Your points are in line with my thinking. You came back to mentioning the USV's numbering about 100,000, that number seems to be close to correct. Many of these men chose to serve in the regiments raised for frontier service such as the 1st thru 6th USV's, men of decided southern leanings but chose to not spend the war in POW camps, often a sure path to death by disease. In the case of the 1st Arkansas regiment, there was indeed former southerners there but if you will research it a little deeper you will find that in NW and North Central Arkansas there were many counties that were pro-nothern in its population base and were displaced by their southern neighbors, their choices were minimized by the 'you are either for us or against us.' It became a matter of survival thus the creation of such towns as Harrison Arkansas, named after the Col. of the 2nd Arkansas Cav M. LaRue Harrison, who was a total union man and the engineer that designed the defenses of Springfield.