Arkansas’ First Battle

Arkansas troops, half trained and poorly equipped, were first hurled into the struggle only about three months after the state seceded from the Union. That was in the battle of Oak Hills, fought in Missouri, August 10, 1861.

The Arkansas troops, numbering about 2,500 or 3,000, were led by Gen. Ben McCulloch, who had been sent up to the state from Texas. This detachment was ordered into Missouri to join Gen. Sterling Price’s little army of some 6,500 soldiers. But of the total Confederate command of around 11,000 men, there were 2,000 who had no arms. Many of the others went into action with shotguns, which were effective only at short distances.

The Northern force consisted of between 6,000 and 7,000 troops thoroughly armed and equipped, under Gen. Nathaniel Lyon.

Both sides contested furiously for every inch of the ground. From 7 o’clock in the morning till 1 in the afternoon the battle raged. It was, as a Southern historian describes it, a close-range struggle, “man to man and to the death.” The lines would come within 50 yards of each other, deliver their fire, and then drop back a few yards to reform and reload. When a Confederate fell, one of his unarmed comrades picked up his gun.

Thus the bitter conflict went on a series of short charges and retirements with intervals of ominous silence between the thunderbursts of attacks. Some of the fiercest fighting was at a place called Bloody Hill. Arkansas troops figured gloriously in that phase of the engagement. There, for five hours, the opposing forces contended, and the dead of both sides lay in heaps. Then, from the Southern line a great shout rose above the tumult of battle. The federal troops were retreating.

General Lyon, the Northern commander was killed in action. General Price was wounded, but refused to quit the field. He only remarked that if he had been as slim as Lyon the bullet that hit his side would have missed him.