Arkansas Democrat. July 5, 1881: “Terrible news was received last night from Fayetteville, being nothing less than a continuation of the bloody Reed feud, which has already cost half a dozen lives… The parties who did the shooting escaped unseen, but suspicion points to members of the infamous White river gang…”
So continued the feverish report about the West Fork outlaws creating havoc in Washington County, Arkansas. Yet a closer inspection of the facts leads to questions—how much of this was truth and how much the hyperbole of malignant Confederate defeat?
As the bloody war years came to a close, the bitter animosity felt by both sides remained, tingeing every transaction, every glance, with threat. In a state that had pledged its allegiance to the South in a region those Rebel partisans outnumbered Union sympathizers by about two-thirds, those who had joined federal forces did not find glory and gratitude at war’s end. Rather, insults and injury were heaped onto their losses and shed blood.
In particular, men of the West Fork Township were the greatest percentage of all Union forces in the region. Did their service for the nation ruin their remaining years? This is the story of those lives.
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