The recent lengthy discussion about Arkansans serving in the Union and Confederate armies is illuminating. For what it is worth, I believe T. C. Hindman deserves most of the credit (or blame, depending on your perspective) for the amazingly high number and percentage of Arkansas Confederates. I have read literally hundreds (no exaggeration) of letters written by Union soldiers in late 1862 and early 1863 who described Arkansas towns and farms as being entirely bereft of men and teenage boys--the only people to be seen were women, girls, and the feeble or elderly, and all of them were in bad shape physically and psychologically.

Now, that being the case, let's ask ourselves the Big Question: How did the Arkansas economy function with all, or nearly all, of the men gone? This was still an age of muscle power, both human and animal. When the muscles went away, what happened to the state's ability to produce subsistence and cash crops, basic manufactures, and so on? Was the great famine of 1862-63 the result of the drought, or was it a man-made catastrophe, or more likely a combination of the two.

Instead of this silly business of boasting that Arkansas alledgely provided more Confederate soldiers than any other state save Virginia, and so on, maybe we should ask what was the effect of this drastic and disruptive development on the food supply? In other words, how many Arkansas babies and children died of malnourishment because of heedless government policies, and the singleminded enforcement of those policies (see Stalin, Soviet Union, Five Year Plans, and the Ukraine Famine of the 1930s).

Just a thought, and not a happy one, but let's not get so wrapped up in statistics that we lose sight of the people behind all those numbers.