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Not only had Earl Van Dorn failed to destroy a numerically inferior Union army at Pea Ridge, but he sustained at least 2,000 casualties and left five cannon in enemy hands.  Pea Ridge was a severe blow to the Rebel cause in Arkansas, but a harder one was about to be inflicted by friendly hands.    

The Confederate government exhibited deplorable timing by choosing the aftermath of Pea Ridge to demonstrate that it regarded Arkansas as expendable – a resource to be exploited instead of a treasure worth guarding.  On March 25, 1862, Van Dorn received orders to cross the Mississippi at Memphis and reinforce Rebel forces massing to oppose the Union conquest of western Tennessee.  Van Dorn complied as quickly as he could, leaving the state virtually defenseless.  This blatant act of abandonment deprived Arkansas of the services of most of the troops that it had raised during the war’s first year.  An angry Governor Rector protested to Jefferson Davis.  Rector also contemplated seceding from the Confederacy, threatening to “build a new ark and launch it on new waters, seeking a haven somewhere, of equality, safety, and rest” unless Richmond took steps to assure Arkansas’ security.

The Davis administration responded to these legitimate concerns by sending Arkansas an army of one – Major General Thomas C. Hindman.  Hindman was a Mexican War veteran and former Mississippi state legislator who relocated to Helena in 1854.  With vaunting ambition and ham-fisted zeal, he threw himself into Arkansas politics, denouncing nativism, challenging the clique that had long dominated the state’s Democratic machine, and then banging the drum for secession.  With the outbreak of the Civil War, he raised the 2nd Arkansas Infantry Regiment with his own funds and embarked on a precipitate rise in the Confederate Army.  He was promoted to brigadier general on September 28, 1861.  General Hindman led several charges at the Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862, until an enemy shell smashed into his horse and exploded, flinging its long-haired rider to the ground with a painful wound.  Such valor earned Hindman the second star of a major general and a challenging new assignment.  He assumed command of the Military District of the Trans-Mississippi at Little Rock by the end of May 1862, and acted ruthlessly to restore Arkansas to a defensible condition.  Hindman declared martial law, enforced the Conscription Act to collect a new army for Arkansas, and subjected deserters to summary execution.  He commandeered Texas soldiers en route to Mississippi, negotiated the return of a division of Price’s Missourians, and ordered Pike to send all non-Indian troops in Indian Territory to Arkansas.  He set up workshops to manufacture the weapons, ammunition, and equipment his new army needed.  He had millions of dollars worth of cotton in eastern Arkansas burned to keep it out of Yankee hands.  He also ordered the creation of irregular bands to harass any enemy troops who ventured into the state.

Many Arkansans questioned the legality of Hindman’s draconian policy, but it turned out to be just what the Confederate cause in Arkansas needed.  A month before Hindman reached Little Rock, Samuel Curtis, recently promoted to major general, marched through northern Arkansas with 20,000 men to capture Little Rock and set up a military government.  Curtis got within fifty miles of the Arkansas capital, but the transfer of 8,000 of his troops east of the Mississippi and logistical problems stalled his advance.  When the Union Navy failed to provide him with a new line of supply via the White River, Curtis changed his objective to Helena on the Mississippi.  He also altered his mode of operations, making Arkansans the first Southerners to taste the “hard war” tactics that would ultimately bring the Confederacy to its knees.  He had his men live off the countryside, and they gleefully stole or destroyed both public and private property.  As Curtis moved eastward through the delta, he also granted refuge to thousands of slaves who fled to his army seeking freedom.  The Emancipation Proclamation would not go into effect for nearly another six months, but emancipation had become part of Arkansas’ Civil War experience.  On July 12, Curtis entered Helena at the head of two armies – a white one with firearms and a black one armed with little more than hope.

