One mistake that is being made here is that we are forgetting in the summer of 1862 the situation was so fluid that tables of organizations changed almost on a daily basis. This may have been the original plan in July 1862 but that order and that reality may not have lasted until the ink got dry.

Arkansas was completely void of any artillery as it had all been transported east of the Mississippi by Gen'l Van Dorn's evacuation of Arkansas. These 10 parrot gun were the best guns in the state in July 1862. There also was a lack of organized artillery batterys in Arkansas at that time also. The military structure was just getting reorganized and re-equiped that early in the summer. So the impression that Etters battery retained 60% of the most desirable artillery piece available may be a mistake.

The Confederates in Arkansas just a month later in August of 1862 recieved a large infusion of arms from the arsenal in the eastern Confederate in both small arms and artillery. According to a report by Union General Samual Curtis at Helena a convoy of at least 25 additional artillery pieces which were unassigned and other military stores crossed the Mississippi with Gen'l Parson Missouri Infantry Brigade when it returned to the Trans-Mississippi dept. This is also supported by Hindmans telegraphs in criptic messages regarding "secret" moves of materials and supplies that were with Parson Brigade ad in the book "Brothers in Gray".

Most of those artillery pieces appear to be the guns (mainly Mountain Howitzers) used to equip the batterys that fought with Hindman at Prairie Grove in December of '62. as with most of the weapons that resupplied the Confederates in Arkansas they were the castoffs of the eastern armies after those armies were reequiped with the captured weapons of the Union army taken at the 7 Days Battle and 2nd Manassas. But it also appears that some of the artillery were quality weapons.

As a results it is very difficult to make a positive determination as to the exact makeup of tables of organization during this period as we do not have available all the different changes and counter changes in the orders of the day. Hindman's Copy book of Telegraphs are filled with these changes where entire department commands were created and desolved in two weeks time. Where entire regiments, that did not even exist, were dispatched to counter Union army movements.

The summer of 1862 was a real mess in the Confederate army organization in Arkansas