To turn around a famous Lincoln phrase, the Mississippi in 1862 was a vexed river. Union passage was blocked by the Southern fortress cities of Vicksburg and Port Hud- son, which in turn relied on standing armies covering both sides of the river for critical support. The Federal conquest of the Mississippi Valley scored one win in early March, when outnumbered U.S. forces managed a victory in northwest Arkansas at the Battle of Pea Ridge. That wrecked the principal Rebel army serving the state and Missouri and cleared the Mississippi’s west banks for Federal control. M The Confederate high command signaled its priorities when it quickly ordered the remnants of the defeated army to the river’s east side, to support what were deemed more critical operations. This would have closed the chapter and left Union planners with one less problem had it not been for a fanatical Confederate officer, who raised an army from the ashes and launched his own unsanctioned high-stakes campaign to restore Rebel control over the Arkansas-Missouri region, including the Mississippi’s west bank. Major General Thomas C. Hindman Jr., appointed in May 1862 to take charge of the District of the Trans-Mississippi (which covered Arkansas and Missouri), was a former U.S. Congressman who had served in the Mexican War and at the Battle of Shiloh. He was also an intense Southerner, who believed that in this war the ends justified the means. When he found, on his arrival in Arkansas, that the Confederate army had ceased to exist there, Hindman put the state on a total war footing: He declared martial law, promoted guerrilla operations, aggressively enforced the draft, and regulated the economy through price controls. Within two months, he had cobbled together a sizable military force from volunteers and conscripts and forged a rudimentary military supply system. He had also made a lot of enemies.
Confederate president Jefferson Davis reacted to complaints about Hindman by inserting an officer above him in overall command. Demonstrating once again his odd knack for putting the wrong people in important posts, Davis tagged his old friend Major General Theophilus H. Holmes as Hindman’s superior. The bumbling, tentative Holmes surprised everyone by continuing many of Hindman’s policies but toning down their enforcement. Hindman also surprised observers by finding ways to work with his new boss. Yet throughout the fall of 1862, his pugnacious posture provoked several minor engagements along the western Arkansas-Missouri border and caused Holmes, in Little Rock, to fret.
In late November Hindman and his 15,000-man Trans- Mississippi Army were head- quartered at Fort Smith, about 160 miles northwest of Little Rock. He was at the extreme end of the Confederate logistical pipeline and in constant need of all military essentials. Taking advantage of a moment when Union forces had pulled back, he sent Brigadier General John S. Marmaduke’s cavalry north 35 miles through the Boston Mountains—the highest part of the Ozark Plateau and cut with deep gorges—to Cane Hill, a fertile farming territory not yet picked clean by marauders, making foraging still worthwhile. Marmaduke and Hindman anticipated a countering Union move from Kansas and realized that if the Yankees came far enough south, they would be dangerously isolated from their nearest reinforcements in Springfield, Missouri.
Three Union divisions, grouped as the Army of the Frontier, opposed Hindman. The western wing, supplied out of Fort Scott in eastern Kansas, was led by Brigadier General James G. Blunt, a medical man and grim abolitionist who had a natural affinity for things military. Despite his reputation for drinking and womanizing, he was a hard fighter who could think on his feet. His immediate superior was ill, leaving Blunt in charge of the entire Army of the Frontier. The army’s eastern wing, under the temporary command of Brigadier General Francis J. Herron, contained two divisions staging out of Springfield, with their supply umbilical snaking back to St. Louis. Herron, a Pennsylvanian well liked by his men, was a fierce warrior whose determined leadership at Pea Ridge had helped stem the Rebel tide. His actions there merited a Medal of Honor for “repeated acts of daring, until he himself was disabled and taken prisoner.” The shared Federal focus was on breaking up any organized Confederate forces throughout the region.
