CSA Conduct after the Battle: By Nick Wagner

Retreat

The battle of Prarie Grove came to a halt when General Thomas Hindman came to the realization that possession of the area meant nothing.¹ Hindman claimed that his command was short on food and ammunition, which was true. He also claimed that he was outnumbered, which was false.¹ Under these circumstances, Hindman ordered a withdrawal. 

Disrupting The Peace Of Civilians

A few weeks following the battle, and into the new year 1863, Confederate soldiers began harming non-combatant civilians. In a letter to Abraham Lincoln, Major-General Samuel Curtis writes "They have causelessly murdered non-combatants by hanging, by shooting, by cutting their throats, and by divers other cruel, inhuman, and outrageous methods."²

They also would burn and destroy railroad bridges, thereby causing trains filled with non-combatants to be precipitated into streams, killing, drowning, and wounding many people, including women and children.²     

"They have, in the darkness of night, summoned citizens to the doors of their dwellings and there shot them dead. They have deliberately, and without provocation, fired into dwellings, placing in extreme jeopardy the lives of innocent and helpless persons therein. They have abducted citizens from their dwellings and families and murdered them secretly and by methods unknown to the community at large."²

Treatment Of Fallen And Wounded Soldiers

Compared to the Union, the Confederates showed less reverence towards their dead. A Kansan was shocked by the “calloused indifference” of the Rebel burial details. Hindman’s men tossed the bodies of their comrades into shallow trenches “with about the same consideration that sacks of potatoes would have received, and when one layer had been completed another was placed on top of the first, and then, sometimes after their coats had been wrapped over them and sometimes without, the clay and gravel was shoveled on and the job was complete.” He added that afterward “we saw many feet protruding from the ground.”³

Confederate surgeons and orderlies were overwhelmed, and some of the latter abandoned their posts and their charges.⁴ Visiting wounded Rebels a week after the battle, a Union soldier was shocked to discover that “many of their wounds have not yet been dressed.”⁴