Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove: Two Days That Saved Missouri
Near Fayetteville, Arkansas
Within thirty miles of Fayetteville, two of the most consequential Civil War battles west of the Mississippi were fought within the same year. Together they settled a question the entire Trans-Mississippi theater had been building toward: who would control Arkansas and Missouri? Pea Ridge came first.
On March seventh and eighth, eighteen sixty-two, eleven thousand Union troops under Brigadier General Samuel Curtis met sixteen thousand Confederates under Major General Earl Van Dorn near Elkhorn Tavern, northeast of Fayetteville. Van Dorn had divided his army and attempted to encircle the Union force. The plan fell apart on the first day when Confederate General Ben McCulloch was killed in the fighting.
Curtis held his lines, counterattacked on the second day, and drove Van Dorn's army off the field. Casualties totaled roughly three thousand four hundred on both sides, by some estimates, though Confederate losses were never precisely counted. The outcome secured Union control of Missouri, a border state whose loss would have been catastrophic for the northern cause, and most of northern Arkansas.
Prairie Grove followed nine months later. On December seventh, eighteen sixty-two, Confederate General Thomas Hindman led eleven thousand men north across the Boston Mountains in a desperate attempt to recapture northwest Arkansas. In one of the most dramatic movements of the entire war, Union General Francis Herron rushed seven thousand reinforcements more than one hundred ten miles in three and a half days upon hearing the threat.
The armies met on a wooded ridge northeast of Prairie Grove Church. The day-long battle was tactically indecisive, but when nightfall came, Hindman had no reinforcements coming and withdrew. Union forces reported twelve hundred fifty-one casualties; Confederates reported thirteen hundred seventeen.
The strategic verdict was clear: northwest Arkansas would remain under Union control for the rest of the war. The land around Prairie Grove Church is now a state park, one of the best-preserved Civil War sites in the region.
