What Happened...
The Battle of Pea Ridge, March 7-8, 1862
From Rugged and Sublime: The Civil War in Arkansas;
Courtesy of the Department of Arkansas Heritage
Arkansas was quiet during the first few weeks of 1862. The primary concern
of Confederate authorities in Richmond and Little Rock continued to be the
unsettled situation in neighboring Missouri, where Maj. Gen. Sterling Price's
ragtag army, the Missouri State Guard, was in winter quarters at Springfield in
the southwestern corner of the state. Price's army was a mix of Confederates and
Missouri state guardsmen and numbered about eight thousand men and forty-seven
cannons. Despite serious organizational and logistical problems, the Missouri
Rebels had fought well at Wilson's Creek and Lexington the previous year, and
they constituted a potential threat to the vital Union stronghold of St. Louis.
Brig. Gen. Benjamin McCulloch's Confederate army was located in
northwestern Arkansas about one hundred miles south of Price's force.
McCulloch's command consisted of about eighty-seven hundred men and eighteen
cannons. Many of his Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana soldiers were veterans of
Wilson's Creek and other engagements in Missouri and the Indian Territory. At
the beginning of the new year, the infantry was in winter quarters in and around
Fayetteville, Cross Hollows (near present-day Lowell), and Bentonville, enduring
the frigid temperatures atop the Ozark Plateau; the cavalry and artillery were
spread out along the Arkansas River Valley sixty miles to the south, where
warmer temperatures and adequate forage made life more bearable for men and
beasts. McCulloch, who did not expect any military activity along the frontier
until spring, had gone to Virginia to confer with President Jefferson Davis
about the state of affairs in the Trans-Mississippi.
What McCulloch wanted to discuss was his long-simmering feud with Price.
The two generals no longer were on speaking terms, and their partisans were
engaged in a full-scale newspaper war. After listening to McCulloch and to
Price's advocates in the Missouri congressional delegation, President Davis
decided that only a bold act could resolve the impasse. He created a new entity,
the Military District of the Trans-Mississippi, on January 10, 1862, and placed
an old friend, Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn of Mississippi, in command. Davis
believed that Van Dorn's appointment would provide unity of command and purpose
to the Confederate war effort west of the Mississippi River.
Van Dorn was a poor choice despite his West Point education and years of
service in the regular army. He was impulsive, reckless, and lacked
administrative skills. None of that was apparent, however, as Van Dorn hastened
westward from Virginia to his new post. He assumed command in Little Rock on
January 29, but established his headquarters in Pocahontas because he intended
to invade Missouri from northeastern Arkansas in the spring. Van Dorn expressed
his rather casual approach to strategy in a letter to his wife: "I must have St.
Louis - then Huzza!"
In St. Louis, meanwhile, decisions were being made that would bring the
war to Arkansas more quickly than anyone expected. President Abraham Lincoln
appointed Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck commander of the Federal Department of the
Missouri on November 19, 1861. Halleck was an excellent administrator and
strategist who was determined to protect St. Louis and reassert Union control
over the rest of Missouri. On December 25, 1861, he placed Brig. Gen. Samuel R.
Curtis in command of the District of Southwest Missouri and its military arm,
the Army of the Southwest, a force of about twelve thousand men and fifty
cannons. Curtis was a West Point graduate and Iowa congressman who had helped to
found the Republican Party. He was an able administrator and an aggressive
campaigner well suited to his mission: to destroy Price's Rebel army.
On January 13, 1862, Halleck authorized Curtis to begin. During the next
four weeks, the Army of the Southwest struggled across the Ozark Plateau toward
Springfield and Price's smaller army. Price repeatedly called upon McCulloch and
his subordinates for assistance, but due to McCulloch's absence and a general
breakdown in communications, no help was forthcoming from Arkansas. As the Union
army approached, Price decided not to fight but to flee. He abandoned
Springfield on February 12 and retreated to the south. If McCulloch would not
join him in Missouri, he would join McCulloch in Arkansas.
