Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West
by Earl J. Hess, William L. Shea
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Book Summary Information
Author: Earl J. Hess, William L. SheaEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1997-09-01
ISBN: 0807846694
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Book Reviews of Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West
Book Review: They Saw It Through the Smoke
Summary: 5 Stars
Pea Ridge is a rewarding book for both newcomers to Civil War reading, and Buffs, as well as researchers with a view toward writing about the last cavaliers' war on this continent.
I say that from the perspective of one who was born long ago, knew some of the vets of the G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic, the Civil War equivalent of the American Legion) who had experienced such "close contact" battles, and at age ten listened to their voices describe it all, which I can still hear. Some of them, older at that time than I am now, recalled war recollections they heard as boys, told by Revolutionary War vets who could remember what Washington looked and sounded like. So it all wasn't that long ago. When I was a boy we were closer to the American Revolution than the nuclear age. Outhouses and kerosene lamps were accepted as normal, even in parts of small towns, and everyone owned and shot guns for hunting and the simple sport of shooting well.
Why is this book different? It's authors are the new breed who are now using the rich resources of regimental and company histories, and personal memoirs and letters by men who lived what they wrote about. Rather than hearing grandiose broad terms such as "Custer swept around the right flank . . . " we hear of how individuals and small organizations traded volleys at close range in heavy timber and brush, visibility so short that they ran into each others by accident and had to shoot at flashes of guns since they couldn't see men in the heavy smoke from black powder.
I was raised on Civil War fare like Charles Carlton Coffin's account of the Seven Days around Richmond, written so intimately and graphically because he himself, although a noncombatant, had seen it through the smoke. But like the familiar Battles and Leaders series, it was mostly about leaders, and brigades were the smallest units mentioned, and usually divisions and corps. I knew who Bull Sumner and the other corps commanders of the Army of the Potomac were by the time I was ten.
This is different and about time.
The leaders at Pea Ridge are worthy of meeting, and the experience, due to their eccentricities and careers, would be rewarding without a full account of how they fought. You can read capsulated biographies in Boatner's indispensable Civil War Dictionary.
This battle was a part of the Anaconda Plan conceived by aged General Scott, an American Icon and still Commanding General of the Army when the Civil War started. He envisioned using the naval superiority of the north and water transport on the western rivers to move armies that would strangle the South with coordinated campaigns, landing on the coasts and making inland incursions, complemented by coordinated movements down the Mississippi and along its tributaries. It was actually the strategy that finally was employed to win the war for the North, but ridiculed by the newspapers at first as visionary, and also by Gen. McClellan even as he adopted it. Mac was a rare study that replaced Scott (by undermining him). I have read widely and never heard of him having been seen on a front line, where even Lee and Grant appeared at times, which may explain his "slows" as Lincoln politely called them.
Get out your road atlas and look at the theatre of the southwest, which was headquartered at St. Louis. At the time of Pea Ridge the Western theater was commanded by Gen. Halleck, who is underrated as a strategist, probably due to his later misfortune of being brought to Washington where Lincoln called him a "first rate clerk," without realizing that was all his Secretary of War, Stanton, allowed him to be, aside from a scapegoat. (Halleck, no fool, probably shrugged his shoulders and acquiesced - pity he didn't write an outspoken memoir and explain himself better.) In St. Louis as the replacement for Gen. Fremont, he was more than that. He was often outright brash in ignoring his timid, foot-dragging superiors - both McClellan and Lincoln - and bold in his strategy. He planned the campaigns carried out by Grant and Pope in Kentucky and Tennessee (Ft. Henry, Ft. Donelson, Island Number Ten, Shiloh, and eventually Corinth, the latter in a glacial advance commanded by Halleck himself.) To do this he had to secure Missouri, especially St. Louis, first as a base of operations. This explains Pea Ridge. It was necessary to drive the Confederates out of Missouri, which was attempted first by Gen. Lyon, under Fremont in the summer of 1861, and finally successfully in the late winter of 1862 under Halleck with Gen. Samuel Curtis as his field commander of the Army of the Southwest. Lyon had suffered disaster and death at Wilson's Creek. Halleck picked up the pieces and wisely, or luckily, chose untried Curtis as his operating arm.
Look further at your atlas and draw a line from St. Louis to the southwest corner of Missouri and you will be tracing roughly the route of the pre war Butterfield stage line, and the transcontinental telegraph line, which gave the name "Telegraph Road" to Curtis's line of advance. Just south of the Missouri/Arkansas border, you will find the battlefield of Pea Ridge straddling the Telegraph Road. (Known as Elkhorn Tavern to the South, as we have Antietam and Sharpsburg respectively for the same battle).
Below the Elkhorn Tavern the roads branch, like the forks of an inverted slingshot and rejoin at Fayetteville, then branch south through the Boston Mountains to the Arkansas River at Ft. Smith. The forces of Gen. McCullough had been wintering in that vicinity.
