Civil War 150: Civil War in Arkansas

The War in 1861 and 1862
The majority of Arkansans initially supported the decision to secede, but a significant minority opposed the move from the beginning. The most serious challenge to the authority of the new Confederate state government arose in the mountainous regions of the north-central part of the state, where area residents formed a clandestine organization known as the Arkansas Peace Society. Local militias eventually broke up the society, but resistance to Confederate authority continued throughout the course of the war. Despite having the third smallest white population of any Confederate state, Arkansas supplied more troops for the Union army than any other Confederate state except Tennessee.

Outside the northern and northwestern regions of the state, many Arkansans greeted secession with enthusiasm. Historian James Willis has written that no other state had a larger proportion of military-age men fighting for the Confederacy than Arkansas. Many of the young men who rushed to enlist were immediately inducted into the regular Confederate army and sent east of the Mississippi River. Others remained to serve in the state forces.

The state remained free of fighting in 1861, but in February 1862, a Union army of 12,000 men led by Brigadier General Samuel Curtis chased a Confederate army out of southwest Missouri and across the border into Arkansas. The Union army went into camp near Bentonville (Benton County). In early March, Confederate Major General Earl Van Dorn moved north with a well-equipped army of 16,000 men, determined to drive the Federal troops back into Missouri or destroy them. Van Dorn succeeded in getting a part of his army behind Yankees, but his force was strung out for miles, and his men were exhausted from the long march in inclement weather. Curtis was initially caught by surprise, but he quickly regrouped and went on the attack. For two days (March 7 and 8), the armies clashed near a broad plateau called Pea Ridge. By the end of the fighting on the second day, the Union army had scored a decisive victory. Following the battle, Van Dorn moved what remained of his army—along with all available animals, equipment, arms, and ammunition—east of the Mississippi River, leaving Arkansas virtually defenseless.

By May, a Union army moving south from Missouri was threatening Little Rock, and an alarmed Governor Henry Massie Rector hurriedly packed up the state archives and fled to Hot Springs (Garland County). But lengthening supply lines and a determined stand by local militia and Texas cavalrymen in White County forced the Federals to abandon their plans to take the capital. Instead, they marched eastward across the state toward the Mississippi River, liberating slaves and destroying property as they went. In July, they entered Helena (Phillips County) on the Mississippi River without opposition, followed by another unofficial “army” of former slaves. Throughout the remainder of the war, wherever the Federal army went, the institution of slavery crumbled.

The late summer and early fall witnessed changes in both the political and military leadership of Confederate Arkansas. The Secession Convention had reduced the governor’s term from four years to two. A disgruntled Rector announced that he would seek another term, but in the ensuing election, he was defeated by Harris Flanagin, an attorney and former Whig from Clark County who was serving in the Confederate army east of the Mississippi River. On November 14, 1862, Flanagin was inaugurated as Arkansas’s seventh governor, but a lack of money and the presence of Federal troops in the state precluded any significant government action. The major decisions in the Arkansas would increasingly devolve on military authorities.

In an attempt to improve deteriorating Confederate military fortunes in the state, the Confederate high command sent Thomas Hindman to Arkansas to take command of what was styled the Military District of the Trans-Mississippi. When Hindman arrived in Little Rock in late May, he was shocked at the situation he found there. “I found here almost nothing,” he remarked. “Nearly everything of value was taken away by General Van Dorn.” To meet the crisis, Hindman employed draconian measures. He declared martial law, established factories, strictly enforced the conscription act, executed deserters, and ordered the immediate burning of all cotton that might be sized by the Federals.

Hindman also authorized the use of “partisan rangers,” bands of guerrillas whose purpose was ostensibly to stage hit-and-run raids on detached Federal units and harass the enemy’s lines of supply. Hindman’s order gave legal sanction to a brutal and merciless guerrilla conflict that historian Daniel Sutherland has called “the real war” in Arkansas. Some of the partisan rangers were legitimate guerrilla fighters, strongly dedicated to defending the state against the Northern invaders, but many were little more than armed bandits whose only causes were self-aggrandizement and the settling of personal grudges. They preyed not only on the Yankees but also on civilians of all political persuasions, contributing greatly to the breakdown of law and order in the state.

