Civil War Arkansas: Beyond Battles and Leaders

Abstract

Civil War Arkansas: Beyond Battles and Leaders. Edited by Anne J. Bailey and Daniel E. Sutherland. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000. Pp. x, 304. Acknowledgments, list of contributors, series editors' preface, introduction, illustrations, notes, index. $34.00, cloth; $22.00, paper.) In their introductory chapter to Civil War Arkansas: Beyond Battles and Leaders, editors Anne Bailey and Daniel Sutherland note that prior to the 1960s the Civil War in Arkansas and the rest of the Trans-Mississippi received about the same minimal degree of attention from historians as it had from the Confederate government (p. 8). But the renewed interest that accompanied the centennial celebration of the war precipitated dramatic increase in historical writing devoted to the war in Arkansas. In their endnotes, Bailey and Sutherland document approximately two hundred books and articles on the subject, making it undoubtedly the most written about topic in all of Arkansas history. Composed of articles revised and reprinted from scholarly journalsincluding the Arkansas Historical Quarterly-Beyond Battles and Leaders continues recent trend in Civil War historiography by exploring how events on the battlefield affected and were affected by social and economic forces in society at large and in individual communities. As this volume clearly demonstrates, the war had devastating impact both on those who served in the Union and Confederate armies and on the civilian population. It also reveals the extent to which Arkansans, despite the state convention's overwhelming vote for secession following the attack on Fort Sumter, remained severely divided in their sympathies. The state never presented united front during the conflict, fact that posed great dilemma for both Confederate and Union authorities in the state. Kim Allen Scott examines this problem from the Union perspective in chapter dealing with the conflict between two Federal commanders over the issue of the treatment of civilian property. Carl Moneyhon looks at the issue from the Confederate perspective in chapter entitled Disloyalty and Class Consciousness in Southwestern Arkansas, 1862-1865. Unionist sentiment in northwest Arkansas has been clearly documented, but Moneyhon examines the widespread hostility to Confederate authority in region of the state that had given majority to pro-slavery candidate John C. Breckinridge in the presidential election of 1860. He argues that this broad-based opposition, which ranged from draft resistance to armed encounters between Union loyalists and Confederate forces, was rooted in a growing antagonism among the region's lower classes against the elites (pp. …