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Brigadier General
James G. Blunt, seated center, and his staff in mid-1862. His chief
of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Moonlight (here a captain), is
the tall bearded officer standing behind Blunt. The tall, thin,
beardless officer standing on the left is Major Verplanck Van
Antwerp. Kansas State Historical Society,
Topeka
Eighteen sixty-two was a bad year
for
the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy. Major General Earl Van Dorn suffered a
crushing defeat at Pea Ridge in March and decided to abandon Arkansas and
Missouri. Without informing the War Department in Richmond of his intentions,
Van Dorn led his battered army across the Mississippi River to Corinth. As soon
as the governors of the affected states discovered what had happened they
screamed bloody murder, and authorities hastily dispatched Major General Thomas
C. Hindman to straighten out the mess. When Hindman reached Little Rock in May
he was shocked. “I found here almost nothing,” he complained. “Nearly everything
of value was taken away by General Van Dorn.” Hindman was a man of iron will,
extraordinary zeal, and exceptional administrative ability. During the summer he
restored order, revived morale, and created an army from scratch. His remarkable
accomplishments in the least populous and least developed part of the
Confederacy seemed almost miraculous. Then he made a mistake.1
The main body of the embryonic Trans-Mississippi Army was based
at Fort Smith, a colorful frontier town in western Arkansas only a stone’s throw
from the Indian Territory. Hindman knew better than anyone else that his
soldiers, an uncomfortable mix of volunteers and conscripts, were not yet fully
trained or equipped, but he was eager to strike a blow. He believed that if he
acted quickly he might be able to recover a portion of Missouri, for it was no
secret that Union forces in that state had been reduced in order to bolster
operations in Tennessee and Mississippi. And so in early September Hindman
marched out of the Arkansas Valley and over the Boston Mountains at the head of
about six thousand men. The Confederates encountered no opposition and advanced
rapidly across the Ozark Plateau. Everything was going according to plan, but at
this critical juncture Hindman was called to Little Rock and his army entered
southwest Missouri without him.
The Union commander in Missouri, Brigadier General John M.
Schofield, was surprised by the unexpected Confederate incursion, but he
responded with great energy and quickly cobbled together a makeshift force
called the Army of the Frontier. After several sharp engagements, most notably Newtonia, the Federals gained the upper hand and drove the Rebels back into
northwest Arkansas. When Hindman finally resumed command, he recognized that his
gamble had failed. He sparred with Schofield for a few weeks then in early
November withdrew across the Boston Mountains.
With Hindman out of reach in the Arkansas Valley, Schofield
judged that the immediate threat to Missouri was over and returned to
Springfield with two of his three divisions. With winter approaching another
Confederate offensive atop the Ozark Plateau seemed unlikely, but just to be on
the safe side Schofield directed Brigadier General James G. Blunt, commander of
the army’s largest division, to remain in northwest Arkansas and keep a close
watch on the Rebels.2
Blunt was a short, stocky, amateur soldier from Kansas who often
wore a business suit instead of a uniform. He drank too much and had other
personal shortcomings, but he was a bold, resolute, and intrepid commander who
liked nothing better than personally leading soldiers into battle. His lack of
pretense and love of action made him immensely popular with his men. Blunt
jumped at the chance to operate independently in hostile territory but he chafed
at the defensive nature of his assignment, for he was one of the most aggressive
officers in the Union army. Nonetheless, for the next few weeks he dutifully
followed Schofield’s instructions to remain alert and avoid taking unnecessary
risks. In mid-November Blunt’s command, popularly known as the Kansas Division
because it was composed largely of volunteers from that state, was camped along
Flint Creek a short distance north of present-day Siloam Springs in the
northwest corner of Arkansas.
Sixty-five miles to the south in the Arkansas Valley, Hindman
labored tirelessly to prepare his command for another round of offensive
operations, but his efforts were hampered by a crippling shortage of food. The
summer had been exceptionally dry and the fall harvest was the poorest in years.
The scarcity of food around Fort Smith was compounded by low water in the
Arkansas River, which made it difficult to bring in supplies from other parts of
the Confederacy. Lieutenant Colonel George W. Guess of the 31st Texas Cavalry
reported that his men were “without any bread or meal” and had been reduced to
“panking corn in the ashes and eating it for breakfast.” Other Rebel regiments
were in the same sad state. While his long-suffering men and animals scraped by
on reduced rations, Hindman learned that a fertile agricultural region called
Cane Hill had escaped the worst effects of the drought. Unfortunately for the
Confederates, this land of plenty was located on the north side of the Boston
Mountains, thirty-five rough and rocky miles from Fort Smith but only thirty
miles from Blunt’s camp on Flint Creek.3
Hindman resolved to gather the bountiful harvest at Cane Hill
before it fell into enemy hands. On November 9 he ordered Brigadier General John
S. Marmaduke to take the Trans-Mississippi Army’s cavalry division across the
mountains and bring back all the food he could carry. Marmaduke was a tall,
spare, angular Missourian and a solid if unspectacular cavalry officer. He also
was one of the few men in Confederate service who could boast of both an Ivy
League and a West Point education. Marma-duke’s Arkansas and Missouri troopers
occupied Cane Hill for five days and filled a large commissary train with
hundreds of pounds of smoked meat and thousands of bushels of flour, meal, and
hay. They returned to the Arkansas Valley without incident and received a hero’s
welcome from their famished comrades. Hindman was emboldened by Marma-duke’s
success and Blunt’s inaction. A week later he directed Marmaduke to stage a
repeat performance.4
The sudden appearance of Marma-duke’s cavalry division on the
north side of the Boston Mountains startled Blunt. He concluded, a bit too
hastily as it turned out, that Hindman was making another attempt to reach
Missouri. In accordance with Schofield’s expressed desire that he not do
anything rash, Blunt placed his six thousand troops in defensive positions along
Flint Creek and waited impatiently for the Rebels to arrive. He announced his
intentions in no uncertain terms: “I have no doubt they meditate an attack upon
me in superior force, but I am prepared to meet them and shall not retreat one
inch.” The expected Confederate offensive failed to materialize, however, and
Marmaduke mysteriously withdrew across the mountains a few days later. Blunt was
furious with himself for adopting a defensive stance and allowing Marmaduke to
get away. He vowed that the next time the Rebels made an appearance on his side
of the mountains he would follow his instincts and attack at once. “General
Blunt is determined to fight,” noted Major Albert C. Ellithorpe of the 1st
Indian Home Guard, one of three Indian regiments in the Kansas Division. “It
makes no difference what their force is.”5
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