Searching For Answers About the Civil War - A Visit to the Prairie Grove Arkansas Battlefield
Searching For Answers About the Civil War - A Visit to the Prairie Grove, Arkansas, Battlefield
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
It struck me that, despite having lived in a former Confederate state for more than four years, I still don’t understand the Civil War any better than I did after visiting Pea Ridge National Military Park. So, I decided to visit another battlefield in the region, Prairie Grove Battlefield, hoping that walking the ground might bring some clarity.
The Battle of Prairie Grove took place on December 7, 1862. Confederate forces under General Thomas Hindman faced Union troops commanded by Generals James G. Blunt and Francis J. Herron. The fighting unfolded along a ridge on land owned by Archibald Borden.
The Borden family had just sat down for breakfast when approximately 20,000 men converged on their property and began fighting a pitched battle around their home.
The Confederate army held the advantage of higher ground. The Union army, however, possessed better artillery and greater ammunition supplies. As a result, the battle was brutal and evenly matched. By the end of the day, Hindman’s forces withdrew, granting the Union effective control of northwest Arkansas. The cost was staggering: roughly 2,700 men killed, wounded, or missing in a single day.
Walking the battlefield, that number stopped me cold.
Prairie Grove is not a particularly large site. Two thousand seven hundred men could have been stacked like cordwood across that ridge. Numbers in history books feel abstract; ground under your feet does not.
Remarkably, the Borden family survived the fighting without injury, though their house did not. It was burned during the battle. The home that stands today is a reconstruction, built by the family after the war.
The park itself is thoughtfully designed. A green holds several historic buildings from Prairie Grove, alongside the rebuilt Borden House. A self-guided, mile-long loop winds across the ridge where most of the fighting occurred, marked with interpretive signs that quietly describe what happened there.
I left Prairie Grove without any deeper understanding of why so many people believed owning another human being was acceptable. That remains incomprehensible to me. What I did feel, deeply, was grief for the lives lost because so many refused to relinquish that belief.
Current estimates place the Civil War death toll around 618,000. But after reading This Republic of Suffering, I understand that we will never truly know the number. Records are incomplete. Deaths went uncounted. Civilians were caught in the wreckage. The suffering extended far beyond the battlefield.
And perhaps what makes the Civil War hardest to reckon with is this: the enemy was also American.
I hope these battlefield sites remain open and preserved. We cannot afford to forget what happened here, or how easily a nation can fracture when it forgets the value of human life.
xoxo a.d. elliott
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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