Curtis followed, much to Price's surprise, and the result was the only
true pursuit of one army by another in the Civil War. For four days the two
columns hurried down Telegraph (or Wire) Road, the primary route linking
southwestern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas. The weather was intensely cold,
and the soldiers in both armies endured snow, sleet, and freezing rain. Sharp
engagements occurred every day between the Confederate rear guard and the
Federal vanguard.
The head of Price's column reached the Arkansas state line on the morning
of February 16. Later that day the pursuing First Missouri (Union) Cavalry
caught up with the First Missouri (Confederate) Cavalry, which was trailing
behind the Confederate main body. The intermingled mass of shooting and slashing
horsemen splashed across Big Sugar Creek and swirled into Arkansas. Soon
afterwards, the Federals disengaged and fell back a short distance into
Missouri. Federal casualties were light: one man killed and five wounded.
Confederate losses were more serious: sixteen men killed and many wounded. This
minor encounter, known locally as the skirmish of Pott's Hill, was the first
clash between Union and Confederate forces on Arkansas soil.
The next morning, February 17, the Army of the Southwest invaded Arkansas
and the Confederacy. Bands played patriotic and popular tunes, including,
appropriately enough, "The Arkansas Traveler," while thousands of cheering
blue-clad troops stepped across the state line. Curtis congratulated his men for
being the first Federal soldiers to set foot on the "virgin soil" of Arkansas
and sent a triumphant message to Halleck in St. Louis: "The flag of our Union
again floats in Arkansas."
Later that day Curtis and his men crossed the broad table land of Pea
Ridge and tramped past a rural hostelry called Elkhorn Tavern. A short distance
south of Little Sugar Creek (near present-day Avoca), the Federals encountered a
strong line of Confederate infantry and cavalry supported by artillery. After an
initial engagement between mounted forces, the two sides blasted away at each
other with artillery. As darkness fell, Price withdrew down Telegraph Road to
join McCulloch's army at Cross Hollows, a dozen miles to the south. The clash at
Little Sugar Creek was the first Civil War engagement fought entirely in
Arkansas, and the first time since the battle of Wilson's Creek that some of
McCulloch's troops fought alongside Price's men. An Arkansas soldier described
the fight at Little Sugar Creek as a "right brisk skirmish," but it was more
than that and casualties were correspondingly high: thirteen Federals killed and
about twenty wounded; Confederate losses are uncertain, but may have included as
many as twenty-six men killed. Curtis camped for two days in the broad valley of
Little Sugar Creek. He heard rumors that exaggerated the strength of the
Confederate position at Cross Hollows, which was a large cantonment rather than
a fortified strongpoint. He therefore decided not to advance directly upon the
Confederates but to outflank them by swinging around to the west by way of
Bentonville and Elm Springs. Such a maneuver would compel McCulloch and Price to
retreat or be surrounded. On February 18 he sent Brig. Gen. Alexander S. Asboth
and a cavalry brigade on a reconnaissance in force down Little Sugar Creek to
Bentonville. When Asboth reported that the rolling terrain west of Cross Hollows
was clear of enemy soldiers, Curtis prepared to move his command in that
direction.
Before the Army of the Southwest could move, however, the Confederate
retreat began anew. McCulloch, just returned from Richmond, was appalled at the
strategic consequences of Price's headlong flight, for he knew that the
cantonment at Cross Hollows was untenable and that the combined armies would
have to fall back even deeper into Arkansas. And so on February 19, the
Confederates burned the barracks, huts, mills, and storehouses in Cross Hollows
and trudged south in miserably cold weather. The next day they reached
Fayetteville, the major Confederate supply depot in northwestern Arkansas.
Unable to remove the tons of military stores because of a lack of
transportation, McCulloch made everything available to the passing troops. The
disorganized system of distribution soon degenerated into looting. Homes and
businesses were ransacked and vandalized. The situation grew even worse the next
day when McCulloch ordered all remaining supplies destroyed. Unsupervised
soldiers set fire to warehouses, some of which contained ammunition. The
resulting explosions spread the fire and several city blocks burned to the
ground. A disgusted Confederate surgeon called the sacking of Fayetteville "one
of the most disgraceful scenes that I ever saw."
