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While these events took place at Leetown during the afternoon of March 7, another and far more severe engagement raged two miles to the east in the vicinity of Elkhorn Tavern. Earlier that morning, as noted above, Curtis had launched two spoiling attacks. The first was commanded by Osterhaus, the second by Col. Eugene A. Carr, a tough regular army officer. Carr deployed his division along the northern escarpment of Pea Ridge near Elkhorn Tavern. The Federal line looked down into Cross Timber Hollow, a deep and narrow valley. Price's division, personally led by Van Dorn, approached from the north on Telegraph Road. Around noon, the Rebel column began to climb up the steep slope that led from Cross Timber Hollow to Pea Ridge. The Federals opened fire and the battle was on.

Van Dorn, like McCulloch, was surprised to encounter Federal troops so far north of Little Sugar Creek. He deployed Price's division and sent it up the slope, but Carr counterattacked so vigorously that the Confederates gave up the initiative and assumed a defensive posture. A furious exchange of artillery fire filled the hollow with smoke, and fighting flared all afternoon along the steep rocky slope as soldiers of both sides blundered about in the haze. During a confused engagement on the Confederate right, Brig. Gen. William Y. Slack of Missouri was mortally wounded.

The Battle of Pea Ridge - Van Dorn's men attack Curtis

Hours passed before Van Dorn grasped the tactical situation, for he could see almost nothing from his position at the bottom of Cross Timber Hollow. Around mid-afternoon, he learned that McCulloch's division was bogged down at Leetown. About the same time, he belatedly realized that Price's division was much larger than the Federal force opposing it. He directed Price to extend his line beyond the flanks of the shorter Federal line. Late in the afternoon, Price's left reached the high ground a mile east of Elkhorn Tavern. Van Dorn ordered a general assault: the Confederate right and center would attack uphill and smash the Federals near the tavern, while the Confederate left would roll up the Federal right atop Pea Ridge.

Federal Army Regimental Battleflag. According to the regulations, this was to be dark blue, with a large national emblem. Many times, other designs were substituted. The regimental flag of the 37th Illinois (the Fremont Rifles) had a large portrait of General Fremont on one side and scenes from the General's career on the other. The9th Iowa's regimental flag was white with Iowa's state seal on one side and red with the Massachusetts seal on the other.

The Rebels struck with barely an hour of daylight remaining and fierce fighting erupted along the northern escarpment of Pea Ridge. An Iowa soldier wrote that the Rebels came on "with a yell and a fury that had a tendency to make each hair on one's head to stand on its particular end." In the center the Confederates overwhelmed the Federals and captured Elkhorn Tavern. Lt. Col. Francis J. Herron led his men in a desperate rear guard defense that earned him a Medal of Honor, but he was wounded and captured. A quarter mile to the east, on a farm owned by Rufus Clemon, the Confederates had a tougher time, for a brigade commanded by Col. Grenville M. Dodge fought from behind a breastwork of logs and repulsed several assaults. The Federals finally retreated when the swarming Confederates threatened to engulf them. Carr's division fell back through thick woods about half a mile to the south side of Benjamin Ruddick's cornfield. There they regrouped astride Telegraph Road and made another stand.

In the deepening twilight, Van Dorn made a final effort to sweep away the stubborn Federals. Masses of Confederate troops poured across the cornfield, "their cheers and yells rising above the roar of artillery," only to be mowed down in heaps by blasts of canister. The surviving Rebels fell back toward the tavern as darkness covered the battlefield. The unsuccessful attack in Ruddick's field late on March 7 was the high water mark for the Confederate war effort in the Trans-Mississippi. Henceforth, the Federals would control the course of the battle and, to a considerable degree, the course of the war in Arkansas and adjacent states.

During the night of March 7-8, Curtis used interior lines to consolidate the Army of the Southwest. He moved all of his scattered forces from Little Sugar Creek and Leetown to join Carr on Telegraph Road. He also distributed food, water, and ammunition. Van Dorn attempted to do the same with the Army of the West, ordering the fragments of McCulloch's division to join him at Elkhorn Tavern. Several thousand Rebels marched all night on the roundabout route around Big Mountain but arrived in such pitiful condition as to be almost useless. The Confederates were without food, except for what little was found in Federal haversacks and sutlers' wagons. They also were without adequate ammunition, for in the confusion of the march along the Bentonville Detour the previous night, the ammunition train had been left behind at Little Sugar Creek, a dozen miles distant.

The next morning, March 8, Curtis waited to see if Van Dorn would continue to press his attack. When nothing happened, Curtis concluded that the Confederates had shot their bolt and that he now held the initiative. He ordered his artillery to wheel forward. For two hours, twenty-seven Federal cannons hammered the Confederates at ever-closer ranges. The most intense artillery bombardment of the war up to that time, it made a great impression on the soldiers who were present. "It was a continual thunder, and a fellow might have believed that the day of judgment had come," said an Iowa soldier. The tremendous noise could be heard fifty miles away. The devastation wrought on the Confederates was terrible.

