Colonel Crawford marched away from Jenkins’ Ferry certain that the reprisals
committed by the 2nd Kansas Colored had taught the Rebels to stop murdering
black prisoners. He was wrong. The Federals left 150 soldiers too badly hurt to
be moved at an overcrowded field hospital at Jenkins’ Ferry. Nine of them were
enlisted men from the 2nd Kansas Colored. Just as the sun began to set, some
Confederate cavalry rode up to the hospital and began robbing the Federal dead
and wounded. Surgeon William L. Nicholson of the 29th Iowa had volunteered to
remain with his stricken countrymen, and he later testified: “One [Rebel],
dressed as an officer, drew his revolver and shot three wounded ‘niggers’ who
lay in the yard.” Nicholson narrowly escaped taking a bullet himself when he
loudly protested “this brutal violation of the hospital flag.” Two weeks later,
the Confederates moved Nicholson and the six surviving 2nd Kansas men to a more
permanent hospital at Princeton, Arkansas. The blacks were quartered in a small
storehouse apart from the wounded white Federals. “They had not been long
deposited,” Nicholson recalled, “when I heard shooting and some one remarked
‘The niggers are catching it.’” Glancing at the storeroom, the surgeon saw a
Confederate soldier emerge with a smoking revolver in each hand. “I went over at
once,” Nicholson wrote, “and found all the poor negroes shot through the head.”38
The heartless events that transpired at Poison Spring, Jenkins’ Ferry, and
Princeton haunted the participants of the Camden Campaign in the months that
followed. Both Union and Confederate soldiers in Arkansas had violated the
bounds of civilized warfare, and a sensitive handful feared that the struggle
would sink to even deeper levels of savagery. “It looks hard,” admitted Private
Chambers, “but the rebs cannot blame the negroes when they are guilty of the
same trick.” Two weeks after Steele returned to Little Rock, one of his
officers, Lieutenant William Blain of the 40th Iowa Infantry, composed this
chilling epitaph for the campaign: “It would not surprise me in the least if
this war would ultimately be one of extermination. Its tendencies are in that
direction now.”39
Gregory J.W. Urwin is the author of numerous works on the Civil War, including
Custer Victorious
(1983), and on the Second World War. His book Facing Fearful Odds: The Siege
of Wake Island received the General Wallace M. Greene, Jr., Award from the
Marine Corps Heritage Foundation. He is general editor of the University of
Oklahoma Press Campaigns and Commanders series, and teaches at Temple
University in Pennsylvania.
NOTES:
1. Gregory J. W. Urwin, “Notes on the First Confederate
Volunteers from Ouachita County, Arkansas, 1861,” Military Collector &
Historian 49 (Summer 1997): 83; J. A. Newman, The Autobiography of an Old
Fashioned Boy (El Reno, Oklahoma: Privately printed, 1923), 23.
2. Wiley Britton to his wife, “The Camden Expedition,”
June 1, 1864, p. 10, Wiley Britton Letters, J. N. Heiskel Historical Collection,
H-4, 13, UALR Archives and Special Collections, UALR Library, University of
Arkansas at Little Rock.
3. John W. Brown, “Diary,” April 15, 1864, Arkansas
History Commission, Little Rock, Arkansas.
4. Wiley Britton, The Union Indian Brigade in the
Civil War (Kansas City, Missouri: 1922), p. 347; U.S. War Department, The
War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and
Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington, D.C.: 1880-1901), ser. 1, vol.
34, pt. 1: p. 657 (Here-after cited as OR, with all references to ser. 1,
vol. 34, pt. 1, unless otherwise noted).
5. John M. Harrell, “Arkansas,” in Clement A. Evans, ed.,
Confederate Military History, vol. 10 (Seacaucus, New Jersey: 1975), p. 239;
Virginia Mc’Collum Stinson, “Memories,” in Mrs. M. A. Elliott, comp., The
Garden of Memory: Stories of the Civil War as Told by Veterans and Daughters of
the Confederacy
(Camden, Arkansas: 1911), p. 31.