The heavily laden Rebels, many of them carrying jewelry, mirrors, dresses,
and even baby rattles, staggered south another seventeen miles on Telegraph Road
into the Boston Mountains, which form the rugged southern edge of the Ozark
Plateau. McCulloch's army camped along the Illinois River near Strickler's
Station (present-day Strickler); Price's army bivouacked just to the west along
Cove Creek. The long retreat was over.
Curtis soon learned from Arkansas Unionists and runaway slaves that the
Confederates had abandoned Cross Hollows and had fallen back into the Boston
Mountains. Curtis declined to follow because the headlong Confederate retreat
from Springfield had drawn him much farther south than anticipated. The Federals
were over two hundred miles from the railhead at Rolla, and their supply
situation was critical. Curtis decided that he could best carry out his mission
of securing Missouri by holding his ground in northwestern Arkansas and keeping
Price at bay. He knew that it would be dangerous to be entirely passive, so he
dispatched cavalry raids and scouting expeditions in various directions to keep
the enemy off balance. The largest of these operations, another reconnaissance
in force led by Asboth, occupied Fayetteville on February 22-26.
In order to facilitate foraging, Curtis placed two divisions at Cross
Hollows and two divisions at McKissick's Creek (near present-day Centerton) and
posted advanced pickets at Mudtown (near present-day Springdale) and Elm
Springs. Should the Confederates launch a counteroffensive, the two halves of
the Army of the Southwest would fall back toward Little Sugar Creek and make a
stand. Curtis disliked assuming the defensive after such a successful offensive
campaign, but he felt he had no choice. In addition to the alarming logistical
situation, the attrition caused by inclement weather, hard marching, and the
need to garrison Springfield and other vital points along his line of
communications had worn down the Army of the Southwest to only about ten
thousand men and forty-nine cannons. "Shall be on the alert, holding as securely
as possible," Curtis assured Halleck. What happened next would be up to the
Confederates.
Van Dorn was at his headquarters in Pocahontas when he learned of the loss
of Springfield and the disastrous chain of events in northwestern Arkansas. He
departed at once for the Boston Mountains to assume personal command of the
Confederate forces there. On the way he fell into a frigid stream (probably the
Little Red River) and became ill. After an exhausting nine-day journey, much of
it in an ambulance, Van Dorn reached the Boston Mountains late on March 2. The
next day he, McCulloch, and Price conferred at Strickler's Station. Van Dorn was
determined to strike back at the Federals as quickly as possible. When he
learned that Curtis had placed his army in two widely separated camps, he
decided to move the next morning. Van Dorn was confident that the Confederate
Army of the West - the name he bestowed on his new command - could surprise the
Yankees and open wide the road to Missouri.
The Confederate plan was simple: the Army of the West would march rapidly
to Fayetteville on Telegraph Road, then to Bentonville on the Elm Springs Road.
At Bentonville the Confederates would turn west and overwhelm the Federal troops
camped along McKissick's Creek, then turn east and do the same to the remaining
Federal troops at Cross Hollows. With Curtis's force out of the way, the
victorious Army of the West would press on toward St. Louis "and Huzza!" The key
to success was the road junction at Bentonville. If Van Dorn could reach the
town before Curtis realized what was happening, the Confederates would be
between the two Federal forces and victory would be almost assured. Since speed
would be required to achieve the necessary element of surprise, each soldier
carried only his weapon, forty rounds of ammunition, a blanket, and three days'
rations. All else would be left behind. Van Dorn blithely assumed that
everything would go as planned and that his troops would subsist on captured
enemy rations; he gave no thought to alternate sources of supply.
Determined to use all available manpower, Van Dorn ordered Brig. Gen.
Albert Pike in the Indian Territory to mobilize Confederate Indian troops and
rendezvous with the Army of the West at Bentonville. The treaties between the
Confederacy and the Five Civilized Tribes specifically stated that Indian
soldiers were not to be used outside the Indian Territory, but some Indians were
willing to go if paid in advance. Pike began doling out Confederate money as
fast as he could.
