Infantry Tracking Arkansas Confederate infantry regiments can be extremely complicated due to the fact that numerical designations were often issued to multiple units. Some of these duplications were due to the competing authorities attempting to organize forces in the state. Other duplications were due to poor and or delayed communications between the various mustering agents, the Arkansas State Military Board, which was in charge of organizing forces within the state, and the Confederate War Department in Richmond. Additional duplications occurred when parts of various regiments were captured, only to be paroled, exchanged and returned to active status at some later point. Finally, much duplication occurred after effective communications had been severed between Richmond and the Department of the Trans-Mississippi. at one point, General Hindman began designating new units organized in Arkansas as Trans-Mississippi Rifle Regiments, which resulted in many regiments serving west of the Mississippi having duplicate designations with units serving east of the Mississippi River.
Competing Authorities An example of the confusion caused by the competing authorities organizing forces is the numbers of the regiment organized by Colonel, later Major General, Patrick Cleburne. Cleburne's regiment received the designation of 1st Arkansas when it was mustered into state service at Mound City on May 14, 1861. Cleburne's regiment was accepted into Confederate service by General Hardee on July 23, 1861, at Pitman's Ferry, Arkansas as the 1st Arkansas Volunteer Infantry. However Confederate authorities had authorized Colonel T. B. Flournoy to raise a regiment of Arkansas Volunteers in April 1861, before the state had actually seceded. The regiment raised by Flournoy, which elected James F. Fagan as its original colonel, was never mustered into State Service, so it never received a state designation. When Cleburne's regiment's documents reached the war department, the duplication was discovered and Cleburne's regiment was re-designated as the 15th Arkansas. Unfortunately there would be two other regiments which were also numbered the 15th Arkansas, one commanded by Colonel Dandrige McRea and another commanded by Colonel James Gee. Additionally, at various times during the war, the State Military Board attempted to organized State Troop organizations, which were not intended to be transferred to Confederate Service. Most of these regiments were eventually transferred into Confederate service but they existed, often with duplicated state number designations for some period of time as state organizations. An example of this confusion involves the 3rd Arkansas Infantry Regiment and Adams Arkansas Infantry Regiment. After the battle of Pea Ridge, General Van Dorn took most of the organized regiments in the state, and all military supplies that he could lay hand on and moved them across the Mississippi River to Corinth, Mississippi, leaving the state basically defenseless. The State Military Board authorized the establishment of several new regiments for the defense of the State, and ordered the conscription of the requisite number of men from the militia to fill the ranks. The new regiments were organized fairly quickly, and were mustered into service in June, July and August 1862. Among the newly organized regiments authorized by the State Military Board were the 34th (Col. William H. Brooks), 35th (Col. Frank A. Rector) and 36th (Col. Samuel W. Peel). True to form, these designations were ignored, and they were mustered into service as the 1st (Rector), 2nd (Brooks) and 3rd (Peel) Regiments, Northwest Division, District of Arkansas. Colonel Peel was eventually superseded by Charles W. Adams, resulting in what is known as Adam's 3rd Arkansas Infantry, which, was disbanded after the Battle of Prairie Grove. The 1st and 2nd Regiments, Northwest Division, finally assumed their authorized designations of 35th and 34th Arkansas Regiments, respectively. To further confuse matters, when the United States War Department clerks who put together the
Compiled Service Records, decades after the war, ran across scattered records of certain men of the 3rd Arkansas who had been paroled at Springfield, Missouri, after the battle of Prairie Grove, they compiled them with the records of Colonel Van H. Manning's 3rd Arkansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment. In fact, these men belonged to Adams's so-called 3rd Arkansas.