6. OR, 779-81; Roman J. Zorn, ed., “Campaigning in
Southern Arkansas: A Memoir by C. T. Anderson,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly
8 (Autumn 1949): pp. 241-42; James L. Skinner, III, ed., The Autobiography of
Henry Merrell: Industrial Missionary to the South (Athens: 1991), p. 352;
Harrell, “Arkansas,” 238-39; John N. Shepherd, “Autobiography,” Guthrie,
Oklahoma, 1908, 42, Richard S. Warner Papers, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
7. OR, 662, 679-80, 734; Brown, “Diary,” April 15,
1864; Mrs. A. J. Marshall,
Autobiography (Pine Bluff, Arkansas: Privately printed, 1897), p. 101.
8. OR, 680.
9. Ibid., 743-44.
10. OR, 743-44, 746, 748-50; Steele’s Kansas
cavalrymen became notorious for their depredations. For more details on this
topic, see Gregory J. W. Urwin, “‘We Cannot Treat Negroes . . . as Prisoners of
War’: Racial Atrocities and Reprisals in Civil War Arkansas,” Civil War
History 42 (September 1996): pp. 199-200.
11. OR, 848-49; Henry Cathey, ed., “Extracts from the
Memoirs of William Franklin Avera,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 22
(Summer 1963): pp. 102-3; Stinson, “Memories,” 34; Allan C. Ashcraft,
“Confederate Indian Troop Conditions in 1864,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 41
(Winter 1963-64): p. 445.
12. OR, 791, 819, 826; Washington (Ark.) Telegraph,
May 11, 1864.
13. OR, 744, 751.
14.
Ibid., 744, 846.
15. Ibid., 744, 750-52, 755.
16. William F. Stafford, “Battery Journal,” April 18, 1864,
M.D. Hutcheson Papers, Camden, Arkansas; Anonymous to “Dear Sally,” n.d., Spence
Civil War Letters, photostat copies on loan to the Old State House Museum,
Little Rock, Arkansas;
OR, 752.
17. OR, 745, 752.
18. When Colonel Randolph Barnes Marcy, one of the
regular army’s four inspector generals, inspected the 1st Kansas Colored on July
19, 1864, he found the regiment armed with “230 U.S. muskets calibre 69 and 126
Enfield rifled muskets calibre 58.” Either type could fire buck and ball
cartridges. OR, 745, 752, 847; R. B. Marcy, “Report of Inspection of the
Department of Arkansas Made in June and July 1864 by Colonel Randolph B. Marcy,
Inspector General U.S. Army,” Record Group 94, Office of Inspector General
Letters Received, 1863-1876, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
19. OR, 745, 752.
20. Ibid., 745.
21. Britton, Union Indian Brigade, 367; OR,
ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, pp. 447-52; Dudley Taylor Cornish, “Kansas Negro
Regiments in the Civil War,”
Kansas Historical Quarterly 21 (May 1953), p. 425.
22. OR, 791, 828, 843, 847.
23. OR, 746, 753-54; Anonymous to “Dear Sally,”
n.d.; Stafford, “Battery Journal,” April 18, 1864; Fort Smith New Era,
May 7, 1864.
24. OR, 746, 748, 749, 756, 757.
25. Fort Smith New Era, May 7, 14, 21, 1864;
Washington Telegraph, May 25, 1864.
26. Britton, Union Indian Brigade, 372-73; Ralph
R. Rea, Sterling Price: The Lee of the West (Little Rock: 1959), p. 106;
Henry Merrell, “Receipts” Book (Diary), April 18, 1864, Southwest Arkansas
Regional Archives, Washington, Arkansas; George Carr to “Dear Father,” May 2,
1864, Eugene A. Carr Papers, Archives Branch, U.S. Army Military History
Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; A. W. M. Petty, A History of the
Third Missouri Cavalry: From Its Organization at Palmyra, Missouri, in 1861, up
to November Sixth, 1864: With an Appendix and Recapitulation (Little Rock:
1865), p. 76 .
27. Stafford, “Battery Journal,” April 18, 1864; Zorn,
“Campaigning in Southern Arkansas,” pp. 242-43; Skinner, Autobiography of
Henry Merrell, 367-68.