On March 4, Van Dorn led the Army of the West out of the Boston Mountains.
It was the largest and best-equipped Confederate military force ever assembled
in the Trans-Mississippi: over sixteen thousand men and sixty-five guns. Van
Dorn thought Curtis outnumbered him but the opposite was true. The Confederates
had a three-to-two advantage in manpower and a four-to-three advantage in
artillery over the Federals. No Confederate army ever marched off to battle with
greater numerical superiority.
Unfortunately for the cause of Southern independence, the march to
Bentonville was a disaster. Bouncing along Telegraph Road in his ambulance at
the head of the column, Van Dorn set a rapid pace.
McCulloch's troops had been in winter quarters for months and were
entirely unprepared for such a strenuous effort. Soon the roadside was littered
his with large numbers of winded Rebels hobbled by blistered feet. Soldiers
remarked sarcastically that Van Dorn "had forgotten he was riding and we were
walking." That same day, a late winter blizzard swept across northwestern
Arkansas, dropping temperatures and covering the road with ice and snow.
Progress slowed to a crawl, and Van Dorn finally called a halt at Fayetteville.
The next day, March 5, the Confederates plodded north across a frozen landscape
and camped at Elm Springs. "I will never forget that night," wrote a Missouri
soldier. "It had turned bitter cold.... We had no tents and only one blanket to
each man. We built log heaps and set them afire to warm the ground to have a
place on which to lie, and I remember well the next day there were several holes
burned in my uniform by sparks left on the ground." The following morning, March
6, the Confederates ate the last of their meager rations and set out for
Bentonville, twelve miles to the north. Despite the slow pace and the
deteriorating condition of his army, Van Dorn remained confident that his plan
to take the Federals by surprise was working.
Unknown to Van Dorn, a Unionist resident of Fayetteville had informed
Curtis of the Confederate advance on March 5. Curtis immediately ordered his
forces to concentrate at Little Sugar Creek and to dig in atop the bluffs on the
northern side of the valley. Struggling against the same miserable conditions as
the Confederates, the Federals marched all night toward the rendezvous point. By
the morning of March 6, nearly all of the Army of the Southwest was in place.
The soldiers constructed earthworks, cleared fields of fire, and awaited the
enemy.
The only Federals who failed to reach Little Sugar Creek without incident
were six hundred men who served as rear guard for the force n that had been
camped along McKissick's Creek. This detachment was under the personal command
of Brig. Gen. Franz Sigel, who tarried behind to eat breakfast at a hotel in
Bentonville. Sigel and his command were nearly cut off by a Confederate cavalry
force led by Brig. Gen. James M. McIntosh. After a running fight east of
Bentonville that covered four miles, Sigel finally managed to shake off his
pursuers and join Curtis at Little Sugar Creek.
When Van Dorn reached Bentonville later that day he realized that his plan
had failed. The Federal army was reunited in an impregnable position at Little
Sugar Creek, while the Confederate army was in desperate straits. After three
terribly difficult days, men and animals were hungry and exhausted and
straggling had become a serious problem. "Such a worn-out set of men I never
saw," exclaimed a soldier. "They had not one single mouthfull of food to eat."
Despite the desperate state of affairs, Van Dorn refused to consider falling
back to the Boston Mountains; he was determined to strike the Federals a blow.
As darkness fell on a singularly dismal Confederate encampment, Pike finally
straggled in from the Indian Territory with about eight hundred mounted
Cherokees and Texans.
That evening McCulloch told Van Dorn about the Bentonville Detour, a road
that led around Curtis's right flank and intersected Telegraph Road near the
Missouri state line, deep in the Federal rear. If the Confederates could reach
Telegraph Road, the Federals would be cut off and would have no recourse but to
surrender. Van Dorn decided to march at once. McCulloch and Price were appalled
at the thought of a night march with the army in such a pitiful condition. The
former appealed to Van Dorn "for God sake to let the poor, worn-out and hungry
soldiers rest and steep that night ... and then attack the next morning." But
Van Dorn insisted that the army move immediately.
