new government's policy was "the extinction of four thousand million dollars of southern property, and the freedom, and the equality with us of the four millions of negroes now in the South." While the minority of Arkansans who were slaveholders had the most direct interest in protecting slavery, Johnson argued that all whites had an interest in the outcome of the conflict. According to Johnson, if the labor system changed, it would mean the destruction of a society that "makes the humblest and poorest white man a proud man and the peer and equal of the wealthiest and greatest in the land. "6 Many prominent Arkansans, however, did not see the need for immediate action and urged a more judicious course. The editor of the Arkansas Gazette advised caution. "Lincoln is elected in the manner prescribed by law, and by the majority required by the Constitution," he wrote. "Let him be inaugurated, and let no steps be taken against this administration until he has committed an overt act which can not be remedied by legal and Constitutional means. "7 While most who opposed precipitous action had serious reservations about how Lincoln's election would affect them, these conditional Unionists believed that secession posed a potentially more dangerous threat to their community than a Republican national government. Merchants, in particular, worried that the state's economy would be harmed by leaving the Union. In addition, many thought that the state and the South had little chance to succeed in their quest for independence. John Brown of Camden

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1861: "The Die Is Cast"

observed that the state was totally unprepared for a war: "Nothing but ruin to property holders, and starvation to the poor would be the result." 8 A resident of Columbia County believed that division would be injurious to all and commented that a fight would "doubtless turn out to be a Kilkenny catfight. Nothing will be left but their tails." 9 While Arkansans made ready for their February 18 state election, the debates among contending parties did not take place in a vacuum. Events in the rest of the South moved rapidly, favoring the advocates of secession locally by rending the Union and raising the fear that the Federal government would invade the South to maintain the nation. In January and February, 1861, the Deep South states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas followed South Carolina out of the Union in quick succession. The seceding governments seized United States military posts and arsenals. At Montgomery, Alabama, the first six of these states formed the Confederate States of America on February 4 and called upon other slave states to join them. The lame duck government of President James Buchanan did not react aggressively to Southern events, but showed an increasing reluctance to abandon its military posts in the South without resistance. In early February, rumors spread across Arkansas that the Federal government intended to reinforce the United States arsenal at Little Rock with a large body of troops that was being sent up the Arkansas River on the steamboat S. H. Tucker. Even though the majority of Arkansans were not ready to secede, they were equally opposed to having their choices limited by the presence of a strengthened Federal garrison. In fact, no relief expedition had been sent, but citizens of Little Rock pushed cannon to the edge of the river to repel the Federal soldiers.10 Despite the lack of an enemy, on February 5, 1861, almost one thousand militiamen converged on the capital to prevent the feared reinforcement of the arsenal. Phillips County sent the Phillips Guards, the Helena Rifles, the Southwestern Guards, the Lagrange Cavalry, and the Jefferson Volunteers. Additional companies arrived from Prairie, White, Saline, Hot Spring, Montgomery, Monroe, and St. Francis counties. Governor Rector had not asked for this force, and even prominent secessionists wanted to avoid bloodshed, but the military force gathered at Little Rock wanted action. 11 Governor Rector assumed command of the volunteers, in part to keep them under control and avoid a battle. On February 6, he asked

Carl Moneyhon

5

Nearly a thousand militiamen converged on Little Rock in February 1861 to prevent rumored reinforcement of the United States arsenal in the capital city. Capt. James Totten and his men were allowed to evacuate the post February 7 "to avoid the cause of civil war." Photo courtesy ofUALRArchives

Capt. James Totten for the surrender of the United States arsenal to the state forces. Totten faced an overwhelming force and saw no point in fighting, but he held out until Rector promised to take charge of the arsenal and munitions and hold them for the United States government, until he was legally absolved from that responsibility. Totten also wanted the Federal soldiers to be allowed to leave with their ordnance, ordnance stores, clothing, and camp and garrison equipment. Totten asked that his men be permitted to leave without surrendering; they would simply evacuate their posts. 12 On February 7, Governor Rector accepted Totten's terms, although he insisted that the Federal soldiers withdraw outside the state's boundaries. The two men signed a memorandum in which Totten explained that he was evacuating the arsenal "in the presence of a greatly superior armed force." Without instructions from his government, he took this action "to avoid the cause of civil war." 13 In thanks, the ladies of Little Rock presented Totten with a sword, which was inscribed:

6

1861: "The Die Is Cast"

When women suffer, chivalry forebears, 14 The soldier dreads all dangers but his own.

The entire event confirmed the belief of many that, if war came, it would be short, relatively bloodless, and heroic. One observer described the affair as a drunken frolic, paid for by Governor Rector at the public expense. 15 ~

When Arkansans finally voted on the convention on February 18, the future of the Union looked bleak. Still, despite the warlike spirit that had risen during the confrontation at the arsenal, Arkansans proceeded cautiously. Secessionists carried the polls when a majority voted for a state convention, but when the delegates arrived at Little Rock on March 4, a count of the members showed that the people had elected a majority who opposed immediate secession. The convention assembled in the house chamber of the Old State House on the same day that Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as president. The strength of Arkansas Unionists was immediately apparent when they elected David Walker, a Washington County attorney who supported maintaining the Union, as the body's president by a vote of forty to thirty-five. Representatives of the newly created Confederacy were present, and they urged Arkansas to join them in a new nation, but the Unionists held steady and ultimately defeated secession by a vote of thirty-five yeas to thirty-nine nays. The pro-Union stand of the convention delegates, however, was reserved. After defeating immediate secession, the Unionist majority adjourned until August 19, but authorized the president to call the convention into session earlier if conditions changed. 16 Initially, Arkansas Unionists were encouraged to believe that peace might be maintained when President Lincoln made no immediate effort to force the seceding states back into the Union. Such a peace was very tenuous, however, because the Confederacy was already pressuring the United States to surrender its remaining military installations within the South, and Lincoln was not ready to abandon any more of them. If the South attempted to take any more Federal posts, everyone knew there would be a collision. If war broke out, Unionists understood that their future lay with the Confederacy and they would have to secede and fight, too. Their fears were realized early in April, when leaders of the

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new Confederate nation demanded the surrender of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, South Carolina. Under the president's orders, its commander refused to turn it over to Confederate authorities. On April 12, Confederate gunners opened fire on the fort, and on the next day it was surrendered. On April 15, President Lincoln requested seventyfive thousand troops from the states to suppress "combinations" who were resisting enforcement of the law in the South. The crisis had come. 17 When Lincoln called for troops to suppress the seceding states, he ended, for all purposes, the debate among Arkansans on their path. His action galvanized public opinion in Arkansas as well as in other slave states that had not left the Union. While Unionists had hoped for peace, they would not help suppress their sister states of the South. Even as decided an opponent of secession as the diarist John Brown concluded, "The war feeling is aroused, the die is cast. The whole South will be aroused in two weeks." 18 Christopher C Danley, another Unionist, urged his colleagues to retain control of the state convention to prevent the "wild secessionists from sending us to the devil," but he was ready for the state's secession. "Lincoln's administration has committed the overt act," he wrote. "Now that the 'overt act' has been committed we should I think draw the sword, and not sheathe it until we can have a guaranty of all our rights, or such standards as will be honorable in the South." 19 After Fort Sumter, Governor Rector considered secession and war inevitable and acted to remove remaining Federal troops from within the state and to confiscate Federal property. The governor ordered a company of state militia under the command of Col. Solon Borland to advance on Fort Smith to seize the Federal post there. A thousand men boarded the steamboats Little Rock, Lady Walton, and Talequah for the expedition to the west. The trip upriver from Little Rock turned into what one participant described as a "picnic excursion," with crowds turning out at every town, landing, and woodyard to greet the state force. By the time Borland's command reached Fort Smith on April 23, the garrison had withdrawn, taking with it all of its equipment and munitions. Without firing a shot, Arkansas troops had achieved what · all the participants agreed was a great victory. Their return to Little Rock was a triumphant parade. Many seemed to think '\he 'war was over' and the 'Yankees whipped."' 20 While Rector moved, chairman David Walker waited until April 25

8

1861: "The Die Is Cast"

before he finally called for the state convention to reconvene at Little Rock. He set the date as May 6. Events had changed the feelings of the majority of delegates drastically. Most Unionists concluded that the state had no option but to secede. On the first day, the delegates took up the issue of secession, and this time only five members voted for Union. H. H. Bolinger of Madison County, Isaac Murphy of Newton County, John Campbell of Searcy County, Samuel Kelley of Pike County, and Thomas M. Gunter of Washington County refused to be stampeded. Despite their op!)?sition, the ordinance was easily adopted. Except for Murphy, the opposing members added their names to the ordinance to show the state's unity. Murphy refused, declaring that his vote had been the result of "mature reflection" and consideration of the "consequences." After Murphy defended his stand, Mrs. Frederick Trapnall threw him a bouquet of flowers. Murphy had stood firm, but Arkansas was out of the Union. News of the state's action was greeted by the Totten Artillery, a local company, which fired its guns in salute from the northeast corner of the statehouse grounds. 21 ~

With secession, the crisis had come to a head. Arkansas not only was out of the Union, but also now at war. The state's leaders and people turned to their new challenge. The state convention continued in session and functioned as the state's interim government. The members quickly joined the Confederacy, ratified the Confederate constitution, and elected delegates to the new central government. 22 A more pressing problem, however, was preparing for war. The convention created a three-man military board headed by Governor Rector to direct the state's preparations, although the delegates retained overall control of the process. The convention assigned the task of organizing the state's volunteer force to two brigadier generals, Thomas H. Bradley, assigned to the eastern section of the state, and N. Bart Pearce, commander in the west. 23 Thousands of eager volunteers rushed to the colors after secession. They were not unified, however, in their motives. The reasons that encouraged men to enlist in the army varied greatly. Some joined because they thought that there were major ideological issues involved in the war. Benjamin F. Boone of Washington County asked his wife to remember, if he should die, that he had joined "for your and our chil-

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drens liberty and the freedom of our country-that it is a holy and just cause." 24 Others came because they believed it was their duty. J. Trooper Armstrong signed up with a Confederate regiment to do his duty. "I could not hear the idea of not being in this war," he wrote his wife. "I would feel that my children would be ashamed of me when in after times this war is spoken of & I should not have figured in it."25 Probably many joined simply because they sought fame or adventure. A Methodist minister encountered a young man on his way to join his unit who was motivated by nothing other than the opportunity to make a reputation for himself "What a chance," he had told the minister, "to win a name. "26 Arkansans responded with fervor, but the actual mobilization of troops proceeded chaotically. Mobilization was left largely in the hands of the communities of the state. Local citizens, usually prominent politicians or businessmen, began the process when they obtained commissions from the governor or some other authority to recruit a company, which consisted of one hundred men in the infantry. The names of the units reflected the romantic notion that the men initially held of the upcoming fight. Among the hundreds of military companies, "Knights" joined the army from Camden, "Hornets" from Hempstead, "Invincibles" from Polk County, "Hunters" from Montgomery County, and "Heroes" from Muddy Bayou. Henry Morton Stanley recalled that at the height of the military enthusiasm, "We, who were to represent them in the war, received far more adulation than was good for us. The popular praise turned our young heads giddy, and anyone who doubted that we were the sanest, bravest, and most gallant boys in the world, would have been in personal danger! Unlike the Spartans, there was no modesty in the estimate of our valour. "27 They came to camp with illusions of a heroic adventure; few of the soldiers of 1861 had a practical view of what life would be like in the army. At Jacksonport, young men who rushed to join the "Jackson Guards," which was being organized by Mexican War veteran Capt. A. C. Pickett, showed up with much more equipment than they needed. One of the volunteers remembered that they "thought we could take our trunks and dress suits." Pickett caused considerable disappointment when he advised them to bring only one suit, a woolen shirt, and two suits of underwear. 28 Elliott H. Fletcher Jr., son of a wealthy plantation family in eastern Arkansas, was only one of many of this class of men who brought their servants with them to the army.

