Reid's Arkansas Battery: Difference between revisions

Reid's Arkansas Battery (Confederate)
Arkansas state flag
Active	1862
Country	Confederate States of America
Allegiance	CSA
Branch	Artillery
Size	battery
Engagements	American Civil War Battle of Prairie Grove

Military unit

Template:Infobox Arkansas Confederate Artillery Batteries

The 1st Arkansas Light Artillery, originally known as the Reid's Arkansas Battery (1862), was a Confederate artillery battery that served during the American Civil War. Another Arkansas Battery, the 1st Arkansas Light Artillery, a.k.a, the Fort Smith Artillery, was also once known as Reid's Battery. Captain Reid Commanded the Fort Smith Artilery during the Battle of Wilson's Creek, but left that organization and later organized a second batteyr that is the subject of this article.

Captain John G. Reid had previouls served as the commander of a volunteer militia company of the 51st Militia Regiment, Sebastian County, Arkansas, The Fort Smith Artillery.^[1] The battery was originally identified simply as the "Independent Artillery" but was later styled the "Fort Smith Battery" or the "Fort Smith Artillery". The unit was inducted into state service for 90 days' service as part of Brigadier General Nicholas Bartlett Pearce's 1st Division (brigade), Army of Arkansas, in June 1861.^[2] following the Battle of Wilson's Creek, the Fort Smith Artillery reorganized for Confederate service and Captain Reid did not stand for reelection, having accepted a staff position. The Fort Smith Artillery elected David Provence as captain on September 17, 1861 and was transferred east of the Mississippi River following the Confederate defeat at the Battle of Pea Ridge.

After the battle of Pea Ridge, General Earl Van Dorn was ordered to move his Army of the West across the Mississippi and cooperate with Confederate forces in Northern Mississippi. Van Dorn stripped the state of military hardware of all types, including almost all the serviceable artillery. When General Thomas C. Hindman arrived to assume command of the new Trans-Mississippi District, he found almost nothing to command. He quickly began organizing new regiments, but his most pressing need was for arms for the new forces he was organizing, including the artillery. With Hindman's first order, dated May 31, 1862 at Little Rock, he announced his staff, including the appointment of Major Francis A. Shoup, Chief of Artillery.^[3] Shoup had served as chief of artillery under General William J. Hardee. He was involved in the formation of the artillery position known as "Ruggle’s Battery" during the Battle of Shiloh. Shoup, and his son, James C. Shoup came west across the Mississippi with General Hindman in May 1862. Hindman ordered guns, which the United States Arsenal had decommissioned and buried as property markers around the Arsenal in Little Rock, to be dug up and refurbished as best possible as serviceable weapons.^[4] Hindman was almost totally destitute of military quality weapons and could hardly arm or issue ammunition to the few troops that he had in June 1862. Until the shipments of arms in August 1862, General Hindman struggled to arm his conscripts.^[4]

Hindman sent numerous requests for arms back across the Mississippi River. In one report he requested that he be sent twelve Model 1841 12 Pound Mountain Howitzers. These guns were considered useless in other theaters because of their short range. Most of the weapons transferred to the Trans Mississippi District from Vicksburg in the "Fairplay Affair" were the castoffs and unusable weapons from the various state armories which had been returned to those armories after the Confederate armies east of the Mississippi had been re-equipped from the "Battlefield Quartermaster" of 7 Days, 2nd Manassas and Harper Ferry.^[5]

When Gen M.M. Parson's Brigade returned to Arkansas from Van Dorn's Army in Mississippi in August 1862, he brought with him a wagon train of quartermaster supplies and twenty five pieces of unattached artillery and supplies. At the same time a shipment of 11,000 arms arrived at Pine Bluff from Vicksburg by way of Monroe, La. out of a shipment of 18,000 that were originally sent. 5,000 of those 18,000 were captured on the steamer "Fair Play" by the Union and 2,500 of them went to General Richard Taylor's army in Louisiana. These weapons had come from the arsenal of eastern Confederate atates that had been returned to the state arsenals as the Confederates had re-equipped themselves with the better captured Union arms. It is reported in the Official Records of the "Fair Play" that some of those weapons had come from captured Union weapons at the Battle of 2nd Manassas. The movement of the twenty-five pieces of artillery to Arkansas by Parson's Brigade was reported in Bull's "Missouri Brothers in Gray" and the Hindman Telegraphs about "secret" moves of wagons and a wagon train with Parson's Brigade being sent to Little Rock when it reached Pine Bluff in early August 1862. The quantity of guns supplied by Parson’s led to the sudden organization and reorganization of several Artillery batteries in August and September 1862 in Arkansas.^[4]

The organization of Reid's Arkansas Battery apparently in the Summer of 1863. on July 17 General Hindman issued Special Order #29 which directed Captain Reed (sic) to report to Col Carroll who was commanding North West Arkansas. Ried was to take four iron guns to be turned over to a Capt Pratt. Capt Shelby or the commanding officer of Shelby's infantry company was to proceed with his company with Capt Reed to Fort Smith.... Capt Pratt was ordered to turn over to Reed the four iron pieces and will receive from Capt Daniels and Capt Woodruff two guns each.^[6]

On Jul 27, 1862, Colonel Robert C. Newton, who was Generl Hinman's Adjutant, wrote to Brigadier General James S. Rains who Hindman had assigned to command Confederate forces in North West Arkansas,^[7]

You shall have a battery at an early date, as soon as he can have the carriages and cassions made, which is now being done. He desires you to raise an arty Company of 150 men to man such a battery, with good officers and get the necessary horses.

On August 8, 1862 Colonel Newton telegraphed Colonel Carroll, General Cooper and Brigadier Rains to explain Hindman' arrangement of artillery. General Rains was to get Reid's battery, but was durected to return to Colonel Carroll men Carroll had detailed from his command for to fill up Reid's battery. General Rains was directed to make up a company for Reid's battery by detailing men from his own forces.

On August 17, 1862, Generla Hindman sent and order to Brigadier General Rains which directed that guns of Captain Reid's company being turned over to Captain Roberts' company. On the same day General Rains reported:

August 17, 1862

Camp Cooper HQ Missouri brigade C.S.A.-Gen Raines

Per Hindman's orders to organize company of artillery with good officers -that company is nearly completed due to energy of Capt Wesley Roberts.......a subsequent order has assigned Capt Reid as Capt of artillery. He is in many respects objectionable to the men of the company as well as to myself and I desire that Capt Reid be relieved and Capt Roberts apptd and that I be allowed to nominate the other officers of my command.

The exactly what made Captain Reid objectionable to General Rains is unclear. It may simply have been that General Rains desired that Captain Roberts, a Missourian, command the battery organized from Missouri soldiers to support Rains largely Missouri brigade. Subsquently General Rains was relieved of command by General Hindman in October 1862 for "incompetence and insobriety."

By the time of the Battle of Prairie Grove on December 7, 1862, Captain Reid was commanding a 37 man battery armed with two 6 pounder smoothbore cannon assigned to Brigadier General John S. Roane's Division of General Hindman's First Corps, Army of the Trans-Mississippi.^[8]

• List of Arkansas Civil War Confederate units
• Lists of American Civil War Regiments by State
• Confederate Units by State
• Arkansas in the American Civil War
• Arkansas Militia in the Civil War

This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, National Park Service

• Daniels, Larry. Cannoneers in Gray: The Field Artillery of the Army of Tennessee, 1861-1865. (Tuscaloosa, AL: Fire Ant Books, 2005).