11/01/2020
Photo: Confederate veterans pose for photo with camp commander Robert G. Shaver while attending the United Confederate Veterans Reunion in Little Rock, May 1911. Shaver stands third from the left in the front row.
Robert Glenn Shaver (1831–1915) was a Confederate officer who raised Arkansas troops for the war, a commander who was wounded in battle, and a former outlaw who once fled the United States to escape punishment.
Robert Shaver was born on April 18, 1831, in Sullivan County, Tennessee, exactly on the line between Virginia and Tennessee. He was the third of four children born to David and Martha (May) Shaver. He attended school at home, and from 1846 to 1850, he attended Emory and Henry College in Virginia. Shaver and his parents moved to Arkansas in 1850, settling east of Batesville (Independence County) in Lawrence County (now Sharp County).
On June 10, 1856, Shaver married Adelaide Louise Ringgold. Before she died in 1889, Adelaide bore eight children. In 1859, Shaver was licensed to practice law in Lawrence County, and they resided on their farm near the White River.
With the eruption of the Civil War in 1861 and Arkansas’s secession from the Union, Shaver received an order from the Military Board of Arkansas to raise a regiment of volunteers from the White River Valley. Ten counties were allotted to him from which to raise the regiment, and the organization took place at Smithville (Lawrence County) on June 16, 1861. In response to the call for soldiers, enough volunteers arrived to create thirty-two companies. Shaver was forced to send many away, as he was authorized only to organize ten companies of 120 men each into the Seventh Arkansas Regiment. Shaver was chosen as colonel, and the regiment became known as “Shaver’s Regiment” and carried that name throughout the war. Shaver and his troops were immediately ordered to Pullman’s Ferry to take a steamboat first to Columbus, Kentucky, and then to Bowling Green to engage Union forces.
Shaver’s Regiment was prominent and illustrious in the war as Shaver led them in battle in Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. His troops bestowed the nickname of “Fighting Bob” on their commander. Shaver is mentioned in twelve different volumes and on several pages of the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion of the Union and Confederate armies.
Shaver and his Arkansas troops were part of the Confederate effort to stop the southward advance by General Ulysses S. Grant in the spring of 1862. Shaver was commander of the First Brigade of Hindman’s Division, Third Army Corps, which was composed of the Second, Sixth, and Seventh Arkansas Infantry and the Third Confederate Infantry, of which two-thirds were also Arkansas troops. Confederate General Albert Sydney Johnston engaged Grant’s forces at Shiloh, Tennessee, in April 1862. Shaver initiated the fight on the Confederate right early Sunday morning of April 6. This opening phase of the battle became known as “The Hornet’s Nest,” and Shaver was seriously wounded in the head and in his left side by an exploding shell. He was unconscious for several hours and suffered from these wounds until the end of his life.
After the Union victory at Shiloh, Shaver was eventually transferred to the Trans-Mississippi Department. In September 1862, Shaver organized the Thirty-eighth Arkansas Infantry at Jacksonport (Jackson County) and was elected colonel. He was on the field at Prairie Grove, Jenkins’ Ferry, Poison Spring, Marks' Mills, and the Red River Campaign. He covered the Confederate retreat from Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1863, reportedly furious that General Sterling Price would not allow him to engage the enemy.
In 1864, General Kirby Smith consolidated the Thirty-eighth Arkansas Infantry and Twenty-seventh Arkansas Infantry, and Shaver commanded these two regiments, known until the end of the war as “Shaver’s Infantry Regiment.”
In March 1865, Shaver received orders to report to Texas and to take command of the port at Galveston. He got as far as Marshall, Texas, when word was received of Lee’s surrender to Grant in Virginia. When he received notice the war was over, he took his command to Shreveport, Louisiana, and surrendered to General Francis Herron. Shaver’s surrender was the last organized Confederate force to surrender in the war.
Shaver procured a large steamboat to transport his men to Jacksonport (most of his troops were from northern Arkansas) from General Herron. He arrived at Jacksonport on June 20, 1865, and his men were disbanded.
Shortly after returning to Jacksonport in 1872, he was informed that Governor Baxter had appointed him to the position of sheriff for newly created Howard County in western Arkansas. Shaver lived in Center Point (Howard County) until 1899, practicing law after leaving his duties as sheriff. In 1899, he and his family moved to Mena (Polk County) to live with his son. In the 1890s, Shaver was made commander of the State Guard and the Reserve Militia of Arkansas and received the rank of general. He was also the commander of the Arkansas Division of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV).
In 1910, he was selected to raise funds and to dedicate a monument and choose its location on the Shiloh battlefield to honor all the Arkansas soldiers who fought and died there. On September 26, 1911, Shaver gave the main address at the dedication of the memorials on the former battleground at Shiloh. When Little Rock was chosen as the site for the annual reunion of the Confederate Veterans, he was made commander-in-charge of the camp, and the National Encampment of the United Confederate was known as “Camp Shaver.”
By 1914, Shaver was becoming feeble and traveled to Foreman (Little River County) to be with his two daughters. He died at Foreman on January 13, 1915, and was buried in his Confederate uniform at Center Point Cemetery in Howard County.
