Arkansas in the American Civil War

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The state of Arkansas was a part of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, and provided a source of troops, supplies, and military and political leaders. Arkansas had become the 25th state of the United States, on June 15, 1836, entering as a slave state. Antebellum Arkansas was still a wilderness in most areas, rural and sparsely populated. As a result, it did not have early military significance when states began seceding from the Union. State Militia forces seized the Federal Arsenal in Little Rock before Arkansas actually voted to secede. The small Federal garrison was forced to evacuate after a demand by Arkansas Governor Rector that the arsenal be turned over to state authority. At the beginning of 1861, the population of Arkansas, like several states of the Upper South, was not keen to secede on average, but it was also opposed to Federal coercion of seceding states. This was shown by the results of state convention referendum in February 1861. The referendum passed, but the majority of the delegates elected were conditional unionist in sympathy, rather than outright secessionist. This changed after the Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and President Abraham Lincoln called for troops to put down the rebellion. The move toward open war shifted public opinion into the secessionist camp, and Arkansas declared its secession from the Union on May 6, 1861.

Arkansas Confederate/Union army contributions

Arkansas formed some 48 infantry regiments for the Confederate Army in addition to numerous cavalry and artillery battery units to serve as part of the Confederate Army. The 1st Arkansas Mounted Rifles, and the 1st, 4th, and 6th Arkansas Infantries would go on to see considerable action as a part of Major General Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee. Including those stated above, all but one infantry regiment and all of the cavalry and artillery units served most of the war in what was known as the "Western Theater", where there were few battles that were on the scale of those in "Eastern Theater". One infantry regiment, the 3rd Arkansas, served in the East for the duration of the war, thus making it the state's most celebrated Confederate military unit. Attached to General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, the 3rd Arkansas would take part in almost every major Eastern battle, including the Battle of Seven Pines, Seven Days Battle, Battle of Harper's Ferry, Battle of Antietam, Battle of Fredericksburg, Battle of Gettysburg, Battle of Chickamauga, Battle of the Wilderness, and the Appomattox Campaign.^[1][2]

Though it was with the Confederacy that Arkansas sided as a state, not all Arkansans supported the Confederate cause. Beginning with the fall of Little Rock to Union forces in 1863, Arkansans supporting the Union formed some eleven infantry regiments, four cavalry regiments, and two artillery batteries to serve in the Union Army. None of those saw any heavy combat actions, and few took part in any major battles. They served mostly as anti-guerrilla forces, patrolling areas that had heavy Confederate guerrilla activity.^[3] Another significant event brought on by the fall of Little Rock was the relocation of the state capital. Initially state government officials moved the capital offices to Hot Springs, but it remained there for only a short time, being moved deeper into Confederate occupied territory, in Washington, Arkansas, where it would remain for the rest of the war.

By the end of the war, many of the Arkansas regiments were serving with Bragg's Army of Tennessee, and most were with that Army when it surrendered on April 26, 1865, in Greensboro, North Carolina.^[4]

Noted Arkansas commanders

Arkansans of note during the Civil War include Confederate Major General Patrick Cleburne. Considered by many to be one of the most brilliant Confederate division commanders of the war, Cleburne is often referred to as "The Stonewall of the West." Also of note is Maj. Gen. Thomas C. Hindman, a former United States Representative, who commanded Confederate forces at the Battle of Cane Hill and Battle of Prairie Grove. Brigadier General Albert Rust, through his political influence, helped to form the 3rd Arkansas Infantry Regiment, and until his promotion to general commanded that regiment. He later commanded forces at the Battle of Pea Ridge and the Battle of Shiloh, ultimately serving under General Sterling Price. Colonel Van H. Manning took over command of the 3rd Arkansas following Rust's promotion, and was commended for bravery in several engagements, most notably at the Devil's Den during the Battle of Gettysburg.

