The Battle of Pea Ridge: The Civil War Fight for the Ozarks

After months of reverses, the Union army was going on the offensive in the spring of 1862 as General McClellan prepared for his Peninsula Campaign. In Tennessee, General Grant had just captured Ft. Henry and Ft. Donelson; and in southwestern Missouri, Gen. Samuel R. Curtis had driven Sterling Price and his Missouri State Guard out of the state and into the arms of General Ben McCulloch's Confederate army in northwestern Arkansas. Using the united armies of Price and McCulloch, the new Confederat