30th Arkansas Infantry Regiment
The 30th Arkansas Infantry (1862–1865) was a Confederate Army infantry regiment during the American Civil War. This regiment was also called the 5th Arkansas Cavalry, the 5th Trans-Mississippi Regiment or 39th Regiment after April, 1863. This regiment was converted to mounted infantry for Price's Missouri Expedition in 1864 and was known as Rogan's Arkansas Cavalry. There were two regiments officially designated as the 30th Arkansas Infantry. The other 30th Arkansas served east of the Mississippi River and was redesignated as the 25th Arkansas Infantry. Organization 30th Infantry Regiment was formed on June 18, 1862, with Colonel Archibald J. McNeill as the original commander. The unit was raised as a mounted infantry or cavalry regiment and was originally designated as the 5th Arkansas Cavalry. In early June 1862 Major McNeill was ordered by Major General Hindman to Crowley's Ridge to conscript roving and unattached companies. The state was facing an invasion in the aftermath of the defeat of General Earl Van Dorn at the Battle of Pea Ridge. Immediately following the battle, General Van Dorn and his Army of the West had been ordered to the east side of the Mississippi to support what would become the Battle of Shiloh. General Van Dorn had stripped the State of Arkansas of all organized units and supplies. General Hindman was placed in command of the new Department of the Trans-Mississippi and immediate began organizing a new army. General Hindman's guidance to Major McNeill and others attempting to organize new regiments in Northeast Arkansas in the face of an imminent invasion threat was to organize rapidly and put each company in the field as soon as completed and attack the enemy. By June 13, 1862, Major McNeill reported from Madison to General Hindman: The companies which Major McNeill found and began to organize into a regiment were originally mounted. By June 18, 1862 Major McNeil reported the companies organized under authority given him to raise a regiment. On August 8, 1862, in Special Orders 60, Army of the South West, General Hindman appointed Major A. J. McNeill as commander of McNeill's Regiment of Arkansas Infantry with date of rank to June 18, 1862, the date that McNeill had first reported the formation of his regiment. Companies continued to be added to McNeill's command through the summer, but by July 10, 1862, General Hindman had ordered McNeill's command dismounted and its horses sent home. Major General Hindman, in a report of his activities in the Trans-Mississippi Department during the period May 31 to November 3, 1862, dated Richmond, Va., June 19, 1863, said, "The scarcity of supplies now caused great distress. Nearly two months must yet elapse before the new crop would ripen. To lessen the consumption of corn, I found it necessary to dismount four regiments of Texans and three of . This produced much dissatisfaction, and there were many desertions in consequence." Colonel McNeill's regiment was one of those which were dismounted. There is little information about the regiment when it was first