livestock. With thousands of enemy
cavalry lurking in the vicinity, Steele called on the Frontier Division to
furnish a train escort. General Thayer assigned more than six hundred infantry
and cavalry to that duty-438 officers and men from the 1st Kansas Colored
Infantry and 197 troopers in detachments taken from the 2nd, 6th, and 14th
Kansas Cavalry. Thayer also sent along thirty-three artillerymen and two
10-pound James rifles in Lieutenant William W. Haines’ section of the 2nd
Independent Battery, Indiana Light Artillery. To command the train and escort,
Thayer chose James M. Williams, the idealistic colonel of the 1st Kansas
Colored. A former lawyer, Williams was noted for his zeal, energy, and
efficiency, and had led his regiment to victory in some hotly contested actions
in Indian Territory.
Colonel Williams roused his column early on Sunday, April 17, and conducted
it west along the Camden-Washington Road. The Federals marched eighteen miles
and went into camp along White Oak Creek, where Williams dispatched details to
seize any corn found at farms and plantations within a six-mile radius.
Correctly divining Williams’ mission, Confederate patrols reached several of
these places first and burned approximately twenty-five hundred bushels. The
Federals loaded what remained aboard 141 wagons and reassembled at their camp by
midnight.
Williams commenced his homeward march at the crack of dawn on April 18. As
the column plodded toward a rising sun, the conscientious colonel split off
foraging details to fill his empty wagons from farms along his route. “There
being but few wagon loads of corn to be found at any one place,” Williams
explained, “I was obliged to detach portions of the command in different
directions to load the wagons until nearly my whole available force was so
employed.” These side trips and the extra labor weighed heavily on the footsore
1st Kansas Colored Infantry, which had received only fifteen hours of rest
during the past seventy-eight. By mid-morning, one hundred black soldiers were
so exhausted that their officers considered them unfit for duty.9
Williams proceeded four toilsome miles to a point known as “Cross-Roads,”
where a welcome sight greeted his eyes. Following the departure of the forage
train the previous day, General Thayer organized a 501-man relief column under
Captain William M. Duncan to cover Williams’ return. Duncan covered twelve miles
before dark on the seventeenth, which allowed him to effect a quick junction
with Williams the next morning. The relief force included 383 officers and men
from Duncan’s own regiment, the 18th Iowa Infantry, ninety-three horsemen from
the 2nd, 6th, and 14th Kansas Cavalry, and a section of two 12-pound mountain
howitzers manned by one officer and twenty-four troopers detached from the 6th
Kansas Cavalry. Duncan’s arrival gave Williams a total force of 1,169, but many
of his cavalrymen would deliberately lag behind to loot nearby farms.10
Keeping the original train escort and Duncan’s contingent separate, Williams
had the newcomers fall in at the rear of the column. The Federals proceeded
eastward, approaching an area that the locals called Poison Spring. A mile down
the road, the cavalry screening Williams’ advance spotted a number of mounted
Confederate pickets. This by itself was no cause for alarm. Duncan’s cavalry had
skirmished with enemy patrols throughout its outward march the previous day.
Williams’ advance guard spurred forward and the pickets gave ground as expected.
A mile closer to Camden, however, the Yankees topped a hill beside the road
around 10:00 a.m. and sighted a sizeable Rebel skirmish line bearing down on
them. If Colonel Williams intended to bring corn to Camden, he would have to
fight a battle at Poison Spring.
Those oncoming skirmishers represented the lead elements of 3,621 Confederate
cavalry and horse artillery who were converging on Poison Spring as quick as
their mounts could carry them. The officer responsible for this timely
concentration was Brigadier General John S. Marmaduke, a combative West Point
graduate. He commanded a Missouri cavalry division with headquarters at
Woodlawn, fourteen miles southwest of Camden. On the morning of April 17,
Marmaduke’s scouts brought him word of Williams’ foraging expedition. Marmaduke
wanted to attack, but he had only 486 troops on hand in Colonel Colton Greene’s
understrength brigade and Captain S.S. Harris’ four-gun battery. Marmaduke
immediately requested aid from Brigadier General James F. Fagan, the commander
of an Arkansas cavalry division. Fagan generously loaned him Brigadier General
William L. Cabell’s 1,200-man brigade, Colonel William A. Crawford’s three
hundred-man brigade, and the four guns of Captain W. M. Hughey’s battery. For
some undisclosed reason, Fagan chose not to accompany these units himself, and
command of them reverted to Cabell.
Setting out at sunset to intercept Williams, Marmaduke rode two miles until
he met some excited scouts. They announced that the Federals had been reinforced
and now numbered twenty-five hundred men. Discouraged by the grossly exaggerated
estimate, Marma-duke returned to Woodlawn, but he was not willing to let
Williams escape.
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