The march on the Bentonville Detour during the night of March 6-7 was a
miserable experience. Men and animals proceeded along at a snail's pace, delayed
by frigid streams and tangled barricades of trees felled by the Federals to
obstruct precisely such a maneuver. Van Dorn's numerical superiority eroded as
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men fell out of the ranks and collapsed. At dawn
on March 7, the head of the Confederate column had reached Telegraph Road, but
the tail was still back at Little Sugar Creek. Van Dorn now made another snap
decision: to save time, Price's division would proceed south on Telegraph Road
on the east side of a rocky hill called Big Mountain; McCulloch's division would
move south on Ford Road on the west side of Big Mountain. The two halves of the
Army of the West would reunite around noon at Elkhorn Tavern atop the broad
plateau of Pea Ridge. There the Confederates would deploy for battle and advance
upon the unsuspecting Federals from the north. Van Dorn had no qualms about
dividing his army in the presence of the enemy because he confidently assumed
that the Federals were still in their fortifications at Little Sugar Creek,
facing south.
Van Dorn's confident assumption was wrong. Federal patrols detected the
Confederate movement on the Bentonville Detour early on March 7, and Curtis
acted immediately to seize the tactical initiative. He launched two spoiling
attacks intended to intercept and delay the approaching enemy forces on either
side of Big Mountain. While these operations were underway, he began the
enormously complex task of turning his entire army around to meet the threat
from the north. By the end of the day, the Federals atop Pea Ridge had
successfully completed a 180-degree change of front.
Shortly before noon Col. Peter J. Osterhaus led his division north from
Little Sugar Creek. Near the hamlet of Leetown, he encountered McCulloch's
division on Ford Road. Osterhaus was riding ahead of his infantry and was
accompanied only by a small force of cavalry and artillery. Despite facing
overwhelming odds, Osterhaus unlimbered his guns and opened fire. McCulloch was
surprised to encounter the Federals so far north of Little Sugar Creek. He
responded by sending his massed cavalry sweeping across a wheatfield toward the
Federal position. Three thousand Texas and Arkansas horsemen overwhelmed
Osterhaus's small command. "In every direction I could see my comrades falling,"
wrote a Federal soldier. "Horses frenzied and riderless, ran to and fro. Men and
horses ran in collision crushing each other to the ground. Dismounted in every
direction. Officers tried to rally their men but order troopers ran I gave way
to confusion. The scene baffles description."
A few hundred yards to the west, Pike conformed to McCulloch's movements
by ordering his command to attack as well. The Cherokees, half mounted, half
dismounted, picked their way through a patch of woods and drove off two isolated
companies of Federal cavalry. (Contrary to legend, the Indians did not take part
in the massed cavalry charge. Their small Victory in the woods was tarnished
when a handful of Indians murdered, mutilated, and scalped several Federal
soldiers.)
The surviving Federals fell back through a thick belt of trees and across
a large cornfield owned in part by Samuel Oberson. On the south side of the
field they met the rest of Osterhaus's division and formed a line of battle
facing north. Osterhaus sent a message to Curtis stating that he had met the
enemy and needed reinforcements. He then readied his command for another Rebel
onslaught. Though the Confederates were out of sight on the north side of the
belt of trees, Osterhaus ordered his remaining artillery to fire over the trees
in hopes of causing some disorder in the enemy ranks. This simple directive had
dramatic effects. The first salvo of shells landed among the Cherokees who were
celebrating their victory. The Indians had never experienced artillery fire
before and were terrified by the explosions. They fled from the field and played
only a marginal role in the remainder of the battle. The barrage also convinced
McCulloch that he could not push on to Elkhorn Tavern and leave such a
substantial enemy force in his rear. He halted his division and deployed for
battle at Leetown. In all of the excitement and confusion, McCulloch neglected
to inform Van Dorn that the reunion of the two halves of the Army of the West at
Elkhorn Tavern would be delayed. Osterhaus's aggressive spoiling attack had
achieved its goal of disrupting enemy plans.
McCulloch prepared for a general infantry assault against the Federals in
Oberson's field. He moved to the extreme right of the Confederate line and rode
forward through the belt of trees to reconnoiter the Federal position himself.
