The March to the River: From the Battle of Pea Ridge to Helena, Spring 1862

by Robert G. Schultz

The March to the River is the first detailed study of the campaign of Samuel R. Curtis’s Army of the Southwest following its important victory at the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas (March 7-8, 1862). After the retreat of Earl Van Dorn’s Confederate army, General Curtis’s next obvious move was to capture Little Rock, the state capital. With the removal of almost all Confederate fighting forces from the state following the battle, Confederate authorities sought solutions to the menace of the Curtis’s army, which was occupying Batesville and Jacksonport and threatening Little Rock. The Northern army, after an epic march through inhospitable country, was faced with numerous problems of supplying these outposts in the face of rising attacks by both guerrillas and newly-formed Confederate regulars. Ultimately, Curtis had to abandon his attempt at Little Rock and led his army through to Helena, arriving in mid-July. Robert Schultz has thoroughly researched this ground-breaking study in private archives, period newspaper accounts, published and unpublished soldiers’ diaries, letters, and memoirs, and the Army and Navy Official Records. Robert G. Schultz is a retired chemist and history teacher who has written and spoken extensively about the Civil War in Missouri and the Trans-Mississippi.

Genres: Civil War

454 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 2014

Reviews

[Bob R Bogle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having an ancestor who was a member of the 9th Iowa Volunteers, I've long been interested in Samuel Ryan Curtis and his Army of the Southwest. I'd mapped out the routes the men marched, and the journey from Pea Ridge through the northern Ozarks to northeast Arkansas had been the most difficult to pin down. I drove those roads representing my best guesses a few years ago and was deeply impressed with the difficult terrain which an army in 1862 must have negotiated. Finally acquiring a copy of Robert G Schultz's 2014 book The March to the River: From the Battle of Pea Ridge to Helena, Spring 1862, was therefore a godsend for me. I'm doubtful that Mr Schultz could have found a more interested reader than myself.

Speaking then as a biased and hardly disinterested reader, I judge The March to the River to be a most excellent book. The research is superb, and so is the writing. The maps are far better than we've maybe come to expect in American Civil War writing, and when we don't have a map for a certain section, the landmarks laid down in the text make it very interesting and very rewarding to turn to, say, Google Maps or Google Earth, for example, to easily follow along. This book contains a wealth of detail and information I've long wanted to know, as well as a lot that I never before knew that I wanted to know, both about the Army of the Southwest and about the Confederates who objected to their presence. This book is a pleasure to read.

It turns out that a number of my assumptions about the march through the northern Ozarks were in error, and now I have a route that is considerably more accurate. Knowing now all that I've learned from Mr Schultz, maybe one day I'll return to the region and revisit the Army's journey in a more accurate and precise manner. Probably not soon, though. For now I'll settle for all that Mr Schultz has taught me.