Reid's Arkansas Battery: Difference between revisions

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.

Organization

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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.

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.

The organization of Reid's Arkansas Battery apparently in the Summer of 1863. On September 29, 1862, General Hindman issued Special Order No. 8 from Little Rock which directed F. A. Shoup, now a Colonel, to take charge of the organization of the artillery from North West Arkansas and assigning certain "suitable officers to duty in the company now unorganized, and recommend them for appointment." These suitable officers included Lieutenants Huey (sic) and Miller.

See also

• 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

References

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

Bibliography

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