When Curtis opened his campaign he moved west toward Springfield (see your atlas) and scared out the forces of Gen. Sterling Price who skedaddled for Arkansas, calling for help from Gen. McCullough. (They mutually detested each other.) In overall command of the Confederate army of the West, comprised of McCullough's and Price's armies, was Earl Van Dorn, a great psychological study in himself. (West Point, 1842, nearly last in his class, and an Indian fighter of note pre war on the plains and in Texas. He never grew beyond being a capable cavalry (dragoon) troop commander, which was to have a great bearing on the outcome at Pea Ridge, probably the decisive one.) Headquartered at Pocohontas, in northeastern Arkansas and intending to advance on St. Louis from there, he promptly changed his plans when he learned of Curtis's advance and Price's retreat.
Thus your modern road atlas gives you an idea of the larger area of the campaign. What was at stake was the Anaconda Plan. The book provides excellent maps on which to follow the major armies movements, and is lacking in a few more maps that would have shown tactical locations mentioned but not shown on the maps. You will also find excellent photos of the major participants and of the field of combat, most of the latter by the two authors.
Van Dorn arrived at Van Buren, near Ft. Smith on 1 March, after a forced march, and pushed the raw troops he found there to the battlefield roughly seventy-five miles away for the battle on March 8 and 9. As the authors comment, he took no time to learn anything about his subordinate commanders, principally Price, McCullough and McIntosh, and less of the capabilities of the troops. He stripped them to one blanket apiece in a climate where late blizzards and freezing weather were common, limited them to short rations, outran his wagon trains and later his artillery and changed his tactical plan at the last minute when he heard of an avenue to envelope Curtis, rather than merely outflank him with superior numbers of about three to two.
Thus he drove part of his hungry and weary army at night around the local prominence known as Big Mountain (or Pea Ridge) and actually got behind Curtis, to his ultimate sorrow. Curtis was ably served by Colonels Osterhaus, later Major General, and Colonel Jeff C. Davis (no relation to the Confederate President) and Colonel Eugene A. Carr, later a Major General. (Davis should have been a Major General as well, but unfortunately killed his superior Gen. "Bull" Nelson in an affair of honor, which stigmatized his promotion beyond Brigadier General even with Grant recommending him.)
The battle, skillfully described by the authors in great detail and with dramatic touches worthy of novelists, is a page-turner, to put it tritely, but truthfully.
The attack by McCullough's forces on the original tactical plan fizzled out when both he and his principal subordinate Gen. McIntosh were killed, acting like scouts instead of commanders. Osterhaus, supported later by Davis skillfully opposed it. By sundown they had cleared off the attackers, whose disaster Van Dorn learned of belatedly, since he was personally leading the enveloping movement around Big Mountain. He was held off by Carr in hard fighting at Elkhorn Tavern and when the night of the first day fell, Curtis finally got a full grasp of the situation and united his forces for a unified attack to the north at Elkhorn Tavern, which swept Van Dorn off the field and in full retreat by noon. (Like Rosecrans at Chickamauga, Van Dorn personally led the skillful retreat, leaving a wounded Price to hold the bag.) He completely circled Curtis, departing to the east, then south, leaving his distant trains to depart as best they could to the southwest the way they'd come.
Curtis was ably served by his major subordinates, except for the spotty performance of his two foreign born political generals, Sigel and Asboth. Both were types wearing stars because of a following of foreign voters, a significant consideration to the politically astute Lincoln.
Van Dorn went on to glory with a large cavalry raid on Holly Springs later that year that destroyed Grant's forward base which had been provisioned for an advance on Vicksburg and set back that campaign to the next summer. His final bow was to take a bullet in the head from a jealous husband who may have done the Confederacy a greater service than Van Dorn had managed at Holly Springs.
In summary this battle's major significance was in making possible full support of the Anaconda Plan from St. Louis down the Mississippi. Grant's successful career owed a debt to Curtis whose performance assured Halleck he could safely cut loose Grant to move up the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. It was the start of his trip to the White House that may never have occurred without Curtis's success at Pea Ridge.
Curtis and Price met again in 1864 when the latter prosecuted his disastrous invasion of Missouri, aimed at St. Louis, deflected west, and ending with the disintegration of his army at Westport, now a suburb of Kansas City.
Curtis was a general who suffered from lack of skill only at self-promotion. It is my opinion that he could have ranked, if given a chance, with the top tier of secondary stellar generals, such as Thomas and Meade. I also think he would have outperformed Rosecrans and Buell in their campaigns, and succeeded where they failed.
A great book with pertinent photos, maps, bibliography, two appendices, and an index that suffers from not being detailed in the Chicago Manual of Style, a small criticism in view of the overall impact of this watershed type of reporting.
Highly recommended. A must on any Civil War shelf.
Summary of Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West
The 1862 battle of Pea Ridge in northwestern Arkansas was one of the largest Civil War engagements fought on the western frontier, and it dramatically altered the balance of power in the Trans-Mississippi. This study of the battle is based on research in archives from Connecticut to California and includes a pioneering study of the terrain of the sprawling battlefield, as well as an examination of soldiers' personal experiences, the use of Native American troops, and the role of Pea Ridge in regional folklore.Civil War Books
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