A point of irony is that Van Dorn gathered all of these "Volunteers" who were patriotic and enlisted out of a call to duty for Arkansas, and took them to Mississippi within a month, leaving only those who would be "drafted" in the following months to defend the State. Arkansas was to be defended for the most part in those few months by TEXAS volunteers. These Texas Volunteers thought it better to fight in Arkansas to defend Texas, than to fight in Texas, or Mississippi to defend Texas.

This is the reason that Governor Rector threatened to have Arkansas secede from the Confederacy.