Call To Battle

Re-enactors ready to experience history firsthand

Hundreds of men, women and children dressed in muslin and wool clothing will camp in the fields along Big Sugar Creek north of Pea Ridge this weekend.

They will build campfires and cook in cast-iron Dutch ovens; children will play in the alleyways between tents; soldiers will drill and prepare for battle. And, on Saturday night, all will gather to dance under the stars on Sutlers’ Row.

The re-enactment event will take place on the Webb family farm, a picturesque and pristine 340-acre, seventhgeneration farmstead near the 4,300-acre Pea Ridge National Military Park.

“We certainly don’t do this to memorialize our nation’s worst tragedy,” says Steve Bailey, the organizer of the re-enactment of the 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge. “Our efforts are purely public charity.”

Money raised goes to the Pea Ridge National Military Park Foundation.

“It has nothing to do with hate,” Bailey adds. “It’s so the park can be preserved for future generations … so they can learn that a house divided cannot stand. We can’t ever go through another Civil War.”

Bailey says his first big event was in 1995.

“This will be a first event for many re-enactors. I want to make it memorable,” he adds.

The battle re-enactment is on private land instead of at the Pea Ridge National Military Park because battle re-enactments are not allowed on federal land, although encampments are.

The nearly 200 acres south of Sugar Creek along the Arkansas-Missouri state line will be turned into battlegrounds and Civil War encampments as re-enactors set up camp. Camp tours began Thursday, with battle re-enactments starting today.

Bailey, president of the Arkansas Re-enactors Education Association and a member of the Board of Directors of the Northwest 15th Arkansas Infantry, says 600 re-enactors registered early. Depending on weather conditions, he says there could be as many as 800 who attend.

Bailey says he anticipates more than 10,000 people will attend over the three-day period.

Rick Hunt, brigadier general of the Trans-Mississippi Brigade, says a re-enactment of this magnitude is long overdue. Hunt will help lead the Confederate troops in the battle re-enactment, which involves re-enactors coming from as far west as California and as far east as Maryland.

“It’s time we have a major Civil War re-enactment this side of the Mississippi River. Pea Ridge is the event we need in the West,” says Hunt.

“About three-fifths of the U.S. is represented with re-enactors coming from Maryland to California, from Washington state to Florida. We’ve never been represented like this in the Midwest,” Bailey says. He explained that typically registration at national events is $20 but here it is only $8 and he says he provides well for the re-enactors.

Local volunteers, including the Pea Ridge Athletic Booster Club and area Boy Scouts, will be on location during the event to help park cars and assist people in reaching the front gates.

FILE PHOTO Re-enactors camp and work together as families and look forward to the camp as a time to catch up with friends seen only during re-enactment gatherings, says Steve Bailey, the organizer of the re-enactment of the 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge. These men...

COURTESY PHOTO Re-enactors wear uniforms and are members of specific military units and are as historically accurate as possible, says Steve Bailey, the organizer of the re-enactment of the 1862 Battle of Pea Ridge.