Arkansas Civil War

Richmond VA, the capitol of the Confederacy, was situated on the James River which ran east-southeast into Chesapeake Bay, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. The Bay is about 200 miles in length from north to south and lies within MD and VA. After Gen Johnston yielded the Yorktown line in the face of overwhelming numbers, the President and his advisor Gen Robert E Lee became increasingly tense. The latter did what he could by ordering construction of a large battery emplacement on Drewry’s Bluff east of Richmond, and throwing ideas at Maj General Thomas J “Stonewall” Jackson on how to pin down or destroy two smaller armies approaching Richmond from the north. Though eccentric, Jackson never made excuses about being outnumbered and good advice wasn’t lost on him.

Sooner than expected naval warships on May 15 ascended the James from Chesapeake Bay targeting Richmond. The fleet didn’t go unchallenged by the battery within the unfinished earthworks atop the 80-100 foot bluff. For several hours the exchange of roaring guns reverberated through the streets of the Capital seven miles away, unsettling the terror stricken population. The iron plated vessels couldn’t elevate their guns sufficiently and were repulsed after suffering many causalities. The city seemed to swirl with relief. The Third AR Infantry was absent in NC and didn’t share in the elation that followed.

In the direction of Corinth MS Gen Van Dorn with his force had been engaged in constant skirmishing while withdrawing with the rest of Beauregard’s army, being pressed by superior numbers as in the east. But then on May 9, one of the Federal General’s division commanders got too far ahead of the rest and came under swift attack from Gen Price at Farmington MS.

AR Gen James F Fagan was present leading the First AR, Second TX and a section of light guns. It’s unknown if the DeWitt Guards or Crockett Rifles were there. This action didn’t fully develop because the Federals were soon in close proximity of their friends.

On May 9 a Federal fleet of iron clad gunboats under command of Commodore Charles H Davis fell victim to an early morning surprise attack from eight ram conversions north of Memphis. The former tow boats were braced and fitted with iron for such critical action. Each had one gun mounted forward and were manned by civilian riverboat men under direction of the army. In the one-half hour “ram-fest” the formidable Cincinnati and Mound City were sunk in shallow water near where they had been anchored. The iron clad monsters of Fort Henry notoriety, were vulnerable enough to be sunk after all. But they were raised, repaired and back in service within a week. The Mound City the following month would navigate AR waters while on a date with destiny.

On May 14, former AR governor and Mexican War veteran Gen John S Roane at Little Rock, received orders from Van Dorn to assume command of all forces in AR and defend the state. He gathered what supplies he could find and put forth the preliminary steps of conscription. He also sent a few mounted men ahead to harass Gen Curtis’s advance. And what mounted troops they were!

Captain Alf Johnson’s Spy Company arrived in little Rock and was accepted into Confederate service on May 7. The small cavalry unit of from 50-60 men compared with today’s long range reconnaissance groups having learned stealth and survival skills on the TX frontier from the Comanche war tribe. They had done steady service for TX Gen McCulloch in MO during the latter months of ’61.

Pvt Drury Connelly wrote home: “We don’t expect to bluff up against them, to fight them, but will make their road a hard one to travel farther south”. He went on to say, “Ours are all the troops here now unless it is scattered ones. There are several regiments from Texas that we can fall back to if necessary.” (The War Letters of Drury Connelly, Ann Neely and John Squier compilers and editors, Hillsboro TX; The Harold B Simpson Confederate Research Center, hereafter cited as Drury Connelly to “Dear Wife”)

A small battery made its way to Dallas County from Paris TX and were resting and recruiting at Tulip during the month of May. They had been in Confederate service since January. Known as Daniels Battery, it was later designated the Ninth Texas Field Artillery.

Former New Jersey native and newspaper editor William Henry Parsons had been en route to reinforce Van Dorn with a cavalry regiment recruited from the northeastern counties of TX. But his orders changed continuously from an evolution of events unknown to him, until his arrival in Memphis. While there he first heard that Gen Curtis was threatening Little Rock. It’s likely he didn’t see Van Dorn but at Corinth he did confer with Beauregard who rerouted the charismatic Colonel back to Little Rock upon obtaining a regimental payroll and bounty funds.

