In the 1850s, Arkansas was a frontier state. Most Arkansans, especially those who lived in the highlands of the north and west (the Ozarks and Ouachitas, respectively), were farmers engaged in subsistence agriculture on small parcels of land., The Civil War caused massive devastation in the rural, frontier state of Arkansas. It is estimated that over 7,000 Arkansas Confederate soldiers, 1,700 white Arkansas Union soldiers, hundreds of Arkan-sas African-American soldiers, and thousands of Arkansas citizens died during this crisis., The Civil War was the greatest catastrophe that the United States has ever endured, and no part of the nation suffered more than Arkansas. More than 6,800 of the 60,000 Arkansans who joined the Confederate Army died of wounds, accident, or disease, a mortality rate greater than 10 percent., Positioned on the Mississippi River and at the doorstep to the Southwest, Arkansas became an intensely contested battlefield during the American Civil War. The state seceded from the Union in 1861, but many residents of its northwestern section were Union sympathizers., Arkansas played a pivotal role in the American Civil War, caught between divided loyalties, intense battles, and a struggle for control of key strategic locations., This unit was composed mainly of loyal Arkansans who had fled to the North, and was the first of nine loyalist Arkansas cavalry and infantry regiments formed during the war..