Designations affected by surrender, parole and exchange The designations of some units became conflicted as parts of units were captured and later paroled, exchanged, and re-entered active service. An example of this is Dawson's 19th Arkansas Infantry. The regiment completed its organization at Nashville, Arkansas, in November 1861 and Charles L. Dawson was elected colonel. The unit was assigned to the garrison of Fort Hindman at Arkansas Post, where a large part of the regiment was captured when the fort was surrendered on January 11, 1863. Some of the men, including the regimental commander, Colonel Dawson, were absent from Arkansas Post at the time it surrendered. This remnant of the 19th was consolidated with similar remnants of other units captured at the post, and with Colonel Dawson, in command, they were referred to as the 19th/24th Consolidated Arkansas, sometimes being referred to as Hardy's Regiment (who succeeded Dawson in command), and operated in the Trans-Mississippi department for the remainder of the war. The part of Dawson's original regiment that was captured at Arkansas Post, were sent to prisons in the North, and when exchanged in April 1863 at
City Point, Virginia, and then transferred to the Army of Tennessee, where they spent the rest of the war, also being referred to as the 19th Arkansas. There was also a third regiment that was given the designation of 19th Arkansas. This regiment was organized on April 2, 1862, at DeValls Bluff, with Col. Hamilton P. Smead in command. Smead was eventually replaced by Colonel Thomas P. Dockery, and surrendered with the garrison of Vicksburg Mississippi.
Re-organization of the Trans-Mississippi Department In May 1862, Major General Hindman assumed command of the Trans-Mississippi and found that the state had been stripped of organized Confederate forces when Major General Van Dorn moved his Army of the West, east of the Mississippi River. In order to organize a new Confederate Army in Arkansas, Hindman utilized the Confederate Conscription act of April 1862. This act actually specifically forbid the use of conscription to raise to units. It had been intended to create a pool of replacements for the regiments which were already in Confederate service but had been depleted by disease and battle filed losses. With no organized regiments in Arkansas, Hindman was forced to create new units. He designated several of his new units as Trans-Mississippi Rifle Regiments. Col. Asa S. Morgan's 26th Arkansas Regiment was designated as the 3rd Trans-Mississippi Regiment. Immediately the officers and men begin to refer to themselves as the 3rd Arkansas Regiment. This leads to confusion for researchers who find Col. Van H. Manning's 3rd Arkansas Volunteer Infantry serving under General Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia and a group in Arkansas who insist on also calling themselves the 3rd Arkansas. The first four (40th, 41st, 42nd, 43rd) were assigned to the Arkansas regiments that were surrendered at the Sieges of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, when these regiments were reorganized in southern Arkansas following their parole and exchange. The 41st was assigned to the exchanged prisoners of the 20th Arkansas Infantry Regiment, the 42nd was assigned to the survivors of the 23rd Arkansas Infantry. The 40th and 43rd were assigned to either 15th (Northwest) or the 19th (Dockery's) Arkansas, but it is impossible to be sure which was which because of the illegibility of the original documents. All of these were assigned as mounted infantry designations, and all of them were ignored by the Confederate Army because the old designations continued to be used in the reports for their commanders. There are occasionally prisoner of war records that utilize the official designations. The 44th through the 48th Arkansas infantry regiments were raised in the summer of 1864, were mounted in order to accompany
Price's 1864 Missouri Expedition, which was planned as an all-cavalry affair. Rare references list them as mounted infantry, for example, 44th Arkansas Infantry (Mounted). However, they were almost always referred to as Cavalry units (for example 44th Arkansas Cavalry) when the numerical designation was used. Usually, however, they were simply designated by the name of the regiment's colonel, for example, McGehee's Arkansas Cavalry. These regiments were for the most part raised in northeast Arkansas, and seem to have consisted in large part of absentees from other regiments. The 45th Arkansas, for example, consisted largely of absentees from the 7th Arkansas and the 38th Arkansas Regiments.
List of Arkansas Confederate Regiments Infantry Battalions Infantry battalions were not intended to be standing organizations during the Civil War. The regiment was the standard organization for both the Union and Confederate Armies. Battalions most often came into existence when there were not enough infantry companies present to form a full regiment, as when Dandrige McRea's 3rd Arkansas Infantry Battalion was formed before the battle of Wilson's Creek. Many of these ad hoc organizations, like McRea's, eventually gained enough companies and received recognition as a full regiment. Some battalions were formed by the detachment of several companies from a parent regiment as when several companies were detached from McCraven's 14th Arkansas Infantry and transferred to Kentucky with Brigadier General Hardee in 1861, and were designated the 9th Arkansas Infantry Battalion. A few battalions, like the 12th Arkansas Infantry Battalion, actually saw significant combat as a separate command.
