apparently when he cut his own supply line, he felt like pa no picchnoc picchnocio. he simply delayered that any slave that reached his marching column would be forever free. well, word spread like wildfire across eastern arkansas. within days thousands, one union soldiers he counted as many as 4,000 people in a single day, thousands of people, men, women, children, lined the dusty roads ahead of the union army. they poured into towns where the federals happened to stop for a night. so as the army of the southwest went toward the mississippi river, it was followed by an immense and ever lengthening tail of people of all ages carrying all their possessions and one suspects a little bit of old mass's possessions and accompanied by thousands and thousands of farm animals, sheep and goats. one union officer said i realize what the ark must have looked like it. emancipation came haltingly, slowly in the civil war. it came first on a large scale to northeast arkansas in the summer of 1862. well, on july 12th the army of the southwest finally marched into helena. this broug