In histories of the Civil War, the Battle of Pea Ridge is treated as an obscure clash of arms in the minor "Western Theater" of the conflict. But to the nearly 26,000 men engaged and the nearly 3,000 casualties, the fight in cornfields, scrub timber, and brush thickets of northern Arkansas on March 7 and 8, 1862, was neither obscure nor minor.

The prelude to the battle occurred at a place called Wilson's Creek near Springfield, Mo. There, Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon, a veteran of the Seminole and Mexican Wars, led Union volunteers in a furious four-hour skirmish. Arrayed against him was a force under two men whose names were to become synonymous with Pea Ridge: Brig. Gen. Ben McCulloch of Texas, the Confederate commander of Arkansas and the Indian Territory; and Maj. Gen. Sterling "Pap" Price, the pre-war governor of Missouri, the state which stood as the key to unlock the entire trans-Mississippi West.

After the Wilson's Creek fight of August 10, 1861, a Pyrrhic victory for the Confederates, Price retreated to the southwestern corner of the state while McCulloch led his volunteers into northwestern Arkansas.

The Southern generals were not friendly to one another. Price, age 52, had served as governor of New Mexico Territory as well as Missouri, but McCulloch regarded the hefty, silver-haired leader of the 7,000-man Missouri State Guard as an amateur warrior in charge of a "huckleberry cavalry." Price was equally unimpressed with the brash McCulloch, despite the 50-year-old Texan's record at San Jacinto under Gen. Sam Houston, in Mexico with Gen. Zachary Taylor, and as a Texas Ranger.

In late December 1861, events that were to culminate at Pea Ridge opened with the appointment of a new commander of the Union Army of the Southwest. Brig. Gen. Samuel Ryan Curtis, a ramrod-straight, 56-year-old West Pointer, congressman, and ex-mayor of Keokuk, Iowa, came to his new assignment with specific orders to drive Sterling Price and all Confederates out of Missouri. Curtis, who had something under 11,000 men and 50 cannons in his force, launched his campaign on Christmas Day 1861, and by Feb. 11 succeeded in pushing Price's rebels into northwest Arkansas. He then halted 40 miles north of the Pea Ridge hills and set up a defensive camp while his divisional commander, Brig. Gen. Franz Sigel, occupied the Arkansas town of Bentonville, southwest of Curtis's position.

Sterling Price, his Missourians camped in the mountains south of Fayetteville, received vital reinforcements as Ben McCulloch marched in with 8,000 Arkansas and Indian Territory volunteers. The Indians, about 1,000 Cherokees and some Creeks as well, were decked out in feathers, turbans, calico shirts, buckskins, and moccasins and armed with bows, arrows, and war clubs in addition to rifles and shotguns. They were commanded by a Boston-born Arkansan, Brig. Gen. Alfred Pike, 52, a 300-pound eccentric with a wild mane of hair and a chest-length beard who wrote poetry and studied Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and the Cherokee languages.

On March 3, the Confederates greeted a new commanding general for their combined forces, now called the Army of the West. This was Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn, 41, a dapper Mississippian lately heading the Department of Texas. In conferring with Price and McCulloch, Van Dorn grandly announced his intention to fulfill President Jefferson Davis's wish to crush Curtis and the Federals forthwith and conquer Missouri once and for all.

On March 4, in a blinding late winter blizzard, Van Dorn led his force toward Bentonville, the town held by two divisions under Franz Sigel and made up largely of German immigrant volunteers from the St. Louis area. Federal scouts reported Van Dorn's approach, and Samuel Curtis consolidated his 12,000 Federals and marched them to a few miles south of the Pea Ridge foothills and a nearby hostelry called Elkhorn Tavern. There, in a naturally fortified position, the Union soldiers entrenched, building an earth and timber breastwork with a creek to their front, their rear guarded by steep escarpments.

