First vandalized in ’14, Prairie Grove Civil War marker destroyed again
For the second time, vandals have destroyed a sign at the site of the 1862 battle of Prairie Grove.
Mark Christ, a member of the Arkansas Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission, said of 120 signs installed around the state, the Prairie Grove marker is the only one that’s been vandalized.
“Given the catastrophic nature of the destruction, it gives me the feeling it was the same individuals responsible in both cases,” said Christ, who is a spokesman for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. “This sign has been busted up twice, and not just dinged with a sledgehammer, but demolished beyond repair.”
Christ said the commission paid to replace the sign last year, but probably won’t this time.
“We probably don’t have the money to replace this one,” he said.
Christ said it would cost $2,340 to replace the cast-aluminum sign.
Alan Thompson, museum registrar at Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park, said he won’t know what can be done about replacing the sign until Monday when park Superintendent Jessee Cox returns to work.
The sesquicentennial sign was put up in 2012, said Thompson. It was destroyed in the spring of 2014 by someone who apparently put a chain around part of the sign and pulled it down with a pickup. The sign was replaced last fall.
On Wednesday morning,
park officials found the sign smashed into large pieces. The sign was in the middle of the park, in a lighted area visible from U.S. 62.
Thompson said it’s unclear why vandals have targeted the marker. Older signs on the property contain similar wording, but they’ve never been vandalized.
There have been protests across the country about Confederate monuments and the battle flag, but Thompson said there’s nothing offensive about the wording on the sign in Prairie Grove.
“There’s nothing about the battle flag,” he said “There’s nothing about race. There’s nothing. It’s not pro-Confederate.”
Thompson said some historians speculated that it could be “lost causers,” or people who are sympathetic to the Confederacy. But he still doesn’t know what would rile them up about the wording on the sign. Christ agreed. “I don’t see anything on either side of the sign that’s not accurate and historically verifiable from many sources,” he said.
One side of the sign is about the battle. It reads: “Prairie Grove was the last major battle in northwest Arkansas and helped seal the fate of Missouri and northern Arkansas. After the Confederate army left, never to return, Union troops and supplies were sent elsewhere. Bushwhackers and jayhawkers then flowed into the region, preying on the civilians left helpless in the power vacuum. The Union army would attempt to root out these lawless brigand bands with varying degrees of success. In the end, the outlaws would reign throughout the Ozarks region until after the Civil War ended in 1865.”
The other side of the sign is about Borden House. That side of the sign reads: “The Borden House was the epicenter of what one historian has called one of the most intense firefights west of the Mississippi during the Dec. 7, 1862, Battle of Prairie Grove. Union and Confederate troops fought around the house and orchard, suffering hundreds of casualties. The Borden family sought refuge from the fighting with other families in a cellar one mile west of here. The day after the battle the Borden family returned to find that their home had been burned to the ground. The house here now was built on the same site around 1870.”
Patrick George Williams, a professor of history at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said he doesn’t see anything offensive in the sign’s wording.
“Maybe somebody sees ‘lawless brigand bands’ as an unfair characterization of Confederate guerrilla fighters, but the reference to both bushwhackers and jayhawkers in the preceding sentence seems to me to make clear that the sign is referring to a broader lawlessness that prevailed through these parts,” Williams said via email.
The commission is asking anyone with information about the vandalism to contact the state park at (479) 846-2990 or the Prairie Grove Police Department at (479) 846-3270.