While Thomas Hindman had created a new army to defend what was left of Confederate Arkansas, his radical expedients made him persona non grata in the eyes of many of the state’s citizens.  Numerous complaints caused Jefferson Davis to send his friend, Major General Theophilus Holmes, to take command of Confederate forces in the newly organized Department of the Trans-Mississippi, which encompassed Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Texas, and Indian Territory.  A military mediocrity with a sickly constitution, Holmes put Hindman in charge of the District of Arkansas. 

Hindman’s new command may have represented a demotion, but it gave him jurisdiction over Arkansas, Missouri, and Indian Territory.  Determined to “push forward toward the Missouri River with the greatest vigor,” Hindman scraped together a ragamuffin army of 12,000 men and thirty-one guns and advanced into northwest Arkansas to smash an isolated division of 5,000 Federals under Brigadier General James G. Blunt.  Brigadier General Francis Jay Herron frustrated Hindman’s plan by force marching two more blue divisions 110 miles from Springfield, Missouri, in three days to support Blunt.  The two Yankee generals succeeded in mauling Hindman’s army and their own in a savagely fought battle at Prairie Grove on December 7, 1862.  The Rebels crept away that night under the cover of a truce ostensibly arranged to allow them to bury their dead unmolested.  Prairie Grove ended the third effort of an Arkansas-based Rebel army to secure Missouri.  It also led to Hindman’s transfer to the Army of the Tennessee on the other side of the Mississippi.

Hindman’s departure left General Holmes free to do little more than sit and fret at Little Rock about his lack of resources and the allegedly inferior quality of his troops.  A plea from the Confederate War Department to draw pressure off Vicksburg, Mississippi, by attacking the Union base at Helena finally stirred Holmes into uncharacteristic action.  He assembled a force of just under 8,000 men in the latter part of June 1863 and commenced a straggling march through oppressive heat and heavy rains.  Helena’s 4,129 Union defenders were alert, well entrenched, and supported by ample artillery.  They administered a stiff repulse to Holmes’ poorly coordinated assault on July 4, and sent the Rebels reeling with 1,636 casualties. 

Major General Ulysses S. Grant’s capture of Vicksburg that same day eclipsed the Union victory at Helena, but it also freed thousands of Yankees for offensive operations in Arkansas.  With Holmes’ army crippled and demoralized, Grant realized that Little Rock and perhaps the rest of the state lay ripe for the taking.  Grant sent enough reinforcements to Helena to give Major General Frederick Steele, his friend and West Point classmate, a force that ultimately numbered 15,000 men.  On August 11, 1863, Steele launched a campaign where he encountered more formidable resistance from the Arkansas heat and malaria than his Confederate adversaries.  After outsmarting and outmaneuvering Rebel troops under the ubiquitous Sterling Price, Steele marched into Little Rock on September 10, turning it into the third Confederate state capital to fall into Northern hands.  (This reckoning does not count Jacksonville, Florida, which was briefly occupied and abandoned by Federal forces four times between March 12, 1862, and March 29, 1863.)

The loss of Little Rock without determined resistance caused Confederate morale in Arkansas to plummet.  Large numbers of Rebel troops deserted, many of them seeking the protection of Northern authorities.  On September 23, Steele boasted to Major General Henry W. Halleck, the Union Army’s general-in-chief:  “With 6,000 more infantry, I think I could drive . . . into Mexico.”  James Blunt’s capture of Fort Smith on September 1 enabled the Federals to place the entire Arkansas River line under their control.  The military outposts that they established became recruiting centers for Arkansans eager to fight for the Union, including many who renounced their tenuous allegiance to the Confederacy after a taste of Thomas Hindman’s military tyranny.  More than 8,000 white Arkansans joined Union military units formed in the state, and an unknown number enlisted with recruiters from other states.  Others served in companies of scouts and home guards that were never officially mustered by Federal officers.  Helena had already become a major recruiting center for the black regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops in the spring of 1863.  At least 5,526 Arkansans of African descent joined the Union Army. 

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