The Battle of Pea Ridge: The Civil War Fight for the Ozarks - Hardcover

Knight, James R

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1540206521 ISBN 13: 9781540206527

Publisher: History Press Library Editions, 2012

Synopsis

After months of reverses, the Union army is going on the offensive in the early spring of 1862. In Virginia, Gen. McClellan is preparing for his Peninsula Campaign; in Tennessee, Gen. Grant has just captured Ft. Henry and Ft. Donelson; and in southwestern Missouri, Gen. Samuel R. Curtis has driven Sterling Price and his Missouri State Guard out of the state and into the arms of Gen. Ben McCulloch's Confederate army in northwestern Arkansas. Using the united armies of Price and McCulloch, the new Confederate department commander, Earl Van Dorn, strikes back at Curtis' Federal army which is now outnumbered and two hundred miles from its supply base. For two days in early March 1862, the armies of Van Dorn and Curtis fight in the wilds of the Ozark Mountains at a place called Pea Ridge. Control of northern Arkansas and southern Missouri for the rest of the war hangs on the outcome.

About this title

About the Author

James R. Knight is a graduate of Harding University, 1967. He spent five years as a pilot in the United States Air Force, flying the C-130E, and thirty-one years as a pilot for Federal Express, flying the Dassault DA-20 Falcon, the Boeing 727 and the McDonnell Douglass DC-10. In the early '90s, he began researching a historical incident in his hometown and published his first work, an article in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly in 1997. In 2003, Eakin Press published his biography of two Texas outlaws titled Bonnie and Clyde: A 21st Century Update. In 2007, he published the story and correspondence of a Confederate cavalryman from Tennessee titled Letters to Anna. This is his second work in The History Press's Sesquicentennial Series, having written The Battle of Franklin in 2009. Knight retired from Federal Express in 2004 and lives in Franklin, Tennessee, where he works part time as a historical interpreter for the Battle of Franklin Trust. When not encouraging visitor at the Carter House to relive some moments of the Battle of Franklin, he sings on the worship team at church, collects historical documents and artifacts and occasionally drives around in his restored 1934 Ford V-8. He and his wife, Judy, and have three children and six grandchildren.

Review

"The Battle of Pea Ridge provides the uninitiated with a good introduction to events in SW Missouri and NW Arkansas in the months and weeks preceding the 1862 campaign. Both operational and tactical features are skillfully outlined. Highlighted is the skirmish at Bentonville on March 6, the bitter fighting over the next two days at Oberson's Field, Morgan's Woods, Elkhorn Tavern, Clemon's Farm, and Ruddick's Field, and, finally, the disorderly Confederate retreat to Van Buren....what is offered is an excellent account of Pea Ridge for the larger subset of Civil War readers for whom deep, micro-tactical battle treatments hold limited appeal.

What the book has most in common with the better battle histories is an artistically attractive and fully functional set of operational and tactical maps (14 by my count). Topographically detailed, they provide a superb sense of how the terrain (characterized by thick, wooded ravines and striking rock outcroppings interspersed with improved farm fields and scattered dwellings) informed the planning and course of the fighting. The unit scale (regiments and batteries) is appropriate to the level of the text. In addition to the cartography, many modern photos of battlefield views and period images of the officers involved are scattered throughout the book." --Civil War Books and Authors

Edition details

• Publisher: History Press Library Editions
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1540206521
• ISBN 13: 9781540206527
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 162