By Brian Irby
Early in the 20th Century, the Civil War generation — those who had lived through the years of epic internecine conflict — was beginning to fade away. As they passed from this mortal coil, monuments commemorating the Civil War began to dot the landscapes of Arkansas’s cities and towns. Virtually all memorialized Confederate soldiers, although a monument honoring Confederate Women graced the Capitol grounds after 1913.
But, something was missing: There was an absence of monuments in Arkansas honoring the 8,239 Arkansans who fought for the Union Army during the war. What monuments had been erected painted an incomplete picture of Arkansas’s experience during that grim period because a few pieces of the puzzle were missing.
Many of the Arkansans who joined the Union Army came from the northwestern portion of the state. Julius White, a recruiter for the Union Army from Illinois, wrote to Illinois Gov. Richard Yates in 1862, “I have the honor to state that large numbers of loyal citizens in Northwestern Arkansas express a desire to enter the military service of the United States. . . . If authorized to say that a regiment or more from Arkansas would be accepted, I believe I could make a cheering report from this people, who have hitherto since the war commenced been prevented from any exhibition of their undoubted loyalty until the battle of Pea Ridge.” Eventually, 18 Union regiments were formed in the state. Once in uniform, many of the men fought and died bravely. Col. Marcus Larue Harrison (for whom the city of Harrison is named), wrote of the soldiers in the Union First Arkansas Cavalry after a particularly hard battle, “Every officer and man in my command was a hero; no one flinched.”
As the memories of the Civil War began to fade, groups actively advocated for monuments to honor the dead. During the first two decades of the 20th Century, the United Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy paid for thousands of monuments throughout the South. Many of these monuments were placed in cemeteries, on public squares and on state house grounds. As the newly Capitol building rose in Little Rock, Confederate veterans organizations sought to have monuments placed on its grounds as well.
The first of these, “Defense of the Flag,” arrived at the construction site in 1905 and was placed in a temporary spot directly in front of the future seat of government. As these new Confederate monuments began to appear on the Capitol grounds, in 1911, newly elected Sen. George L. Christian, representing Boone County in the legislature proposed an audacious bill to likewise erect a monument to Arkansas’s Union war dead. Christian had a unique career in Arkansas politics. A lifelong Republican, he followed Theodore Roosevelt’s exit of the party, joining the Progressive Party, better known as the Bull Moose Party, in 1910, making him the sole member of that party in Arkansas’s legislature. Sen. Christian likely introduced the bill as a means of honoring soldiers like his father, Thomas Christian, who had served in the 5th Missouri Cavalry in the United States Army during the Civil War. Additionally, there were several Union veterans among Christian’s constituents living in Boone and Carroll counties.
The bill appointed the governor and two members named by the McPherson Post of the Grand Army of the Republic to choose a site on the Capitol grounds for the monument. Knowing that it would be impossible to get the legislature to agree to appropriate funds for the purpose of honoring the Union Army dead, Christian wrote into the bill that the cost of the monument would be paid for by members of the Grand Army of the Republic. It was clear that the cost was not necessarily the issue because, during the same session, the legislature appropriated $10,000 to erect a monument in honor of the “Southern women of the Confederacy.”
The opposition to the bill was harsh. A factor that may have contributed to the opposition to the bill was the upcoming Confederate reunion in Little Rock, set for May 1911. Members of the legislature were adamant to show their “patriotism” to the “Lost Cause.” One senator blasted Christian’s bill without a sense of irony: “I can shake hands across the bloody chasm with any man of the North who enlisted in the Union army and forgive him for what he did, but I say to you that any man living south of Mason and Dixon’s line who enlisted in the Federal army was a cut-throat and was worse than a thief and murderer, and a greater traitor to his country than was Benedict Arnold, and if ever a monument is erected to his memory, it should not be on the state capitol grounds, but on a back alley in the darkest slums of the city.” Despite this stout opposition, which was bolstered by the upcoming Confederate reunion and zealous patriotism to the Confederate South, Christian’s bill miraculously passed the Senate.
On the House side, Andrew Russell of Carroll County introduced a similar bill. Russell also faced opposition to the legislation, with a number of representatives lining up to denounce the bill. The main thrust of their argument was supporting such a bill would be supporting Union occupation of the South and what they believed were the detrimental ways that Southerners were treated during Reconstruction era governments.
Russell and his supporters defended the bill and argued the monument could act as a gesture of peace that would help heal any lingering wounds from the Civil War and bring the two regions closer together. Russell was shocked at the vitriol he faced from the opposition. He wrote to the Arkansas Gazette that those speaking against the bill expressed “almost but not quite treasonable utterances.” He reminded readers that many of the private donors contributing money to erect Confederate monuments in the state were Union veterans.
Unlike in the Senate, Russell’s bill failed to find support, being voted down 51 to 19. With the bill’s failure in the House, the issue was dead. The Berryville Star Progress, which had supported the bill lamented, “We are doing everything to eliminate sectionalism in the south and by this act on the part of the senate [sic] it is again fanned into flame. To have permitted this monument would have done no one harm and its prevention will do a great deal to perpetuate sectional hatred.”
To this day, there remains an absence of memorials to the Arkansans who chose to fight for the stars and stripes and not the stars and bars.