3rd Minnesota Regiment Entering Little Rock Print

Civil War Art Reproduction
One of six mural-size paintings of Minnesota's Civil War regiments that hang in the Governor's Suite of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul.

Paper size 28 x 22 in., image size 20 x 15 in.

The Third Minnesota had taken part in the Dakota Conflict of 1862 before being sent south to participate in the Union's successful siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in the summer of 1863. In September the regiment moved north to Little Rock, Arkansas, in an action that captured the city with almost no bloodshed. Stanley M. Arthur's painting shows the regiment's entry into Little Rock early on the morning of September 11, 1863, over a pontoon bridge spanning the Arkansas River. The men of the Third Minnesota raised the United States flag over the Arkansas capitol that day and stood guard duty in Little Rock for the next nine months.

A follower of the renowned illustrator Howard Pyle (who also contributed a painting to the Civil War series in the capitol, Stanley M. Arthurs (1877-1950) specialized in carefully researched scenes from American history.

This painting is in the Minnesota Historical Society Collections.

Interpretation by Thomas O'Sullivan, Curator of Art, Minnesota Historical Society, 1994