Disastrous Retreat
March 8, 1862 - Afternoon
It took two weeks for the stunned survivors of the Confederate Army of the West to make their way from here back to rendezvous on the Arkansas River. In late March 1862 General Van Dorn was ordered to take his army east to Mississippi. This left northern Arkansas in the hands of the Union.
"[Our] regiment arrived...in straggling squads, tired, hatless, barefooted, hungry, dirty, and ragged. They had been in rain-storms, climbed steep mountains along narrow and rugged foot-paths, waded deep and cold mountain streams, starved, slept without tents or blankets on the wet and frosty ground...The retreat was more disastrous than a dozen battles."
William Tunnard, private, 3rd Louisiana Infantry Regiment
Brigadier General Sterling Price, a 52-year-old planter and lawyer born in Virginia, commanded Missouri state troops at Wilson's Creek and Pea Ridge. The popular former congressman and governor of Missouri survived four years of civil war, and died in St. Louis in 1867.
Near here Price tried in vain to rally his battered and exhausted division. Many regiments then retreated along this road east toward Huntsville. Other Confederates withdrew to the north and west.
Marker can be reached from Military Park Road (County Road 65), on the left when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
