They contacted Leroy P. Walker, Confederate Secretary of War, at Montgomery, by telegraph and received his reply declining the offer of the two companies, separate from a regiment.

Rust help gain the acceptance as a part of the Confederate Army, conditioned on his raising the remaining companies needed to form a regiment.

Rust, returned to Arkansas, and organized nine additional companies, and joined Captain Tebbs and Capt Manning in Virginia, where the regiment was mustered into service for the period of the war.

While in Virginia, command level officers with formal military training were assigned to the regiment, to include West Point graduate Seth.

[16] The regiment was ordered to the mountains of West Virginia, where it performed arduous and discouraging service in the campaign on the Gauley and Cheat rivers.

This was followed by hard marching under Stonewall Jackson (whom Col Rust later described as "an impracticable old schoolmaster who said grace before he ate and prayed before going to bed") in the Valley Campaign.

The Second Arkansas Battalion had been organized in October, 1861, from three companies of volunteers from El Dorado, Hot Springs and Pine Bluff.

In June, 1862, the 2nd Arkansas Battalion was decimated while leading an assault on the Federal position at Beaver Dam Creek, and its commander, Major William Naylor Bronaugh, mortally wounded.

[17] The Third Arkansas acquired a reputation as tenacious fighters, often finding themselves in the thickest fighting on the battlefield, such as their presence at the "sunken road" during the Battle of Antietam.

The regiment was commended for gallantry in that action, while under the direct command of Brigadier General Jerome B. Robertson, fighting in and in the vicinity of the "Devil's Den".

[20] The regiment was transferred with Longstreet's Corps to Tennessee in September, 1863 in time to fight at the Battle of Chickamauga (where Major Reedy was mortally wounded).

The unit went on to participate in the battles of Chattanooga, Wauhatchie, and in the siege of Knoxville, Tennessee, returning to the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring of 1864.

H. Manning and Lieutenant-Colonel Robert S. Taylor, both of whom were badly wounded and captured, in addition to Major William K. Wilkins who was killed in action.

The regiment was at Deep Run on August 6, 1864; at Petersburg during the siege by Grant, at High Bridge and Farmville during the closing day of the war in 1865.

The flag was donated to the Old State House Museum by the family of Private R. Jessie Bailey, 3rd Arkansas Infantry, regimental band.

[26] When General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, only 144 men of the Third Arkansas remained out of the 1,353 mustered into it from the start of the war.