War Enters Arkansas
This first clash in which Arkansas troops figured was a clear victory
for the Southern forces. Compared to the numbers engaged, losses on both
sides were severe. The Southern sacrifice was 1,208 killed and wounded,
while the total of killed and wounded for the federals was 1,317.
Arkansas’s loss was 91 killed, 317 wounded and four missing.
Early the next spring, on March 6, 1862, the war rolled down out of
Missouri into Arkansas.
Meanwhile, through the fall and winter of 1861-1862, Arkansas, like the
other states of the Confederacy, made unresting efforts to provide its
rallying host of soldiers and its civilian population with the
thousand-and-one necessities of warfare and daily life. That was a
gigantic problem. The South, then almost wholly agricultural in its
development, had imported the bulk of its manufactured goods and much of
its food from the North.
To provide all at once the huge supplies required was a task that might
well have daunted any people. But Arkansas, with its sister states under
the Stars and Bars, rose swiftly and magnificently to the test.
Men whose entire experience had been on plantations, or in professional
activities, were soon building machinery and boats, erecting factories,
working mines, and getting substantial results in the whole complicated
field of industry.
A variety of army needs was manufactured at the state penitentiary.
Railroad shops in Hopefield, opposite Memphis, were used for repairing
guns. Up and down the state plants for making this or that necessity was
hastily constructed.
The resourcefulness displayed in that dark hour, against towering odds,
is a proud chapter of American history.
State bonds to the amount of $2,000,000 were authorized, along with new
taxes, including an income levy of 10 per cent, payable in cotton and
other farm produce. Some of the taxes were later repealed, however, and
the issuance of bonds suspended.
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