Brooks Blevins, an Izard County resident and Noel Boyd Professor of Ozarks Studies at Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo., told me recently that he has submitted the manuscript for the final volume in his trilogy on the history of the Ozarks.
This series is a major publishing event for several reasons, not the least being that multi-volume books are rare these days, given the economics of modern book publishing. Judging from the first two volumes, "A History of the Ozarks" (University of Illinois Press, 2018) will undoubtedly become the standard history of that upland region for years to come.
Many Arkansans forget that far more of the Ozark Plateau lies within the boundaries of Missouri than in our state. Blevins writes about the entirety of the Ozarks, integrating the two states into a seamless story which is much richer and more interesting than limiting the scope to one state. For example, the Arkansas Ozarks were home to far fewer foreign-born residents than the northern edge of the Missouri Ozarks, where German-speaking immigrants were numerous.
The first volume is subtitled "The Old Ozarks" and covers everything from geologic forces that created the Ozark Plateau, to the indigenous peoples who arrived in the area more than 12,000 years ago, to the French and later American immigrants.
While Blevins writes history in a grand and sweeping fashion, he never forgets the role of the individual Ozarker. Take Moses Austin. Before he became a land speculator in Arkansas and Texas -- he was the father of Stephen F. Austin of Texas fame -- he made a huge impact in the early Ozarks economy. A New England native, he arrived in Spanish Missouri in 1797 and managed to acquire a land grant of 6,000 acres, including areas rich in lead deposits.
Austin proceeded to revolutionize the lead industry in the northern Ozarks by introducing mining and smelting innovations, demonstrating how the region could prosper: "The Ozarks of Moses Austin was not the isolated, monolithic backwoods region of popular imagination. It was market-oriented, multicultural, economically stratified, technology dependent, and thoroughly integrated into the broader world of the American West."
Correcting the stereotypes common in the popular imagination of the Ozarks is one of the major achievements of the first two volumes. For example, though Blevins acknowledges that the Scots-Irish played an important role in settling the Ozarks, he writes that the great bulk of Scots-Irish immigrants to the Ozarks were second-generation Americans--"in the process of molting into Upland Southerners specifically and Americans in general."
This molting process -- the decline of ethnic identity -- "owed much to the crucible of nationalities and linguistic groups in which they found themselves," Blevins informs us. German speakers in particular were more numerous and influential than often assumed. For example, the Johann Heinrich Hermann family settled in western Washington County, and along with a dozen other German and Swiss families, established a community later known as Dutch Mills.
Hermann, a man full of democratic ideals, had fled Germany after the failed revolution of 1848. His community on the western frontier prospered until the Civil War, when the family fled to Missouri as refugees. Blevins' "old Ozarks" ends with the beginning of the Civil War, a four-year period which left the Ozarks reeling.
Blevins' second volume, subtitled "The Conflicted Ozarks," covers both the war and the following Reconstruction period. It was a confrontation of incredible violence that found neighbors killing neighbors, homes and barns being burned, and Unionist families fleeing to federal military posts.
Many Ozarkers opposed secession, and some organized into underground "peace societies." Ultimately, irregular partisans on both sides adopted scorched-earth policies which did not necessarily recognize noncombatants. The wounds inflicted by the war would take decades to heal.
Blevins recounts major battles fought in the Ozarks, but is at his best in describing the deadly work of irregular forces, often un-uniformed men who blurred the line between warfare and retribution. Blevins holds Confederate Gen. Thomas C. Hindman responsible for starting the use of irregular forces. In April 1862, Hindman issued General Order No. 17, which authorized informal Confederate "independent companies," and in so doing, as Blevins writes, "unleashed on the Ozarks a beast that refused to be tamed."
One of the most notorious Confederate partisans was Sam Hildebrand, leader of a band of guerrillas who became the subject of widespread fear among loyal unionsts in Missouri. Blevins writes that Hildebrand placed a notch on his rifle for each of his 80 or so victims.
Arkansas had its share of ruthless Confederate guerrillas, including Bill Dark in Van Buren County and James H. Love in Searcy County.
A number of unionists established irregular units, though they might be referred to as militia or home guard units. John R. Kelso of Dallas County, Mo., was commissioned as a federal officer and proceeded to make a reputation for himself, as one historian has written, "as a virtual assassin working under the cover of a Union uniform."
The Confederate surrender in April 1865 did not bring a complete end to the war in the Ozarks. Perhaps the best known of the post-war confrontations involved a group of Union army veterans and Republican leaders who in 1883 formed a Committee for Law and Order, which soon became known as the Bald Knobbers.
While the stated purpose of these night riders was to battle crime and corruption, it had the effect of ensuring Republican control of Taney County. "Motivated by political loyalties forged in war more than two decades earlier," Blevins writes, "the Bald Knobbers, their opponents, and other vigilantes of the era reflected the lingering animosities of bloody conflict and the long, slow process of reconstructing the Ozarks."
The Ozarks trilogy will conclude next year with the publication of the third volume, which will address the Ozarks in the 20th and 21st centuries.
I have conducted an interview with Blevins about his Ozarks trilogy, which is being published today as an online item here.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at [email protected].