MonticelloLive

Noted Civil War historian Dr. William Shea of the University of Arkansas at Monticello will lead a three-day walking tour of Pea Ridge National Military Park and Prairie Grove State Historic Park in northwest Arkansas March 27-29.
            Shea will conduct the tour for the Blue-Gray Education Society of Virginia.
            A member of the UAM faculty since 1974, Shea is the co-author of Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West, a landmark work he wrote with Earl J. Hess that describes in detail the most important Civil War battle west of the Mississippi River.
            Shea’s walking tour is a continuation of what has been a busy year for the UAM history professor. In August, Shea lectured on the tactical and technological innovations in the Trans-Mississippi theater of the Civil War at the annual Civil War Symposium at the Old State House Museum in Little Rock.
            In October, Shea addressed a select audience of Civil War enthusiasts at historic Christ Episcopal Church in Vicksburg, Miss. His lecture, entitled “Wild Goose Chase: Sherman, McClernand, and Porter at Arkansas Post,” provided a new look at an important, but often overlooked operation in the Vicksburg campaign. The event is sponsored annually by the Vicksburg National Military Park.
            In November, Shea participated in a two-day workshop sponsored by the Civil War Round Table of the Ozarks in Springfield, Mo., where he delivered a lecture entitled “Back from the Dead: Thomas Hindman and the Resurrection of the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy.” Later that month, Shea traveled to Virginia, where he visited the Museum of the Confederacy, the White House of the Confederacy, the Tredegar Civil War Center, and related Civil War sites. He also spent a day exploring the recently excavated ruins of James Fort at Jamestown National Historic Park.
            Shea will make a presentation on the importance of the Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove campaigns and lead a bus tour of the battlefields at the annual meeting of the Civil War Preservation Trust of Washington, D.C., during the organization’s meeting April 17-19 in Springfield, Mo.