Hindman’s harsh actions earned him the enmity of many Confederate sympathizers as well as the Yankees and eventually led to his dismissal as overall commander in the region. But combined with his masterful administrative skills, they also managed to create a viable fighting force almost out of thin air. In early December, Hindman moved his new army of 12,000 north from Fort Smith (Sebastian County) to attack an isolated Union division. On December 7, at Prairie Grove, about ten miles southwest of Fayetteville (Washington County), the Confederates clashed not only with that division but also with two additional divisions of Union reinforcements who had moved south from Missouri. In some of the most brutal fighting of the war, each side suffered more than 1,350 casualties each. Tactically, the battle was a draw, but during the night of December 7, the Confederates withdrew from the field. The battles at Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove helped secure Missouri for the Union, but much remained to be done before Union forces regained control of Arkansas.

The first full year of war seriously disrupted civil society in the state. “Dozens of county and local governments ceased to function as judges, sheriffs, clerks, and other officeholders fled or failed to carry out their duties,” historian William Shea has noted. “Taxes went uncollected, lawsuits went unheard, and complaints went unanswered. With courts closed and jails open, the thin veneer of civilization quickly eroded. Incidents of murder, torture, rape, theft, and wanton destruction increased dramatically.” In southern Arkansas, many items—such as cotton cards, coffee, tea, and salt—had virtually disappeared. For the next two and a half years, many citizens of the state would experience the horrors of civil war to an extent matched by few other Americans, and the struggle for states’ rights and the Southern way of life would quickly be overshadowed by the struggle for mere survival.

The War in 1863
In January 1863, a Union force of more than 50,000 men steamed up the Mississippi River from Vicksburg and overwhelmed the 5,000 Confederate defenders at Arkansas Post (Arkansas County), an earthen bastion on the Arkansas River about 120 miles south of Little Rock. Nearly 4,800 Confederate soldiers were taken prisoner, and the Southerners lost vast quantities of sorely needed arms, ammunition, and supplies.

By summer, it had become apparent that only a decisive victory could reverse the Confederates’ sagging fortunes. Major General Theophilus Holmes, the new supreme Confederate commander in Arkansas, devised a plan for just such a victory. His forces would attack and seize Helena, a busy agricultural and commercial center that had been occupied by Union forces the previous July. The attack, begun in the early morning hours of July 4, was an utter failure. The Confederates suffered more than 1,600 casualties and failed to take the city. The disaster was compounded by the news that Confederate General Robert E. Lee had been repulsed at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 3 and was retreating with heavy casualties. Even more ominous for Arkansas Confederates was the news that the Confederate Mississippi River stronghold at Vicksburg had surrendered on July 4, freeing up thousands of Union soldiers for service in Arkansas. The significance of that defeat soon became apparent.

In mid-August, a Union army of 6,000 men under the command of Major General Frederick Steele moved west from Helena toward Little Rock. At Clarendon (Monroe County), they were joined by 6,000 cavalry commanded by Brigadier General John Davidson. By the time this force reached the vicinity of Little Rock, it had been reinforced to about 14,000 men. On September 10, the Union cavalry crossed the Arkansas River south of Little Rock and began to move north toward the city along the south bank of the river, while their infantry moved along the north bank. Furious skirmishing took place south of the river, but the Confederates were forced to evacuate the city in the late afternoon. The Rebels also abandoned Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). The state’s Confederate government and the bulk of its military forces withdrew to southwest Arkansas, and the town of Washington (Hempstead County) became the Confederate state capital for the remainder of the war.

In late October, the Confederates tried once again to gain the initiative. Two thousand Confederate cavalry led by Brig. Gen. John Marmaduke moved north from Princeton (Dallas County) to attack Colonel Powell Clayton’s 550-man Union detachment at Pine Bluff. They struck on the morning of October 24, but despite fierce fighting, they were unable to retake the town. The Union garrison was assisted by many former slaves who put up barricades of cotton bales to protect the Federal position.