One hundred and fifty years ago in Arkansas, the inevitable was taking place: people were taking advantage of a bad situation and creating a worse condition for fellow Arkansawyers. Throughout American history, people have always taken advantage of others in difficult and distressing times. Entitled “Extortion”, an article found in an 1862 Little Rock newspaper tells of price gouging, “Between the shopkeepers, who skin us all, including the country people; and the latter, who, to get even, run their produce up to the highest price, the people of towns and cities are plundered without sting.”

What could have caused such economic behavior in Arkansas? Lincoln’s illegal blockade had all but strangled the life from the Southern people making it difficult to obtain needed supplies from Europe and the rest of the world. One also cannot discount the dwindling morale of the South amid news of the reports of the high casualties from the Battle of Shiloh less than a month previous. One cannot also not discount the fall of New Orleans, thus shutting the Mississippi River off from the rest of civilization: “Upon the news of the fall of New Orleans, certain of our patriotic dealers ran sugar up from five and six to ten and twelve cents a pound, and molasses rose fifty or a hundred per cent. They pile on the price, and their plea is that they cannot replace their goods for a less price.”

The article continued, “Poor men are ground to the very dust, and the necessaries of life placed beyond their reach by the exactions of heartless spectators. When greed so fills the heart of a man as to lead him to such extortion, he is not fit to live among a free people. He is a Lincolnite in heart. Such a man would sell his country and his soul, if he had any, for ‘hard money.’ Dead to all the nobler impulses of humanity and the honest feelings of a patriot, he seeks to grow fat upon the life-blood of the poor. They may do so with impunity.”

As the Spring of 1862 warms up, the condition of Arkansas and its people worsens and a quick and easy fix to the economic problem becomes impossible as Arkansawyers dig in for the duration of the war.

On May 5, 1862 the US War Department created the Department of Kansas, and appointed 35 year old Brigadier Gen James G Blunt Commander. He migrated to KN from OH during the 1850’s and assisted John Brown in sending escaped slaves to Canada while practicing medicine in Greely KN. He didn’t have much to recommend militarily speaking except for a bulldog disposition similar to that of Gen Grant’s. His greatest asset was consistent good luck.

Gen Curtis crossed into AR northwest of Batesville approximately May 1 and felt somewhat relieved at the cessation of the rainy season with improved road conditions. The officers and men he led were all Midwesterners, mostly from IL with the smallest contingents from KN, WI and OH. Their world had been rolling prairies with prosperous farms and bustling towns and cities.

They were mostly young men in their twenties and away from home for the first time. Their encounter with the Ozark highlands at the beginning of their odyssey through MO and AR was at first a fascinating experience through an alien environment. Frequent descriptions of the beauty of the highlands filled diaries and letters to home and into prominent newspapers. It was, wrote a cavalryman “a wonderful change of scenery to the boys from the IL prairies.” One soldier observed; “The green pines and cedars look very pretty on the barren stony hills.”

Initially they acted like tourists in any day and age. One trooper from the wide open spaces of KN amused himself by pushing large rocks over steep cliffs “to see and hear them fall in the abyss below.” Another Kansan informed his brother that Arkansas (Benton CO) “is one remarkable country (sic) for fine streams of pure running water.”

But after a few weeks ,the Army of the Southwest became tired tourists and the excitement of the march began to wane. The bloody battle of Pea Ridge, the onset of torrential rains and the rigors of the eastward slog across the Ozark Plateau eroded morale and inspired contempt. “We are in a perfect wilderness, where not anything is to be seen but trees, stumps, hills and rivulets”, whined one officer. With harsh negative sentiment an Iowan described the landscape as “the roughest, meanest country God ever made (I think).” One infantryman ranted to the Indianapolis (IN) Dailey Journal, that the army of the Southwest was lost somewhere in “one of the most rantankerous, half-manufactured sections of the country you ever saw.”

