PEA RIDGE — As the sun rose on the morning of March 4, 1862, the Confederate Army of the West began their 65-mile march north as snow began to fall. Earl Van Dorn rode along with his men for a short time before being compelled to ride in his ambulance suffering from a fever and illness brought on by his unexpected baptism in the Little Red River a few days prior.
The strain of the march began to show quickly as Van Dorn’s ambulance set a brutal pace that was hard for his soldiers to keep up with. Ephraim Anderson of the First Missouri Confederate Brigade remarked, “Van Dorn had forgotten that he was riding and we were walking.”
That evening the Confederates camped near Fayetteville in the freezing temperatures and snow with no tents. March 5, 1862, the main column of the Confederate army continues their march as snow falls all day. A Union spyfrom the 3rd Iowa cavalry that had spent the last two weeks with the Confederates in the Boston Mountains, slipped away and met with Curtis at Cross Hollows and informed him that the rebels were on the move. Curtis quicklyissued orders for his entire army to concentrate at Little Sugar Creek.
Curtis assumed that the Confederate column would march north along the Telegraph Road (Wire Road) but Van Dorn chose to move north along the Elm Springs road toward Bentonville. As night fell, the Confederate army spent another miserable night 12 miles south of Bentonville. The Federals were digging rifle pits and artillery redoubts along the bluffs of Little Sugar Creek.
March 6, 1862, various detachments of Curtis’ army arrived throughout the day at Little Sugar Creek. His western most detachment under the command of Franz Sigel left Bentonville at dawn after dragging his feet the day before. As Sigel’s divisions passed through Bentonville, Sigel, ever the thorn in his commander’s side, inexplicably decided to stay behind with a small force while the rest of his two divisions marched on. At 10 a.m.
gunfire erupted south of the Bentonville Courthouse as the rebels closed in on Bentonville. Sigel, visibly shaken, rallied his small command and moved quickly to leave Bentonville. Just outside of town, Sigel halted his command on a knoll (where the office buildings sit on the eastern side of I-540 and Arkansas Highway 72) and fired a few artillery rounds at his pursuers, then limbered up and continued his retreat. What happened next was a seven-mile running fight out of Bentonville and along the floor of the Little Sugar Creek valley. Sigel sent word for Osterhaus and Asboth to double back with their divisions to save him and by 3:30 p.m., Sigel and his divisions reached the Federal works at Little Sugar Creek.
At 8 p.m., the easternmost detachment, the 2nd brigade under command of Col. William Vandever, arrived at Little Sugar Creek after one of the most impressive marches during the Civil War, covering the 42 miles from Huntsville in 16 hours without losing one of his 700 men.
Van Dorn halted in the valley and realized he would suffer too many casualties if he attacked the Union trenches. He decided to march 8 miles around the Federals and cut off their supply and escape route along Telegraph Road. Van Dorn ordered his men to prepare fires as though they were camping for the night and then under cover of darkness, the Confederate Army of the West moved out along the Bentonville Detour. After running into two timber blockades cut along the road by Union cavalry, dawn found the Confederate army stretched for miles. Fearing that he had lost the element of surprise, Van Dorn ordered McCulloch and his half of the army to double back at Twelve Corners and march east along the Ford Road to eventually link up with Van Dorn and Price near Elkhorn Tavern. The two halves of the Confederate Army of the West marched out of the Boston Mountains with 16,000 men and through hard marching in terrible conditions now reached Pea Ridge with 13,000 men including two regiments of Cherokee under the command of Albert Pike. Van Dorn had succeeded in getting behind Curtis’ army.
The largest battle West of the Mississippi River was about to begin in earnest.
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Editor’s note: Troy Banzhaf is the supervisory park ranger/interpretation at the Pea Ridge National Military Park.
News, Pages 1 on 03/07/2012