Col. Robert G. Shaver, Sr. (CSA)

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.asp...

Robert Glenn Shaver was a former Confederate officer who raised Arkansas troops for the war, a commander who was wounded in battle, and a former outlaw who once fled the United States to escape punishment.

Robert Shaver was born on April 18, 1831, in Sullivan County, Tennessee, exactly on the line between Virginia and Tennessee. He was the third of four children born to David and Martha (May) Shaver. He attended school at home, and from 1846 to 1850, he attended Emory and Henry College in Virginia. Shaver and his parents moved to Arkansas in 1850, settling east of Batesville (Independence County) in Lawrence County (now Sharp County).

On June 10, 1856, Shaver married Adelaide Louise Ringgold. Before she died in 1889, Adelaide bore eight children. In 1859, Shaver was licensed to practice law in Lawrence County, and they resided on their farm near the White River.

With the eruption of the Civil War in 1861 and Arkansas’s secession from the Union, Shaver received an order from the Military Board of Arkansas to raise a regiment of volunteers from the White River Valley. Ten counties were allotted to him from which to raise the regiment, and the organization took place at Smithville (Lawrence County) on June 16, 1861. In response to the call for soldiers, enough volunteers arrived to create thirty-two companies. Shaver was forced to send many away, as he was authorized only to organize ten companies of 120 men each into the Seventh Arkansas Regiment. Shaver was chosen as colonel, and the regiment became known as “Shaver’s Regiment” and carried that name throughout the war. Shaver and his troops were immediately ordered to Pullman’s Ferry to take a steamboat first to Columbus, Kentucky, and then to Bowling Green to engage Union forces.

Shaver’s Regiment was prominent and illustrious in the war as Shaver led them in battle in Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. His troops bestowed the nickname of “Fighting Bob” on their commander. Shaver is mentioned in twelve different volumes and on several pages of the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion of the Union and Confederate armies.

Shaver and his Arkansas troops were part of the Confederate effort to stop the southward advance by General Ulysses S. Grant in the spring of 1862. Shaver was commander of the First Brigade of Hindman’s Division, Third Army Corps, which was composed of the Second, Sixth, and Seventh Arkansas Infantry and the Third Confederate Infantry, of which two-thirds were also Arkansas troops. Confederate General Albert Sydney Johnston engaged Grant’s forces at Shiloh, Tennessee, in April 1862. Shaver initiated the fight on the Confederate right early Sunday morning of April 6. This opening phase of the battle became known as “The Hornet’s Nest,” and Shaver was seriously wounded in the head and in his left side by an exploding shell. He was unconscious for several hours and suffered from these wounds until the end of his life.

After the Union victory at Shiloh, Shaver was eventually transferred to the Trans-Mississippi Department. In September 1862, Shaver organized the Thirty-eighth Arkansas Infantry at Jacksonport (Jackson County) and was elected colonel. He was on the field at Prairie Grove, Jenkins’ Ferry, Poison Spring, Marks' Mills, and the Red River Campaign. He covered the Confederate retreat from Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1863, reportedly furious that General Sterling Price would not allow him to engage the enemy.

In 1864, General Kirby Smith consolidated the Thirty-eighth Arkansas Infantry and Twenty-seventh Arkansas Infantry, and Shaver commanded these two regiments, known until the end of the war as “Shaver’s Infantry Regiment.”

In March 1865, Shaver received orders to report to Texas and to take command of the port at Galveston. He got as far as Marshall, Texas, when word was received of Lee’s surrender to Grant in Virginia. When he received notice the war was over, he took his command to Shreveport, Louisiana, and surrendered to General Francis Herron. Shaver’s surrender was the last organized Confederate force to surrender in the war.

Shaver procured a large steamboat to transport his men to Jacksonport (most of his troops were from northern Arkansas) from General Herron. He arrived at Jacksonport on June 20, 1865, and his men were disbanded.

Shaver’s activities with the Arkansas Ku Klux Klan after the war eventually caused serious legal problems. Most modern state historians now scoff at Shaver’s claim that he was the Klan commander in Arkansas with 10,000 Klansmen in opposition to the Powell Clayton carpetbagger regime. Although his claims may not stand close modern scrutiny, by 1868 state carpetbagger leaders had him charged with murder, arson, treason, and robbery. When General Daniel Phillips Upham and the state militia were sent to arrest him, he quickly fled the state to New Orleans, Louisiana. His family later joined him there, and they all boarded the British steamboat Mexico for British Honduras.