What was so undesirable and repulsive to what had been a mountainous wonderland, was nothing compared to the disparagement of the inhabitants. “You have no idea how miserably poor the inhabitants of this section (Benton CO ) of the country are,” wrote one man to his mother. “They have barely enough to keep body and soul together which I suppose they make by hunting and I do think they are not fit for anything else.” The list of derogatory comments was endless. One soldier wrote the New York Tribune that Arkansas was a “semi-savage State.” Finally a WI soldier gave expression to his derision by declaring; “I have often heard and read of the ignorance of Southern people, but I have never been so convinced of the fact until I have had the opportunity of conversing with them.”

When the Army of the Southwest arrived in Batesville on May 5, the accolades were enormous. Not enough good could have been said for such a refined and pleasant appearing town and most spent an entire day walking around staring at the houses. But no amount of praise was redemptive enough to diminish the states tarnished reputation.

Before the war, AR already had an unfortunate reputation as a rugged wilderness populated by crude backwoodsmen. The disparaging descriptions given by the invaders reinforced this negative image and gave it widespread circulation among hundreds of thousands of Americans through newspapers from the Midwest to the east coast—-an image that plagues the state to this day. (William L Shea, A Semi-Savage State: The Image of Arkansas in the Civil War, AHQ, Winter 1989.)

On May 5, Governor Rector issued an inflammatory proclamation threatening to secede from the Confederacy. Abandonment of AR had cast a deep feeling of despair, but newspapers responded with an uproar of protest. The Gazette, True Democrat and Washington Telegraph claimed the governor only spoke for himself, and not for the vast majority of the people in the state. They also refrained from making derogatory remarks about the governor, but out-of-state newspapers were hostile and sometimes vicious in attacking him.

Many veterans of the battle of Shiloh were now on convalescent leave. In AR County, Sergeants Andrew J Gunnell, Daniel Brown and Private Frederick Foster would recuperate from their wounds to serve again. “Fred” Foster of Casscoe had farmed a small portion of a 40 acre strip one-half mile west of Cook’s Lake and would survive the conflict for his final homecoming.

One hundred and fifty years ago in Arkansas, the inevitable was taking place: people were taking advantage of a bad situation and creating a worse condition for fellow Arkansawyers. Throughout American history, people have always taken advantage of others in difficult and distressing times. Entitled “Extortion”, an article found in an 1862 Little Rock newspaper tells of price gouging, “Between the shopkeepers, who skin us all, including the country people; and the latter, who, to get even, run their produce up to the highest price, the people of towns and cities are plundered without sting.”

What could have caused such economic behavior in Arkansas? Lincoln’s illegal blockade had all but strangled the life from the Southern people making it difficult to obtain needed supplies from Europe and the rest of the world. One also cannot discount the dwindling morale of the South amid news of the reports of the high casualties from the Battle of Shiloh less than a month previous. One cannot also not discount the fall of New Orleans, thus shutting the Mississippi River off from the rest of civilization: “Upon the news of the fall of New Orleans, certain of our patriotic dealers ran sugar up from five and six to ten and twelve cents a pound, and molasses rose fifty or a hundred per cent. They pile on the price, and their plea is that they cannot replace their goods for a less price.”

The article continued, “Poor men are ground to the very dust, and the necessaries of life placed beyond their reach by the exactions of heartless spectators. When greed so fills the heart of a man as to lead him to such extortion, he is not fit to live among a free people. He is a Lincolnite in heart. Such a man would sell his country and his soul, if he had any, for ‘hard money.’ Dead to all the nobler impulses of humanity and the honest feelings of a patriot, he seeks to grow fat upon the life-blood of the poor. They may do so with impunity.”

As the Spring of 1862 warms up, the condition of Arkansas and its people worsens and a quick and easy fix to the economic problem becomes impossible as Arkansawyers dig in for the duration of the war.

As Editor of the Arkansas Toothpick, I must say that helping Joe Walker write Harvest of Death- The Battle of Jenkins’ Ferry, Arkansas was an honor. It was not until last summer that I began my journey to that horrific ordeal that transpired exactly 148 years ago as I compose this post. As the Battle of Guess’ Creek wound down and the Federal Army began crossing the Saline River at Jenkins’ Ferry, the rain began making life miserable for all trapped in the Saline River bottoms. What happened tomorrow 148 years ago is the subject of this book. No Arkansas historian’s bookshelf is complete without it, as it features never before published maps and documents that shed new light on this battle. Orders yours by clicking HERE!