Bryan, I was really trying to encourage some of our known excellant published writters of Arkansas history, like Bill Shea and Anthony Rushing (hint hint), to maybe look at the project.
My Brother-in-law has written 5 doctorial theology books. So I known what kind of dedication it takes to write a book. I am no good at that. I've been trying to write something on the history of the war in Southeast Arkansas for 15 years now and can't put it together. I know that the chess game warfare that was the defense of the Lower Arkansas River valley, The second front as I call it in the War in Arkansas, was not so glamorus as Praire Grove and Pea Ridge, or even Little Rock and Jenkins Ferry. But it is, to me, an important study simply because it was so important and so unglamorus and had such far reaching impact on the Vicksburg Campaign and Missouri campaigns.
My problem is I am always redoing some part of it. Oh I can tell you stories about what happened down here all day long, but put it on paper in a form I am happy with? It like the letters of the 9th Arkansas that I sent to Dr. Willis in his history "Arkansas Confederates in the Western Theater", I would have never been able to put those into a concise form.
The one thing that has held me up is that in my research I found that many of the previous written histories are now to some degree incorrect in their original assumptions. And those error have been carried on in later works.
One Example is Camp Wright where Gen John G. Walkers Texas Division camped after the fall of Arkansas Post until April of 1863, when they went to Louisiana. Many of the earlier Histories put Camp Wright at Wright, Arkansas, near Pastoria. Because they didn't know where it was when they wrote those original accounts. We now know that Camp Wright was on the Wright Plantation, which is now the University Of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. And was near the Arkansas River halfway between Fort Pleasant and Pine Bluff.
This may seem to be a minor difference except the new location explains the role they were playing in the total defence of the Lower Arkansas and why the federal navy just didn't sail their gunboats during High Water period, up the Arkansas River, like Commander Thomas O Selfridge who commanding the USS Cairo and later the USS Constatoga wanted to do, in the first place.
As for the 3rd Arkansas I read those excellant accounts of the 1st, 4th, and 5th Texas and Hood's Texas Brigade by Harold Simpson and say why cain't there be a simular book written about the 3rd Arkansas? I know that it may be plowing old ground, but there are so few regimental histories, or Histories in general, that deal with Arkansas Fighting Units. And those Arkansas Boys didn't have anything to hang their heads and be ashamed about.
If I ever do write a book I know what the Title will be. I will title my book, "NOTHING EVER HAPPENED HERE, SO NOBODY LOOKED!" That would seem to sum up just about all the attitudes regarding Arkansas History.