This was a habit he had developed as a captain in the Texas Rangers and had not
been able to shake despite his promotion to high command. Along the north edge
of the field, a company of skirmishers from the Thirty-sixth Illinois saw
McCulloch riding directly toward them. The entire company fired a volley and the
general tumbled from his saddle, killed by a bullet in the heart. Command of the
division passed to Brig. Gen. James M. McIntosh, who recklessly advanced through
the belt of trees only to be struck down like his predecessor by a bullet
through the heart. McIntosh was the victim of a volley from another company of
the Thirty-sixth Illinois. The loss of McCulloch and McIntosh demoralized and
paralyzed the right and center of the Confederate line at Leetown. Col. Louis
Hebert, now the ranking officer of McCulloch's division, was in command of the
Confederate left. Hebert was in a dense patch of woods and was unaware of the
disaster that had befallen his superiors. Thinking that the scattered firing in
Oberson's field was the signal for the general infantry assault that McCulloch
had planned, Hebert led four regiments south toward the exposed right flank of
the Federal line.
Federal reinforcements arrived at Leetown just in time to block Hebert's
assault. When Curtis received Osterhaus's message calling for support, he
dispatched a division led by Col. Jefferson C. Davis. Davis reached Leetown in
mid-afternoon and deployed his men in the woods on Osterhaus's right. The
fighting in the heavy woods was confusing and intense. An Illinois soldier
recalled that the air around him was "literally filled with leaden hail. Balls
would whiz by our ears, cut off bushes closely, and even cut our clothes." The
Federals lay down to avoid the deadly fire, an unusual tactic so early in the
war. An officer was convinced his men "would have been utterly annihilated" had
he not "fought them flat on their bellies on the ground. The Confederates had
superior numbers and steadily pushed the Federals back. At one point several
hundred Confederates burst out of the woods and overran a Federal battery in the
southeastern corner of Oberson's field. For a few moments, it seemed as if
Hebert had achieved a breakthrough, but Federal regiments to right and left
turned toward the Confederates and drove them back into the woods. As the
afternoon wore on, hundreds of exhausted Confederates simply lost heart and
drifted to the rear. Hebert was captured when he became disoriented in the smoky
woods and wandered into the Federal lines.
The loss of Hebert was the final blow to the disorganized Confederate
effort at Leetown. Now utterly leaderless, the Rebels milled around waiting for
orders. Pike attempted to assume command, but many officers refused to recognize
his authority. Pike eventually led about half of McCulloch's shrunken division
away from Leetown and around Big Mountain toward Elkhorn Tavern. The other half
of the division remained behind or drifted away from the battle toward Little
Sugar Creek. By late afternoon the fighting at Leetown had sputtered out. An
outnumbered Federal force, ably co-commanded by Osterhaus and Davis and blessed
with remarkable good fortune, had wrecked a larger Confederate force, had killed
or captured three senior Confederate officers, and had kept the Army of the West
divided.
While these events took place at Leetown during the afternoon of March 7,
another and far more severe engagement raged two miles to the east in the
vicinity of Elkhorn Tavern. Earlier that morning, as noted above, Curtis had
launched two spoiling attacks. The first was commanded by Osterhaus, the second
by Col. Eugene A. Carr, a tough regular army officer. Carr deployed his division
along the northern escarpment of Pea Ridge near Elkhorn Tavern. The Federal line
looked down into Cross Timber Hollow, a deep and narrow valley. Price's
division, personally led by Van Dorn, approached from the north on Telegraph
Road. Around noon, the Rebel column began to climb up the steep slope that led
from Cross Timber Hollow to Pea Ridge. The Federals opened fire and the battle
was on.
Van Dorn, like McCulloch, was surprised to encounter Federal troops so far
north of Little Sugar Creek. He deployed Price's division and sent it up the
slope, but Carr counterattacked so vigorously that the Confederates gave up the
initiative and assumed a defensive posture. A furious exchange of artillery fire
filled the hollow with smoke, and fighting flared all afternoon along the steep
rocky slope as soldiers of both sides blundered about in the haze. During a
confused engagement on the Confederate right, Brig. Gen. William Y. Slack of
Missouri was mortally wounded.