28.
Washington Telegraph, May 11, 1864.
29. Urwin, “We Cannot Treat Negroes,” 202; Washington
Telegraph, June 27, 1864, January 13, 1865; Arkansas Gazette,
November 4, 1853, April 6, June 15, 1855; Helena Southern Shield, October
25, December 20, 1856; Skinner,
Autobiography of Henry Merrell, 38-39.
30. Arkansas Gazette, October 11, 1862; Little Rock
True Democrat, April 22, 1863; Washington Telegraph, October 15,
1862, June 8, 1864; For a balanced account of the Fort Pillow Massacre, see
Brian Steel Wills, A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford
Forrest (New York: 1992), pp. 179-96.
31.
Washington Telegraph, May 25, 1864; Charles O. Musser to “Dear Father,” May
11, 1864, in Barry Popchock, ed., Soldier Boy: The Civil War Letters of
Charles O. Musser, 29th Iowa (Iowa City, Iowa: 1995), p. 127.
32. OR, 669-70; Edwin C. Bearss, Steele’s Retreat
from Camden and the Battle of Jenkins’ Ferry (Little Rock: 1990), pp. 102,
161; Samuel J. Crawford,
Kansas in the Sixties, ( Chicago: 1911) p. 121-23.
33. OR, 697-98, 781, 813; Little Rock Unconditional
Union, May 13, 20, 1864; George Carr to “Dear Father,” May 2, 1864;
Crawford, Kansas in the Sixties, 124-28; Lonnie J. White, ed., “A
Bluecoat’s Account of the Camden Expedition,”
Arkansas Historical Quarterly 24 (Spring 1965): 87-88; William E. McLean,
Forty-Third Regiment of Indiana Volunteers: An Historic Sketch of Its Career
and Services (Terre Haute: 1903), p. 26; Samuel J. Crawford to Joseph T.
Wilson, December 31, 1885, in Joseph T. Wilson, The Black Phalanx
(Hartford, Connecticut: 1890), p. 242; Skinner, Autobiography of Henry
Merrell, 368.
34. Milton P. Chambers to “Dear Brother,” May 7, 1864,
Milton P. Chambers Papers, Special Collections Division, University of Arkansas
Libraries, Fayetteville;
OR, 781, 813; Little Rock Unconditional Union, May 20, 1864.
35. Crawford, Kansas in the Sixties, 131-32; OR,
759; Samuel J. Crawford to James T. Wilson, December 31, 1885, in Wilson,
Black Phalanx, 245; William L. Nicholson, “The Engagement at Jenkins’
Ferry,” Annals of Iowa
11 (October 1914): p. 511.
36. Mamie Yeary, comp., Reminiscences of the Boys in Gray,
1861-1865 (Dallas, Texas: 1912), p. 437.
37. James McCall Dawson to “Dear Father Sisters and
Brothers,” May 5, 1864, in James Reed Eison, ed., “‘Stand We in Jeopardy Every
Hour’: A Confederate Letter, 1864,”
Pulaski County Historical Review 31 (Fall 1993): 52; Junius N. Bragg to Ann
Josephine Goodard Bragg, May 5, 1864, in Mrs. T. J. Gaughan, ed., Letters of
a Confederate Surgeon 1861-1865 (Camden, Arkansas: 1960), p. 230; Yeary,
Reminiscences of the Boys in Gray, 799; Edward W. Cade to “My dear Wife,”
May 6, 1864, Edward W. and Allie Cade Correspondence, John Q. Anderson
Collection, Texas State Archives, Austin, Texas.
38. Nicholson, “Engagement at Jenkins’ Ferry,” 509, 511-15,
519; Fort Smith New Era, June 16, August 6, 1864.
39. Milton P. Chambers to “Dear Brother,” May 7, 1864;
William Blain to “Dear Wife,” May 17, 1864, in Dolly Bottens, comp., Rouse
Stevens Ancestary & Allied Families (Carthage, Missouri: Privately printed,
1970), p. 108B.
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