In late November Blunt did the unexpected and marched his 5,000 soldiers directly toward the Rebel cavalry, causing Marmaduke to hustle his wagons south. Blunt snapped at Marmaduke’s rear guard, then, to Hindman’s surprise and delight, settled in around Cane Hill instead of returning to Kansas. This gave Hindman the opportunity he had been hoping for. The Confederate plan called for Marmaduke to strike at Blunt’s force from the south, while Hindman attacked from the east and Native American allies blocked roads to the west. But getting Hindman’s resource-challenged forces into marching order consumed several days, and even when the troops began moving on December 3, it was slow going for the men, animals, and rickety wagons. Hindman finally got into position late on December 6 and was preparing for the morning’s fight when a courier brought startling information.
Blunt had been alert to the dangers of his exposed position and had made sure he had eyes on Fort Smith. On December 2 he had learned that the Rebels there were stirring, and he had sent orders to Springfield for the rest of the army to join him. It took a hard-riding courier less than a day to cover the 56 miles from Blunt’s headquarters at Cane Hill to the nearest telegraph operator at Elkhorn Tavern, then just hours for troops at Springfield to be dispatched. With the energetic Herron in charge, no time was lost as the men marched at a blistering pace and without tents or baggage, southwest through Fayetteville to Cane Hill. Incredibly, the Union divisions had been on the move even before Hindman’s men had departed Fort Smith, and while the Confederates had been hard pressed to make 10 miles a day, Herron’s column had covered 30. So the news delivered to the Confederate commander on the evening of December 6 was grim: A large Yankee column was within a day’s march on the Fayetteville Road.
Going after Blunt was now out, but after pondering his situation, Hindman favored an option offering an even greater opportunity. His forces would turn to smash this arriving enemy force, then hustle back to finish up with Blunt, clearing west-central Arkansas of Yankee soldiers and opening the door to Missouri. In crafting his new plan, though, he chose to ignore the fact that his men and equipment were ragged from slogging through the Boston Mountains and that his army carried just enough ammunition for one battle, not two. His suffering infantrymen were roused after midnight on December 7 and redirected to meet the new threat, with Marmaduke’s cavalry trotting ahead. A small force remained to keep Blunt occupied.
First blood went to Hindman soon after dawn, when Marmaduke’s troopers, having covered about eight miles, surprised several Union cavalry regiments on the Fayetteville Road just south of Prairie Grove Church and scattered them, killing, wounding, or capturing more than 300. A third Federal mounted regiment was engulfed in a panicked retreat that lasted until it reached Herron’s main column five miles up the road, ending only after the Union officer in charge shot “one cowardly whelp off his horse.” Herron quickly forced Marmaduke to backtrack. It was a little after 9 a.m. when the retreating troops found their infantry support forming along an east-west Arkansas ridge some two miles long on forested tableland called Prairie Grove.
The Confederates held the high ground and generally faced north. Herron’s column approached from the northeast via the Fayetteville Road, which crossed the rain-swollen Illinois River within cannon shot of the plateau. Prairie Grove itself was covered by a thicketed hardwood forest that concealed most of Hindman’s strength, though it also caused him to put his cannons out front for a clear field of fire.
Up to this point Hindman had followed a bold course, but he began to have second thoughts. Instead of striking with all available force, he let his smallest division settle in along Prairie Grove Ridge and kept his largest well to the rear in case Blunt showed up. Perhaps it was the sight of his many stragglers, “overcome with fatigue” and sprawled along the roadside that gave him pause and made him surrender the initiative.
Herron saw the Rebel cavalry falling back to the timbered heights and believed he was facing a small delaying force. Worried that Blunt was struggling for his life not 10 miles away, Herron was determined to break through the enemy line. Perhaps he should have reconsidered when his initial effort at 10 a.m. to put a battery across the Fayetteville Road river crossing was blasted back by more numerous Confederate cannoneers. Herron was forced to use a ford farther north to safely cross his guns and some infantry support. It was a little before 2 p.m. when his gunners took on the Rebel batteries in what proved to be an unequal contest. The Confederates were constrained by their limited stock of munitions and the fact that nearly every tube was a smoothbore, less accurate than the Yankee rifled cannons.
