LITTLE ROCK — Fighting off a Union Army advance in Virginia, the 3rd Arkansas Volunteer Infantry came out of its first fight in the Civil War victorious 150 years ago last week.
The 3rd Arkansas, made up of volunteers from several south Arkansas counties, went into battle with a historic list of commandersduring the 1861-1865 war.
The Arkansas troops became part of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederate’s main force, and at times joined with armies under the command of Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Gen. James Longstreet, according to Mark Christ, a spokesman for the Department of Arkansas Heritage.
The Arkansans’ first action came Oct. 3, 1861, at Greenbrier River in Virginia, helping to turn back Union troops that had attacked Southern forces that included regiments from Virginia and Georgia.
“The 3rd got their baptism by fire there,” Christ said in an interview. He wrote an account on the 3rd Arkansas for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.
“The 3rd is the only Arkansas regiment that served the entire war with the Army of Northern Virginia,” Christ added. “That’s their special distinction in Arkansas Confederate history.”
The 3rd Arkansas hasn’t been forgotten by Civil War enthusiasts in the state. This summer, eight members of the state division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, led by its state president, Mary Jackson of Texarkana, went to Winchester, Va., to memorialize 20 Arkansans buried at Mount Hebron Cemetery.
No Arkansas monument was in the graveyard, the only represented state without a marker, Jackson said.
An 8-foot-tall, $4,000 gray granite monument, engravedwith the soldiers’ names and with the Arkansas flag emblazoned at its top, now stands as a memorial to the 3rd Arkansas troops.
Also during the dedication ceremony, United Daughters of the Confederacy group members sprinkled dirt from south Arkansas on each of the 20 Arkansans’ graves, Jackson said.
“It all started about three years ago,” Jackson recalled. “One of the chapter presidents from Winchester, Va., contacted us and said they had a section of land up there where Arkansas soldiers were buried but did not have a monument.”
Working together long distance, the Arkansas division and the Virginia division each raised $2,000 forthe monument, she said.
In planning the trip to Virginia for the dedication this summer, Jackson said, she came up with the idea to take along some Arkansas soil.
“I had seen or read somewhere about how important their state was to soldiers back then,” she said. “So I thought it’d be [a] good idea to take Arkansas soil over there to place on the gravesites.
“A speaker at the ceremony said, ‘These boys knew they were from Arkansas. Now everyone will know they are from Arkansas,’” she added.
All totaled, the 3rd Arkansas had 1,353 soldiers in its ranks during the war, according to Christ’s historical account. By the time Lee surrendered April 9, 1865, only 144 remained.
The regiment participated in the capture of Harper’s Ferry, W.Va., before joining the Army of Northern Virginia’s invasion of Maryland, heavily engaged in fighting at Sharpsburg, then saw “intense action” at Gettysburg under Lee, Christ wrote.
The regiment, still part of the Army of Northern Virginia, moved to Tennessee with Longstreet in 1863, fighting at Chickamauga, Ga., before returning to Virginia to face Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s campaign against Richmond, the Confederate capital, Christ said. The regiment also fought at the Battle of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Cold Harbor and Petersburg.
The battle flag of the 3rd Arkansas is included in the Old State House Museum’s collection of Civil War history in Little Rock.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 10/10/2011