UA Alumnus to Lecture on Battle of Fayetteville Tonight

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Kim Allen Scott

FAYETTEVILLE – Kim Allen Scott, an alumnus of the history department at the University of Arkansas, will lecture about the Battle of Fayetteville at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 18, at the Fayetteville First Christian Church on College Avenue. The lecture is part of ceremonies organized by the Washington County Historical Society commemorating the 150th anniversary of the battle to be held Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The Washington County Historical Society will also conduct tactical reenactments of the battle on Saturday and candlelight tours around Headquarters House on Friday evening.

“The commemoration of the Battle of Fayetteville has always had major significance to the historical society because its headquarters, the Tebbetts House, was the headquarters for the Union troops that occupied Fayetteville in 1863,” said Hoyt Purvis, president of the Washington County Historical Society. “This year is the 150th anniversary of the battle, and we want to provide an understanding of the Civil War that reflects acknowledgement of the sacrifices that Americans made to remain a Union and to reject the great political, social and cultural artifact of that time: slavery.”

The commemoration has been financed in part with tax funds from the state of Arkansas and the Arkansas Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission in association with the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.

The commemoration will begin with a living history performance and lecture starting at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 18, in the sanctuary of the First Christian Church. A reception will be held starting at 6:30. Parking is available next door in the Washington County Courthouse parking deck.

The living history performance is titled “Caught in the Middle” and was developed by Dee Dee Lamb and Joe Guinn, members of the historical society. It presents the dilemma and difficulty that Jonas Tebbetts faced as a a partisan during the Civil War at a moment when military troops on the other side of the conflict occupied the town.

The presentation sets the scene for the lecture about the Battle of Fayetteville that follows. Historian Kim Allen Scott, a professor and university archivist for Montana State University who did his graduate work at the University of Arkansas, will lecture about the historical and military significance of the battle as it related to Fayetteville and to the state in general.

Scott began his academic publishing career by winning the Violet B. Gingles Award from the Arkansas Historical Society in 1987 for his study of a Kansas regiment’s service during the Prairie Grove campaign, and he has won the association’s Lucille Westbrook Prize three more times for studies on Fayetteville and Prairie Grove during the Civil War. His in-depth study of the Battle of Fayetteville, “The Civil War in a Bottle,” was published in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly in the Autumn 1995 issue. In 2003 he was invited by the University of Arkansas Press to edit Loyalty on the Frontier, the reminiscences of Lt. Col. Albert W Bishop, a participant in the Battle of Fayetteville. In addition to his publication record, Professor Scott has lectured on the Battle of Fayetteville on numerous occasions, including presentations at the Washington County Historical Society’s Headquarters House in 1994 and 1998, and again in 2000 to the members of the Society of Southwest Archivists who were attending their annual meeting at Fayetteville. He has also used the battle as an illustrative tactical exercise for ROTC classes at Montana State University.

The site for the lecture, the First Christian Church, sits on the grounds that were central to the Battle of Fayetteville and where Arkansas College stood prior to the war. The congregation of the church has its own connections to the battle. William Baxter, pastor of the church lived at the corner of College Avenue and Dickson Street, and his house was at the center of the battle.

On Friday, April 19, re-enactors will provide living-history vignettes on the grounds surrounding Headquarters House for candlelight tours. Price is $5 for adults and $3 for children older than 12. Under 12 free. “Living history” refers to actors who portray real people from history, in this case the real people who lived in the area surrounding Headquarters House during the Civil War and the soldiers on both sides of the Civil War who fought the Battle of Fayetteville. Among the vignettes:

• The capture of Union soldiers who attended a dance at West Fork on the night before Confederate troops attacked Fayetteville.
• Reports by Col. Marcus LaRue Harrison, the commander of Union forces in Fayetteville, about the results of the battle.
• The thoughts of the Yeatter sisters, who hid in the basement of a house that was cannonaded by Confederate artillery.
• Scenes from an Army surgical hospital set for the wounded.
• Response of the home front to the vagaries of a war in which the occupying troops one day might not be the same the next day.

Candlelight tours will occur every 15 minutes starting at 6:30 p.m.

On Saturday, two tactical reenactments of the Battle of Fayetteville will be presented along East Dickson Street and on the grounds surrounding Headquarters House, the first in the morning at 10 a.m. and a second in the afternoon at 2 p.m., with Union and Confederate re-enactors demonstrating the battle as it occurred 150 years ago.  A speaker will provide explanation of the battle re-enactment as it occurs. Dickson Street will be closed from Willow Avenue to College Avenue for the re-enactments.

Spectators will watch from the parking deck of the Washington County Courthouse. Parking will be available in the courthouse parking deck, with entrance from College Avenue after the street is closed for the re-enactment of the battle.

The battle was waged April 18, 1863. Fayetteville was under command of Union troops at the time, led by Col. Marcus La Rue Harrison of the First Arkansas Cavalry. Confederate troops led by Brig. Gen. William L. Cabell entered Fayetteville from the south during the early morning hours, firing artillery from East Mountain (present-day Mount Sequoyah) and eventually charging the Union lines near the intersection of College Avenue and Dickson Street. By 10 a.m., casualties on both sides of the battle lines were about even, but the Confederate troops withdrew when ammunition for their artillery ran low. Although the Union fended off this attack, the threat of future attacks caused the Union troops to withdraw from Fayetteville a week later, not to return permanently until the following September.

Headquarters House was used by the Union army as its headquarters at the time of the Battle of Fayetteville. It had been the home of Jonas and Matilda Tebbetts and their family prior to the war, and today is maintained as a period museum by the Washington County Historical Society, a nonprofit organization with a mission to preserve the past for the future. Memberships in the historical society are open to the public and support the mission of the society to preserve the county’s history, educate the public about the historical and cultural richness of the region, and foster research about the history of the Washington County.