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1861: "The Die Is Cast"

Elliott's slave Jack came along and cooked meals and took care of the young man's clothing. 29 The job of outfitting the local military companies was initially the responsibility of the communities or private citizens. Ordinarily, local businessmen furnished supplies and weapons to the hometown soldiers, but a few company commanders outfitted the volunteers with their own money, and in some instances the soldiers brought their own equipment. The Montgomery Hunters brought "(home)made Bed Quilts, Pots, Skillets, Coffee Pots-Pans," and moved themselves in farm wagons drawn by oxen. 30 Their uniforms, for the most part, were homemade. Wives, mothers, sisters, and sweethearts organized to make uniforms for the men. Robert F. Kellam of Camden recorded that the ladies of his city had "made themselves into a great Sewing Society, making up the soldiers clothes. All the tailors & all the sewing machines in requisition." 3 1 Even the weapons provided the volunteers were a jumble. A soldier of the Fourth Arkansas State Infantry Regiment reported that companies in his unit were equipped with five different types of weapons. Two companies had shotguns, four had squirrel rifles, one was armed with flint-lock muskets, and another with a breech-loading rifle known as the Hall's Rifle. The men had few cartridge boxes, bayonets, cap boxes, or belts. Supplying munitions for such units presented a daunting challenge. 32 Not until the company had been recruited to its full strength did it leave the locale where it was organized. Probably at the moment they left, as families, friends, and lovers parted, the soldiers realized for the first time that the great adventure was a much more serious endeavor than they initially envisioned. It was a time for personal leave taking that affected all who witnessed it. At Little Rock, a young soldier embraced his elderly father, who burst into tears and became very emotional. The old man "addressed his son in an admonition never to dishonor the cause and that he must remember that his duty was first to God and then to his country. "33 Across the state, the local boys also participated in public ceremonies in which they were enjoined to do their duty. At Des Arc the community presented the company with a flag and speeches were given, including one by a young lady, who reminded the company that they were fighting for everyone's liberties. She stated her hope that "when · marshalled before the booming cannon and exposed to the solid sheets

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of liquid death, may [the flag] ... inspire your souls and nerve your arms and lend new courage to your drooping spirits." The company commander responded to the presentation, "While contending for our cherished rights we will plant this flag triumphantly on our soil or find a grave beneath its verdant sod .... Again ladies, we bid you a farewell, hoping God will protect you at home while we defend you abroad." 34 Emotions ran high at such moments. At Jacksonport the ceremony was so touching that there "was not a dry eye in the throng. "35 The local volunteers boarded steamboats or headed out on foot on the country roads to join with hundreds of other companies to be mustered in. Their course was often a triumphal procession, with crowds gathered along the way to shower the volunteers with praise. Company commanders were required to make speeches in every small town through which they passed as the units halted to be honored with picnics and banquets. Junius N. Bragg reported that on his journey from Camden to Little Rock, the young ladies were "very good, in waving their handkerchiefs at my red shirt, which of course 'ye gallant volunteer' reciprocated with his rag." 36 Another Camden soldier recalled that at every house and crossroads, women greeted his column with "smiles, and they brought bouquets and flowers of the sweetest fragrance, fruit of the rarest and richest quality to distribute and also buckets of cool fresh water. We received nice vegetables, fruit, melons, and cakes that were adorned with roses and evergreens." 37 The companies initially moved to Little Rock or some other large town to be formed into regiments in the state service or for acceptance by the Confederacy. Companies of the Third Arkansas Infan.try went directly from camps in Little Rock and Memphis to Virginia to be mustered in, but most troops were sent to training camps in northern Arkansas. In order to have his men positioned to stop a rumored invasion from Missouri, the companies sent to General Pearce rendezvoused in Benton and Washington counties at Camp Walker near Maysville, at Elm Springs, and at Osage Mills. Bradley's forces gathered along the Current River, at Pittman's Ferry and Perkin's Ferry, and at Pocahontas, from which they could be moved either to support Pearce or to the Mississippi River. 38 Under Pearce, Bradley, or other commanders, the volunteers of Arkansas formed thousand-man infantry regiments, elected their officers, and began to learn the lessons of soldiering. Few of the men of '61 had any military experience. One soldier

12

1861: "The Die Is Cast"

described the companies that came into camp as "a rabble." He wrote, "Tennessee volunteers may appear rough and uncouth to you, but compared with those we have here, they are courtly gentlemen." 39 An officer sent to the state to evaluate military preparations and training reported to the Confederate secretary of war, "Arkansas has less the appearance of a military organization than any people I ever yet knew. "40 Amateurs drilled the army. When the Jackson Guards first joined other units of the Third Arkansas Infantry at the Memphis fairgrounds one member recalled that "there were only two men in the company who knew anything about military' tactics or could even keep step."4 1 Capt. William E. Woodruff of the Totten Artillery of Little Rock, one of the elite militia companies, had to watch the crew of another battery move through a gun drill to refresh his introduction to artillery service acquired in military school as a youth. 42 The techniques of battle were not complicated, however, and the soldiers quickly learned the skills of combat. Each day was filled with company and battalion drill. In the evening the regiment formed for inspection. A member of the Fourth Arkansas State Infantry remembered the evening formation as an impressive one. What to "uninitiated minds seemed a perfect host, was marched out and formed for inspection. It is true there were no glistening bayonets, nor rattling of ramrods, but the old familiar fowling piece which had many a time supplied its owner in the wilds of Arkansas with bear steak or venison hams, was made to look as bright as ashes and flannel rags could make them." 43 Henry Morton Stanley of the Sixth Arkansas Infantry remembered, ''After a few drills, we could not even go to draw rations without the practice of the martial step, and crying out 'Guide centre,' or 'Right wheel,' or some other order we had learned. At our messes, we talked of tactics, and discussed Beauregard's and Lee's merits, glorified Southern chivalry, and depreciated the Yankees, became fluent in the jargon of patriotism, and vehement in our hatred of the enemy." 44 Learning to be a soldier represented only a part of the volunteer's adjustment to army life. Discovering that the day-to-day life of the soldier in camp often was filled with waiting and boredom was possibly the least expected aspect of their new experience. Junius Bragg complained, "The idea of wearing out my strength and spirits in the monotonous routine of camp life is far from being agreeable. If I could shoot a few Yankees, I would be perfectly content to go home." 45 To fill their time, many turned to a wide variety of entertainments,

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especially drinking and gambling. One soldier wrote that he had seen men playing cards on a Sunday evening. While he tried to discourage them, they refused to listen. "The most of men seem to become reckless by being out in camp. If this war lasts a few years our country will have retrograded fifty years," he observed. 46 One officer complained, "I presume there is not a situation in which a man can be placed, so well calculated to corrupt and ruin him morally, as living in a camp." 47 On the other hand, religious men tried to maintain themselves in the face of the ribald life of soldiering. Religious services and prayer meetings were held in the midst of camp corruption. One Arkansan remembered hearing the singing, "in just about the way I have often thought Cromwell's men used to do when they were engaged in the same cause in which we are. "48 Men in another company tried to encourage moral behavior by voting to expel any volunteer discovered to be a "drunkard. "49 In camp, the volunteers also came almost immediately face-to-face with the darker side of war. They discovered that an even more immediate danger than the Yankees faced them in the form of disease. Epidemics decimated these new units, as men from isolated communities across the state were brought together. Childhood diseases, such as measles and mumps, exacted a harsh toll among rrien who had never been exposed to them before. Typhoid fever and diarrhea, probably the result of poor sanitation in the camps, also struck at the troops. After suffering from a bout with the measles, one soldier informed his family that the "measles is the roughest customer that ever I had to contend with, but by great prudence in exposure and careful dieting, in fact eating nothing at all, we are now almost ~l Right."'so Given the primitive nature of medicine at the time, most of these medical problems led to secondary infections such as pneumonia, which posed a real threat to life. Physicians and volunteer nurses could accomplish little, and hundreds of the new recruits died. One of the volunteers encamped at Pocahontas informed a friend that it was hard to see his friends die. "In their last moments," he wrote, "they almost invariably speak of Mother[,] Home & Heaven." 51 The first military funerals witnessed by many were for comrades who had died from disease, and they were inspired by the ritual as the regiment marched to the grave behind muffled drum and fifes playing melancholy airs, words were spoken by the commander or chaplain, and a squad fired a volley of arms over the grave. After witnessing his first funeral for a comrade

14

1861: "The Die Is Cast"

who died from a fever, William L. Gammage recalled that the men returned to camp "as quietly and probably sadder than when we came." 52 Removed from their families and friends, loneliness also became a part of camp life for many of the volunteers. In addition, they became increasingly aware of the danger that they faced and of the possibility that they might never see their loved ones again. An Arkansan whose unit had moved to Virginia wrote to his family, "I need not tell you how much I want to see you all, though I do hope you are all getting along well. Keep -in good heart, I will be back after awhile." 53 Despite problems, Arkansas units were steadily molded into a force ready to face the enemy. A correspondent of the Arkansas Gazette, Sam Williams, reported that by the end of May they were ready for a fight. "We expect an engagement now very soon; perhaps before you get this, the lines of battle will have been formed, and many a brave Arkansas boy will be made to bite the dust-they are ready for any fate, butterribly will each death be avenged as long as one stout heart or strong hand is above the earth. We will endeavor not to shame you at home by any acts of ours. Trust us for that. " 54 These soldiers, who had been so recently civilians, did not have to wait long for the fight that they all expected. The first regiment actually into the field was the First Arkansas Infantry, organized in April at Little Rock and Memphis and commanded by Col. James F. Fagan. The Confederate government had already requested that a regiment of volunteers to be sent to Virginia even before Arkansas seceded, and companies of the First Arkansas were sent forward when they reached their full strength. They were not the first into battle, however. While on the field of action, they were not engaged in the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. The first troops participating in a major battle would be state forces in the west under Brigadier General Pearce. 55 ~

In June, Brig. Gen. Ben McCulloch brought a force of Texas and Louisiana troops into northwestern Arkansas. There they joined the two thousand Arkansans gathered by General Pearce. On August 4, the Arkansas state troops marched under McCulloch northward into Missouri. They were to join a column of Missourians under Maj. Gen. ·Sterling W Price that was being driven into the corner of that state by a Federal force under Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon. McCulloch's and

