Arkansas Peace Society

Peace Society members marked their homes with a yellow rag or ribbon, which led Confederates to call them yellar rag boys. Estimates of membership run to 1,700, though only about 240 names are known. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas names Van Buren, Izard, Carroll, Fulton and Marion counties as strongholds, and says the society was betrayed on November 17, 1861, and discovered in Searcy County three days later. Conscripts from the chain gang deserted at higher rates than other soldiers. One of them, John Morris, fought at Shiloh in April 1862 and later joined the First Arkansas Union Cavalry.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Buffalo National River at Tyler Bend — 9.1 mi
  The country's first national river, kept free-flowing after a dam fight that ended in 1965, seen from the Middle District's visitor center, the Collier Homestead and the Riverview Trail.
• Rush Historic District — 16 mi
  The zinc-mining camp on Rush Creek that boomed from the 1880s, emptied after 1919 and now stands inside Buffalo National River as a ghost town.
• Blanchard Springs Caverns — 26 mi
  A living limestone cave in the Ozark National Forest, opened to the public in 1973 on a spring that once ran a Confederate veteran's gristmill.
• Jacob Wolf House — 28 mi
  Arkansas's oldest public structure, a two-story dogtrot log house at the Norfork confluence that served as the Izard County courthouse in 1829 and later as a family home.

More markers nearby

• Federal Raids on Burrowville — steps away
• Searcy County Seat — steps away
• Elton Britt — steps away
• Skirmish at Tomahawk — 13 mi