Arkansas in the American Civil War

• 1. Introduction

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  Arkansas in the American Civil War begins with a lopsided vote. On the 6th of May 1861, a convention meeting in Little Rock passed the ordinance of secession by 69 to 1. Less than three months earlier, the state's voters had sent mostly Unionist delegates to that very convention. Arkansas had not wanted to leave. Yet it went on to become a Confederate state, and it held a major role in the fight over the Mississippi River. How did a reluctant state turn so fast? Who defended it once the war reached its soil? And what kind of place did the fighting leave behind?

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• 2. Rivers and Slavery

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  Arkansas became the 25th state of the Union on the 15th of June 1836, and it entered as a slave state. Most of the land was still wilderness, rural and thinly settled. Slavery had existed in the area since French and Spanish colonial times, but on a limited scale until statehood.

  Plantation agriculture took hold wherever water transport let growers ship cash crops such as cotton to market. The counties along the Mississippi, Arkansas, White, Saline and Ouachita rivers held the largest enslaved populations. In the mountainous northwest and the north central region, slavery existed on a much smaller scale. The 1850s brought rapid economic growth.

  In the presidential election of 1860, Arkansas voted for John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, the Southern Democratic candidate. The same rivers that carried cotton would soon carry gunboats and supply steamers.

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• 3. Convention and Governor

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  News of John Brown's Raid in Virginia in 1859 jolted Arkansas into reviving its militia, which had been nearly dormant since the War with Mexico. State law required military service from most men of a certain age. By August 1860 the militia counted 62 regiments, grouped into eight brigades and split between an eastern and a western division. Uniformed volunteer companies in many counties and cities drilled more often and were better equipped than the ordinary militia.

  On the 8th of February 1861, a rump element of that militia demanded the surrender of the Federal Arsenal at Little Rock. Nobody had yet voted on secession. The volunteer companies were instrumental in seizing federal installations at Little Rock and Fort Smith, a process that began in February, before the state had left the Union.

  The convention met in March 1861 and adjourned until a special election set for August. Then came the capture of Fort Sumter and President Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops. Governor Rector sensed that open war would swing public opinion toward secession. He quickly organized a militia battalion and seized the Federal Arsenal at Fort Smith on the 23rd of April 1861. The convention then reconvened in Little Rock.

  Many delegates were angry at how Rector had used the militia to push the state toward war. Their new constitution cut the governor's term from four years to two. Military authority passed to a three-person Military Board chaired by the governor. That board was to organize a state army, arm, feed and clothe the troops, and call out forces to defend the state.

  The convention also created an "Army of Arkansas" with two divisions, the 1st in the west and the 2nd in the east, each under a brigadier general. It elected three of its own members as commanders. Major General James Yell of Jefferson County took overall command. Nicholas B. Pearce, a West Point graduate from Benton County, led the First Division. Thomas H. Bradley of Crittenden County led the Second.

  On the 30th of May 1861, an ordinance told every county to appoint a "home guard of minute men" for local defense until regular regiments could be raised. These units were made up of old men and boys who could not serve in normal units. Companies came from each township. James Yell would be called on again in May 1862, when the state had almost no army left.

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• 4. Two Armies

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  Arkansas formed 48 infantry regiments, over 20 cavalry regiments and 20 artillery batteries for the Confederate States Army. Most troops raised before May 1862 crossed the Mississippi and eventually made up a division in the Army of Tennessee. All but one infantry regiment, and every cavalry and artillery unit, spent most of the war in the Western Theater, where few battles matched the scale of those in the East.

  Starting in 1862, the Confederate states west of the Mississippi fell under the Department of the Trans-Mississippi. Every unit raised after May 1862 stayed there for the rest of the war.

  The Third Arkansas was the exception. This infantry regiment served in the eastern theater for the entire war under General Robert E. Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia. It fought in almost every major eastern battle, including Seven Pines, the Seven Days, Harper's Ferry, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, the Wilderness and the Appomattox Campaign. That record made it the state's most celebrated Confederate unit.

  Major-General Patrick Cleburne was the state's most notable military leader. Many considered him one of the most brilliant Confederate division commanders, and he is often called "The Stonewall of the West."

  Not every Arkansan backed the Confederacy. Beginning with the fall of Little Rock in 1863, Unionists formed four infantry regiments, four cavalry regiments and an artillery battery for the United States Army. Six infantry regiments and one artillery battery of African Descent were also credited to the state. They began as the 1st-6th Arkansas Volunteers of African Descent. They were later redesignated as the 46th, 54th, 56th, 57th, 112th and 113th United States Colored Troops.

  The Confederate regiments left the state quickly, and that departure soon left Arkansas dangerously exposed.

