BY THE SUMMER OF 1862 THE CONFEDERACY WAS IN SERIOUS TROUBLE. Southern military and naval forces west of the Appalachian Mountains had suffered an unrelieved string of defeats and disasters. Significant portions of Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Mississippi had fallen under Union control, and the Stars and Stripes flew over two state capitals, Nashville and Baton Rouge. All of the bustling commercial centers along the Mississippi River had been lost except Vicksburg, and it was uncertain whether the reeling Confederates could maintain their grip on that beleaguered citadel.

The situation was particularly grim in the trans-Mississippi Confederacy, an immense region...

HINDMAN’S COUNTERPART IN BLUE WAS BRIGADIER GENERAL JOHN M. Schofield, commander of the District of Missouri. Schofield was a highly regarded 1853 graduate of West Point whose classmates included John B. Hood, James B. McPherson, and Philip H. Sheridan. After a tour of duty in Florida and a teaching stint at his alma mater, Schofield became disillusioned with the slow pace of advancement in the peacetime army. He secured an extended leave of absence and joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis where he taught physics and astronomy. Schofield seemed destined for a career in academe, but he...

WHILE THE FEDERALS EXPLORED PEA RIDGE, THE DISPIRITED CONfederates passed the time at Cross Hollows and Elm Springs, a day’s march to the south and southwest. Rains was out of ideas and under mounting criticism for falling back so far and so fast. Anxious to retrieve the situation before Hindman returned, he held a council of war. One of the officers present was Colonel Douglas H. Cooper, a hard-drinking Mexican War veteran who had raised the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles at the outbreak of the war. Cooper was superintendent of Indian Affairs and de facto commander of Confederate...

CONVINCED THAT HINDMAN HAD WITHDRAWN BEYOND HIS REACH into the Arkansas Valley, Schofield left Huntsville and returned to the west side of the White River. After two more days and nights of rapid marching Totten and the Second Division halted at Osage Spring, four miles south of Bentonville. Herron and the Third Division stopped six miles to the southeast in Cross Hollows. Men and animals were worn out. “We have been marching pretty hard ever since we came into Arkansas,” William Clayton of the Nineteenth Iowa told his parents. “The boys are all well, but considerably footsore.” Benjamin B. Sanborn...

LOYAL RESIDENTS OF FAYETTEVILLE MUST HAVE THOUGHT DELiverance was at hand when they awoke on 29 October and found the streets swarming with blue-clad soldiers. But they soon learned that Union liberation was only slightly less onerous than Confederate occupation. “The stores are broke open and everything looks like the picture of ruin,” wrote Aaron P.Mitchell of the Twentieth Iowa. “It is strictly against orders to destroy anything but the boys will, a great many of them, run the risk and break in and take anything they can find that they need. They have arrested quite a number for breaking...

HINDMAN WAS ON THE MULBERRY RIVER WHEN HE LEARNED THAT Schofield had evacuated Fayetteville “in great haste.” A few days later he received word that the Federals had pulled out of Osage Spring and Cross Hollows and returned to Missouri in a cloud of dust. Hindman could not believe his good fortune; the Union turnaround seemed a miracle. From his vantage point in Little Rock, Holmes offered a more prosaic explanation.

He believed Schofield had misinterpreted Parsons’s movement from Yellville to the Mulberry as a threat to his flank and acted accordingly. Also, Holmes wondered whether Schofield might have fewer...

MARMADUKE WAS IN FOR A BIG SURPRISE. ON 24 NOVEMBER BLUNT learned that the Confederates had returned to Cane Hill. Instead of assuming a defensive position along Flint Creek, as he had done two weeks earlier, Blunt decided to launch a preemptive attack. “I shall move on Marmaduke tomorrow morning,” he informed Curtis. “Hope to destroy him before he can be re-enforced by Hindman.” Curtis immediately notified Herron that “General Blunt is about to attack the enemy at Cane Hill” and told him to be prepared to support the Kansas Division “by a prompt movement” should that become necessary. Herron...

THE LUNGE FROM FLINT CREEK TO CANE HILL CARRIED BLUNT AND his men thirty miles deeper into the Confederacy. The Kansas Division now was more than one hundred miles south of the Missouri Divisions near Springfield, but only thirty-five miles north of the Trans-Mississippi Army in the Arkansas Valley. Marmaduke realized that the Federals had blundered into a trap. On 29 November he pleaded with Hindman to spring the trap before Blunt saw the danger he was in and pulled back. “I am fully convinced that no force is sufficiently near to give him support in case you attack him,”...

ON 1 DECEMBER HERRON ADVISED CURTIS THAT HIS COMMAND WAS fully recovered from the rigors of the fall campaign. “I have been at work getting the [Missouri] Divisions into shape for a prompt and lengthy movement, and would report them ready,” he wrote. Herron expected orders to march to Helena or some other point on the Mississippi River, but he did not hesitate when Blunt’s call for support reached his headquarters on 3 December. “Will move both divisions entire at noon today, and will make good time to your position,” Herron replied. “The distance from here is so great that...

BELOW HERRON’S POSITION ON EAST BLUFF THE ILLINOIS RIVER flows north through a well-defined flood plain incised into the limestone surface of the Ozark Plateau. At the time of the Civil War the narrow plain was covered with a forest of oak, hickory, cedar, poplar, and elm. West of the river is Crawford’s Prairie, a broad valley one and a half miles long from east to west and three-quarters of a mile wide from north to south. In 1862 roughly half of the valley floor was still covered with native grasses and used as pasturage; the other half was planted...

