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Private James Madison Jones, Company B,
1st Arkansas Union Cavalry
Courtesy Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park
Events in the Trans-Mississippi were
not a priority with Civil War leaders in either Washington or
Richmond. Men and resources were diverted eastward, yet the military
men remaining there did their best with what they had. From the time
of secession in May of 1861 until December of 1862 Confederate
authority was not seriously challenged in northwest Arkansas.
Federal forces were victorious at the battle of Pea Ridge (also
known as Elkhorn Tavern) about thirty miles north of Fayetteville,
Arkansas, in March 1862, but the position was too advanced to
maintain and Union lines were pulled back into southern Missouri.
However, following their victory at Prairie Grove on December 7,
1862, Union troops maintained a tenuous presence in the area. It was
this isolated Federal outpost at Fayetteville that was the target of
a Confederate attack
on April 18, 1863.
The Arkansas Federals
In Northwest
Arkansas the war of 1861-1865 was not simply between the states,
with all the people of Arkansas united for the Confederacy against
Union troops from the North, but rather a true civil war. It was
neighbor against neighbor without regard to geographical
considerations. While recognizing that a majority of people in that
part of the state favored the Confederate cause in 1861, it must
also be acknowledged that a very substantial minority was strongly
Unionist in sentiment. After the war it was estimated that 2,000 men
from Washington County, Arkansas, (including Fayette-ville) served
in the Confederate Army, while 500 to 800 were in the Union service.1
The start of the war aroused most of the white Southern
population into a great wave of Confederate patriotism. Yet there
was a minority of Arkansans who continued to feel patriotism, not
for the new Confederacy, but for the old United States. Without
having loaded their belongings into a wagon or having taken a single
step down the road, they found themselves living in a new country
not of their choosing. What had once been patriotic loyalty was now
treasonous disloyalty, and the transition to these new circumstances
was difficult or impossible for many.
After the March
1862 Federal victory at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, Union men from
north-west Arkansas began increasing numbers to work their way
northward to United States Army lines in Cassville, Missouri. They
would be back-armed, mounted and wearing blue. Captain Mar-cus LaRue
Harrison of the 36th Illinois Infantry, the quartermaster of the
Federal garrison at Cassville, liked these Arkansas men who had
given up their homes for their country. When he was authorized to
raise a company for the 6th Missouri Cavalry, he decided to fill the
enlisted ranks with them. When the quota was quickly met the idea
emerged to form an entire regiment from this pool of manpower.
Many Northern officers did not share Harrison’s enthusiasm: they
thought a regiment of Union men from seceded Arkansas a bad idea.
The belief was commonly held that such men had divided loyalties and
in the final analysis would not fight. “There are officers in the
army,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Albert W. Bishop of the First
Arkansas Union Cavalry, “who knowingly shook their heads at the
project, and prophesied nothing but failure.”2
Nevertheless, on 16 June 1862 the War Department issued a special
order to Captain Harrison, stating that “the Secretary of War hereby
authorizes you to raise a regiment of cavalry from the loyal men of
Arkansas, to be completed by the 20th of July, and to be mustered
into service, clothed, mounted, and armed at Springfield, Missouri,
by the United States government.”3
Staffing the new regiment was a big project. The position of
second in command fell to Albert W. Bishop, a Yale-educated captain
in the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry. Other commissioned officers for the
new regiment were either men from northwest Arkansas and
southwestern Missouri who were thought sufficiently eminent in their
home districts to recruit a large number of men, or were drawn from
the ranks of existing Federal units. The recruitment of enlisted men
went on among walk-in refugees fleeing from Arkansas and through
clandestine meetings with Union men still in the state. These men
were Southern Union troops, but they were not “Yankees.”
In October 1862 the First Arkansas Union Cavalry was ordered to
set up a forward post at Elkhorn Tavern, Arkansas, the very site of
the Federal victory at Pea Ridge. As part of the Prairie Grove
campaign, the First Arkansas Union Cavalry moved south on Saturday,
December 6, 1862, with Major General Francis J. Herron’s army.
Herron was moving to unite with Brigadier General James G. Blunt
before Major General Thomas C. Hindman’s Confederate forces could
strike. At the end of the day the First Arkansas encamped for the
night, and Colonel Harrison sent a message to Blunt a few miles
away, stating that his men and horses were too tired to proceed
farther and that he did not think he could move before Monday
morning.
Blunt was furious. In imminent danger of attack, he was not happy
to hear that a subordinate planned to halt just a few miles away.
Harrison’s men had come a shorter distance on horse than Herron’s
men had come on foot, yet the infantry was still moving. “Whether
his regard for the Sabbath or the fear of getting into a fight
prompted him to make such a report to me, I am unable to say,” Blunt
complained in his battle report, “but, judging from his movements
that he was not a man upon whom to place much reliance on the
battlefield, I ordered him to proceed by daybreak to Rhea’s Mills,
to guard the transportation and supply trains....”4
Worse was soon to come. Early the following morning the
Confederates put into motion their bold plan to strike and defeat
Herron, then turn on and destroy Blunt. Between Blunt and Herron
were a few regiments of Union cavalry. The 7th Missouri Cavalry was
in the lead, and behind it the First Arkansas. The unsuspecting 7th
Missouri was resting when disaster struck. The last word had been
that the road to Cane Hill was clear of the enemy, and no contact
was expected. The 7th had turned the horses loose to feed, with
bridles off and girths loosened.
At that moment Confederate cavalry came crashing through the
Missourians’ lines. Utterly unprepared the Missouri Federals fled in
complete disorder back up the road to Fayetteville and directly into
the First Arkansas Union Cavalry. Panic in turn seized the
Arkansans, and they fled in chaos. Colonel Harrison wrote afterward
that he was left behind “in the extreme rear of my men who had all
left me.”5
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