Major Campaigns

Arkansas State Troops provided the bulk of forces for the second major battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Wilson's Creek in southeastern Missouri. Although this first major battle in the western theater was a victory for southern forces, the Arkansas forces moved back to Arkansas and in a dispute over transfer to Confederate Authority, were disbanded. Remaining Confederate Forces in Arkansas were transferred east of the Mississippi River in the fall of 1861, and spent the remainder of the war serving in that theater.

General Earl Van Dorn was dispatched to Arkansas early in 1862 to build a new force. General Van Dorn led his new Army of the Frontier into the Battle of Pea Ridge in late February 1862. This battle was a defeat for southern forces and led to the loss of northwest Arkansas. Immediately following the battle of Pea Ridge General Van Dorn transferred his forces east of the Mississippi River in an attempt to support Confederate Forces in what would become the Battle of Shiloh. Although General Van Dorn's force arrived too late to participate in the battle, they remained east of the Mississippi River for the remainder of the war.

In April 1862 when General Van Dorn left the state, Brigadier General Roane refused to go with Van Dorn because Roan believed that Arkansas Troops should be left to defend their state. Van Dorn detached Roane and left him in command of all military forces in Arkansas, but he did not leave Roane any organized body of troops to command.

General Roane approached the Governor of the State Henry M. Rector, for assistance in raising new forces. Governor Rector told General Roane to stop any troops then within the state for the state's defense. There were four companies of the 12th Texas Cavalry at Pine Bluff at the time waiting on a steamboat to take them to Memphis where their Colonel, Parsons, was waiting for them with the two companies of the regiment who were en route to join Van Dorn at Corinth Mississippi per Van Dorn's orders. The remainder of the 12th Texas Cavalry were at Little Rock and Benton heading to Pine Bluff for transportation.

On May 1, 1862, Governor Rector, feeling that Union General Samuel Curtis' army was on the way to capture Little Rock, abandoned Little Rock and moved the state Government to Hot Springs, Arkansas. So for the first three weeks of May 1862 there was no military or State Government at Little Rock. General Roane went to Pine Bluff and enlisted the help of Major General James Yell commander of the Arkansas State Militia and began recruiting for a new Army of the Southwest in the Department of Arkansas. General Yell was a "States Defense first" advocate and lent his power to aiding Roane along with Arkansas Confederate State Senator Colonel Robert Johnson also of Pine Bluff. These three men were the backbone of the newly reconstituting Army of the Trans Mississippi Department. The companies which eventually became the 26th Arkansas Infantry Regiment had started the recruiting process before General Van Dorn left the state and had just been organized when General Roane moved his headquarters to Pine Bluff from Little Rock.

Governor Rector in the meantime sent dispatches to President Jefferson Davis threatening to secede from the Confederacy unless he sent some sort of support. Which Davis did in the form of the CSS Ponchartrain and CSS Maurepaus. The State Government did not return to Little Rock until the Ponchartrain arrived and a week later Gen Thomas C. Hindman arrived to take command from Roane, and ordered all troops at Pine Bluff to Little Rock.

General Hindman was dispatched to take command of what had been designated as the Confederate Department of the Trans-Mississippi. Through rigorous enforcement of new Confederate conscription laws, Hindman was able to raise a new army in Arkansas. Union forces threatened the state capitol of Little Rock in the summer of 1862, but settled for occupying the city of Helena and turning it into a major logistical hub.

General Hindman sent numerous requests for arms back across the Mississippi River. Many weapons were transferred to the Trans Mississippi District from Vicksburg in what became known as the "Fairplay Affair". A shipment of 11,000 arms arrived at Pine Bluff from Vicksburg by way of Monroe, La. out of a shipment of 18,000 that were originally sent. 5,000 of those 18,000 were captured on the steamer "Fair Play" by the Union and 2,500 of them went to General Richard Taylor's army in Louisiana. These weapons had come from the arsenal of eastern Confederate states that had been returned to the state arsenals as the Confederates had re-equipped themselves with the better captured Union arms. These guns were the castoffs and unusable weapons from the various state armories which had been returned to those armories after the Confederate armies east of the Mississippi had been re-equipped from the "Battlefield Quartermaster" of 7 Days, 2nd Manassas and Harper Ferry.^[5]

General Hindman's aggressive tactics caused complaints that he was ruling by martial law, which led the Confederate Government to dispatch General Holmes to assume command of the new Department of the Trans-Mississippi. General Hindman was retained in command of the I Corps of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi. Hindman led this new force, composed largely of conscripts, in an attempt to clear northwest Arkansas of Union forces. The offensive ended in defeat at the Battle of Prairie Grove in Northwest Arkansas in December 7, 1862.

