The Arkansas in the Civil War Message Board

Re: R. Murphy's Militia Company

John, In my effort to be brief in my comment I can see that I was not clear enough.

Ms Arabelle's comments are well known. She says that this party of men were the "Union Party" and that at least some of them were merchants. I am sure that these men whoever they were did not make their political leaning publicly known while the Confederate Army occupied Pine Bluff. Gen Hindman and Holmes had ordered the arrest of merchant and planters who attempted to circumvent the Confederate authorities and conduct trade with Union traders ply the Mississippi River out of Helena and St Louis.

That order seriously upset many merchants and planter in the lower Arkansas River delta.

Ms Arabelle doesn't say that these "Unionist" merchants from Pine Bluff, who were more profiteers than anything else, had any authority from officials at Pine Bluff to go to Little Rock and invite the Union Cavalry to come to Pine Bluff. And I have not found any mention by Union Authorities that any such meeting every took place that confirms Ms Arabelle's statement.

Bare in mind that I do not doubt Ms Arabelle's letter which I believe that she made with honest conviction from her viewpoint. And that has become an "Urban Legend" in Pine Bluff that the city officials were somehow traitorious to the Confederacy and turned coat at the first oppertunity.

But that does not fit with the previous two years of history prior to the fall of Little Rock. During those two years Pine Bluff was almost if not in fact the "Charleston, South Carolina" of Arkansas in its zeal for secession and the Confederacy. However the down side to that zeal is that most of the ablebodied and young men of jefferson County never returned home. More than 2,200 men enlisted in the Confederate Arms from Jefferson County during the 12 month period between June 1861 to June 1862. And those men fought in every theater of war from Gettysburg to the Red River.

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R. Murphy's Militia Company
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What I've found so far......
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Southern unionist.
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Yup, if ya` can`t beat `em join `em *NM*
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Re: R. Murphy's Militia Company
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