Consequences of the Battle of Prairie Grove

Borden House in 1976

The Battle of Prairie Grove turned out to be one of the bloodiest of the Civil War. The Union forces went into battle with about 7,500-8,000 troops and suffered 1,251 casualties; 175 men killed, 813 wounded, 263 missing. The casualty rate was no better on the side of the Confederates as they came in with around 11,500 troops, losing 1,483; 204 killed, 872 wounded, 407 missing.¹ 

Though the battle looked to be a stalemate, more was lost for the Confederates than the Union through this decision. The Union forces claimed a strategic victory following the Confederate Army’s retreat which kept northwest Arkansas and Missouri under federal protection. This was the last neutral strength battle between the two armies in this region of the country and the attempt by the Confederates to recover lost land, which furthermore increases the importance of this battle on the overall outcome of the Civil War.² 

The consequences of the battle went further than the land retained or lost by either side following the fight. The horrors soldiers witnessed throughout, and the wounds received left all with a lasting impact. The landscape of the battleground was described as being varnished; nearly all the trees had been destroyed through the fire as well as the bushes.³ The fields were covered with hundreds of dead bodies, mutilated through the gunfire and the wild hogs that fed on their corpses.⁴ Lieutenant Colonel Gad Bryan of the first Iowa Cavalry described the scene to his wife: 

“It is a fearful sight to see, after one has cooled off, when the blood is no longer up to battle heat, and take a look at your own work. Dead men and horses, friends and foes, broken gun carriages, and arms all in one promiscuous heap. Men mangled in every conceivable manner. Some with heads torn off, some shot clear in two, some with legs off. Blood on the ground, blood on the fences, and blood on the trees. I saw trees bloody higher than you can reach, and there was a leg of one of the enemy hanging up in a tree top thirty feet high.”⁵

The sight following the retreat was much worse 12 miles east in Fayetteville. A flying hospital was proposed to be set up in this city, but it never came to be due to worries of facing Guerrilla warfare in their travels. This left hundreds of wounded Union men crowded inside the buildings of Fayetteville with almost no medical help and little edible food.⁶ Perished soldiers would be laid on the sidewalks to eventually be picked up. The conditions only got worse through the terrible stench of decaying men and poor hygiene as a measles outbreak occurred through the city. Soldiers, workers, and civilians alike came down with the disease leading to more death caused by the battle. The Union soldier's troubles were eventually lessened through the help of dozens of volunteers from the north who marched down with medical supplies and made it to the site two weeks after the battle.⁷ 

The Confederate soldiers were not as fortunate in receiving medical care. They were left behind by their commanders, forced to crowd into houses made into hospitals throughout the neighborhoods around Prairie Grove. Floors of the buildings were filled with dead men while the wounded men that were still alive waited to join the rest. The amputated limbs of the Confederate soldiers were thrown out of buildings with no care to be fed to the wild hogs that roamed. Many soldiers were left untreated and almost all were malnourished from the lack of food supplies the hospitals had.⁸