 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 |