Herron mounted his first infantry attack not long after 2:30 p.m., sending two regiments forward to capture the visible Rebel batteries. Some 790 members of the 20th Wisconsin and 19th Iowa advanced. The Southern artillerymen had positioned their guns a short distance back from the crest, creating a blind spot in front. Taking advantage of this, the Yankees sprinted up the slope, overran a battery posted near a farmhouse, and plunged into the thickets. The Wisconsin boys then encountered an Arkansas infantry brigade and were staggered, as were the Iowans when they came up to help. A Federal in that maelstrom remembered it as “a perfect slaughter pen.” After 10 or 15 minutes, half the Yankees had been killed or wounded, and the stunned survivors of the two regiments were in retreat.
More by impulse than intention, a couple of regiments, then most of the Arkansas brigade, flooded down the hill in a spontaneous counterattack. Their action was characteristic of Confederate problems with command and control that day. Hindman remained mostly hands off, leaving it to his division, brigade, and regimental commanders to prosecute the combat, often without reference to any larger scheme. The unsupported Arkansans were quickly targeted by Herron’s cannons, which mashed their impromptu foray. It also alerted Herron to the fact that this was no small rearguard. Before he could fully digest that information, he watched the 26th Indiana and 37th Illinois push up the same hillside on orders 30 minutes old.
Their fate was no different from that of the first pair of regiments. When the Illinoisans reached an orchard where Confederates were waiting on two sides, the shot “came in one continuous stream of fire, not unlike a severe hail storm,” a Union officer recollected. Without waiting for orders from below, the Illinois commander, Lieutenant Colonel John Charles Black, ordered everybody back, saving many of his men’s lives. (Black’s heroism throughout the day brought him Prairie Grove’s only Medal of Honor.)
Completing the day’s deadly pattern, the retreating Federals were followed by Rebels advancing without orders or support, who were again savaged by Union artillery and infantry. Still, in his effort to overrun what he first thought was a minor Rebel roadblock, Herron had exhausted four of his six available regiments (all at reduced strength because of the straggling) and now was clearly outnumbered. He needed a miracle—or Blunt’s division.
James Blunt was a man in motion early on December 7 as he prepared his troops around Cane Hill for the anticipated Rebel attack. He remained convinced that the enemy was present in considerable force, yet when Union skirmishers pressed the Confederates, it “seemed that they did not want to fight but was hard up for amusement,” a Kansas soldier remarked. Further clouding the issue, scouts reported that the Fayetteville Road was blocked by Rebel cavalry. Then, around 10 in the morning cannon fire toward Fayetteville alerted Blunt that Hindman was actually fighting Herron.
Blunt fashioned a new plan to engage the Rebel army by pushing northeast along the Fayetteville Road. Some 400 Union cavalrymen plus a battery took the point and soon made contact. The Confederates covering the rear of Hindman’s army responded with strength and the advance party withdrew, expecting to meet Yankee infantry but instead finding an open road. In the scramble, marching orders were either garbled or misunderstood, so when the head of the main Union column mistakenly turned off the Fayetteville Road and went northwest toward Rhea’s Mill (the army’s supply depot), the men marching behind dutifully followed. By the time Blunt realized what was happening, most of his army seemed to be heading away from the fighting.
When Blunt reached Rhea’s Mill, he learned of a road from there that would take him over to the Fayetteville Road more directly than would back-tracking. It also neatly bypassed Hindman’s rear guard, waiting on the Fayetteville Road, and had the added advantage of leading Blunt directly to his beleaguered subordinate.
Yet that initially seemed like a moot point, for when the column reached Rhea’s Mill around one in the afternoon, the soldier grapevine carried word of Herron’s defeat and retreat. Blunt resisted the impulse to rush forward and instead dispatched scouts to provide him intelligence. After about an hour he had the information he needed, and his columns were marching at the double-quick, their course marked by a ragged line of discarded blankets and overcoats and footsore stragglers. The terrain was relatively open, so on their own initiative several of his regimental commanders took their men cross-lots to ease congestion on the single-track lane.
