I cant really say how long since I did it in spare time. But I will give a short detail of how I broke it down.

1. I printed out a good typed copy of Saline Co 1860 census, by township. Our local history society and others had transcribed those in the past. I see there are some for Union county, at least 5 townships so not sure how many townships Union had in 1860.

2. I highlighted each male aged 10-65 being sure to see age, occupation, where born etc.

3. I think I started out with the rosters from the Arkansas Edward Gerds Civil War site at http://www.couchgenweb.com/civilwar/. Bryan Howerton has already provided you with Union Co units containing a majority of Union Co men. But now that the entire CSR is available on Fold3 on the computer you can use that as well. Bryan's units and the rosters from the Gerdes site will get you the majority probably and you will have to hunt and fill in the rest.

4. When I found a name on the CSR that matched, I wrote out the unit (company and regiment) beside the man's name. I did nothing with those I did not find. Then all the men with units were my soldiers. However, some common names must be rechecked as the man with the same name could be anywhere in Arkansas, you have to look for other clues..like he was in or was not in one of those Union Co companies Bryan provided. Sometimes his military info would list where he joined, or sometimes if captured or discharged his home was listed.

To get it accurate you have to diligently search for all those names you can't find on lists. That is what takes a while. If I couldn't find them on any CSR I went to Union CSR's, then pension records, COnfederate Reunion 1911 etc on the Ark History Comm site at www.ark-ives.com
the National Park Services Soldier search that is online and anywhere else you think you can look. Once I exhausted these sites and lists, I marked the name off as a non soldier. But again using the Gerdes rosters and Bryan's info will give you the majority. I always looked in other counties around Saline as well as many times they traveled there to enlist in a non county regiment. That would be my second quick search. You would look at AShley, Bradley, Columbia etc.

Beware, I started out to just make a list of all soldiers that morphed into a list of all thier socio-demographic info as well as all thier military info (WIA, KIA, captured, surrendered etc). It starts getting way to interesting to just stop with list of names and units.

ANyway, I would highly recommend it, anything you might do in this area would only greatly add to the knowledge we have. Bryan is a great resource to run men by if you get something confusing as he might have info to prove or disprove your man.

ANyway, good luck

Anthony