General Hindman was transferred east of the Mississippi to the Army of the Tennessee, leaving General Holmes and General Price in command in Arkansas. Holmes moved his army across the state and attacked the Union supply depot at Helena in an attempt to relieve federal pressure on Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Confederate attack was repulsed at the Battle of Helena on July 3, 1863. The Federals followed up this victory by moving against the state capitol at Little Rock, which fell to the Union army in early September 1863. Confederate forces retreated to southwestern Arkansas and a new Confederate State capitol was established at Washington, Arkansas in Hempstead County.

When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, Union forces were in occupation of northwestern Arkansas. Local Union commanders, who had been aggressively enforcing the Confiscation Acts to grant freedom to slaves of rebel owners, put the proclamation into effect immediately, freeing many slaves in the area.^[6]

The next major action in Arkansas was the Camden Expedition (March 23 – May 2, 1864). Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele and his Union troops stationed at Little Rock and Fort Smith were ordered to march to Shreveport, Louisiana. There, Steele was supposed to link up with a separate Federal amphibious expedition which was advancing up the Red River Valley. The combined Union force was then to strike into Texas. But the two pincers never converged, and Steele's columns suffered terrible losses in a series of battles with Confederates led by Maj. Gen. Sterling Price and Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith at the Battle of Marks' Mills, Battle of Poison Spring and the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry. Ultimately Union forces managed to escape back to Little Rock where they basically remained for the duration of the war.

The victory by Confederates in the Red River Campaign and its Arkansas segment, the Camden Expedition, opened a brief window of opportunity for Arkansas Confederates. Missouri General Joseph Shelby was dispatched to northeast Arkansas with his cavalry brigade and began recruiting. Throughout the summer of 1864, Confederate strength in northeast Arkansas steadily grew with many men who had either deserted from their previous commands or become separated, returning to Confederate Service. The last formation of new Confederate units occurred during this time with the formation of the 45th through the 48th Arkansas Mounted Infantry Units. Several existing Arkansas Units were converted to Mounted Infantry and dispatched to northeast Arkansas. Shelby was eventually able to seriously threaten vital Union lines of communication along the Arkansas River between Helena and Little Rock, and for a while it appeared that Confederates would mount a serious attempt to retake the Capitol in Little Rock. However, Confederate authorities in Richmond were pressuring General Kirby Smith to dispatch some of his infantry to reinforce Confederate armies east of the Mississippi. This caused an uproar with the Arkansas confederate infantry units, and as a compromise, General Smith approved a plan by Major General Sterling Price to organize a large scale raid into Missouri that would coincide with the November 1864 Presidential Elections.

Many Arkansas troops participated in the last Confederate offensive operation in the Trans-Mississippi Department, when General Price led a large cavalry raid into Missouri in the fall of 1864. Following Price's defeat at the Battle of Westport in on October 23, 1864, most of the Arkansas cavalry units returned to the state and were furloughed for the remainder of the war.