Hours passed before Van Dorn grasped the tactical situation, for he could
see almost nothing from his position at the bottom of Cross Timber Hollow.
Around mid-afternoon, he learned that McCulloch's division was bogged down at
Leetown. About the same time, he belatedly realized that Price's division was
much larger than the Federal force opposing it. He directed Price to extend his
line beyond the flanks of the shorter Federal line. Late in the afternoon,
Price's left reached the high ground a mile east of Elkhorn Tavern. Van Dorn
ordered a general assault: the Confederate right and center would attack uphill
and smash the Federals near the tavern, while the Confederate left would roll up
the Federal right atop Pea Ridge.
The Rebels struck with barely an hour of daylight remaining and fierce
fighting erupted along the northern escarpment of Pea Ridge. An Iowa soldier
wrote that the Rebels came on "with a yell and a fury that had a tendency to
make each hair on one's head to stand on its particular end." In the center the
Confederates overwhelmed the Federals and captured Elkhorn Tavern. Lt. Col.
Francis J. Herron led his men in a desperate rear guard defense that earned him
a Medal of Honor, but he was wounded and captured. A quarter mile to the east,
on a farm owned by Rufus Clemon, the Confederates had a tougher time, for a
brigade commanded by Col. Grenville M. Dodge fought from behind a breastwork of
logs and repulsed several assaults. The Federals finally retreated when the
swarming Confederates threatened to engulf them. Carr's division fell back
through thick woods about half a mile to the south side of Benjamin Ruddick's
cornfield. There they regrouped astride Telegraph Road and made another stand.
In the deepening twilight, Van Dorn made a final effort to sweep away the
stubborn Federals. Masses of Confederate troops poured across the cornfield,
"their cheers and yells rising above the roar of artillery," only to be mowed
down in heaps by blasts of canister. The surviving Rebels fell back toward the
tavern as darkness covered the battlefield. The unsuccessful attack in Ruddick's
field late on March 7 was the high water mark for the Confederate war effort in
the Trans-Mississippi. Henceforth, the Federals would control the course of the
battle and, to a considerable degree, the course of the war in Arkansas and
adjacent states.
During the night of March 7-8, Curtis used interior lines to consolidate
the Army of the Southwest. He moved all of his scattered forces from Little
Sugar Creek and Leetown to join Carr on Telegraph Road. He also distributed
food, water, and ammunition. Van Dorn attempted to do the same with the Army of
the West, ordering the fragments of McCulloch's division to join him at Elkhorn
Tavern. Several thousand Rebels marched all night on the roundabout route around
Big Mountain but arrived in such pitiful condition as to be almost useless. The
Confederates were without food, except for what little was found in Federal
haversacks and sutlers' wagons. They also were without adequate ammunition, for
in the confusion of the march along the Bentonville Detour the previous night,
the ammunition train had been left behind at Little Sugar Creek, a dozen miles
distant.
The next morning, March 8, Curtis waited to see if Van Dorn would continue
to press his attack. When nothing happened, Curtis concluded that the
Confederates had shot their bolt and that he now held the initiative. He ordered
his artillery to wheel forward. For two hours, twenty-seven Federal cannons
hammered the Confederates at ever-closer ranges. The most intense artillery
bombardment of the war up to that time, it made a great impression on the
soldiers who were present. "It was a continual thunder, and a fellow might have
believed that the day of judgment had come," said an Iowa soldier. The
tremendous noise could be heard fifty miles away. The devastation wrought on the
Confederates was terrible.
Around ten o'clock Curtis ordered a general advance. Nearly ten thousand
Federal soldiers swept across the fields and woods atop Pea Ridge, converging on
Elkhorn Tavern from the west and south. "That beautiful charge I shall never
forget," wrote a Federal officer. "With banners streaming, with drums beating,
and our long line of blue coats advancing upon the double quick, with their
deadly bayonets gleaming in the sunlight, and every man and officer yelling at
the top of his lungs. The rebel yell was nowhere in comparison." Van Dorn
realized that his position was hopeless and ordered a general withdrawal. The
retreat rapidly degenerated into a rout after Van Dorn rode away to the east on
Huntsville Road, leaving behind not only most of his wounded, but also large
numbers of his men who were still engaged. Leaderless, panicked Rebels fled in
all directions as thousands of cheering Federal soldiers met at the tavern.