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• 5. Abandoned to Her Fate

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  By the end of September 1861, Brigadier General William J. Hardee had moved his new command of Arkansas troops east of the Mississippi. They joined what would become the Confederate Army of Tennessee. Governor Rector's newspaper charged: "The Confederate government has abandoned Arkansas to her fate." By November 1861, Rector reported that 21 regiments, a total of 16,000 men, had been raised, with 6,000 more soon to follow.

  In August 1861, before it could be transferred, the First Division of the Army of Arkansas fought near Springfield, Missouri. Arkansas State Troops supplied the bulk of the force at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, a Confederate victory. They then returned to Arkansas, argued over a transfer to Confederate authority, and were disbanded. In November, Colonel Solon S. Borland at Pittman's Ferry heard of an impending invasion of northeast Arkansas. He called for militia, and the units that answered were formed into three regiments of 30 Day Volunteers.

  In January 1862, Major General Earl Van Dorn arrived to build a new force. On the 31st of January, Rector proclaimed a call for 100 new companies and four batteries. He estimated that Arkansas already had 22,000 men in the Confederate Army, equal to 37 percent of its population fit or subject to military duty.

  Van Dorn led his Army of the West into the Battle of Pea Ridge from the 6th to the 8th of March 1862. The defeat was a major one for Southern forces in the Trans-Mississippi Theater and cost the Confederacy northwest Arkansas. Van Dorn was then ordered east of the Mississippi to reinforce the Confederates near Corinth, in northern Mississippi.

  Major General Samuel Curtis, the victor of Pea Ridge, began his invasion of Arkansas in early April. He took his 17,000-man army back into Missouri for better transportation routes and set up his supply base at Rolla. Curtis reached West Plains on the 29th of April and turned south. Poor weather, rough terrain and unreliable resupply slowed him. By the 9th of May his large but ill-supplied force had emerged from the Ozark foothills onto flat ground at Searcy, ready to strike toward Little Rock.

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• 6. Hindman's Improvised Army

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  Brigadier General John S. Roane refused to leave with Van Dorn, declaring that Arkansas troops should stay and defend their state. Van Dorn left him in command, but with virtually no organized forces. Governor Rector had already abandoned Little Rock on the 1st of May 1862 and moved the government to Hot Springs. For the first three weeks of May, Little Rock had neither a military command nor a state government.

  Roane stopped elements of the 12th Texas Cavalry that were bound for the eastern theaters. He also ordered troops who had reached Memphis, Tennessee, to turn around. At Pine Bluff, James Yell and Senator Robert W. Johnson helped him recruit a new army. Meanwhile Rector sent dispatches to President Jefferson Davis, threatening to secede from the Confederacy unless support arrived. Davis answered by sending the CSS Pontchartrain and the CSS Maurepas to Little Rock. The state government did not return until the Pontchartrain arrived.

  On the 31st of May 1862, Major General Thomas C. Hindman arrived to take over. He was a former United States Representative. He found his command "bare of soldiers, penniless, defenseless, and dreadfully exposed." Hindman issued harsh edicts that imposed conscription, authorized guerrilla warfare and requisitioned supplies. He also ran a campaign of misinformation to mislead Union officers about the state's defenses.

  The Battle of Whitney's Lane on the 19th of May was a small but psychologically important victory over Curtis's foraging parties. Hindman then sent a mixed force of Texans and hastily formed Arkansas units against Curtis at the Battle of Cotton Plant on the 7th of July 1862. Union commanders began to fear that their supply line could not reach the capital, and they turned toward Helena to rebuild it.

  Hindman's methods had doubtful legal footing. The Confederate Conscription Act of April 1862 had expressly forbidden raising new units by conscription, because it was meant to replace losses in existing regiments. Van Dorn had taken nearly every organized regiment out of Arkansas, so Hindman ignored the problem. He let volunteer companies elect their own officers while conscript companies had officers appointed. Colonels James Fleming Fagan, Robert G. Shaver, Simon P. Hughes and Alexander T. Hawthorn resigned their commands near Corinth and returned to help him.

  Weapons were another struggle. A shipment of 18,000 arms left Vicksburg for Pine Bluff, in what became known as the "Fairplay Affair." Union forces captured 5,000 of them on the steamer Fair Play, and 2,500 were redirected to Major-General Richard Taylor in Louisiana. Only 11,000 reached Pine Bluff, and many were castoffs from state armories.

  The shortened gubernatorial term forced an election in the fall of 1862. Colonel Harris Flanagin of the 2nd Arkansas Mounted Rifles won. Complaints that Hindman ruled by martial law brought Lieutenant-General Theophilus H. Holmes to command the new Trans-Mississippi Department. Hindman kept the 1st Corps and tried to clear northwest Arkansas of Union forces. His offensive ended in defeat at Prairie Grove on the 7th of December 1862.

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• 7. Losing the Capital

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  On the 1st of January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. Union forces held northwestern Arkansas, and local commanders who had already been enforcing the Confiscation Acts applied the Proclamation at once, freeing many enslaved people.