When the war ended, the 3rd Arkansas Infantry Regiment surrendered with Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Virginia on April 9, 1865. The Remnants of Major General Patrick Cleburne's Division of Arkansas Troops surrendered with the Army of Tennessee at Bennett Place near Durham Station, North Carolina on April 26, 1865. The Jackson Light Artillery was among the last of the Confederate troops east of the Mississippi to surrender. The Jackson Light Artillery aided in the defense of Mobile and surrendered with the Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana. The battery spiked its guns and surrendered at Meridian, Mississippi, May 11, 1865.^[7] The Arkansas infantry regiments assigned to General E. Kirby Smith's Department of the Trans-Mississippi were surrendered on May 26, 1865.^[8][9] When the Trans-Mississippi Department surrendered, all of the Arkansas infantry regiments were encamped in and around Marshall, Texas, as war-ravaged Arkansas was no longer able to provide adequate sustenance to the army. The regiments were ordered to report to Shreveport, Louisiana, to be paroled. None of them did so. Some soldiers went to Shreveport on their own to be paroled, but the regiments simply disbanded without formally surrendering.^[10] Most of the Arkansas Cavalry Units were surrendered by Brigadier General M. Jeff Thompson, Commander of the Military Sub-District of Northeast Arkansas and Southeast Missouri. General Thompson agreed to surrender his command at Chalk Bluff, Arkansas on May 11, 1865, and agreed to have his men assemble at Wittsburg and Jacksonport, Arkansas to lay down their arms and receive their paroles. The cavalry units formally surrendered and were paroled at Wittsburg, Arkansas on May 25, 1865 or at Jacksonport, Arkansas on June 5, 1865.^[11][11] Many smaller commands surrendered at various Union posts, including Fort Smith, Pine Bluff and Little Rock in May and June 1865.

The Fort Smith Council was a series of important meetings held at Fort Smith in September 1865 that were organized by the United States government for all Indian tribes east of the Rockies. The purpose was to discuss the future treaties and land allocations following the close of the Civil War. Under the Military Reconstruction Act, Congress readmitted Arkansas in June 1868.

Battles in Arkansas

The following is a list of Civil War battles fought in Arkansas.

See also

• Arkansas Civil War Confederate Units
• List of Arkansas Union Civil War Units
• Arkansas Militia in the Civil War
• Confederate States of America - animated map of state secession and confederacy

References

Further reading

• Christ, Mark K. Civil War Arkansas, 1863: The Battle for a State (University of Oklahoma Press, 2010) 321 pp. ISBN 978-0-8061-4087-2
• Christ, Mark K. Rugged and Sublime: The Civil War in Arkansas (University of Arkansas Press, 1994); guidebook to the Civil War battlefields of Arkansas with maps and photos; ISBN 978-1-55728-357-3
• Huff, Leo E. "The Memphis and Little Rock Railroad during the Civil War," Arkansas Historical Quarterly (1964) 23#3 pp. 260–270 in JSTOR

Primary sources

• Christ, Mark K., and Patrick G. Williams, eds. I Do Wish This Cruel War Was Over: First Person Accounts of Civil War Arkansas from the Arkansas Historical Quarterly (University of Arkansas Press, 2014)
• Getting Used to Being Shot At: The Spence Family Civil War Letters ISBN 978-1-55728-939-1

External links

• National Park Service map of Civil War sites in Arkansas
• Arkansas in the Civil War
• 3rd Arkansas
• History of the 3rd Arkansas
• "For Ninety Nine Years or the War" The Story of the 3rd Arkansas at Gettysburg
• Brig. Gen. J.B. Robertson, after action report, Devil's Den
• Arkansas Union Army contributions
• Arkansas Confederate Army contributions
• Musters

Arkansas in the American Civil War 1861 Seizure of Little Rock Arsenal 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge Battle of Whitney's Lane Battle of Saint Charles Battle of Cotton Plant Battle of Cane Hill Battle of Prairie Grove 1863 Battle of Arkansas Post Battle of Chalk Bluff Battle of Helena Battle of Devil's Backbone Battle of Bayou Fourche Battle of Pine Bluff 1864 Battle of Elkin's Ferry Battle of Prairie D'Ane Battle of Poison Spring Battle of Marks' Mills Battle of Jenkins' Ferry Battle of Old River Lake Battle of Fort Smith Reconstruction Arkansas Militia in Reconstruction Units Arkansas Militia in the Civil War List of Arkansas Civil War Confederate units List of Arkansas Civil War Union units