Curtis rode among his men, waving his hat and shouting "Victory! Victory!"
Despite being outnumbered and surprised by Van Dorn's unorthodox and reckless
tactics, Curtis had achieved one of the first major Federal victories in the
Civil War.
The victory did not come cheap. Pea Ridge cost the Federals 1,384
casualties: 203 killed, 980 wounded, and 201 missing, roughly 13 percent of the
10,250 troops engaged in the battle. Confederate casualties are uncertain
because Van Dorn lied about his losses in order to hide the magnitude of his
defeat. A conservative estimate is that the Confederates suffered at least 2,000
casualties, approximately 15 percent of the 13,000 troops engaged in the battle.
(The Army of the West contained roughly 16,500 men when it set out from the
Boston Mountains and the Indian Territory, but suffered severe attrition because
of Van Dorn's insistence on haste, and lost nearly one-fourth of its strength
before reaching the battlefield. Attrition during the retreat also was severe
but cannot be estimated.)
The Confederate retreat from Pea Ridge was as disastrous as the advance
and the battle. Late on the evening of March 8, most of the Army of the West
reassembled at Van Winkle's Mill on the east side of the White River. The men
were famished. They devoured everything in sight, but the sparsely populated
Ozark countryside provided only a fraction of the food necessary to feed
thousands of men and animals. For the next week, the pathetic column staggered
south on primitive trails through almost uninhabited country, generally moving
up the narrowing valleys of the Middle and West Forks of the White River. A
Texas soldier observed that he was "in much greater danger of dying from
starvation in the mountains of northern Arkansas than by the enemy's bullets."
Hundreds of Rebels wandered away in search of food and never returned to the
ranks. The trail of the defeated, dissolving army was littered with discarded
clothing, weapons, coffee pots, and even flags. By the time the Confederates
crossed the Boston Mountains and followed Frog Bayou down to the Arkansas River
near Van Buren, they were a pitiful remnant of the proud army that had opened
the campaign two weeks earlier.
While the troops recuperated, Van Dorn received a telegram from General P.
G. T Beauregard in western Tennessee. Beauregard suggested that Van Dorn
transfer the Army of the West to Corinth, Mississippi, as part of a
concentration of all Confederate armies west of the Appalachian Mountains. The
purpose of this grand design was to assemble a force powerful enough to defeat
Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Federal army camped at Pittsburg Landing on the
Tennessee River. Van Dorn agreed and began to move his force eastward from Van
Buren. Heavy spring rains turned the roads into sloughs, slowing the march. The
leading elements of the army did not begin boarding steamboats at Des Arc on the
White River until April 6. By then, it was too late - the battle of Shiloh was
underway. Without Van Dorn's sizable contingent, the Confederates failed to
destroy Grant's army and were driven from the field. Van Dorn did not know this
and continued to hurry his command across the Mississippi River. The transfer
was complete by the end of April.
Unknown to Beauregard or anyone else in the Confederate high command, Van
Dorn did not merely move the Army of the West out of Arkansas, he abandoned the
Trans-Mississippi altogether. He carried away nearly all troops, weapons,
equipment, stores, machinery, and animals. Van Dorn's unauthorized actions meant
that in order for the Confederates in the Trans-Mississippi to continue
fighting, they would have to start from scratch. Arkansas was thrown into
turmoil by this unexpected and alarming development. Gov. Henry M. Rector
protested to President Davis and vaguely threatened to secede from the
Confederacy and form a new political entity west of the Mississippi River. Brig.
Gen. John S. Roane succinctly informed Beauregard of the situation in Arkansas:
"No troops - no arms - no powder - no material of war - people everywhere eager
to rise, complaints bitter."
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