By 1872, Shaver returned to Arkansas upon hearing that his personal friend Elisha Baxter had replaced Clayton as governor. The records are probably lost, and the details may never be known, but within twenty-four hours, all charges and indictments against him were dropped. He had breakfast with Powell Clayton and then left for Jacksonport.

Shortly after returning to Jacksonport in 1872, he was informed that Governor Baxter had appointed him to the position of sheriff for newly created Howard County in western Arkansas. Shaver lived in Center Point (Howard County) until 1899, practicing law after leaving his duties as sheriff. In 1899, he and his family moved to Mena (Polk County) to live with his son. In the 1890s, Shaver was made commander of the State Guard and the Reserve Militia of Arkansas and received the rank of general. He was also the commander of the Arkansas Division of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV).

While in Mena, many newspapers interviewed him and wrote feature articles concerning his experiences. Shaver’s many stories appeared in the Mena Evening Star,the Polk County Democrat,the Mena Weekly Star,the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and several magazines. The Commercial Appeal sent Robert Brown to Mena in June 1909 to interview Shaver about his past ties with the Ku Klux Klan. This interview was published in the Commercial Appeal to coincide with the United Confederate Veterans reunion being held in Memphis.

In 1910, he was selected to raise funds and to dedicate a monument and choose its location on the Shiloh battlefield to honor all the Arkansas soldiers who fought and died there. On September 26, 1911, Shaver gave the main address at the dedication of the memorials on the former battleground at Shiloh. When Little Rock was chosen as the site for the annual reunion of the Confederate Veterans, he was made commander-in-charge of the camp, and the National Encampment of the United Confederate was known as “Camp Shaver.”

By 1914, Shaver was becoming feeble and traveled to Foreman (Little River County) to be with his two daughters. He died at Foreman on January 13, 1915, and was buried in his Confederate uniform at Center Point Cemetery in Howard County.
Married Adalaide Louise Ringgold
June 10, 1856
Batesville, Arkansas - Independence Co.

Co A, 7th Regt., AR Inf

OBITUARY:
From the Confederate Veteran, Volume XXIII, pages 178-179:
Col. Robert G. Shaver
By Col. V. Y. Cook, Batesville, Arkansas

"Colonel Robert G. Shaver died at the home of his daughter; Mrs. P.B. Williams, at Foreman, Arkansas, on January 13, 1915, aged eighty-four years. He came to Arkansas with his parents from Sullivan County; East Tennessee, in 1850, locating at Batesville, where in 1856 he was married to Miss Adelaide Louise Ringgold, a beautiful and accomplished daughter of Col. John Ringgold, one of the State's most prominent citizens. Some three years later he removed to Lawrence County, where he was licensed to practice law

"In the spring of 1861 he recruited and organized the 7th Arkansas Infantry for the Confederate army and was elected its first colonel. He and his regiment saw service at Columbus and Bowling Green, Ky, and on the evacuation of the latter place by General Albert Sidney Johnston in February; 1862, Colonel Shaver; as senior colonel of the brigade in which his regiment was serving, commanded the rear guard of General Johnston's army to Nashville, Tenn., a most critical period.

"At Shiloh, April 6 and 7, 1862, Colonel Shaver, still in command of the brigade - i.e., the 1st Brigade of Hindman's Division, 3d Army Corps, composed of the 2d, 6th, and 7th Arkansas Infantry and the 3d Confederate Infantry; two-thirds of the latter regiment also being Arkansans - rose level to his country's need, and the soldiers who followed him were of the very best type. Colonel Shaver initiated the fight on the Confederate right early Sunday morning, the 6th, where the fighting was fierce and incessant throughout that bloody struggle, a struggle in which brothers were standard bearers of the opposing forces, and where he led there was much carnage; yet victory was his at every point, as his troops surged forward in conjunction with his alignment of the Confederate center and left wing, pushing the Federals back toward the Tennessee River; where late in the afternoon they appeared a conglomerated mass of fugitives on the river bank seeking the friendly aegis of the Federal gunboats.

"The 7th Arkansas, Colonel Shaver's own regiment, went into action on the left of the brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Deane commanding, with its drum-and-fife corps playing Granny, Will Your Dog Bite?

"Colonel Shaver had two horses killed under him during the day and one on the following day, when he and his brigade continued to fight gallantly and effectively. General Hardee, in his report of the battle, said that Colonel Shaver's conduct was most satisfactory, skillful, and exemplary throughout both days' fighting.

