Confederate General Earl Van Dorn attacked Union positions in northwest Arkansas hoping to open a path to St. Louis, but poor coordination and the death of key commanders, including Generals Ben McCulloch and James McIntosh, crippled the Southern effort. Union General Samuel Curtis's forces held firm and counterattacked the following day, delivering a decisive victory that kept Missouri firmly under Union control.
The Battle of Pea Ridge, fought across rugged terrain in Benton County, Arkansas, pitted roughly 16,000 Confederate troops under General Earl Van Dorn against about 10,500 Union soldiers commanded by General Samuel Curtis. Van Dorn's ambitious plan called for a wide flanking march to strike the Union rear, but the maneuver exhausted his troops and fractured his command structure just as the fighting began on March 7.
Disaster struck the Confederate effort early when General Ben McCulloch was shot dead while personally scouting Union lines, and General James McIntosh was killed leading a cavalry charge soon after. The loss of both commanders threw Confederate forces into confusion at a critical moment. Curtis's Union troops, though outnumbered, held their ground through the first day of fighting and launched a devastating counterattack on March 8 that broke the Confederate army entirely. The victory secured Missouri for the Union for the remainder of the war and derailed Confederate ambitions to control the trans-Mississippi region, a strategic outcome disproportionate to the battle's relatively modest scale.