It was the Grandest Thing I Ever Saw...

On Saturday, March 8, 1862, 10,000 Union men stood in battle lines stretching for a mile across the open fields below, with all the regiments within sight of each other, a rare spectacle in the Civil War and one that few veterans of the Battle of Pea Ridge ever forgot. Sergeant Samuel Herrington of the 8th Indiana Infantry Regiment in Davis' Division recalled the scene and the advance: "Forward quick time guide right. Halt make ready take aim fire. After first shot load at will. Our guns a-booming. The battery howling. Wounded groaning. Some excited, I might say all. But we was going forward."

Garfield, Arkansas · United States