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Price's commands linked near Carthage, Missouri. Pearce and Price, even though they outranked him, agreed to serve under McCulloch, who had been commissioned by the Confederate government. The combined force, consisting of over eleven thousand men, turned and moved toward Springfield and General Lyon's force. By August 7, the Confederates had reached Oak Hill, above Wilson's Creek, twelve miles from Springfield, Missouri. 56 At Wilson's Creek the Confederates halted while McCulloch sent out scouts and spies to determine Lyon's strength and disposition. He did not receive the information that he needed until August 9, but after ordering an attack he held up because of heavy rain that evening. The delay had given Lyon time to prepare his own surprise, and on the evening of the ninth, his men advanced on the Confederate camp for an attack the next morning. The Federals split into two columns, hoping to catch McCulloch in a pincer movement between the columns. Lyon was to assault the Confederate front, while Brig. Gen. Franz Sigel was sent around McCulloch to attack the Confederate camp in its rear. Lyon's column attacked at sunrise on August 10.57 The Battle of Wilson's Creek turned out to be one of the bloodiest engagements in the war. The first clash took place as Lyon's Federals slammed into the Confederate left. The Totten Battery from Little Rock and James McIntosh's Second Arkansas Mounted Rifles were on that part of the field and were hotly engaged when Sigel began his attack on the Confederate flank. General McCulloch put his left in the hands of Price's Missourians, turned his other units to meet Sigel, and routed the Federals with a charge that swept through Sigel's artillery and drove the infantry from the field in a panic. With his right cleared, McCulloch then turned his entire attention to General Lyon's attack. 58 At about nine o'clock in the morning, the fighting focused totally on Oak Hill, and the resulting carnage would earn it the nickname "Bloody Hill." The Second and First Arkansas Mounted Rifles, along with Col. John R. Gratiot's Third Arkansas Infantry and Col. Dandridge McRae's Infantry Brigade rushed to the front to support the Missouri troops, who appeared on the verge of breaking before Lyon's advance. One participant called it a ''desperate affair." His unit marched within one hundred feet of artillery and infantry. When the Federals opened up, they brought "us down like Sheep but we never waved [sic]. We did not wait for orders to fire but all of us cut loose at them like wild men." 59 In the resulting melee, the Federal advance was halted and the blue lines

16

1861: "The Die Is Cast"

Gen. Ben McCulloch lead Southern forces at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri, where Arkansas Confederates played a prominent role in one of the bloodiest engagements in the Civil War. One Arkansan called the fighting "the most galling fire that was ever witnessed." Photo courtesy ofUALRArchives

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thrown back. Following the death of General Lyon in a last effort to stop the Confederate counterattack, the Federals began a rapid retreat back to Springfield. 60 The Confederates were almost too exhausted to realize that they had won a victory, but they soon grasped their accomplishment. Sgt. James P. Erwin of the Hempstead Rifles was with the Third Infantry as it repulsed Lyon. He informed his brother, "Rightly gallantly did we charge. For twenty minutes we stood the most galling fire that was ever witnessed. Nobly did our little band stand up against 3,000 Federals, until victory perched upon our flag. [Gen. Benjamin] McCulloch says that it was our regiment that won him the day." 6 1 In only five hours, the Confederates lost 1,218 men killed and wounded out of 10,175 engaged. The Confederates were successful, but the first of many young Arkansans had died, beginning a list that mounted inexorably for the next four years. 62 The victory at Wilson's Creek was not followed up on. Price pursued the retreating Federals, but McCulloch pulled his troops back into Arkansas. Missouri had not yet seceded, and the general was uncertain that he could use his troops there. McCulloch went to Richmond to defend his refusal to aid Price, and the troops returned to their camps in northwestern Arkansas. Back at home, the Arkansans soldiers were met by Gen. Thomas Hindman, who asked them to move on to Pittman's Ferry where the units could be transferred into regular Confederate service under Gen. William J. Hardee. Many of the men, however, did not want to serve outside of Arkansas, and they refused to transfer into the regular army. 63 General Hindman's lecture to the men on the need to remain in the ranks fell on deaf ears. One soldier wrote that "all think more of home than all else." When a vote was taken on whether or not to re-enlist, "not a man did so. We have given up our arms and accoutrements, and the whoop and hurrah of discharged companies on every side." 64 After months of preparations, the army fielded by the state appeared on the verge of dissolving. ~

On the surface, Arkansans appeared unified as they went to war in 1861, but in fact the people of the state were never completely united in their support for the war. From the beginning, white Arkansans worried about the third of their population that had little interest in

18

1861: 'The Die Is Cast"

Southern success-the slaves. Probably reflecting white fear more than any actual plans by the slaves, rumors spread across the state of the threat of an abolitionist invasion and slave uprisings. At Camden, citizens condemned the presence of "Dutch" merchants in their community, who they believed encouraged unrest among the slaves and, along with other Arkansans, Camden residents talked about "running the Dutch out of town." 65 Town watches were strengthened across the state to respond to any internal insurrection. 66 At Searcy, vigilantes lynched a tanner who was accused of inci~ing a slave insurrection. Several slaves who were accused of supporting him were also executed, and others were sent out of the community. "Great excitement prevailed," wrote one correspondent. 67 No slave uprising ever occurred, but through the rest of the war, white Arkansans never completely trusted the loyalty of their slaves. At best, they considered their slaves to be only very reluctant friends. Dissent also appeared in another unexpected quarter in the autumn of 1861, when Confederate authorities uncovered a large-scale plot in northwestern Arkansas. Loyal Confederate citizens called for military assistance to suppress a conspiracy for an insurrection in early December. The conspirators, who belonged to what was known as the Arkansas Peace Society, had allegedly taken a pact to kill "every man who was not a friend of the North." Local vigilantes reported that as many as seventeen hundred men in Carroll, Fulton, Izard, Marion, Searcy, and Van Buren counties had taken an oath to carry out such an uprising and began, on their own, to imprison as many of the "traitors" as they could. 68 Confederate authorities sent troops into the area to arrest members of the Peace Society. The actual purpose of the society, ultimately, was never clear. While Confederates feared that it would be used against them, many of the members apparently joined because they thought that it was a home protection organization. Nearly one hundred men were arrested, and many of them were tried for treason. Ultimately, some were acquitted, but most were forced into the Confederate army.69 While authorities easily handled the Peace Society, its appearance only marked the beginning of unrest on the home front that continued during the rest of the war. The war clearly had strained the ties that bound together the members of the antebellum commuity. By the end of 1861 , Arkansans had engaged in eventful steps. They had become part of a war that ultimately would visit a whirlwind of

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destruction upon them and their society. All of that was in the future, but many looked ahead warily. John Brown of Camden summed up the view of many in his diary entry for the first day of 1862. Brown wrote: "The new year begins its rounds. The old, with its events, not their consequences, has ended, and I might well say, events of the greatest importance to the race of man which have transpired since the Christian Era. As to their termination or final consequences, I will not here enter a prophecy." 70

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Northwest Arkansas in 1862

mith Steve Scallion

1862: ''A Continual Thunder" William L. Shea University ofArkansas, Monticello Arkansas was quiet during the first few weeks of 1862. The primary concern of Confederate authorities in Richmond and Little Rock continued to be the unsettled situation in neighboring Missouri, where Maj. Gen. Sterling Price's ragtag army was in winter quarters at Springfield in the southwestern corner of the state. Price's army was a mix of Confederates and Missouri state guardsmen and numbered about eight thousand men and forty-seven cannons. Despite serious organizational and logistical problems, the Missouri Rebels had fought well at Wilson's Creek and Lexington the previous year, and they constituted a potential threat to the vital Union stronghold of St. Louis. Brig. Gen. Benjamin McCulloch's Confederate army was located in northwestern Arkansas about one hundred miles south of Price's force. McCulloch's command consisted of about eighty-seven hundred men and eighteen cannons. Many of his Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana soldiers were veterans of Wilson's Creek and other engagements in Missouri and the Indian Territory. At the beginning of the new year, the infantry was in winter quarters in and around Fayetteville, Cross Hollows (near present-day Lowell), and Bentonville, enduring the frigid temperatures atop the Ozark Plateau; the cavalry and artillery were spread out along the Arkansas River Valley sixty miles to the south, where warmer temperatures and adequate forage made life more bearable for men and beasts. McCulloch, who did not expect any military activity along the frontier until spring, had gone to Virginia to confer with President Jefferson Davis about the state of affairs in the Trans-Mississippi. 1 What McCulloch wanted to discuss was his long-simmering feud with Price. The two generals no longer were on speaking terms, and

22

1862: ''A Continual Thunder"

their partisans were engaged in a full-scale newspaper war. After listening to McCulloch and to Price's advocates in the Missouri congressional delegation, President Davis decided that only a bold act could resolve the impasse. He created a new entity, the Military District of the TransMississippi, on January 10, 1862, and placed an old friend, Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn of Mississippi, in command. Davis believed that Van Dom's appointment would provide unity of command and purpose to the Confederate war effort west of the Mississippi River. 2 Van Dorn was a poor choice despite his West Point education and years of service in the regular army. He was impulsive, reckless, and lacked administrative skills. None of that was apparent, however, as Van Dorn hastened westward from Virginia to his new post. He assumed command in Little Rock on January 29, but established his headquarters in Pocahontas because he intended to invade Missouri from northeastern Arkansas in the spring. Van Dorn expressed his rather casual approach to strategy in a letter to his wife: "I must have St. Louisthen Huzza!" 3 In St. Louis, meanwhile, decisions were being made that would bring the war to Arkansas more quickly than anyone expected. President Abraham Lincoln appointed Maj. Gen. Henry W Halleck commander of the Federal Department of the Missouri on November 19, 1861. Halleck was an excellent administrator and strategist who was determined to protect St. Louis and reassert Union control over the rest of Missouri. On December 25, 1861, he placed Brig. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis in command of the District of Southwest Missouri and its military arm, the Army of the Southwest, a force of about twelve thousand men and fifty cannons. Curtis was a West Point graduate and Iowa congressman who had helped to found the Republican Party. He was an able administrator and an aggressive campaigner well suited to his mission: to destroy Price's Rebel army. 4 On January 13, 1862, Halleck authorized Curtis to begin. During the next four weeks, the Army of the Southwest struggled across the Ozark Plateau toward Springfield and Price's smaller army. Price repeatedly called upon McCulloch and his subordinates for assistance, but due to McCulloch's absence and a general breakdown in communications, no help was forthcoming from Arkansas. As the Union army approached, Price decided not to fight but to flee. He abandoned Springfield on February 12 and retreated to the south. If McCulloch would not join him in Missouri, he would join McCulloch in Arkansas.