Blunt got to the battlefield about 3:15, arriving from the northwest. Within a few minutes he contacted Herron and began forming his Kansans to connect with the Missourians. Hindman had been puzzling over reports that Blunt was heading away from the fighting. Now his questions were answered. The troops he’d kept back to watch the rear were now brought up, spreading the Confederate line westward. Two Rebel brigades advanced into the valley, targeting Blunt’s left flank in the only planned Rebel offensive of the battle. They collided in a spoiling attack.
“The rattling of musketry…was terrific,” Blunt reported.“The contending armies swayed to and fro, each alternately advancing and retiring.” At one point Federal officers screamed at their men to lie flat. Hardly had they done so when the line of cannons posted in their rear opened fire with shrapnel shells fused so short that the cannon blast and explosion were almost indistinguishable. The fighting was especially intense around one farmhouse, as the Yankees were slowly but inexorably shoved backward by superior numbers.
With Blunt’s command disorganized and vulnerable and Herron’s little more than exhausted bystanders, the combat reached a tipping point. Still without any central controlling mind(Hindman remained in the rear),Confederate brigadier Mosby M.Parsons was the only officer to see the opportunity and attack.His Missourians, determined to continue the advance and eventually regain their homeland,pressed forward in the face of canister, shrapnel, and musketry until flesh and blood could take no more. Since most of the other Confederates along Prairie Grove Ridge didn’t even know what was happening, the attack that could have finished Blunt’s Union force instead disintegrated.
By the time the combat ended,with positions unchanged, it was,recorded a soldier, “so dark that the fire could be seen streaming from the guns at every discharge.” Federal cannoneers shot incendiary rounds into distant haystacks to illuminate the field. Unknown to them, numbers of wounded had burrowed into them for succor, only to be incinerated. The cold night brought another horror—packs of wild hogs, ravenous and determined.
Both commanders took stock. Blunt’s stragglers were refilling his ranks and there was sufficient ammunition for another day’s fight. Hindman’s stragglers (many unwilling conscripts)were streaming south and his ammunition was virtually gone.Just hours after the fighting ended, the Rebel columns began tramping toward Fort Smith, surprising many in the ranks who felt they had been winning. Hindman covered his withdrawal the next day by convincing Blunt to accept a six-hour truce for both sides to tend the wounded. Blunt later condemned the ruse, but at the time he was probably happy to see the enemy depart, leaving him in possession of the battlefield, a traditional measure of victory. Confederate losses were 204 killed, 872wounded, 407 missing, most of the last deserters. The Federals counted 175 dead, 813 wounded, and 263 missing. By battle’s end some 8,000 Unionists had engaged 11,500 Confederates.
As to the main players, James Blunt remained Kansas-based and active during the war, dying in 1881 in a Washington, D.C.,asylum, some said from syphilis; Francis Herron fought in the Vicksburg campaign, then from behind a desk in Louisiana and Texas, ending his days in New York in 1902; Thomas Hindman was transferred east in 1863 to fight at Chickamauga and against Sherman in 1864. After the war he tried Mexican exile before returning to Arkansas, where reconstruction politics had become as deadly as combat. He was sitting quietly in his parlor one night in late September 1868, when a shotgun blast through a window ended his life. Some said it was pro-Republican night riders, others looked back to the enemies his harsh policies had made in 1862.
A last chance for the Arkansas-Missouri Confederates to reestablish control over the Mississippi River fizzled at Prairie Grove. Had Hindman succeeded in reaching the west bank, the course of the 1863 campaigns would have dramatically altered. Instead, the primary Rebel force tasked with holding those states was chewed up. Hindman’s patched-together force would operate in the Trans-Mississippi throughout the war, and fighting on this front would continue. But it would be limited to raiding parties. The Confederate flag would continue to fly over parts of Arkansas, but Federal control of the Mississippi River’s west bank in that area remained secure, giving Ulysses Grant the freedom to operate along both sides against Vicksburg—which surrendered on July 4, 1863.
Noah Andre Trudeau, a producer and writer, is currently working on a book about Abraham Lincoln’s visit to the war front in March– April 1865 and developing a multimedia work about Lincoln’s life.
Originally published in the April 2015 issue of Military History Quarterly. To subscribe, click here.
