The Situation in Arkansas

At the latest advices from Gen. Curtis, he had repeatedly defeated the rebel General Price in skirmishes and had occupied Fayetteville, a portion of which the enemy had burned.  Fayetteville was a pretty and thriving town.  It is the county seat of Washington county, Arkansas, the second county in population in the state.  It is situated in a noted wheat growing region, and was a stronghold of Union Sentiment until secession madness became an epidemic.  The town once contained about two thousand inhabitants.  The county, in 1860, had 14,673 inhabitants, of whom only 1,493 were slave.  Between 1850 and 1860, the free population increased 6,409, and the slave population only 294.  Fayetteville is about halfway between the Missouri line and the Arkansas river.  On the west is the Cherokee Nation, which is more than half loyal.  Our troops can proceed to the Arkansas river if desirable.  The Boston Mountains are not formidable obstacles, and the land being elevated above the region of the asphyxia nigrian, Union men are found there.  A letter lately found in the camp of General Price, dated Dover, Pope county, Ark., Dec. 17, 1861, and written by one James L. Adams, who wanted Price to give him “a situation as surgeon,” says:

“Our men over the Boston Mountains pen and swing the mountain boys who oppose Southern men; they have in camp thirty, and in the Burrowville jail seventy-two, in the Clinton jail thirty-five, and have sent twenty-seven to Little Rock.  We took up some as low down as Dover.  We will kill all we get, certain; every one is so many less.  I hope you will soon get help enough to clear out the last one in your State.  If you know them they ought to be killed, as the older they grow the more stubborn they get.”

The ‘mountain boys who opposed Southern men” were probably not sorry to see General Curtis.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2