Huntsville massacre facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Huntsville massacre |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the American Civil War | |||||
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| Belligerents | |||||
 United States Army |
 Confederate Guerrillas/sympathizers |
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||
| Lt Col. Elias Briggs Baldwin | Unknown | ||||
| Units involved | |||||
| Company G, 8th Regiment Missouri Volunteer Cavalry | Unknown | ||||
| Strength | |||||
| 5,000 | Unknown | ||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||
| None | 9 shot; 1 survivor | ||||
The Huntsville massacre refers to the execution during the Civil War of nine local men, including three Confederate soldiers, by Union soldiers on January 10, 1863, in Huntsville, Arkansas. No formal charges were filed, and the commanding officer was later discharged by the US Army. The prisoners may have been suspected of being Confederate sympathizers. A few months before, guerrillas had attacked a force of 25 Union troops in the area.
The event was discussed secretly and nearly lost until a historian wrote about it in a history quarterly in 1974. More research has been published on this topic, and a memorial to the victims was erected in 2006.
Background
In 1862, after the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas, Isaac Murphy of Huntsville had received death threats and was forced to flee his home. He had represented Madison County in the state House but was known to have voted against secession at the start of the war. He was with the Army in Missouri. By the fall of 1862, his daughters wished to visit him in Pea Ridge, Missouri. The Union Army provided escort to them to return to their home of Huntsville, then under Union control.
Two miles from town, the escort of 25 soldiers sent the daughters along to the town alone and set up camp to rest. The soldiers were attacked by a local Confederate guerrilla band. Eighteen men were killed, and seven of the Union soldiers survived the skirmish.
After the Battle of Prairie Grove, Union General Francis Herron was ordered to take his 5,000 troops northeast to the Mississippi River, where he would connect with the army under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant in the push for Vicksburg. While Herron's troops passed through Huntsville, they were told that Murphy's daughters were being harassed by locals and had lost some personal property at their hands. Within days Union soldiers had arrested several local men, but no official charges were filed.
Aftermath
Two local colleges closed that had been affiliated with the Masons. The local Masonic chapter believed that Isaac Murphy had something to do with the executions, and several of those executed were members of the Masons. Murphy's daughters and wife had operated the female seminary, and Murphy headed the other college. The Masons chapter ended financial support of both schools, forcing them to close.
Murphy became active with the Republican Party and had a distinguished political career by being elected as governor in 1863 and staying in office during the first years of Reconstruction in Arkansas. Colonel James Johnson was later elected from Arkansas as a US Representative, and later Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State of the state. E.D. Ham was elected by the state legislature as a Senator for Arkansas, also winning election as a District Attorney and Circuit Judge. Short of Baldwin's arrest and dismissal from the army on less-than-honorable circumstances, no one was punished for the deaths of the Confederates.
For decades afterward, locals in the area commemorated the event by annually decorating the site with flowers, but few spoke publicly about it. In 1974, the historian John I. Smith published several articles about the murders in the Northwest Arkansas Times since he had uncovered accounts of the massacre while he was researching a biography on Isaac Murphy. On September 30, 2006, a monument commemorating the event was dedicated at the execution site.