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Gen . Samuel R. Curtis's Pea Ridge campaign included a major military victory against imposing odds, hard marching over more than seven hundred miles of rough terrain, the creation of a new form of mobile warfare, and the retention of Missouri for the Union. The balance of power in the Trans-Mississippi was permanently altered in favor of the North. Photo courtesy of]. N. Heiskell Collection/UALRArchives

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1862: "A Continual Thunder"

Curtis followed, much to Price's surprise, and the result was the only true pursuit of one army by another in the Civil War. For four days the two columns hurried down Telegraph (or Wire) Road, the primary route linking southwestern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas. The weather was intensely cold, and the soldiers in both armies endured snow, sleet, and freezing rain. Sharp engagements occurred every day between the Confederate rear guard and the Federal vanguard. · The head of Price's column reached the Arkansas state line on the morning of February 16. Later that day the pursuing First Missouri (Union) Cavalry caught up with the First Missouri (Confederate) Cavalry, which was trailing behind the Confederate main body. The intermingled mass of shooting and slashing horsemen splashed across Big Sugar Creek and swirled into Arkansas. Soon afterwards, the Federals disengaged and fell back a short distance into Missouri. Federal casualties were light: one man killed and five wounded. Confederate losses were more serious: sixteen men killed and many wounded. This minor encounter, known locally as the skirmish of Pott's Hill, was the first clash between Union and Confederate forces on Arkansas soil. 5 The next morning, February 17, the Army of the Southwest invaded Arkansas and the Confederacy. Bands played patriotic and popular tunes, including, appropriately enough, "The Arkansas Traveler," while thousands of cheering blue-dad troops stepped across the state line. Curtis congratulated his men for being the first Federal soldiers to set foot on the ''virgin soil" of Arkansas and sent a triumphant message to Halleck in St. Louis: "The flag of our Union again floats in Arkansas." 6 Later that day Curtis and his men crossed the broad table land of Pea Ridge and tramped past a rural hostelry called Elkhorn Tavern. A short distance south of Little Sugar Creek (near present-day Avoca), the Federals encountered a strong line of Confederate infantry and cavalry supported by artillery. After an initial engagement between mounted forces, the two sides blasted away at each other with artillery. As darkness fell, Price withdrew down Telegraph Road to join McCulloch's army at Cross Hollows, a dozen miles to the south. The clash at Little Sugar Creek was the first Civil War engagement fought entirely in Arkansas, and the first time since the battle ofWilson's Creek that some of McCulloch's troops fought alongside Price's men. An Arkansas soldier described the fight at Little Sugar Creek as a "right brisk skirmish," but it was more than that and casualties were correspondingly high:

William L. Shea

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Gen. Earl Van Dom's plans to "have St. Louis-then Huzza!" were thwarted by his defeat at the Battle of Pea Ridge. He later abandoned the Trans-Mississippi altogether, stripping Confederate Arkansas of most of its troops, weapons, ordnance, and livestock. Photo courtesy of Arkansas History Commission

26

1862: ''A Continual Thunder"

thirteen Federals killed and about twenty wounded; Confederate losses are uncertain, but may have included as many as twenty-six men killed.7 Curtis camped for two days in the broad valley of Little Sugar Creek. He heard rumors that exaggerated the strength of the Confederate position at Cross Hollows, which was a large cantonment rather than a fortified strongpoint. He therefore decided not to advance directly upon the Confederates but to outflank them by swinging around to the west by way of Bentonville and Elm Springs. Such a maneuver would compel McCulloch and Price to retreat or be surrounded. On February 18 he sent Brig. Gen. Alexander S. Asboth and a cavalry brigade on a reconnaissance in force down Little Sugar Creek to Bentonville. When As both reported that the rolling terrain west of Cross Hollows was dear of enemy soldiers, Curtis prepared to move his command in that direction. 8 Before the Army of the Southwest could move, however, the Confederate retreat began anew. McCulloch, just returned from Richmond, was appalled at the strategic consequences of Price's headlong flight, for he knew that the cantonment at Cross Hollows was untenable and that the combined armies would have to fall back even deeper into Arkansas. And so on February 19, the Confederates burned the barracks, huts, mills, and storehouses in Cross Hollows and trudged south in miserably cold weather. The next day they reached Fayetteville, the major Confederate supply depot in northwestern Arkansas. Unable to remove the tons of military stores because of a lack of transportation, McCulloch made everything available to the passing troops. The disorganized system of distribution soon degenerated into looting. Homes and businesses were ransacked and vandalized. The situation grew even worse the next day when McCulloch ordered all remaining supplies destroyed. Unsupervised soldiers set fire to warehouses, some of which contained ammunition. The resulting explosions spread the fire and several city blocks burned to the ground. A disgusted Confederate surgeon called the sacking of Fayetteville "one of the most disgraceful scenes that I ever saw. "9 The heavily laden Rebels, many of them carrying jewelry, mirrors, dresses, and even baby rattles, staggered south another seventeen miles on Telegraph Road into the Boston Mountains, which form the rugged southern edge of the Ozark Plateau. McCulloch's army camped along the Illinois River near Strickler's Station (present-day Strickler); Price's army bivouacked just to the west along Cove Creek. The long retreat was over. 10

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Curtis soon learned from Arkansas Unionists and runaway slaves that the Confederates had abandoned Cross Hollows and had fallen back into the Boston Mountains. Curtis declined to follow because the headlong Confederate retreat from Springfield had drawn him much farther south than anticipated. The Federals were over two hundred miles from the railhead at Rolla, and their supply situation was critical. Curtis decided that he could best carry out his mission of securing Missouri by holding his ground in northwestern Arkansas and keeping Price at bay. He knew that it would be dangerous to be entirely passive, so he dispatched cavalry raids and scouting expeditions in various directions to keep the enemy off balance. The largest of these operations, another reconnaissance in force led by Asboth, occupied Fayetteville on February 22-26. 11 In order to facilitate foraging, Curtis placed two divisions at Cross Hollows and two divisions at McKissick's Creek (near present-day Centerton) and posted advanced pickets at Mudtown (near present-day Springdale) and Elm Springs. Should the Confederates launch a counteroffensive, the two halves of the Army of the Southwest would fall back toward Little Sugar Creek and make a stand. Curtis disliked assuming the defensive after such a successful offensive campaign, but he felt he had no choice. In addition to the alarming logistical situation, the attrition caused by inclement weather, hard marching, and the need to garrison Springfield and other vital points along his line of communications had worn down the Army of the Southwest to only about ten thousand men and forty-nine cannons. "Shall be on the alert, holding as securely as possible," Curtis assured Halleck. What happened next would be up to the Confederates. 12 ~

Van Dorn was at his headquarters in Pocahontas when he learned of the loss of Springfield and the disastrous chain of events in northwestern Arkansas. He departed at once for the Boston Mountains to assume personal command of the Confederate forces there. On the way he fell into a frigid stream (probably the Little Red River) and became ill. After an exhausting nine-day journey, much of it in an ambulance, Van Dorn reached the Boston Mountains late on March 2. The next day he, McCulloch, and Price conferred at Strickler's Station. Van Dorn was determined to strike back at the Federals as quickly as possible. When

28

1862: ':4 Continual Thunder"

he learned that Curtis had placed his army in two widely separated camps, he decided to move the next morning. Van Dorn was confident that the Confederate Army of the West-the name he bestowed on his new command-could surprise the Yankees and open wide the road to Missouri. 13 The Confederate plan was simple: the Army of the West would march rapidly to Fayetteville on Telegraph Road, then to Bentonville on the Elm Springs Road. At Bentonville the Confederates would turn west and overwhelm the Federal troops camped along McKissick's Creek, then turn east and do the same to the remaining Federal troops at Cross Hollows. With Curtis's force out of the way, the victorious Army of the West would press on toward St. Louis "and Huzza!" The key to success was the road junction at Bentonville. If Van Dorn could reach the town before Curtis realized what was happening, the Confederates would be between the two Federal forces and victory would be almost assured. Since speed would be required to achieve the necessary element of surprise, each soldier carried only his weapon, forty rounds of ammunition, a blanket, and three days' rations. All else would be left behind. Van Dorn blithely assumed that everything would go as planned and that his troops would subsist on captured enemy rations; he gave no thought to alternate sources of supply. 14 Determined to use all available manpower, Van Dorn ordered Brig. Gen. Albert Pike in the Indian Territory to mobilize Confederate Indian troops and rendezvous with the Army of the West at Bentonville. The treaties between the Confederacy and the Five Civilized Tribes specifically stated that Indian soldiers were not to be used outside the Indian Territory, but some Indians were willing to go if paid in advance. Pike began doling out Confederate money as fast as he could. 15 On March 4 Van Dorn led the Army of the West out of the Boston Mountains. It was the largest and best-equipped Confederate military force ever assembled in the Trans-Mississippi: over sixteen thousand men and sixty-five guns. Van Dorn thought .Curtis outnumbered him but the opposite was true. The Confederates had a three-to-two advantage in manpower and a four-to-three advantage in artillery over the Federals. No Confederate army ever marched off to battle with greater numerical superiority. Unfortunately for the cause of Southern independence, the march to Bentonville was a disaster. Bouncing along Telegraph Road in his ambulance at the head of the column, Van Dorn set a rapid pace.

William L. Shea

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McCulloch's troops had been in winter quarters for months and were unprepared for such a strenuous effort. Soon the roadside was littered with large numbers of winded Rebels hobbled by blistered feet. Soldiers remarked sarcastically that Van Dorn "had forgotten he was riding and we were walking." That same day, a late winter blizzard swept across northwestern Arkansas, dropping temperatures and covering the road with ice and snow. Progress slowed to a crawl, and Van Dorn finally called a halt at Fayetteville. The next day, March 5, the Confederates plodded north across a frozen landscape and camped at Elm Springs. "I will never forget that night," wrote a Missouri soldier. "It had turned bitter cold .. . . We had no tents and only one blanket to each man. We built log heaps and set them afire to warm the ground to have a place on which to lie, and I remember well the next day there were several holes burned in my uniform by sparks left on the ground." The following morning, March 6, the Confederates ate the last of their meager rations and set out for Bentonville, twelve miles to the north. Despite the slow pace and the deteriorating condition of his army, Van Dorn remained confident that his plan to take the Federals by surprise was working. 16 Unknown to Van Dorn, a Unionist resident of Fayetteville had informed Curtis of the Confederate advance on March 5. Curtis immediately ordered his forces to concentrate at Little Sugar Creek and to dig in atop the bluffs on the northern side of the valley. Struggling against the same miserable conditions as the Confederates, the Federals marched all night toward the rendezvous point. By the morning of March 6, nearly all of the Army of the Southwest was in place. The soldiers constructed earthworks, cleared fields of fire, and awaited the enemy. 17 The only Federals who failed to reach Little Sugar Creek without incident were six hundred men who served as rear guard for the force that had been camped along McKissick's Creek. This detachment was under the personal command of Brig. Gen. Franz Sigel, who tarried behind to eat breakfast at a hotel in Bentonville. Sigel and his command were nearly cut off by a Confederate cavalry force led by Brig. Gen. James M. McIntosh. After a running fight east of Bentonville that covered four miles, Sigel finally managed to shake off his pursuers and join Curtis at Little Sugar Creek. 18 When Van Dorn reached Bentonville later that day he realized that his plan had failed. The Federal army was reunited in an impregnable position at Little Sugar Creek, while the Confederate army was in desperate straits. After three terribly difficult days, men and animals were

1862: ''.A Continual Thunder "