THE MISSOURI DIVISIONS WERE A SHAMBLES AFTER THE ATTRITION and detachments of the past few days. Herron might have fared better had he bypassed the existing organization and consolidated his depleted infantry force into two ad hoc brigades of three regiments apiece. Instead, he kept his six understrength regiments spread among four brigade commanders. Herron further complicated matters by retaining personal control of the Third Division despite his larger responsibilities, a decision that left the division without firm direction. Although a resolute and inspiring leader, Herron had never commanded anything larger than a regiment in battle. His lack of experience...

SURVIVORS OF THE CONFEDERATE COUNTERATTACK STRUGGLED TO regroup atop the Ridge amid renewed Union artillery fire. Fagan’s four Arkansas regiments formed a new, more compact line centered on the Borden house. Brooks and Hawthorn, on the left, crowded into the space between the house and the ravine. King and Pleasants, on the right, reoccupied the fences bordering the west and south sides of the orchard but shifted closer to the house. By 3:30 P.M. Fagan’s Brigade, considerably battered and reduced to fewer than 1,300 men, was packed into an L-shaped line between the ravine and the southwest corner of the...

WHILE THE MAIN BODY OF THE TRANS-MISSISSIPPI ARMY HURRIED north on Cove Creek Road to intercept Herron, James Monroe and his small Arkansas cavalry brigade maintained a lonely vigil atop Reed’s Mountain. Hindman’s revised plan called for Monroe to “threaten and press the enemy vigorously” in order to keep Blunt’s attention focused on Van Buren Road. It was a tall order for four hundred cavalrymen, but the Arkansans did their best. They prepared crude breastworks along the crest of the mountain and kept campfires burning all night. At dawn on 7 December they moved down the west slope and formed...

THE WELL-DEFINED BROW THAT GIVES THE RIDGE ITS NAME DOES not continue west of Fayetteville Road. The only significant natural feature on that part of Prairie Grove is the prominent bench at the foot of the hill. The Rogers and Morton homesteads were located on the bench, and years of industry had produced a more or less continuous strip of cleared yards, outbuildings, fences, gardens, orchards, and woodlots between Fayetteville and Viney Grove roads. The slope above the bench was thickly wooded save for a rectangular clearing south of the Morton house. A lane ran east-west along the bench between...

THE ATTACKING FORCE ON THE RIGHT OF THE UNION LINE WAS COMposed of 1,350 infantry and dismounted cavalry from Weer’s Second Brigade and Cloud’s Third Brigade. It consisted of Colonel Thomas Ewing’s wing of the Eleventh Kansas on the left and Colonel Thomas M. Bowen’s Thirteenth Kansas, two battalions of Bassett’s Second Kansas Cavalry, Major Henry H. Williams’s Tenth Kansas, and Lieutenant William Gallaher’s company of the Third Indian on the right. Weer gave the order to advance, and the Federals hurried across the Morton cornfield and Wilson wheatfield at the doublequick. No one mentioned plowing through cornstalks, so William...

ALEXANDER CAMERON, A TROOPER IN CRUMP’S TEXAS CAVALRY, thought the day had gone well. “It was the full calculation of all that I saw that night after the battle that we had whiped them and that we would renew the battle next morning if they were there.” The actual situation was more complicated. Although the Confederates defended their hilltop position against repeated Union assaults, they failed to achieve any of their larger objectives. In fact, by bringing the widely separated wings of the Army of the Frontier together at Prairie Grove, the Confederates strengthened the Union military presence in northwest...

AFTER THE FIGHTING ENDED ON 7 DECEMBER, THE FEDERALS WITHdrew into the woods north and east of Crawford’s Prairie. Many soldiers had discarded their overcoats, blankets, and packs during the dash to the battle – field and had little protection against the bitter cold. “We suffered terribly during the night,” wrote an Illinois infantryman. “We packed as close as we could.” Blunt and Herron prohibited fires, but the cold was so severe that their orders were widely ignored. By midnight the Union side of the field was dotted with hundreds of blazes, large and small. Practically everyone in blue believed the...

ON 23 DECEMBER CURTIS INFORMED BLUNT THAT SCHOFIELD WAS ON his way back to Arkansas to resume command of the army. He also passed along a rumor that Holmes was reinforcing Hindman. “Be on the alert,” Curtis advised. “Do not venture too far at present.” Blunt did not put much stock in the rumor because his own sources of information indicated that Hindman was preparing to evacuate Fort Smith and join Holmes near Little Rock. The next day Schofield chimed in from Waynesville, twenty-five miles southwest of Rolla. He repeated the warning about Confederate reinforcements and urged Blunt to exercise...

THE VAN BUREN RAID MARKED THE END OF THE PRAIRIE GROVE campaign. Shaken by the ease with which the Federals had crossed the Boston Mountains, Holmes ordered Hindman to move the Trans-Mississippi Army to Little Rock. Hindman offered no objections. During the first two weeks of 1863 the Confederates slowly made their way down the Arkansas Valley. The 180-mile march was a miserable experience, more damaging and demoralizing than the withdrawal from Prairie Grove. Winter returned with a vengeance, pelting men and animals with ice, snow, and freezing rain. Horses and mules died by the hundreds; men straggled or deserted...