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