30

hungry and exhausted and straggling had become a serious problem. "Such a worn-out set of men I never saw," exclaimed a soldier. "They had not one single mouthfull of food to eat." Despite the desperate state of affairs, Van Dorn refused to consider falling back to the Boston Mountains; he was determined to strike the Federals a blow. As darkness fell on a singularly dismal Confederate encampment, Pike finally straggled in from the Indian Territory with about eight hundred mounted Cherokees and Texans. 19 That evening McCulloch told Van Dorn about the Bentonville Detour, a road that led around Curtis's right flank and intersected Telegraph Road near the Missouri state line, deep in the Federal rear. If the Confederates could reach Telegraph Road, the Federals would be cut off and would have no recourse but to surrender. Van Dorn decided to march at once. McCulloch and Price were appalled at the thought of a night march with the army in such a pitiful condition. The former appealed to Van Dorn "for God sake to let the poor, worn-out and hungry soldiers rest and sleep that night ... and then attack the next morning. " But Van Dorn insisted that the army move immediately. 20 The march on the Bentonville Detour during the night of March 6-7 was a miserable experience. Men and animals proceeded along at

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William L. Shea

31

a snail's pace, delayed by frigid streams and tangled barricades of trees felled by the Federals to obstruct precisely such a maneuver. Van Dom's numerical superiority eroded as hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men fell out of the ranks and collapsed. At dawn on March 7, the head of the Confederate column had reached Telegraph Road, but the tail was still back at Little Sugar Creek. Van Dorn now made another snap decision: to save time, Price's division would proceed south on Telegraph Road on the east side of a rocky hill called Big Mountain; McCulloch's division would move south on Ford Road on the west side of Big Mountain. The two halves of the Army of the West would reunite around noon at Elkhorn Tavern atop the broad plateau of Pea Ridge. There the Confederates would deploy for battle and advance upon the unsuspecting Federals from the north. Van Dorn had no qualms about dividing his army in the presence of the enemy because he confidently assumed that the Federals were still in their fortifications at Little Sugar Creek, facing south. 2 1 ~

Van Dom's confident assumption was wrong. Federal patrols detected the Confederate movement on the Bentonville Detour early on March 7, and Curtis acted immediately to seize the tactical intiative. He launched two spoiling attacks intended to intercept and delay the approaching enemy forces on either side of Big Mountain. While these operations were underway, he began the enormously complex task of turning his entire army around to meet the threat from the north. By the end of the day, the Federals atop Pea Ridge had successfully completed a 180-degree change of front. Shortly before noon Col. Peter J. Osterhaus led his division north from Little Sugar Creek. Near the hamlet of Leetown, he encountered McCulloch's division on Ford Road. Osterhaus was riding ahead of his infantry and was accompanied only by a small force of cavalry and artillery. Despite facing overwhelming odds, Osterhaus unlimbered his guns and opened fire. McCulloch was surprised to encounter the Federals so far north of Little Sugar Creek. He responded by sending his massed cavalry sweeping across a wheatfield toward the Federal position. Three thousand Texas and Arkansas horsemen overwhelmed Osterhaus's small command. "In every direction I could see my comrades falling," wrote a Federal soldier. "Horses frencied and riderless, ran to and fro. Men and horses ran in collision crushing each other to the ground. Dismounted

32

1862: "A. Continual Thunder"

troopers ran in every direction. Officers tried to rally their men but order gave way to confusion. The scene baffles description." A few hundred yards to the west, Pike conformed to McCulloch's movements by ordering his command to attack as well. The Cherokees, half mounted, half dismounted, picked their way through a patch of woods and drove off two isolated companies of Federal cavalry. (Contrary to legend, the Indians did not take part in the massed cavalry charge. Their small victory in the woods was tarnished when a handful of Indians murdered, mutilated, and scalped several Federal soldiers.) 22 The surviving Federals fell back through a thick belt of trees and across a large cornfield owned in part by Samuel Oberson. On the south side of the field they met the rest of Osterhaus's division and formed a line of battle facing north. Osterhaus sent a message to Curtis stating that he had met the enemy and needed reinforcements. He then readied his command for another Rebel onslaught. Though the Confederates were out of sight on the north side of the belt of trees, Osterhaus ordered his remaining artillery to fire over the trees in hopes of causing some disorder in the enemy ranks. This simple directive had dramatic effects. The first salvo of shells landed among the Cherokees who were celebrating their victory. The Indians had never experienced artillery fire before and were terrified by the explosions. They fled from the field and played only a marginal role in the remainder of the battle. The barrage also convinced McCulloch that he could not push on to Elkhorn Tavern and leave such a substantial enemy force in his rear. He halted his division and deployed for battle at Leetown. In all of the excitement and confusion, McCulloch neglected to inform Van Dorn that the reunion of the two halves of the Army of the West at Elkhorn Tavern would be delayed. Osterhaus's aggressive spoiling attack had achieved its goal of disrupting enemy plans. 23 McCulloch prepared for a general infantry assault against the Federals in Oberson's field. He moved to the extreme right of the Confederate line and rode forward through the belt of trees to reconnoiter the Federal position himself. This was a habit he had developed as a captain in the Texas Rangers and had not been able to shake despite his promotion to high command. Along the north edge of the field, a company of skirmishers from the Thirty-sixth Illinois saw McCulloch riding directly toward them. The entire company fired a volley and the general tumbled from his saddle, killed by a bullet in the heart. Command of the division passed to Brig. Gen. James M. McIntosh,

William L. Shea

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who recklessly advanced through the belt of trees only to be struck down like his predecessor by a bullet through the heart. McIntosh was the victim of a volley from another company of the Thirty-sixth Illinois. 24 The loss of McCulloch and McIntosh demoralized and paralyzed the right and center of the Confederate line at Leetown. Col. Louis Hebert, now the ranking officer of McCulloch's division, was in command of the Confederate left. Hebert was in a dense patch of woods and was unaware of the disaster that had befallen his superiors. Thinking that the scattered firing in Oberson's field was the signal for the general infantry assault that McCulloch had planned, Hebert led four regiments south toward the exposed right flank of the Federal line. 25 Federal reinforcements arrived at Leetown just in time to block Hebert's assault. When Curtis received Osterhaus's message calling for support, he dispatched a division led by Col. Jefferson C. Davis. Davis reached Leetown in mid-afternoon and deployed his men in the woods on Osterhaus's right. The fighting in the heavy woods was confusing and intense. An Illinois soldier recalled that the air around him was "literally filled with leaden hail. Balls would whiz by our ears, cut off bushes closely, and even cut our clothes." The Federals lay down to avoid the deadly fire, an unusual tactic so early in the war. An officer w~s convinced his men "would have been utterly annihilated" had he not ''fought them flat on their bellies on the ground." The Confederates had superior numbers and steadily pushed the Federals back. At one point several hundred Confederates burst out of the woods and overran a Federal battery in the southeastern corner of Oberson's field. For a few moments, it seemed as if Hebert had achieved a breakthrough, but Federal regiments to right and left turned toward the Confederates and drove them back into the woods. As the afternoon wore on, hundreds of exhausted Confederates simply lost heart and drifted to the rear. Hebert was captured when he became disoriented in the smoky woods and wandered into the Federal lines. 26 The loss of Hebert was the final blow to the disorganized Confederate effort at Leetown. Now utterly leaderless, the Rebels milled around waiting for orders. Pike attempted to assume command, but many officers refused to recognize his authority. Pike eventually led about half of McCulloch's shrunken division away from Leetown and around Big Mountain toward Elkhorn Tavern. The other half of the division remained behind or drifted away from the battle toward Little Sugar Creek. By late afternoon the fighting at Leetown had sputtered

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1862: "A Continual Thunder"

out. An outnumbered Federal force, ably co-commanded by Osterhaus and Davis and blessed with remarkable good fortune, had wrecked a larger Confederate force, had killed or captured three senior Confederate officers, and had kept the Army of the West divided. 27 ~

While these events took place at Leetown during the afternoon of March 7, another and far more severe engagement raged two miles to the east in the vicinity of Elkhorn Tavern. Earlier that morning, as noted above, Curtis had launched two spoiling attacks. The first was commanded by Osterhaus, the second by Col. Eugene A. Carr, a tough regular army officer. Carr deployed his division along the northern escarpment of Pea Ridge near Elkhorn Tavern. The Federal line looked down into Cross Timber Hollow, a deep and narrow valley. Price's division, personally led by Van Dorn, approached from the north on Telegraph Road. Around noon, the Rebel column began to climb up the steep slope that led from Cross Timber Hollow to Pea Ridge. The Federals opened fire and the battle was on. Van Dorn, like McCulloch, was surprised to encounter Federal troops so far north of Little Sugar Creek. He deployed Price's division and sent it up the slope, but Carr counterattacked so vigorously that the Confederates gave up the initiative and assumed a defensive posture. A furious exchange of artillery fire filled the hollow with smoke, and fighting flared all afternoon along the steep rocky slope as soldiers of both sides blundered about in the haze. During a confused engagement on the Confederate right, Brig. Gen. William Y. Slack of Missouri was mortally wounded. Hours passed before Van Dorn grasped the tactical situation, for he could see almost nothing from his position at the bottom of Cross Timber Hollow. Around mid-afternoon, he learned that McCulloch's division was bogged down at Leetown. About the same time, he belatedly realized that Price's division was much larger than the Federal force opposing it. He directed Price to extend his line beyond the flanks of the shorter Federal line. Late in the afternoon, Price's left reached the high ground a mile east of Elkhorn Tavern. Van Dorn ordered a general assault: the Confederate right and center would attack uphill and smash the Federals near the tavern, while the Confederate left would roll up the Federal right atop Pea Ridge. 28

William L. Shea

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The Rebels struck with barely an hour of daylight remaining and fierce fighting erupted along the northern escarpment of Pea Ridge. An Iowa soldier wrote that the Rebels came on "with a yell and a fury that had a tendency to make each hair on one's head to stand on its particular end." In the center the Confederates overwhelmed the Federals and captured Elkhorn Tavern. Lt. Col. Francis J. Herron led his men in a desperate rear guard defense that earned him a Medal of Honor, but he was wounded and captured. A quarter mile to the east, on a farm owned by Rufus Clemon, the Confederates had a tougher time, for a brigade commanded by Col. Grenville M. Dodge fought from behind a breastwork of logs and repulsed several assaults. The Federals finally retreated when the swarming Confederates threatened to engulf them. Carr's division fell back through thick woods about half a mile to the south side of Benjamin Ruddick's cornfield. There they regrouped astride Telegraph Road and made another stand. 29 In the deepening twilight, Van Dorn made a final effort to sweep away the stubborn Federals. Masses of Confederate troops poured across the cornfield, "their cheers and yells rising above the roar of artillery," only to be mowed down in heaps by blasts of canister. The surviving Rebels fell back toward the tavern as darkness covered the battlefield. The unsuccessful attack in Ruddick's field late on March 7 was the high water mark for the Confederate war effort in the Trans-Mississippi. Henceforth, the Federals would control the course of the battle and, to a considerable degree, the course of the war in Arkansas and adjacent states. 30 During the night of March 7-8, Curtis used interior lines to consolidate the Army of the Southwest. He moved all of his scattered forces from Little Sugar Creek and Leetown to join Carr on Telegraph Road. He also distributed food, water, and ammunition. Van Dorn attempted to do the same with the Army of the West, ordering the fragments of McCulloch's division to join him at Elkhorn Tavern. Several thousand Rebels marched all night on the roundabout route around Big Mountain but arrived in such pitiful condition as to be almost useless. The Confederates were without food, except for what little was found in Federal haversacks and sutlers' wagons. They also were without adequate ammunition, for in the confusion of the march along the Bentonville Detour the previous night, the ammunition train had been left behind at Little Sugar Creek, a dozen miles distant. 3 1 The next morning, March 8, Curtis waited to see if Van Dorn would continue to press his attack. When nothing happened, Curtis

1862: ''A Continual Thunder"

36

.. ..

