Sources & Methodology

Primary bibliography

Every event in the study is sourced from at least one of the following collections. Where multiple sources are available for a single event, the most authoritative is cited in the event data and the others are used for cross-verification.

Books and academic sources

1. William L. Shea and Earl J. Hess, Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). The standard scholarly account of the campaign, used as the primary factual reference for troop movements, command decisions, and order of battle throughout. ISBN 0-8078-2024-3.
2. William Baxter, Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove, or, Scenes and Incidents of the War in Arkansas (Cincinnati: Poe and Hitchcock, 1864). Contemporary memoir by a Fayetteville professor who lived through the occupation. Used for civilian perspective and the account of the burning of Fayetteville.

Federal and institutional sources

3. National Park Service, Pea Ridge National Military Park.Interpretive materials, official tour stop narratives, and the park's published order of battle. The NPS archaeological record underlies the cannon placement data referenced in the site narrative.
4. The American Battlefield Trust — article archive and campaign map series for the Battle of Pea Ridge. Used for order of battle supplementation and troop strength figures. battlefields.org
5. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas(Central Arkansas Library System, ongoing). The online encyclopedia's entries on Pea Ridge, Van Dorn, Price, McCulloch, and the Trans-Mississippi Theater were used for biographical data and regional context. encyclopediaofarkansas.net

Field and marker sources

6. Civil War Muse — GPS waypoints from field visits to historical markers along the Wire Road corridor and the Pea Ridge battlefield. Provided independently verified coordinates for over twenty events. Used as a primary coordinate source where it conflicts with secondary literature estimates. civilwarmuse.net
7. Fort Tours Northwest Arkansas Historical Markers index — a systematic index of historical markers in Benton, Washington, and surrounding counties. Used to verify marker text and locations referenced in event entries.
8. Historical Marker Database — supplementary marker locations and text for markers outside the core battlefield area. hmdb.org

Regional and community sources

9. ozarkscivilwar.org (Community and Conflict project) — the consortium of Northwest Arkansas universities documenting the regional Civil War experience, with particular strength on the civilian impact of the campaign and the guerrilla period that followed.
10. Pea Ridge Times sesquicentennial and centennial reporting series (2012, 2022) — local newspaper coverage that traced the campaign at 150 and 160 years, including interviews with park staff and descendant community members.

Primary correspondence

11. Period dispatches and orders— military correspondence between Samuel Curtis, Henry Halleck, George McClellan, Franz Sigel, Earl Van Dorn, Sterling Price, and Ben McCulloch, as reproduced in Shea & Hess and in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion (Series I, Volume 8). Direct quotations in the study are attributed to the originating officer with date and addressee.

GPS coordinate verification

Each of the 36 map locations in this study was assigned coordinates through the following protocol:

1. Primary: GPS waypoint from Civil War Muse field visit, where available. These represent on-site readings at physical historical markers and are the most accurate source used.
2. Secondary: Historical marker location as recorded in the Fort Tours NW Arkansas index or the Historical Marker Database, cross-referenced against the modern road network on OpenStreetMap.
3. Tertiary:Geographic estimate from the secondary literature (primarily Shea & Hess) when no marker or field GPS exists. Locations derived by estimate only are flagged internally in the data layer.

Where the three sources disagree by more than 200 meters, the Civil War Muse field GPS is treated as authoritative and the discrepancy is noted internally. No coordinate was accepted on a single source alone unless it was a Civil War Muse field reading at a known, named historical marker.

Historical marker coverage

Of the 50 events in the study, more than 20 have a corresponding historical marker reference in the event entry. Marker text is quoted or paraphrased from the physical marker where the project owner has visited in person, or from the Fort Tours NW Arkansas index or Historical Marker Database where the marker is outside the Benton County area.

Markers within Pea Ridge National Military Park are consistent with NPS interpretive signage as of the project owner's most recent site visit. The park has ten numbered auto-tour stops; all ten are represented in the study's event data.

What this study does not claim

This is an independent educational resource, not an official NPS or academic publication. It does not claim to resolve historiographical disputes about troop strengths, casualty counts, or command decisions where the primary scholarship disagrees. Where Shea & Hess is ambiguous or silent, that ambiguity is preserved in the event entries rather than resolved by inference.

Casualty figures for the campaign as a whole (approximately 2,384 Union and 2,000 Confederate) come from Shea & Hess. Event-level casualty figures are noted only where a specific source attributes them to a specific engagement.

This study is not affiliated with the National Park Service, the City of Pea Ridge, the Pea Ridge National Military Park Foundation, or any heritage organization. It draws on their published materials and is glad to be corrected by them.

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