Tuesday, September 07, 2004
The Battle of Pea Ridge
By The Erudite Redneck
PEA RIDGE NATIONAL MILITARY PARK, Ark. -- That's fescue down there, not corn.
Aside from that, what you see below this bluff in the Ozarks is exactly what the boys in gray and the boys in blue saw -- more than 26,000 of them -- on March 6-8, 1862, during the Battle of Pea Ridge.
From the fence lines to the lay of the land to the surrounding hickory oak forests to the little clumps of trees scattered about the prairie, the battle ground has been restored to appear almost exactly as it did -- minus the corn -- in 1862.
The Battle of Pea Ridge actually occurred on two distinct battlegrounds, Elkhorn Tavern and Leetown. The two-day engagement is known as the battle that saved Missouri for the Union.
The Battle of Prairie Grove, to the south, came nine months later, but the Union and the Confederacy were mainly fighting for control of northwest Arkansas by then -- although a victorious Confederacy would have plunged straight up into Missouri. Of course, the Rebels didn't.
Here, a stone's throw from the Missouri state line, marched the Union Army of the Southwest, 10,500 troops under the command of Brig. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis. Curtis's aim was to keep Missouri under Union control and to secure the upper reaches of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.
At Leetown and Elkhorn Tavern, Curtis met the Confederate Army of the West, 16,000 Southerners, including three regiments of Cherokees, led by Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn.
Here's how it played out:
On the night of March 6, Van Dorn set out to outflank the union position near Pea Ridge, dividing his army into two columns. The next morning, the Union marched north to meet the Confederates.
At Leetown, two Confederate generals -- Brig. Gen. Ben McCullough and Brig. Gen. James McQueen McIntosh -- were killed and the ranking Southern colonel was captured. Union victory.
Van Dorn's second column had advanced to Elkhorn Tavern. By nightfall, the area was secure. The important Telegraph Road was in the South's hands. Confederate victory.
This was no draw, though. The next morning, Curtis's men, regrouped and consolidated, counter-attacked near the tavern. Superior artillery slowly but surely pounded the Confederates to, well -- to death.
Of the 5,949 casualties over the three days, most -- 4,600 -- were Confederates. Van Dorn, running out of ammunition, abandoned the battlefield.
The 4,300-acre Pea Ridge National Military Park, about 40 miles northeast of Fayetteville, includes one of the best-preserved battlefields in the country.
Some 2,000 acres around Elkhorn Tavern have been painstakingly returned to their 1862 appearance. The reforestation and recovery project began in the 1960s and, natural resources being what they are, will never be complete.
For one thing, researchers are still getting information in bits and pieces that cause them to make subtle changes.
Think of it: There was no satellite photography in 1862. The Elkhorn Tavern battlefield has been restored based on all kinds of information, including crude maps drawn in the field, battle strategies concocted on the fly and letters written home before, during and after the fighting. A change can come after something as simple as finding a letter that mentions a tree line, or a single tree, or a big rock, that nobody knew of before.
Then there's nature itself. Cedar is trying to take over parts of the park -- and it was nowhere to be seen around here 135 years ago.
The National Park Service has reconstructed the Elkhorn Tavern itself -- think bed-and-breakfast inn, not sleazy roadhouse -- on the site of the original.
But there's no corn, even though dirt farmers around Elkhorn Tavern grew it.
There were corn fields here. It having been early March, that means one of two things: fighting took place in fields of dead stalks from the season before or in fields being prepared for planting within the next month. There certainly wasn't any new corn that early in the spring.
In any case, that's one detail the Park Service opted not to recreate. That would turn park rangers into farmers.
The fescue in place of the corn serves a dual purpose. It preserves the prairie that surrounded the corn patches, as it was in 1862. And, under hay leases with area farmers, it provides income that goes straight into the coffers of Pea Ridge National Military Park.
The hay money helps Davis and others continue to preserve the heritage, and natural artifacts, of this little part of the War Between the States.
END
PEA RIDGE NATIONAL MILITARY PARK, Ark. -- That's fescue down there, not corn.