Confederates Union

Confederate withdrawal from Leetown on the night of March 7-8 ..........._

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concluded that the Confederates had shot their bolt and that he now held the initiative. He ordered his artillery to wheel forward. For two hours, twenty-seven Federal cannons hammered the Confederates at ever-closer ranges. The most intense artillery bombardment of the war up to that time, it made a great impression on the soldiers who were present. "It was a continual thunder, and a fellow might have believed that the day of judgment had come," said an Iowa soldier. The tremendous noise could be heard fifty miles away. The devastation wrought on the Confederates was terrible. 32 Around ten o'clock Curtis ordered a general advance. Nearly ten thousand Federal soldiers swept across the fields and woods atop Pea Ridge, converging on Elkhorn Tavern from the west and south. "That beautiful charge I shall never forget," wrote a Federal officer. "With banners streaming, with drums beating, and our long line of blue coats advancing upon the double quick, with their deadly bayonets gleaming in the sunlight, and every man and officer yelling at the top of his lungs. The rebel yell was nowhere in comparison." Van Dorn realized that his position was hopeless and ordered a general withdrawal. The retreat rapidly degenerated into a rout after Van Dorn rode away to the east on

William L. Shea

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Huntsville Road, leaving behind not only most of his wounded, but also large numbers of his men who were still engaged. Leaderless, panicked Rebels fled in all directions as thousands of cheering Federal soldiers met at the tavern. Curtis rode among his men, waving his hat and shouting "Victory! Victory!" Despite being outnumbered and surprised by Van Dom's unorthodox and reckless tactics, Curtis had achieved one of the first major Federal victories in the Civil War. 33 The victory did not come cheap. Pea Ridge cost the Federals 1,384 casualties: 203 killed, 980 wounded, and 201 missing, roughly 13 percent of the 10,250 troops engaged in the battle. Confederate casualties are uncertain because Van Dorn lied about his losses in order to hide the magnitude of his defeat. A conservative estimate is that the Confederates suffered at least 2,000 casualties, approximately 15 percent of the 13,000 troops engaged in the battle. (The Army of the West contained roughly 16,500 men when it set out from the Boston Mountains and the Indian Territory, but suffered severe attrition because of Van Dom's insistence on haste, and lost nearly one-fourth of its strength before reaching the battlefield. Attrition during the retreat also was severe but cannot be estimated.) 34 t;:::::::=y

The Confederate retreat from Pea Ridge was as disastrous as the advance and the battle. Late on the evening of March 8, most of the Army of the West reassembled at Van Winkle's Mill on the east side of the White River. The men were famished. They devoured everything in sight, but the sparsely populated Ozark countryside provided only a fraction of the food necessary to feed thousands of men and animals. For the next week, the pathetic column staggered south on primitive trails through almost uninhabited country, generally moving up the narrowing valleys of the Middle and West Forks of the White River. A Texas soldier observed that he was "in much greater danger of dying from starvation in the mountains of northern Arkansas than by the enemy's bullets." Hundreds of Rebels wandered away in search of food and never returned to the ranks. The trail of the defeated, dissolving army was littered with discarded clothing, weapons, coffee pots, and even flags. By the time the Confederates crossed the Boston Mountains and followed Frog Bayou down to the Arkansas River near Van Buren, they were a

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1862: "A Continual Thunder"

pitiful remnant of the proud army that had opened the campaign two weeks earlier. 35 While the troops recuperated, Van Dorn received a telegram from Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard in western Tennessee. Beauregard suggested that Van Dorn transfer the Army of the West to Corinth, Mississippi, as part of a concentration of all Confederate armies west of the Appalachian Mountains. The purpose of this grand design was to assemble a force powerful enough to defeat Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Federal army camped at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. Van Dorn agreed and began to move his force eastward from Van Buren. Heavy spring rains turned the roads into sloughs, slowing the march. The leading elements of the army did not begin boarding steamboats at Des Arc on the White River until April 6. By then, it was too latethe battle of Shiloh was underway. Without Van Dom's sizable contingent, the Confederates failed to destroy Grant's army and were driven from the field. Van Dorn did not know this and continued to hurry his command across the Mississippi River. The transfer was complete by the end of April. Unknown to Beauregard or anyone else in the Confederate high command, Van Dorn did not merely move the Army of the West out of Arkansas, he abandoned the Trans-Mississippi altogether. He carried away nearly all troops, weapons, equipment, stores, machinery, and animals. Van Dom's unauthorized actions meant that in order for the Confederates in the Trans-Mississippi to continue fighting, they would have to start from scratch. Arkansas was thrown into turmoil by this unexpected and alarming development. Gov. Henry M. Rector protested to President Davis and vaguely threatened to secede from the Confederacy and form a new political entity west of the Mississippi River. Brig. Gen. John S. Roane succinctly informed Beauregard of the situation in Arkansas: "No troops-no arms-no powder-no material of war-people everywhere eager to rise, complaints bitter." 36 Beauregard attempted to stabilize the deteriorating political and military situation in Arkansas by selecting Maj. Gen. Thomas C. Hindman, a prominent Helena politician and a zealous secessionist, to succeed Van Dorn as commander of the Military District of the TransMississippi. When Hindman reached Little Rock at the end of May he was shocked. "I found here almost nothing," he complained. "Nearly everything of value was taken away by General Van Dorn." Undaunted, the fiery Hindman issued a ringing declaration to the people of Arkansas

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that began: "I have come here to drive out the invaders or perish in the attempt." That statement was no rhetorical flourish; Hindman meant it.37 During his brief period of independent command in Arkansas, Hindman demonstrated what fanaticism and a complete disregard for constitutional rights could accomplish. He declared martial law, rigorously enforced the unpopular conscription act, and summarily executed accused deserters. He commandeered all Texas troops passing through Arkansas en route to Mississippi, obtained the return of a division of Price's Missouri soldiers from Mississippi, and ordered Pike to transfer all non-Indian troops in the Indian Territory to Arkansas. He established shops to manufacture arms, ammunition, and equipment. He set price controls and ordered millions of dollars of cotton in eastern Arkansas burned to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. Finally, he authorized the formation of unsupervised irregular bands (euphemistically called "Partisan Rangers") to attack Federal foragers and supply trains, a short-sighted decision that accelerated the emergence of lawlessness across much of the state. Despite these excesses, or perhaps because of them, in two months the abrasive, hard-driving Hindman created an embryonic army and a rudimentary logistical base in the least populous and least developed part of the Confederacy. Hindman's accomplishments were remarkable, but his drastic actions-legal, extralegal, and patently illegal-produced massive disaffection in Arkansas. Capricious enforcement of martial law caused enormous aggravation for everyone and considerable hardship for some. To cite but one example, Arkansans needed passes to travel from town to town and sometimes even from neighborhood to neighborhood. The threat of conscription drove thousands of men into hiding or out of Arkansas altogether. Substantial numbers of draft evaders in the northern half of the state even sought the dubious protection of Federal forces. Arbitrary price controls bankrupted some merchants, enriched others, and led to the emergence of a flourishing black market. Widespread burning of cotton encouraged planters in eastern Arkansas to trade with the enemy while they still had something of value. Morale plummeted as the normal patterns of civil government and commerce were altered by the regulations that issued forth from Confederate military headquarters in Little Rock. It remained to be seen whether Hindman's vigorous but heavy-handed actions would prevent Curtis from overrunning Arkansas. 38

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1862: "A Continual Thunder"

Gen. Thomas Hindman pledged to "drive out the invaders or perish in the attempt" when he succeeded Van Dorn as the Confederate Trans-Mississippi commander. His audacious attempt to destroy the Union Army of the Frontier in northwest Arkansas with a ragtag Southern army was foiled in the brutal fighting at Prairie Grove. Photo courtesy of UALR Archives

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When Halleck learned that Van Dorn was moving down the Arkansas River, he directed Curtis to fall back and shift eastward across the Ozark Plateau to cover Missouri's vulnerable southern flank. The Federals struggled for weeks across the southern edge of Missouri from Cassville to West Plains. By late April Halleck was certain that Van Dorn had crossed the Mississippi River. The threat to Missouri was over, at least for the time being, and Halleck instructed Curtis to turn south and invade Arkansas once again. The Army of the Southwest re-entered Arkansas on April 29 near Salem and reached Batesville on May 2, where Curtis personally led a cavalry charge that scattered a large band of Rebel irregulars. Two days later a separate Federal force commanded by Brig. Gen. Frederick Steele arrived from southeastern Missouri and occupied Jacksonport, a few miles down the White River from Batesville. Curtis incorporated Steele's column into his army and prepared to march on Little Rock, one hundred miles to the south. Once the Confederate state capital was in Federal hands, Curtis was authorized to act as military governor and rule by martial law. During his brief stay in Batesville, Curtis organized the first Arkansas Union regiments, composed of residents of the northern part of the state who opposed secession. 39 The Army of the Southwest crossed the White River at Batesville and the Little Red River west of Searcy, but could go no farther. The overland supply line from Missouri was stretched to the breaking point. To make matters worse, Confederate soldiers and the irregulars raised by Hindman harassed Federal foraging parties. Sharp clashes occurred every few days. Hindman's undisguised hatred of Yankees may have been responsible for an ominous increase in barbaric behavior: some captured Federals were tortured, murdered, and mutilated. After a par,ticularly brutal engagement near Searcy on May 19, in which several wounded Federal soldiers were murdered, Curtis ordered his men "to take no more prisoners of armed banditts." 40 Although the Army of the Southwest ground to a halt forty miles short of Little Rock, its proximity to the capital caused an ·uproar. Governor Rector panicked, packed up the state archives, and headed west, eventually ending up in Hot Springs. The governor's political enemies had a field day. A caustic editorial in a Little Rock newspaper rhetorically asked whether "some patriotic gentleman would relieve the