General Asboth and his dog York go off to battle at Pea Ridge. (Image: Frank Leslie's Illustrated)

Around ten o'clock Curtis ordered a general advance. Nearly ten thousand Federal soldiers swept across the fields and woods atop Pea Ridge, converging on Elkhorn Tavern from the west and south. "That beautiful charge I shall never forget," wrote a Federal officer. "With banners streaming, with drums beating, and our long line of blue coats advancing upon the double quick, with their deadly bayonets gleaming in the sunlight, and every man and officer yelling at the top of his lungs. The rebel yell was nowhere in comparison." Van Dorn realized that his position was hopeless and ordered a general withdrawal. The retreat rapidly degenerated into a rout after Van Dorn rode away to the east on Huntsville Road, leaving behind not only most of his wounded, but also large numbers of his men who were still engaged. Leaderless, panicked Rebels fled in all directions as thousands of cheering Federal soldiers met at the tavern. Curtis rode among his men, waving his hat and shouting "Victory! Victory!" Despite being outnumbered and surprised by Van Dorn's unorthodox and reckless tactics, Curtis had achieved one of the first major Federal victories in the Civil War.

The victory did not come cheap. Pea Ridge cost the Federals 1,384 casualties: 203 killed, 980 wounded, and 201 missing, roughly 13 percent of the 10,250 troops engaged in the battle. Confederate casualties are uncertain because Van Dorn lied about his losses in order to hide the magnitude of his defeat. A conservative estimate is that the Confederates suffered at least 2,000 casualties, approximately 15 percent of the 13,000 troops engaged in the battle. (The Army of the West contained roughly 16,500 men when it set out from the Boston Mountains and the Indian Territory, but suffered severe attrition because of Van Dorn's insistence on haste, and lost nearly one-fourth of its strength before reaching the battlefield. Attrition during the retreat also was severe but cannot be estimated.)

Additional Sources:

www.price.gv2.net
www.nps.gov
freepages.military.rootsweb.com/~mikegoad
www.multied.com/CivilWar
www.lib.utexas.edu
www.oldgloryprints.com
www.cwbattlefields.com
www.swcivilwar.com
www.civilwarweb.com
freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~janicekmc
oha.ci.alexandria.va.us
www.oldprintshop.com

The Confederate retreat from Pea Ridge was as disastrous as the advance and the battle. Late on the evening of March 8, most of the Army of the West reassembled at Van Winkle's Mill on the east side of the White River. The men were famished. They devoured everything in sight, but the sparsely populated Ozark countryside provided only a fraction of the food necessary to feed thousands of men and animals. For the next week, the pathetic column staggered south on primitive trails through almost uninhabited country, generally moving up the narrowing valleys of the Middle and West Forks of the White River. A Texas soldier observed that he was "in much greater danger of dying from starvation in the mountains of northern Arkansas than by the enemy's bullets." Hundreds of Rebels wandered away in search of food and never returned to the ranks. The trail of the defeated, dissolving army was littered with discarded clothing, weapons, coffee pots, and even flags. By the time the Confederates crossed the Boston Mountains and followed Frog Bayou down to the Arkansas River near Van Buren, they were a pitiful remnant of the proud army that had opened the campaign two weeks earlier.

The Confederate Monument is dedicated to the Confederate soldiers who fell near the Elkhorn Tavern during the battle of Pea Ridge. It is located in a field just south of the Tavern

While the troops recuperated, Van Dorn received a telegram from General P. G. T Beauregard in western Tennessee. Beauregard suggested that Van Dorn transfer the Army of the West to Corinth, Mississippi, as part of a concentration of all Confederate armies west of the Appalachian Mountains. The purpose of this grand design was to assemble a force powerful enough to defeat Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Federal army camped at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. Van Dorn agreed and began to move his force eastward from Van Buren. Heavy spring rains turned the roads into sloughs, slowing the march. The leading elements of the army did not begin boarding steamboats at Des Arc on the White River until April 6. By then, it was too late - the battle of Shiloh was underway. Without Van Dorn's sizable contingent, the Confederates failed to destroy Grant's army and were driven from the field. Van Dorn did not know this and continued to hurry his command across the Mississippi River. The transfer was complete by the end of April.

Close up of the Confederate Monument

Unknown to Beauregard or anyone else in the Confederate high command, Van Dorn did not merely move the Army of the West out of Arkansas, he abandoned the Trans-Mississippi altogether. He carried away nearly all troops, weapons, equipment, stores, machinery, and animals. Van Dorn's unauthorized actions meant that in order for the Confederates in the Trans-Mississippi to continue fighting, they would have to start from scratch. Arkansas was thrown into turmoil by this unexpected and alarming development. Gov. Henry M. Rector protested to President Davis and vaguely threatened to secede from the Confederacy and form a new political entity west of the Mississippi River. Brig. Gen. John S. Roane succinctly informed Beauregard of the situation in Arkansas: "No troops - no arms - no powder - no material of war - people everywhere eager to rise, complaints bitter."

Rugged and Sublime: The Civil War in Arkansas