Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West [Hardcover]

William L. Shea (Author), Earl J. Hess (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 1992

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With its exhaustive research and lively prose style, this military study is virtually a model work of its kind. Shea and Hess, who teach history at the University of Arkansas at Monticello and Lincoln Memorial University (Tenn.), respectively, convincingly argue that the 1862 campaign for Pea Ridge (Ark.) decisively changed the balance of power in the West, with the Union gaining effective control of Missouri. Samuel Curtis, commander of the Federal Army of the Southwest, understood the strategic requirements of his theater, according to the authors, and elicited the best performance from his troops, even though they were beset by internal tensions. The Southern commander, Earl van Dorn, the authors maintain, was a swashbuckler out of his depth--particularly in light of the administrative weaknesses of the trans-Mississippi Confederacy. Their detailed analysis of the climactic battle impressively conveys the difficulties of the improvised armies that groped for and grappled with each other in the Civil War West. Illustrations not seen by PW. BOMC and History Book Club selections.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The battle of Pea Ridge, fought in northwestern Arkansas in March 1862, was probably the most important trans-Mississippi battle of the Civil War. It was unusual in the use of Indian troops and in the Confederates' numerical superiority, better supplies, and inferior leadership. The battle ended any serious Confederate threat to Missouri and opened the Union's path into Arkansas. The book offers the rich tactical detail, maps, and order of battle that military scholars love but retains a very readable style combined with liberal use of recollections of the troops and leaders involved. Shea (history, Univ. of Arkansas) and Hess (history, Lincoln Memorial Univ.) do, however, suffer from a touch of logorrhea; the narrative rumbles along for nearly 100 pages after the battle ends. Nonetheless, this is an important book for academic libraries and for public libraries in the region. BOMC and History Book Club selections.
- Fritz Buckallew, Univ. of Central Oklahoma Lib., Edmond
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press; First Edition edition (November 15, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807820423
• ISBN-13: 978-0807820421
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,119,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars General Van Dorn Stinks up Arkansas., January 25, 2004

By 

Dennis Phillips "The Book Friar" (Bulls Gap, Tennessee USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West (Paperback)

Almost from the end of the war, most of the books and articles about various battles and leaders of the civil war tended to focus on Virginia. The western theater got nowhere near the attention it deserved and the Trans-Mississippi has been almost completely ignored. Fortunately, William Shea and Earl Hess have decided to end all of that and have given us a wonderful book about the campaigns that cumulated in the Battle of Pea Ridge. Remarkable characters with which many readers will not be familiar like Van Dorn, Curtis, Price and Pike will begin to come into focus and will not be easily forgotten.

The authors do an excellent job also of telling the stories of the common soldiers. They had to have dug through mountains of newspapers and journals to come up with all of this information but the results are well worth their efforts. Quote after quote tells the reader of the miserable conditions, the incessant marching, the hunger, and the fear. A large number of maps and portraits are a great help as the reader tries to picture what is going on. Many authors of this kind of detailed study of a battle end up giving the reader headaches with minute details about troop movements, but Shea and Hess manage to get the information across without becoming dull at all.

The portrait painted of this campaign is quite clear. Untimely deaths of commanders on the battlefield played a large part in the Confederate defeat, but mostly it was their inept General. With the exception of General Sigel, the Union commanders seem to have been an excellent group of officers who led brave men and led them well. Often overlooked is the bravery and fortitude of the common soldiers of both sides. These authors do not make that mistake. Shea and Hess do call it like they see it though and Freemasons beware, Albert Pike is not well treated.

The authors conclude with a look at the battle of Pea Ridge from a larger perspective. Many tactics used during this odd winter campaign would later become common practice for Union armies. Generals Grant and Sherman would take a large page from Curtis' play book when they in campaigns to come cut their supply lines and lived off of the land. As the authors point out, General Curtis does not get the credit he deserves for what he did at Pea Ridge. Things in Tennessee might have turned out very differently if the Federals had lost on that little ridge in Arkansas. To really understand the entire civil war, one must grasp what was going on in the west. To understand the west, one needs to grasp what happened at Pea Ridge. This book will go a long way in helping you reach that goal.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars They Saw It Through the Smoke, June 26, 2006

By 

Socialcomment "LQCLamar" (Western U. S.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West (Paperback)

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... Read more ›

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent campaign study of a little known battle, June 4, 2001

By 

Chris Carter (Greensboro, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West (Hardcover)

Pea Ridge is a well crafted book which deals with an obscure but extremely important battle early in the Civil War. The authors present their story in a very engaging and readable style which gives a real sense of being on the frigid and tangled battlefield in Northwestern Arkansas. The two armies and their commanders are described in wonderful detail, and the action flows right from the start. After finishing the book, I was struck by just what Curtis and the Army of the Southwest had accomplished, and by how many precedents he had set for future operations. Nevertheless, his accomplishments have been largely ignored. This book helps rescue him from obscurity, and is without a doubt the definitive study of this battle. Pea Ridge is a fantastic book on the Trans-Mississippi theater of the war, and when read along with Cozzen's book on Iuka and Corinth, provides a very complete picture of the formation of Van Dorn's and Price's armies and their fate. I highly recommend this book as an essential volume on the Civil War in the West.