July 1, 2007

Confederate general Earl Van Dorn was given command of the Military District of the Trans-Mississippi No. 2 in January 1862. Fearing the loss of Missouri, he quickly established his headquarters on Arkansas’s northeast border at Pocahontas (Randolph County). Shortly afterward, he moved to northwest Arkansas to stop advancing Union forces, which defeated his army at the Battle of Pea Ridge in March. After the defeat, he was transferred east of the Mississippi River, taking with him most of the Arkansas troops and thus leaving the state virtually undefended. Van Dorn was killed approximately a year later by an irate husband who claimed the general had “violated his home.”