As the cooking fires of the weary Confederates sparked and popped in the frosty twilight, Van Dorn, meeting with Price, McCulloch, Pike, and various staff officers, formulated his plan to envelop the Yankees by moving Price's Missourians-half of his army-to the Union rear in an eight-mile night march around Pea Ridge. At dawn he would advance south past Elkhorn Tavern and take the Federals by surprise. It was a daring and innovative plan but one destined to go awry as McCulloch's troops lagged so far behind that the Confederate advance was divided, scattering Van Dorn's offensive.

When Union commander Samuel Curtis learned of Van Dorn's movements on the morning of March 7, in a brilliant maneuver he ordered his army out of their fortified positions and turned them toward their rear, launching an attack on Sterling Price's force. The battle began on the western edge of Pea Ridge at about 10:30 a.m. when McCulloch's division clashed with a battery of Union artillerymen firing upon the Confederates from a cleared portion of a farm field. McCulloch's men were supported by two regiments of Cherokee mounted volunteers led by Cols. John Drew and Stand Watie. The Indians charged wildly toward the cannon, quickly overran the "wagons that shoot," captured the battery, and scattered the supporting Union cavalrymen. This victory was momentary however, and when the Cherokees were hit with a barrage from another of the Union cannon positions, they fled the field.

In trampled cornfields and mushy farmland swales, in belts of brush and scrub timber, and along split-rail fences, the fighting seemed at first to favor the Confederates. All this changed about noon on the 7th however when the Union 3rd Division, led by Col. Jefferson C. Davis, a Mexican War veteran from Indiana, joined the fight. Davis' infantry struck McCulloch's left flank, McCulloch was killed by a rifle volley, and the Confederate advance disintegrated.

Meantime, on the southeastern foothills of Pea Ridge, most notably around the whitewashed frame building known as Elkhorn Tavern, Earl Van Dorn, at the head of Sterling Price's division, was having better luck despite growing obstacles, some of his own making. He had early lost the element of surprise that was central to his bold plan to encircle the Federals; he had no central command post and therefore had scant knowledge of the fighting elsewhere in his command and now his Confederates faced Union troops occupying a fine position on the Pea Ridge plateau. But even under the fearful hammering of the Union artillery fire, Price's men ascended the heights and gained a foothold there.

(In the fight the third Confederate general fell in battle: Brig. Gen. William Yarnell Slack of Kentucky, who had fought in Mexico with Price. Price, too, was twice wounded, in the abdomen and right arm, bu continued to command his division.)

By nightfall, the Rebel advance was halted as the Federals brought reinforcements forward. Van Dorn now faced the greatest of his several dilemmas since the battle began. A large percentage of his consolidated Army of the West was in poor shape, McCulloch's men especially, bone-tired and starving, reduced to eating what scraps of food they could find in the knapsacks of the Union dead or what they could forage in the dead winter farmland. Moreover, ammunition was running low.

By the time dawn broke on March 8, Van Dorn had formed his men into a defensive line in front of Elkhorn Tavern. Commanding a brigade on the right of the line stood one of Price's favorites, Col. Lewis Henry Little of Maryland, an artilleryman who had distinguished himself at Monterey in the Mexican War. Price himself commanded the center with McCulloch's depleted division, now commanded by Col. Elkanah Greer of Tennessee, on the left. Curtis' gunners laid down a ferocious cannon barrage at sunrise, and after disabling many of the Confederate guns, the Union general deployed his army, two divisions on each side of the Telegraph Road, against Van Dorn's army spread out at the base of Pea Ridge. The unrelenting artillery, more than any other factor, caused the right of the Confederate line to waver and fall back. On a ridge above Elkhorn Tavern, Price's infantry made a gallant last stand before faltering under Federal guns and bayonets. Price, his arm in a bloody sling, rode up and down the line shouting to rally his Missourians, but with no cannon to slow the Union advance, the men scattered and Van Dorn was forced to retreat.

The casualties of the Pea Ridge battle- 2,684 men killed and wounded-were more or less balanced. The Confederates began the campaign with about 16,000 men- although fewer than 15,000 were engaged at Pea Ridge-and ended it with about 1,600 casualties. The Union force in the battle numbered about 10,500 men, and Union casualties numbered 1,384.