  At Arkansas Post on the Mississippi, the Confederates had built a massive earthwork in 1862 called Fort Hindman. It sat on a bluff 25 feet above the river, with a mile of view up and downriver. It was meant to stop Union movement toward Little Rock and to disrupt river traffic. From the 9th to the 11th of January 1863, Union forces attacked by water with ironclad gunboats as part of the Vicksburg Campaign. They outnumbered the defenders 33,000 to 5,500, and most of the garrison surrendered.

  The Battle of Fayetteville on the 18th of April 1863 pitted Arkansas Confederates against Arkansas Unionists. General William Cabell attacked the Union outpost, and the Union force under Colonel M. LaRue Harrison held the field. The attack still exposed the post's weakness, and the Union troops withdrew to Missouri a week later.

  Pressed by Richmond to relieve Vicksburg, General Holmes marched across the state and attacked the Union supply depot at Helena. The attack was repulsed on the 3rd of July 1863, the same day Vicksburg fell. Union forces from Indian Territory captured Fort Smith on the 1st of September.

  With Helena secure, Major-General Frederick Steele moved on Little Rock. Sterling Price tried to hold him back with cavalry. Steele crossed the Arkansas River and attacked from the south side. At the Battle of Bayou Fourche on the 10th of September 1863, near today's Clinton National Airport, Price chose to abandon the city rather than risk a siege. Governor Flanagin took the state archives to Arkadelphia and then to Washington in Hempstead County, where he set up a new capitol.

  The fall of Little Rock opened the way for a pro-Union government under Isaac Murphy, established on the 18th of April 1864. It struggled to win recognition from Union authorities, who were then arguing with Congress over terms for seceded states. Many Union troops were pulled out to reinforce armies east of the Mississippi. Intense guerrilla warfare followed in the no-man's land north of the Arkansas River.

  The Camden Expedition ran from the 23rd of March to the 2nd of May 1864. Steele was ordered to march to Shreveport, Louisiana, and meet a Union amphibious force coming up the Red River, but the two never joined. His columns suffered terrible losses at Marks' Mills, Poison Spring and Jenkins' Ferry against Confederates led by Sterling Price and General E. Kirby Smith.

  That victory briefly revived Confederate hopes. Brigadier General Joseph O. Shelby recruited in northeast Arkansas, and deserters returned to service. The last new Arkansas units were formed then, the 45th through the 48th Arkansas Mounted Infantry. Richmond's demand for more infantry east of the Mississippi caused an uproar. As a compromise, Price led a large cavalry raid into Missouri that timed with the presidential election. It lasted from the 29th of August to the 2nd of December 1864. After Price's disastrous defeat at Westport on the 23rd of October, most Arkansas cavalry units went home on furlough for the rest of the war.

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• 8. Surrender and Return

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  On the 9th of April 1865, the Third Arkansas surrendered with the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. The remnants of Cleburne's division of Arkansas troops gave up with the Army of Tennessee at Bennett Place, near Durham Station, North Carolina, on the 26th of April. The Jackson Light Artillery was among the last Confederate units east of the Mississippi to yield. After helping defend Mobile, its men spiked their guns and surrendered at Meridian, Mississippi, on the 11th of May 1865.

  The Arkansas infantry of the Trans-Mississippi Department surrendered on the 26th of May 1865. They were camped around Marshall, Texas, because war-ravaged Arkansas could no longer feed an army. The regiments were told to report to Shreveport, Louisiana, for parole. None did. Some soldiers went on their own, and the regiments simply disbanded. Enthusiasm for the cause had already faded under the draft, high taxes and martial law.

  Brigadier General M. Jeff Thompson surrendered most Arkansas cavalry. He agreed to give up his command at Chalk Bluff on the 11th of May 1865. His men gathered at Wittsburg and Jacksonport to lay down their arms. At Wittsburg, 1,964 enlisted men and 193 officers were paroled in May. At Jacksonport, 4,854 enlisted men and 443 officers were paroled in early June. In all, Thompson surrendered about 7,500 men. Smaller commands gave up at posts including Fort Smith, Pine Bluff and Little Rock.

  In September 1865, the federal government organized the Fort Smith Council. It was a series of meetings about future treaties and land allocations involving Indian tribes east of the Rockies.

  Under the Reconstruction Acts, Arkansas and Mississippi formed the Fourth Military District of the U.S. Army. Generals Edward Ord, Alvan Cullem Gillem and Adelbert Ames commanded it at various times. Arkansas had to meet the requirements of Reconstruction, including ratifying constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and granted citizenship to former slaves. Its representatives were then readmitted to Congress. The state was fully restored on the 22nd of June 1868, the second former Confederate state to return, after Tennessee in July 1866.

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