Aside from that, what you see below this bluff in the Ozarks is exactly what the boys in gray and the boys in blue saw -- more than 26,000 of them -- on March 6-8, 1862, during the Battle of Pea Ridge.
From the fence lines to the lay of the land to the surrounding hickory oak forests to the little clumps of trees scattered about the prairie, the battle ground has been restored to appear almost exactly as it did -- minus the corn -- in 1862.
The Battle of Pea Ridge actually occurred on two distinct battlegrounds, Elkhorn Tavern and Leetown. The two-day engagement is known as the battle that saved Missouri for the Union.
The Battle of Prairie Grove, to the south, came nine months later, but the Union and the Confederacy were mainly fighting for control of northwest Arkansas by then -- although a victorious Confederacy would have plunged straight up into Missouri. Of course, the Rebels didn't.
Here, a stone's throw from the Missouri state line, marched the Union Army of the Southwest, 10,500 troops under the command of Brig. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis. Curtis's aim was to keep Missouri under Union control and to secure the upper reaches of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.
At Leetown and Elkhorn Tavern, Curtis met the Confederate Army of the West, 16,000 Southerners, including three regiments of Cherokees, led by Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn.
Here's how it played out:
On the night of March 6, Van Dorn set out to outflank the union position near Pea Ridge, dividing his army into two columns. The next morning, the Union marched north to meet the Confederates.
At Leetown, two Confederate generals -- Brig. Gen. Ben McCullough and Brig. Gen. James McQueen McIntosh -- were killed and the ranking Southern colonel was captured. Union victory.
Van Dorn's second column had advanced to Elkhorn Tavern. By nightfall, the area was secure. The important Telegraph Road was in the South's hands. Confederate victory.
This was no draw, though. The next morning, Curtis's men, regrouped and consolidated, counter-attacked near the tavern. Superior artillery slowly but surely pounded the Confederates to, well -- to death.
Of the 5,949 casualties over the three days, most -- 4,600 -- were Confederates. Van Dorn, running out of ammunition, abandoned the battlefield.
The 4,300-acre Pea Ridge National Military Park, about 40 miles northeast of Fayetteville, includes one of the best-preserved battlefields in the country.
Some 2,000 acres around Elkhorn Tavern have been painstakingly returned to their 1862 appearance. The reforestation and recovery project began in the 1960s and, natural resources being what they are, will never be complete.
For one thing, researchers are still getting information in bits and pieces that cause them to make subtle changes.
Think of it: There was no satellite photography in 1862. The Elkhorn Tavern battlefield has been restored based on all kinds of information, including crude maps drawn in the field, battle strategies concocted on the fly and letters written home before, during and after the fighting. A change can come after something as simple as finding a letter that mentions a tree line, or a single tree, or a big rock, that nobody knew of before.
Then there's nature itself. Cedar is trying to take over parts of the park -- and it was nowhere to be seen around here 135 years ago.
The National Park Service has reconstructed the Elkhorn Tavern itself -- think bed-and-breakfast inn, not sleazy roadhouse -- on the site of the original.
But there's no corn, even though dirt farmers around Elkhorn Tavern grew it.
There were corn fields here. It having been early March, that means one of two things: fighting took place in fields of dead stalks from the season before or in fields being prepared for planting within the next month. There certainly wasn't any new corn that early in the spring.
In any case, that's one detail the Park Service opted not to recreate. That would turn park rangers into farmers.
The fescue in place of the corn serves a dual purpose. It preserves the prairie that surrounded the corn patches, as it was in 1862. And, under hay leases with area farmers, it provides income that goes straight into the coffers of Pea Ridge National Military Park.
The hay money helps Davis and others continue to preserve the heritage, and natural artifacts, of this little part of the War Between the States.
END
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Hell fire, woman, this was somethin' I pulled out of my less-erudite buttock. I would expect any person with average thinking ability -- and average writin' ability, which is the same -- to be able to come up with something comparable. ;-) ... Yeah, give me a class. I will be their worst nightmare. :-)
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