Hot Springs National Park and the Civil War: a Confederate capital, then veterans

Hot Springs National Park began as Hot Springs Reservation, created by Congress and President Jackson in 1832. It covered four square miles, including much of today's city of Hot Springs, then a thoroughly southern town. This National Park Service article traces how the Civil War shaped the place.

Before and during the war

The census counted 361 enslaved people in Hot Spring County in 1850 and 616 in 1860. By the 1860s established roads let troops of both sides pass through and sometimes camp. Many local men of military age joined the Confederate Army at the start of the war, and Hiram Whittington, a Massachusetts native for whom a section of the park is named, put up money for a Confederate regiment. Skirmishes are recorded nearby, including a deadly one east of Cedar Glades in 1863, but archeological surveys at suspected battle sites found no evidence of fighting inside the park. In 1864 federal troops arrested a number of residents who refused to take a loyalty oath.

Civilians suffered. Food, clothing and shelter became scarce. Irregular militiamen on both sides, called bushwhackers and jayhawkers, burned buildings, shot at soldiers and killed civilians whose sympathies they distrusted. Many residents fled to Texas, Louisiana or Little Rock. Regular troops also took what they needed from the countryside, which civilians trying to get through lean times resented.

Two Union officers who later ran the reservation. Photograph from the Park Service's page.

A capital on Bathhouse Row

Although the hot springs were set aside as federal property, no one oversaw them until the 1870s. In mid-1862, when Little Rock seemed likely to fall to the Union, Arkansas's Confederate governor, Henry M. Rector, came home to the bathhouse and "kitchen" he owned here, so a Confederate capital briefly stood on Bathhouse Row. He brought state archives, funds and supplies, in a wagon train from Dardanelle that the article puts at 7 to 9 tons. His sudden departure caught Little Rock off guard, though his popularity had already faded since his election in 1860, and soon after he went back he was voted out of office.

A plaque on a tufa rock near the Superior Bathhouse marks the capital on Bathhouse Row. Park Service photograph.

Veterans arrive

After the war, veterans of both sides flocked to Hot Springs, some to bathe their wounds. Those who could pay used the bathhouses, and those who could not bathed in "dugout pools" of hot water on the hillside, which led to the first Free Bathhouse for the poor. Others came to settle, including some who had been stationed nearby and found it beautiful. Veterans built and ran bathhouses, among them Samuel Fordyce (Union), George Latta (Confederate) and Dr. Algernon Garnett, who had served aboard the ironclad C.S.S. Virginia, and doctors who were veterans moved in to practice. L.Q.C. Lamar and John W. Noble, also veterans, have their names preserved in architecture on the Row. The reservation's first three superintendents were all Civil War veterans.

Confederate General Charles W. Field, third superintendent of the reservation. Photograph from the Park Service's page.

The article also notes that not everything was well: Jim Crow laws and lynchings marked the period, the last lynching recorded in 1922.

A giant hospital

The Army and Navy General Hospital began when Illinois senator and former Union general John A. Logan came to bathe under Dr. Garnett's guidance. Veterans invited him to a special dinner at the Palace Bathhouse, where the Fordyce stands today, and asked him to bring a federal Army and Navy hospital to town. It opened behind Bathhouse Row in 1887, and its successor became the Hot Springs Rehabilitation Center in 1960.

The first Army and Navy Hospital and its grounds. Image from the Park Service's page.

Sources

• National Park Service, “Civil War Connections at Hot Springs National Park” (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/civil-war-connections-at-hot-springs-national-park.htm); pictures are historic photographs and Park Service photographs as given on the page; rewritten in hubnx's own words.