Early in June, 1862, Colonel Shaver, with General Hindman, was
 transferred to the Trans-Mississippi Department; and at Jacksonport,
 Ark., on the 8th of September of that year, Colonel Shaver organized the
 38th Arkansas Infantry, of which he was unanimously elected colonel and
 which he continued to command during the various campaigns and battles
 in that department. In the fall of 1864, at the reorganization of the
 Army of the Trans-Mississippi, Colonel Shaver was again elected colonel
 of the 38th, and on the same day, in a different field, he was also
 elected colonel of Shaver's 27th Arkansas Infantry. Gen. Kirby Smith
 consolidated these two regiments, and they were known thenceforth until
 the surrender in June, 1865, as Shaver's Infantry Regiment. He
 participated in all the principal battles fought in the
 Trans-Mississippi Department after June, 1862, among which were Prairie
 Grove, Mansfield, Jenkins' Ferry, Poison Springs, Marks Mill, and all
 the battles incident to Gen. Dick Taylor's Red River campaign against
 General Banks, during all of which he displayed his usual gallantry and
 resourcefulness. That Colonel Shaver was not killed was not his fault,
 for he gave the Federals every opportunity on many fields.

 At the evacuation of Little Rock, September 10, 1863, Colonel Shaver was
 in command of his brigade and covered the Confederate retreat out of the
 city southward. He was greatly chagrined and deeply mortified that he
 was not permitted to engage the enemy, and he always contended that
 General Price should have offered battle; that his forces were
 numerically superior to the Federals under General Steele and were in
 fine trim and anxious to fight. It has been truthfully said of Colonel
 Shaver that he had rather fight than eat, even after a week's
 subsistence on half rations and those who knew him and saw him on
 different battle fields can well testify to his worth as a resourceful
 officer and a tenacious fighter. He was a soldier by intuition,
 adaptability, and desire, and withal a strategist and tactician, a
 warrior with but few peers. He is mentioned in twelve different volumes
 and on many pages of the "Records" of the Union and Confederate armies,
 made up of the reports of the various commanding generals and published
 after the war by the government.

 Colonel Shaver not only had no friends at court, but much strong
 opposition caused by a political fight engendered in a State campaign in
 1860. One of the defeated candidates for State honors, being in high
 authority at Richmond in the Confederate Senate, always opposed Colonel
 Shaver's promotion; otherwise he would certainly have attained at least
 the rank of major general. With that rank opportunities would have
 offered which he would have availed effectively, thereby placing him
 beyond the reach of the deadly enmity of the politician; for as a
 military genius he was Gen. Pat Cleburne's equal in every respect, and
 everybody knows there was none better than Cleburne.

 Colonel Shaver's well-earned sobriquet of "Fighting Bob Shaver" was
 known throughout the different armies in which he served. He was wounded
 four times and had six horses killed under him in action.

 A poem on the Arkansas Confederate soldier mentions Colonel Shaver in
 one of its stanzas, as follows:

 "We fought with Lee at Gettysburg, with Cleburne  always our saver,

                With Bragg at Chickamauga Creek, at Shiloh with Bob  Shaver."

The information on this page was collected from various sites and publications on Colonel R.G. Shaver and his Units during the War of the Rebellion.