Volunteer Companies The basic building block of a regiment during the Civil War period was the volunteer company. Many volunteer militia companies were organized under the authority of the Arkansas militia law during 1860 and 1861. Most of the companies raised during this period had their elections certified by the local militia regimental commander and their commissions were issued by the governor as the commander in chief of the State Militia. This practice continued until the fall of 1861. Other volunteer companies were raised directly for Confederate service and were never organized in the state militia. Volunteer companies, whether militia or raised directly for Confederate service were then organized into new volunteer regiments. A regiment required eight to ten companies for organization. If a unit was not able to field enough companies to organize as a regiment, it was often allowed to organize as a separate battalion until enough companies were added to comprise a full regiment. A separate battalion was commanded by a lieutenant colonel. This list includes only those companies with a distinct name. Many volunteer companies were simply designated "Volunteer Infantry Company, Conway County," or Volunteer Cavalry Company, Conway County".
Cavalry Arkansas mounted units consisted of three types,
Cavalry,
Mounted Infantry, and
Partisan Rangers. Cavalry forces fought principally on horseback, armed with
carbines,
pistols, and especially
sabers. Only a small percentage of Arkansas mounted forces met this definition. Some Arkansas Confederate regiments carried
shotguns, especially early in the war. Due to a lack of appropriate weapons and training in actual cavalry tactics, most Arkansas horsesoldiers were actually
Mounted Infantry. Mounted Infantry moved on horseback but dismounted for fighting on foot, armed principally with
rifles. In the second half of the war, most of the units considered to be cavalry actually fought battles using the tactics of mounted infantry. Irregular forces (
partisan rangers or
guerrillas) were generally mounted forces. There is little commonality as to their weapons—in general, any available were used. Due to severe drought in Arkansas in 1862 and 1863, forage for horses became increasing scares and led to calls from multiple Confederate commanders to dismount the mounted units. Multiple Confederate commanders lamented the fact that the country had been "eaten out" by cavalry. General Hindman at one point stated: Mounted infantry, while theoretically more maneuverable, were in practice less disciplined and less reliable than the standard infantry formation. Confederate commanders, especially in the Department of the Trans-Mississippi regularly bemoaned the fact that most recruits wanted to "jine the cavalry" as opposed to infantry. Confederate commanders often suggested dismounting cavalry and mounted infantry units in order to man infantry units and this happened to several Arkansas units that served in the Army of Tennessee. Because the list of units was compiled over thirty years after the war, from very fragmentary records collected by the United States War Department, some units are misidentified, some being listed as regiments that may in fact have only been a company, such as Brandenburch's Arkansas Cavalry Regiment, The site contains several alleged Arkansas Confederate units for which no other information exists other than short list of names, probably developed from prisoner of war rosters. Most of these units have less than six identified unit members. Several have only one identified unit member. The following units have no published history and may not have actually been Arkansas Confederate units:
Artillery Most artillery units seem to have begun the war named for the city or county that sponsored its organization. In the Official Records, artillery units are most often referred to by the name of their battery commander. During the war, some effort was made to organize artillery units into battalions and regiments, but the units almost never functioned above the battery level, and were often broken out and fought as single gun sections. For these reasons the Arkansas artillery organizations are listed by several names. The Arkansas batteries which served primarily in the Confederate
Army of Tennessee or
Army of Mississippi, (east of the Mississippi River) were "officially" designated as "_st Arkansas Light Artillery". On November 19, 1864, General E. Kirby Smith, commanding the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department, issued Special Orders No. 290, organizing the artillery of the department into battalions, and listing the various batteries as "_st Arkansas Field Battery". The component batteries rarely, if ever, operated together. They were usually assigned individually to an infantry or cavalry brigade. ==Arkansas soldiers in Confederate units of other States==