The battle lives on
Re-enactors revive the Pea Ridge fight between blue, gray.
PEA RIDGE — The thunder of cannon fire echoed again Saturday over the battlefields of Leetown and Elkhorn Tavern as onlookers watched a re-enactment of the battle that raged there 153 years ago.
Troy Banzhaf, supervising park ranger at the Pea Ridge National Military Park, said the park hosts educational events every year, as close as possible to the anniversary of the battle, which was fought March 7 and 8, 1862.
Banzhaf talked to visitors during Saturday’s artillery drill, providing information about the weapons and ammunition that would have been used at the time of the battle.
A group of re-enactors portrayed the 2nd Illinois Light Artillery. The soldiers loaded, aimed and fired a model 1841 six-pounder cannon.
Paul Dolle of Rogers, the sergeant in charge of Saturday’s gun crew, said he’s been interested in the Civil War since the 1950s and ’60s, and he has been involved in staging re-enactments of Civil War battles for nearly 50 years.
Dolle, who began going to the Pea Ridge park in 1982, said becoming a re-enactor was part of the progression of his interest in history.
“When I was a kid, there was a program on television called The Gray Ghost about the exploits of John Singleton Mosby,” a Confederate Army cavalry commander, Dolle said. “If I got my homework done right, I could stay up to watch that. Then, in the 1960s, there was the centennial of the Civil War, and that generated a lot of interest. It’s a progression. When I was growing up, reading and television programs were readily available. The re-enactment hobby itself didn’t really begin until the ’60s and ’70s.”
Dolle said he has portrayed Confederate and Union soldiers, but he chooses now to mostly portray Union soldiers to highlight for residents the divided loyalties of Arkansas men during the Civil War.
“There were 13 regiments in the Union Army from Arkansas,” he said. “Then later, after the Emancipation Proclamation, there were four regiments of colored troops from Arkansas in the Union Army. I try to provoke questions and
go into aspects of Arkansas’ Civil War history most people aren’t aware of.”
The Pea Ridge re-enactment is generally well-attended, Banzhaf said, because visitors enjoy seeing the uniforms, flags, weapons and other artifacts that participants take to the field.
“The living history like this, we do only once a year,” he said. “The big draw will be the fact we’re firing a cannon and doing the drill.”
Saturday’s program drew some people who have family ties to the battle.
With family and friends, Mitch Tyson traveled to the park from Atlanta, Texas. He said his great-great-greatgrandfather — Josephus Tyson — was a captain in the 4th Arkansas Infantry Regiment of the Confederate Army and was wounded during the battle.
“They were from southwest Arkansas, Miller County and Lafayette County, and they came up here to fight,” Tyv son said. “I’ve got the pistols he fought here with. He was wounded in both legs charging a cannon. He spent 16 months recovering, and then he joined Crawford’s [1st Arkansas Cavalry Regiment]. He was in it to the end. He never surrendered. He just went home.”
One visitor with no family ties to the battle was Tiziano Celli, a graduate student in agriculture at the University of Arkansas who is from near Rome, Italy. Celli and a van filled with other international students made the trip to the park to watch the re-enactment.
“I don’t know too much about this part of Arkansas history,” he said. “In Italy, I participate in some re-enactments but it’s mostly medieval. To me, it’s beautiful. It’s very real.”