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1862: 'A Continual Thunder"

anxiety of the public by informing it of the locality of the State government. "41 Curtis withdrew to Batesville and asked Halleck to establish a waterborne supply line to his isolated army. A flotilla of Federal gunboats and transports left Memphis on June 13, steamed down the Mississippi River, then turned in to the Arkansas River and the narrow, twisting White River. Hindman tried frantically to disrupt the Federal plan. At St. Charles on the White River, the Confederates placed two pieces of heavy artillery ancl sank several steamboats to block the channel. On June 17 the Federal flotilla approached St. Charles with the partially armored gunboat U.S.S. Mound City in the lead. While the Federal warships and the Confederate fort exchanged fire, the Forty-sixth Indiana disembarked and approached the fort overland. The Mound City was struck by a solid shot that penetrated the armored casemate and wrecked the steam drum. Superheated air immediately filled the vessel with calamitous effect: a hundred and five men were scalded to death or drowned when they jumped into the river; another forty-four were severely burned. Only twenty-six crewmen escaped injury. Confederate soldiers shot several helpless sailors while they struggled in the water. The gunboat was essentially intact but drifted out of the fight, since most of its crew were dead or incapacitated. Other Federal gunboats advanced and engaged the fort. Meanwhile, the Forty-sixth Indiana swept around and overran the Confederate position, killing eight Rebels and capturing thirty others. After the costly victory at St. Charles, the Federal flotilla churned up the White until halted by low water near Clarendon. 42 Curtis decided not to wait at Batesville but to sever his overland supply line and meet the relief flotilla halfway. This was the first time in the Civil War that a Federal army operated without a base of supplies and depended on the Southern countryside for sustenance. For the next two weeks, the Army of the Southwest marched down the east bank of the White River. The Federals gobbled up provisions, freed thousands of slaves (six months before the Emancipation Proclamation), and destroyed an enormous amount of public and private property. "Such scenes cannot be described, but will last with me while time lasts," wrote a Federal soldier. "Fields all burned out, houses, barns, cotton gins, and fences burned, and the smoke mingling with the dust darkens the heavens." Economic devastation, social upheaval, and the collapse of

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More than a hundred Union sailors were scalded to death, drowned, or shot by Confederate marksmen after the U.S.S. Mound City was struck in the steam drum by Southern artillery fire at St. Charles on the White River. Only 26 crewmen of the ship's 175-man complement escaped injury in the costly Union victory. Photo courtesy of U.S. Naval Historical Center

local institutions were the legacy of Curtis's march across eastern Arkansas. The state felt the impact of "total war" long before it was visited upon Georgia or other parts of the Confederacy. 43 Hindman initially attempted to halt the Federal juggernaut with a destructive policy born of zealotry and desperation: scorched earth tactics. He urged everyone along the White River to burn their crops, destroy their ·stores of food, drive away their cattle and hogs, poison their wells, and snipe at the enemy from every side. When the citizens of eastern Arkansas understandably failed to respond enthusiastically to this prescription for economic (and perhaps actual) suicide, a disgusted Hindman took more direct action. He dispatched Brig. Gen. Albert Rust with a hastily raised division of Texas and Arkansas troops to block a ford on Cache River, the only natural obstacle in Curtis's path. The Confederates failed to reach Cache River in time. They collided with the Federals on Parley Hill's plantation, four miles south of the

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1862: '/1 Continual Thunder"

river and three miles north of Cotton Plant. The Federal vanguard consisted of Col. Charles E. Hovey and a small force of Illinois and Wisconsin troops. After a sharp firefight in a swamp, the outnumbered Federals fell back to a more defensible position in a cornfield. Thinking the enemy was on the run, Col. William H. Parsons led two regiments of Texas cavalry in pursuit. The Texans came on "yelling like savages and swearing like demons," but the Federal infantry mowed down the tightly packed cavalry with a "storm of lead." Federal reinforcements soon reached the field,: and Rust and his depleted command fled in confusion. Federal losses were light: 6 killed and 57 wounded; Confederate losses were extremely heavy: at least 123 killed and a large number of wounded and missing. The brief battle near Cache River was the most one-sided Federal victory in Arkansas. Hindman sacked Rust and made no further effort to halt the Army of the Southwest. 44 The Federals reached Clarendon on July 9 only to discover that the relief flotilla had departed the day before. Disappointed, Curtis decided to head east to the Mississippi River and establish a more direct waterborne supply line to Missouri. It meant turning away from Little Rock, but Curtis did not consider the small Arkansas capital to be of significant military or political value. He expected to capture the city after resting and refitting his command. On July 12, the Army of the Southwest occupied Helena without incident. Federal soldiers and freed slaves (who were called "contrabands" at that stage of the war) gradually constructed a semicircular line of earthworks around the little Mississippi River town. Helena remained in Federal hands for the rest of the war and, as Curtis expected, would serve as the jumping-off point for the Federal offensive that eventually captured Little Rock. 45 The Pea Ridge campaign was one of the most remarkable operations of the Civil War. During the first six months of 1862, Curtis and his men marched over seven hundred miles across difficult terrain, much of it on the sparsely settled frontier. They fought and won a major battle against imposing odds, pioneered a new form of mobile warfare, and wreaked havoc wherever they passed. The Federals achieved all of their strategic objectives except the capture of Little Rock; for them, the campaign was a triumph of major proportions. Exactly the opposite was true for the Confederates. Van Dorn failed to liberate Missouri or defend Arkansas, and his bungling allowed the Federals to gain a significant strategic advantage in the Trans-Mississippi. Hindman arrived too late and had too few resources to do more than prevent Curtis from knock-

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ing Arkansas out of the war altogether. When the campaign ended, Missouri was securely in Union hands, much of Arkansas was lost to the Confederacy, and the balance of power in the Trans-Mississippi was permanently altered. The question facing both sides in the summer of 1862 was how to respond to this dramatic shift in fortunes. ~

While the final events of the Pea Ridge campaign were extending into eastern Arkansas, the statewide outcry over Hindman's dictatorial rule reached faraway Richmond. President Davis recognized that a lighter touch was required in Little Rock. He created a separate Department of the Trans-Mississippi consisting of Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, and the Indian Territory. Davis placed another old friend, Maj. Gen. Theophilus H. Holmes, in command of the new department. Holmes was an incredibly poor choice. He was infirm, timid, vacillating, and pathologically pessimistic; his soldiers derisively called him "Granny" and a doctor diagnosed his condition as a case of "softening of the brain." Holmes had failed in Virginia and North Carolina earlier in the war and had asked to be relieved from military service. Instead, Davis appointed him to one of the most demanding departmental commands in the Confederacy. 46 Holmes reached Little Rock on August 12. To everyone's surprise he left most of Hindman's draconian policies in place, but he prosecuted them with less vigor and, consequently, with less effectiveness. Holmes was a military man, and, to the best of his limited ability, he focused his attention on purely military matters. On August 20 he subdivided his sprawling department into three districts. He placed Hindman in command of the District of Arkansas, which was composed of Arkansas, Missouri, and the Indian Territory. Because the Federals were relatively inactive for several months following the capture of Helena, Holmes took advantage of the lull to reorganize the military forces in the District of Arkansas. He stationed roughly half of his troops at Arkansas Post on the Arkansas River and at various locations along the White River. These Confederates faced east toward Helena and the Mississippi River. Their mission was to deter or repulse any Federal attempts to push into the central part of the state. Seasonal low water levels in the Arkansas River and other navigable streams made a Federal offensive unlikely until the spring of 1863, but Holmes was

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1862: ':.4 Continual Thunder"

extremely sensitive about the vulnerability of Little Rock. He began fortifying the northern and eastern approaches to the town. Holmes stationed the other half of his troops at Fort Smith and Fayetteville in the northwestern part of the state, the area occupied by McCulloch at the beginning of the year. These soldiers were styled the First Corps of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi. and were under Hindman's personal direction. They faced north toward Missouri but their mission was unclear. 47 Holmes and P.Iindman did not work well together because, among other things, they held very different views about the military situation west of the Mississippi River. Holmes considered the troops in his department to be a "crude mass of undisciplined material"; Hindman believed that "the material is generally remarkably good." Holmes adopted a passive defensive strategy that he hoped would discourage the Federals from overrunning more of the Trans-Mississippi; Hindman believed the Trans-Mississippi could best be defended by pursuing an offensive strategy that would rock the Federals back on their heels. Like Price and Van Dorn before him, Hindman saw Missouri as the key to Confederate success in the West. He wanted "to push forward toward the Missouri River with the greatest vigor" and carry the war to the enemy. Because of the differences between these two ranking officers, Confederate military policy in the District of Arkansas in the latter half of 1862 was decidedly ambiguous. 48 Since the beginning of 1862, the Confederates had only reacted to Federal moves, but Hindman was greatly encouraged by what he saw as his success in forcing Curtis away from Little Rock. He convinced Holmes to allow him to seize the strategic initiative in northwestern Arkansas and southwestern Missouri. At Fort Smith Hindman struggled to train and equip the recruits and unwilling conscripts that made up the First Corps. Progress was excruciatingly slow because arms, ammunition, clothing, equipment, wagons, draft animals, and food were in short supply. Hindman grew impatient and led a small force into southwestern Missouri. He had barely established his headquarters in Pineville, Missouri, before Holmes called him to Little Rock for a conference. In mid-September Hindman reluctantly returned to Arkansas and left Brig. Gen. James S. Rains in command in Missouri. 49 As luck would have it, Holmes recalled Hindman at the worst possible moment. On September 19 Curtis, now a major general, succeeded

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Halleck as commander of the Department of the Missouri; Steele in turn succeeded Curtis as commander of the Federal garrison at Helena. In surveying the situation from his new headquarters in St. Louis, Curtis immediately noted Hindman's presence in the state. Curtis had swept Price's army out of southwestern Missouri eight months earlier, and he was absolutely determined to prevent the Confederates from reestablishing themselves in that region. He directed his principal subordinate, Brig. Gen. John M. Schofield, to clean the Rebels out of Missouri once and for all. In effect, Curtis gave Schofield the same task Halleck had assigned Curtis the previous December. The primary difference was that after Pea Ridge the focus of the war in the TransMississippi had shifted eastward to the banks of the Mississippi River, where the titanic struggle for Vicksburg was underway. The resources available to both sides to carry out major military operations on the frontier were smaller than at the beginning of the year. Another difference was that Schofield had much less military ability than Curtis. 50 Schofield hastily gathered together a composite force that he called of the Frontier. After several weeks of confused campaigning Army the during which both Schofield and Rains demonstrated their incapacity for independent command, the Federals finally pushed the scattered Confederate detachments back into Arkansas and the Indian Territory. The Army of the Frontier entered northwestern Arkansas on October 18 and briefly occupied Fayetteville, Bentonville, and Cross Hollows. The only engagement of note in or near Arkansas occurred just west of Maysville on October 22 when Brig. Gen. James G. Blum's Federal division attacked and routed a small force of Confederate Indians commanded by Col. Douglas H. Cooper. 51 Early in November Schofield fell back to Springfield with two of his three divisions, but left Blum's division in the northwestern corner of Arkansas. On November 20 Schofield became ill and returned to St. Louis. Command of the scattered Army of the Frontier passed to Blunt, a self-confident and aggressive amateur soldier from Kansas. Emboldened by his success at Maysville, Blunt led his division south down the Military Road that ran along the border between Arkansas and the Indian Territory. The other two Federal divisions, commanded by Brig. Gen. Francis J. Herron of Pea Ridge fame, remained near Springfield. By the end of November, the main components of the Army of the Frontier were dangerously far apart. 52

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1862: ''A Continual Thunder"