The Action at Pine Bluff was the last major military action in Arkansas in 1863. During the year, the Union army had secured the Arkansas River from Fort Smith in the west through Little Rock and Pine Bluff to Arkansas Post in the east, and the Mississippi River was securely in its possession. As the Confederate military fortunes declined, discontent with the Confederate government grew. In large areas of Arkansas, food and other necessities were in short supply. Where neither army held sway, the last remnants of civil government and the rule of law disappeared, and guerrilla fighters roamed the countryside.

The War in 1864 and 1865
Shortly after the fall of Little Rock, Gen. Steele began to prepare for the establishment of a loyal state government. Under Lincoln’s lenient policy, the state could form a loyalist government whenever the number of people taking an oath of loyalty to the Union reached ten percent of those who had voted in the election of 1860. This was accomplished in January 1864. That same month, Arkansas Unionists drafted a new state constitution. The new document differed little from the original state constitution, with the exception that it outlawed slavery and repudiated secession. The convention also chose a provisional slate of officers, with Isaac Murphy as governor. In March, loyalist voters approved the constitution and the slate of officials by a wide margin, and they elected a new state legislature.

In late March, Union forces embarked on an ambitious military venture known as the Red River Expedition. The Arkansas phase of this operation (which would come to be known as the Camden Expedition) called for a Union army under Steele’s command to move southwest from Little Rock toward Shreveport, Louisiana, where it would meet another Union army moving north from New Orleans, Louisiana. If successful, the operation would destroy the remaining Confederate forces in southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana, reassert Federal authority in Texas, and seize millions of dollars worth of Confederate cotton and other supplies.

The Red River Expedition turned to disaster for Union forces. The Louisiana wing of the operation was defeated at Mansfield, Louisiana, and forced to retreat. Steele fared little better. Dwindling supplies and growing resistance forced him to abandon his advance on Shreveport. He turned east, and on April 15, his troops occupied the Ouachita River town of Camden (Ouachita County), only recently abandoned by the Confederates. Steele sent a foraging party west with a large wagon train to gather corn and other supplies, but it was ambushed by Confederate cavalry at Poison Spring (Ouachita County) as it was returning to Camden on April 18. The Confederates overran the wagon train and captured the wagons. The Rebels shot wounded African-American soldiers of the First Kansas Colored Infantry as they lay helpless on the ground and gunned down others as they tried to surrender. Four days later, a second wagon train was ambushed east of Camden at Marks’ Mill.

On April 26, the Union troops evacuated Camden and began a long retreat back to Little Rock. Rebel forces caught up with them as they attempted to cross the Saline River at Jenkins’ Ferry. After a fierce battle, Steele’s army crossed the river to reach the safety of Little Rock on May 3. With the disastrous failure of the Red River Expedition, Confederate forces across the state went on the offensive. In September, Major General Sterling Price launched a raid into Missouri with 12,000 men. After crossing that state from east to west, the Rebels were soundly defeated at the Battle of Westport near the Kansas border on October 23 and began a long retreat south. By the time they reached Laynesport (Little River County) in southwest Arkansas on December 2, only 3,500 men remained.

With the failure of Price’s Missouri raid, major military operations in Arkansas came to an end. Much of the state descended into what one resident called “a state of perfect anarchy” as the last vestiges of law and social stability evaporated. In November, Abraham Lincoln was elected to second term as president, dashing any hope in the South for a negotiated peace. The war in the Military District of the Trans-Mississippi did not officially end until June 2, 1865, but by that time, the Confederacy in Arkansas had long ceased to exist.

The Civil War was one of the greatest disasters in Arkansas history. More than 10,000 Arkansans—black and white, Union and Confederate—lost their lives. Thousands of others were wounded. Devastation was widespread, and property losses ran into the millions of dollars. The war left a legacy of bitterness that the passage of many years would not erase.

Thomas A. DeBlack
Arkansas Tech University

This article is used with permission from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net.