"Early in June, 1862, Colonel Shaver; with General Hindman, was transferred to the Trans-Mississippi Department; and at Jackonport, Ark., on the 8th of September of that year; Colonel Shaver organized the 38th Arkansas Infantry, of which he was unanimously elected colonel and which he continued to command during the various campaigns and battles in that department. In the fall of 1864, at the reorganization of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi, Colonel Shaver was again elected colonel of the 38th, and on the same day, in a different field, he was also elected colonel of Shaver's 27th Arkansas Infantry. Gen. Kirby Smith consolidated these two regiments, and they were known thenceforth until the surrender, in June, 1865, as Shaver's Infantry Regiment. He participated in all the principal battles fought in the Trans -Mississippi Department after June, 1862, among which were Prairie Grove, Mansfield, Jenkins's Ferry; Poison Springs, Marks Mill, and all the battles incident to Gen. Dick Taylor's Red River campaign against General Banks, during all of which he displayed his usual gallantry and resourcefulness. That Colonel Shaver was not killed was not his fault, for he gave the Federals every opportunity on many fields.

"At the evacuation of Little Rock, September 10, 1863, Colonel Shaver was in command of his brigade and covered the Confederate retreat out of the city southward. He was greatly chagrined and deeply mortified that he was not permitted to engage the enemy, and he always contended that General Price should have offered battle; that his forces were numerically superior to the Federals under General Steele and were in fine trim and anxious to fight. It has been truthfully said of Colonel Shaver that he had rather fight than eat, even after a week's subsistence on half rations and those who knew him and saw him on the different battle fields can well testify to his worth as a resourceful officer and a tenacious fighter. He was a soldier by intuition, adaptability, and desire, and withal a strategist and tactician, a warrior with but few peers. He is mentioned in twelve different volumes and on many pages of the "Records" of the Union and Confederate armies, made up of the reports of the various commanding generals and published after the war by the government.

"Colonel Shaver not only had no friends at court, but much strong opposition caused by a political fight engendered in a State campaign in 1860. One of the defeated candidates for State honors, being in high authority at Richmond in the Confederate Senate, always opposed Colonel Shaver's promotion; otherwise he would certainly have attained at least the rank of major general. With that rank opportunities would have offered which he would have availed effectively, thereby placing him beyond the reach of the deadly enmity of the politician; for as a military genius he was Gen. Pat Cleburne's equal in every respect, and everybody knows there were none better than Cleburne.

"Colonel Shaver's well-earned sobriquet of "Fighting Bob Shaver" was known throughout the different armies in which he served. He was wounded four times and had six horses killed under him in action.

"A poem on the Arkansas Confederate soldier mentions Colonel Shaver in one of its stanzas, as follows:

"We fought with Lee at Gettysburg,
with Cleburne always our saver,
With Bragg at Chicamauga Creek,
at Shiloh with Bob Shaver.
"So loyal was Colonel Shaver to the Confederate cause that he never complained of the ungenerous and untoward opposition to him by the politicians and carried the heart wound to his grave without a murmur.

"Colonel Shaver was a member of the Grand Council of the Ku-Klux Klan, and many of the Latin terms which expressed its polities and tenants bore the earmarks of his ability and scholarly attainments. He was the highest ranking officer of the Klan in Arkansas, General Forrest being the highest in the entire Klan, its commander in chief. Early in the winter of 1868 Colonel Shaver; on account of his connection with the Klan in Arkansas, and especially his campaign in Woodruff County, in which he participated in two skirmishes against Clayton's Militia, was forced by the Clayton regime of carpetbaggers, then in power in Arkansas, to leave the United States, going to British Honduras, where he remained for several years. Returning to Arkansas, he was appointed sheriff of Howard County by Gov. Elisha Baxter, the carpetbaggers in the meantime having been dethroned. Later he was appointed major general of the Arkansas State Guard, which he at once reorganized, and in 1896 he was elected Commander of the Arkansas Division, United Confederate Veterans, and at once gave to it its first semblance of organization. This position he held for two years; and not withstanding his great popularity, fitness, and adaptability for the position, he declined further election, as had been the custom previously and since, with one lamentable exception. This he did that other comrades might share this great and exalted honor. He was greatly adverse to scrambling for U. C. V positions in the State and gave his influence for rotation after a term of two years.

"Camp Shaver; where the Confederate veterans were camped during the Little Rock Confederate Reunion in 1911, was named for Colonel Shaver; and he was further honored by being placed in command of the encampment. His duties were executed with loving kindness toward the old soldiers under his charge, and yet with such military precision that a successful discipline was accomplished, attractive and beneficial to those participating.

"His memory is embalmed in the hearts of his countrymen, and long and deeply will they remember and appreciate his heroic service for this country's cause."

This article was contributed by Robert W. King

OBITUARY added to memorial courtesy of Wayne Goates* Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Sep 22 2022, 5:53:09 UTC