Hindman returned to Fort Smith and learned of the inviting disposition of the Army of the Frontier. He decided to try to cross the Boston Mountains undetected and overwhelm Blum's isolated division before Herron could react. If everything turned out as he hoped, the road to Missouri would be open once again. Back in Little Rock, Holmes continued to be extremely concerned about the danger of a Federal offensive from the east. His anxiety mounted when Confederate authorities in Richmond urged him to send ten thousand men to Vicksburg at once. Then he learned of Hindman's bold plan to march north. It was all too much for Holmes; he refused to allow any of his troops to leave Arkansas. "The invasion of Missouri is interdicted," he told Hindman, "so make your arrangements to give up that darling project." Hindman assured Holmes that the planned attack on Blunt was a limited offensive that did not presage an invasion of Missouri and that regardless of the outcome of the operation he would return to Fort Smith. Considering Hindman's nature, and his disdain for the ineffectual Holmes, Hindman may not have been entirely honest. 53 The initial phase of the Confederate offensive did not go as planned. Brig. Gen. John S. Marmaduke led a cavalry force of about two thousand men across the Boston Mountains to distract Blunt and to screen Hindman's advance. To Marmaduke's surprise, Blunt rushed forward to meet him with a force of five thousand men and thirty cannons. The two unequal columns collided on November 28 at Cane Hill. The Federals used flanking maneuvers and superior artillery to drive the Confederates from one position after another. The nine-hour running fight swept across twelve miles of forested ridges and valleys. As was often the case in the Civil War when mobile mounted forces were engaged, casualties were light: the Federals lost nine killed, thirty-two wounded, and a small number missing; Confederate losses were slightly higher. 54 Marmaduke was pushed back across the Boston Mountains to Dripping Springs before Hindman could ferry the main body of his army across the Arkansas River from Fort Smith to Van Buren. Hindman was not particularly upset, however, because he realized that the engagement at Cane Hill had drawn the aggressive Blunt thirty-five miles deeper into Arkansas. Blum's division now was located at the northern edge of the Boston Mountains, nearly one hundred miles from Herron's two divisions near Springfield, but only thirty miles from Hindman's army at Van Buren. Blunt was more vulnerable than ever and

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The pugnacious Gen. James G . Blunt defeated a Confederate cavalry force in a running battle at Cane Hill on November 28, 1862, then arrived in the nick of time to frustrate Hindman's bid to defeat Federal forces at Prairie Grove. Photo courtesy ofUALR Archives

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1862: "A Continual Thunder"

Hindman believed it was imperative that the Confederates take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity. On December 3, Hindman led the eleven thousand men and twenty-two cannons of the First Corps of the Army of the TransMississippi north toward the Boston Mountains. The ragged Rebels who tramped out ofVan Buren exemplified Van Dom's crippling legacy to the Trans-Mississippi: the First Corps was a makeshift army thrown together and rushed into battle without adequate training and equipment. Many men were conscripts of dubious reliability. They were armed with a reasonably effective mix of rifles, smoothbores, and shotguns, but they carried only enough ammunition for a single day of combat. The artillery was unimpressive even by Confederate standards. Draft animals were emaciated due to a lack of forage, and the small number of rickety wagons that composed the train could not support the army in the field for more than a few days. 55 Hindman was optimistic despite the obvious weaknesses in his command. His plan was simple: Marmaduke would advance across the Boston Mountains once again and create a diversion by threatening Cane Hill from the south. With Blum's attention fixed on Marmaduke, Hindman and the main body of the First Corps would swing around Blum's left flank and strike him from the east. The Federals would be overwhelmed on the spot or be driven into the wilderness of the Indian Territory, where they would be without hope of supply or succor. It was a sound plan on paper, but it demanded a great deal of inexperienced officers and men and relied heavily on an extremely fragile logistical system. Thus began the final Confederate offensive in northwestern Arkansas. 56 c:;::::::==y

Blunt was headstrong and belligerent, but he was no fool. He realized that his advanced position practically invited an attack, so he kept a close watch on Confederate activity in western Arkansas. On December 2, the day before the First Corps marched out ofVan Buren, Blunt concluded that something was afoot. He telegraphed Herron to march immediately to his support. Despite the gravity of the situation, Blunt did not fall back toward Missouri. Instead, he placed his troops in defensive positions around Cane Hill and prepared for a fight. Three

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days passed as the anxious Federals waited for the slow-moving Confederate column to cross the Boston Mountains.57 On December 6, Marmaduke's cavalry finally emerged from Cove Creek Valley and clashed with Federal cavalry near Reed's Mountain. While this noisy diversion was in progress, Hindman led his infantry and artillery around to the east of Cane Hill. The Confederates inched forward at an agonizingly slow pace, hampered by fatigue, confusion, primitive roads, failing draft animals, and disintegrating wagons and artillery vehicles. Nevertheless, events generally were unfolding according to plan, if not on schedule. Then, during the night of December 6-7, Hindman learned that Herron had left Springfield with his entire force and was hastening to Blum's relief on Telegraph Road. Hindman realized he could not attack Blunt from the east and expose his rear to Herron. He decided instead to move around Blum's left as originally planned, but to continue north and intercept Herron before he could reach Cane Hill. He intended to defeat Herron somewhere near Fayetteville, then turn back and deal with Blunt. 58 The hastily revised plan required Hindman's Confederates to march farther and faster than originally anticipated. It also ignored the fact that they did not have enough ammunition to fight two battles. Finally, it meant that most of Marmaduke's cavalry would have to accompany the main body, leaving only a small force near Reed's Mountain to keep Blunt occupied. Hindman was not averse to taking risks. Now, as so often before in his civilian and military career, he would attempt to accomplish much with little. Early the next morning, December 7, the Confederates struck out across the rolling terrain north of the Boston Mountains, giving a wide berth to Blunt's position at Cane Hill. The troops moved so slowly even Hindman reported that it was painful to observe the exhaustion of the men. Straggling became epidemic, and the train fell far behind. Shortly after sunrise Marmaduke's cavalry division, riding several miles ahead of the sluggish infantry, encountered a small Federal cavalry force near the Illinois River (west of present-day Farmington). The Federals were the vanguard of Herron's column. They were easily routed and retreated in disorder to the outskirts of Fayetteville, where they reached the safety of Herron's main body. 59 The presence of Herron's two divisions at Fayetteville at that day and hour was nothing short of miraculous. Herron received Blunt's

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message late on December 3 and placed his troops in motion on Telegraph Road early the next morning. During the next three days, the Federals marched a hundred and ten miles-an average of almost thirty-five miles per day. Some units covered the final sixty-six miles in only thirty hours. The march was one of the extraordinary events of the war and an epic of human endurance. Not every one of Herron's men was able to maintain the furious pace, however. About seven thousand Federal soldiers set out at the beginning of the march but only half that number were on their feet at the end. Hundreds of those feet were bare, for many men either wore out their shoes along the way or found it more comfortable to do without them. Fortunately for both sides, the weather throughout the campaign was unseasonably mild for December. Herron's attenuated column reached Fayetteville during the night of December 6-7, halted for a brief rest, then moved on at sunrise and encountered Marmaduke's cavalry. 60 Marmaduke fell back before the inexorable advance of Herron's weary, footsore infantry. Ten miles west of Fayetteville the Confederate cavalry retired across the Illinois River and ascended a low wooded hill surrounded by rolling grasslands. Atop the hill was a modest structure known as Prairie Grove Presbyterian Church. Marmaduke halted to await the arrival of the rest of the First Corps, which slowly came up from the south and deployed along the hill facing north. By this stage of the campaign, the Confederates had suffered considerable attrition as well, and the First Corps probably consisted of fewer than nine thousand men. Hindman reached Prairie Grove at mid-morning with the intention of attacking Herron's force, but his men trickled in so slowly it would be afternoon before he had sufficient strength to do the job. Then his scouts reported that Blunt was stirring at Cane Hill and preparing to march. The Confederate commander was almost as worn out as his soldiers, and this latest information seemed to deflate him. Afraid that if he went after Herron, Blunt would strike him in the rear, Hindman simply stopped at Prairie Grove, unable to decide upon an appropriate course of action in this crisis. 61 Hindman first attempted to attack Blunt at Cane Hill before Herron arrived in support, then he attempted to attack Herron at Fayetteville before Blunt realized what was happening. Both efforts failed because of Herron's alacrity and Hindman's unrealistic expectations of what his army could accomplish. Now the tired, hungry, and

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Gen. Francis J. Herron, a hero of the Battle of Pea Ridge, led his Federal troops on a grueling forced march from Missouri to the savage fighting at Prairie Grove on December 7, 1862. A devastating bombardment by Herron's artillery played a major role in the Union victory. Photo courtesy of UALR Archives ·

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1862: "A_Continual Thunder "

poorly equipped Confederates were between two converging Federal forces whose combined strength was roughly equal to their own. And those Federal forces were led by two of the most combative officers in the Department of the Missouri. The coming battle would determine whether the First Corps of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi would survive to return to Van Buren. ~

During the morning of December 7, Herron and his two shrunken divisions forded the Illinois River and deployed on Crawford's Prairie opposite the Confederate right. Herron was outnumbered better than two to one and his line was less than half as long as the Confederate line. Moreover, his men-the thirty-five hundred or so who were still with him-were hardly in the best condition for a grueling fight. Undaunted, Herron ordered his twenty-four rifled cannons into action against the lighter Confederate artillery planted on the forward slope of the hill. Around ten o'clock the Federal artillery roared to life and began "Spitting Fire and Smoke Shell and Shot in to the Secesh Ranks." The bombardment lasted two hours. By noon all of the Confederate guns on Hindman's right had been disabled or abandoned, and most of the Confederate infantry and dismounted cavalry had taken cover on the reverse slope of the hill. The devastating bombardment was another stunning demonstration of the superiority of Federal artillery in the Trans-Mississippi. 62 When the Confederate batteries fell silent and the infantry disappeared from sight, Herron mistakenly assumed that the Confederates had retreated. He ordered four small regiments forward. The Federals advanced across Crawford's Prairie and up the wooded slope, easily overrunning an abandoned Rebel battery. They continued on past Archibald Borden's house and reached an orchard on the crest of the hill. There they were met by a furious counterattack and ''a perfect hail storm of bullets" from two divisions of Confederate troops commanded by Marmaduke and Brig. Gen. Francis A. Shoup. Half of the Federals were killed or wounded within minutes. The Rebels then advanced from three sides and drove the surviving Federals back down the hill in disarray. "As we came off the field the bullets were flying seemingly as thick as hail and nearly every one was struck either in his person or clothing," wrote an Indiana soldier. "I was one of three in my company who did

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not receive a mark of a bullet." Wildly yelling Confederates, barely under the control of their officers, swept down the slope and across the prairie after the fleeing Federals, only to be cut down in heaps by Herron's artillery. 63 Despite the bloody repulse of the spontaneous Confederate counterattack on Crawford's Prairie, Hindman saw his chance. With the Federal infantry decimated by the slaughter around the Borden house on the Confederate right, he had only to wheel forward his center and left and overwhelm Herron's command. A quick decisive victory might be possible after all. It was mid-afternoon, however, before the Confederates advanced down the slope toward the prairie. As they commenced the maneuvers required to swing around to approach Herron's position, they were struck by artillery fire from the northwest. Blum's division was on the field. Blunt passed most of the morning at Cane Hill wondering why Hindman did not attack. When he heard the roar of artillery in the direction of Fayetteville, he belatedly realized that Hindman had gotten around his flank and intercepted Herron. Furious at having been fooled, Blunt immediately marched toward the sound of the guns. It was fortunate for the Union cause in the Trans-Mississippi that he did so, From Rhea 's

~

Battle of Prairie Grove

Blunt'~ approach

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I 862: