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A
view of Poison Spring Historic Battlefield Site.
Photograph by A.C. Haralson, courtesy Arkansas
Department of Parks and Tourism
At the outset of the
Civil War, Camden, Arkansas, was a bustling commercial center on the
Ouachita River roughly 120 miles south of Little Rock. Rows of trim
white houses sheltered 2,219 people, making Camden the second
largest city in the state.1
Yet when Major General Frederick Steele approached Camden with a Union army
in April 1864, the place took on the appearance of a ghost town. Many of the
city’s young white males had gone off long ago to fight for Southern
independence. The remaining white residents cowered in their homes, wondering
what punishment the invaders might inflict on a community so firm in its support
of the Confederacy. Such terror was a new experience for Camdenites, as no other
large Union column had penetrated that far into southwestern Arkansas. As
Private Wiley Britton of the 6th Kansas Cavalry gloated: “Our rapid advance
caused almost a complete panic among the rebel civilians. . . . so much so that
they seemed to think the whole country was flooded with Yankees.”2
That blue flood surged into Camden near dusk on April 15. “The awful day of
all days-the dread event feared for years,” local merchant John W. Brown
scribbled in his diary. “About 6 O clock, an enemy infuriated by combat & hunger
came rushing down our main street and diverging into the cross streets. . . .
Northern muskets, swords & bayonets glittering with the last rays of the setting
sun with fierce imprecations and hideous shouts of exultation.”3
Steele, the commander of the Union Department of Arkansas and VII Army Corps,
drew his army from two sources. Nine thousand men grouped in one infantry
division and one cavalry division accompanied Steele when he left Little Rock on
March 23, 1864. Brigadier General John M. Thayer had already marched from
Fort Smith two days earlier with the Frontier Division, just under five thousand
troops in two infantry brigades and one of cavalry. The two Federal columns
rendezvoused on the Little Missouri River south of Arkadelphia on April 9.4
Thayer’s 2nd Brigade included the 1st and 2nd Kansas Colored Infantry, the
first black regiments ever committed to an active combat role in a major Union
offensive in Arkansas. That fact infuriated Confederate soldiers and civilians
alike. “Only one thing stirred my Southern blood to heat,” admitted a Camden
housewife, “was when a negro regiment passed my home going to fight our own dear
men.”5
Steele’s ultimate destination was Shreveport, Louisiana, on the Red River,
where he planned to join a larger Union army and a gunboat flotilla under Major
General Nathaniel P. Banks. Banks wanted Steele to assist in an invasion of
Texas and the seizure of vast supplies of cotton for profit-hungry Northern
speculators.
Steele’s route south was not an easy one. Lieutenant General Edmund Kirby
Smith, the commander of the Confed-eracy’s Trans-Mississippi Department,
concentrated much of his strength in Louisiana to oppose Banks, but he left six
thousand cavalry behind to defend southern Arkansas. Most of these Rebel
troopers were well-mounted and armed with long-range Enfield and Richmond rifle
muskets, which enabled them to function as potent mounted infantry. Beginning on
April 2, the Confederates subjected Steele’s main column to constant harassment,
contesting river crossings and pressing his rear guard. “I don’t think there was
a day passed without some one being Shot,” claimed one Union infantryman. The
Confederates continued their hit-and-run tactics even after Steele and Thayer
united on the Little Missouri.6
Though Steele’s soldiers cursed enemy bushwhacking and muddy roads, the most
formidable adversary they encountered was hunger. The Federals passed through a
country that had been scoured by Confederate foragers since the fall of 1863. By
the time the invaders reached Camden, they had been on half-rations for three
weeks, and they immediately searched the city for anything to eat. “The soldiers
dashed to our doors demanding food,” John Brown confided to his diary. “I soon
handed out all the victuals which were on hand, cooked. After dark they brook
into the smoke house & commenced carrying off as they wanted.” Mrs. A.J.
Marshall, a schoolteacher, watched in horror as blue foot soldiers “broke open
the smokehouse with one blow of the butt-end of their muskets, stuck their
bayonets through as many joints of meat as would stick on them, filled seives
and boxes with meat, rice, sugar, coffee, flour, etc.”7
While the larders of Camden afforded temporary relief to the famished Union
troops, Steele faced another problem. His future mobility depended on providing
sufficient forage for the twelve thousand horses and mules attached to his army.
As Captain Charles A. Henry, Steele’s chief quartermaster, commented: “The
difficulty of procuring forage occasioned great uneasiness, as we were without
any base of supplies and with an active enemy in front.”8
Fortunately, Captain Henry learned that five thousand bushels of corn had
been stored at some farms sixteen miles west of Camden. He quickly assembled a
forage train of 198 wagons to collect this prize, which could be converted into
meal for Steele’s soldiers or feed for his
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