Asa Payne

Asa Payne Company E, 3^rd Missouri Infantry, 1^st Missouri Brigade (CSA)

In 1911, Civil War veteran Asa Payne wrote his remembrances of the Battle of Pea Ridge after revisiting the now peaceful battlefield.

"After a lapse of forty nine years, I again visited the Pea Ridge battle ground and it may not be out of place here to give my memories of that historic field on that occasion."

"I was, yet I was not the beardless boy that marched away, but an old, gray bearded man. I was surprised to find how little it had changed, what seemed to be the same old tavern with its elk horns was standing there still, but the barn was gone and in its place an apple orchard grew. There was nothing to remind me of the treacherous days in March of '62 but two monuments about twelve feet high which stand about a hundred yards southwest of the tavern, inscribed on one of them are the names of General Schlack and of General McIntosh and General Ben McCullough; the other one is in memory of the Federal commanders."

"I stayed all night in that old tavern but all was quiet, the booming of cannon and the wails of the wounded were hushed forever. While seated on its porch beyond the eastern hills the full moon rose like a copper disk and shed its light just as fifty years before over the bloody field. I was lulled to sleep by the tinkling of cow bells in the near by mountain and was awakened only by the hoot of owls which seemed to me were hooting their last long hoot in memory of the past."