Battle of Pea Ridge

Battle context

The Battle of Pea Ridge, fought near Leetown in northwestern Arkansas, decided control of Missouri and northern Arkansas for the Union. Federal forces under Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis had pushed Confederate forces south from central Missouri into Arkansas, prompting Major General Earl Van Dorn to organize a counteroffensive aimed at recapturing that lost ground. The Confederate assembly at Bentonville represented the largest Rebel concentration of guns and men yet fielded in the Trans-Mississippi theater. Despite facing a numerically superior force—16,500 Confederate troops against roughly 10,500 Federal soldiers—Curtis repelled the Confederate attack on the first day and drove Van Dorn's army from the field on the second. The defeat effectively ended the Confederate bid to retake northern Arkansas and Missouri, consolidating Union dominance across most of that region for the remainder of the war.