|
Kirby Smith overtook the fleeing Federals on April 30 at Jenkins’ Ferry after
they got bogged down in the flooded bottoms fringing the south side of the
Saline River. While Steele’s cavalry, artillery, and other impedimenta sloshed
through two muddy miles to cross a hastily constructed pontoon bridge, his
infantry turned around to hold Kirby Smith at bay. The 2nd Kansas Colored gladly
took its place in the battle line, and as an Arkansas brigade came within range,
Colonel Crawford shouted to his 660 black soldiers, “Aim low, and give them
hell.”32
Well into the battle, a section from Captain Samuel T. Ruffner’s Missouri
Battery unlimbered a pair of field pieces opposite the 2nd Kansas Colored.
Crawford was not the kind of officer to sit still and watch his regiment get
pounded to bits. Instead, he ordered a charge. Closely supported by the 29th
Iowa Infantry, the 2nd Kansas Colored immobilized the enemy guns with a volley
that killed most of their battery horses. A second volley scattered the
section’s infantry supports. Then the 2nd Kansas leveled its bayonets and raced
forward, the men shouting, “Poison Springs!” The blacks overran their objective
in a matter of seconds, plunging their bayonets into every Confederate they
could catch, including three artillerists who tried to surrender.33
Sweeping into the battery position hard on the heels of the 2nd Kansas, the
29th Iowa Infantry beheld some grisly incidents. As Private Milton P. Chambers
of the 29th revealed: “One of our boys seen a little negro pounding a wounded
reb in the head with the but of his gun and asked him what he was doing. the
negro replied he is not dead yet!” Only the intervention of several other Iowans
prevented the frenzied blacks from slaying Lieutenant John O. Lockhart, the
commander of the captured section, and his five remaining gunners. “The negroes
want to kill every wounded reb they come to,” Chambers added, “and will do it
too if we did not watch them.”34
Throwing his divisions into action piecemeal, Kirby Smith doomed 1,000 of his
seasoned veterans to death and wounds in a series of fierce but unimaginative
frontal assaults against the unyielding Union infantry. Checked and battered,
the Confederates drew back to rest and reform and the scene of carnage grew
quiet. Steele took advantage of this lull to pull his foot soldiers across the
Saline River, leaving the 2nd Kansas Colored behind to cover the withdrawal of
his white regiments. During the two hours that the 2nd Kansas lingered south of
the Saline, Colonel Crawford dispatched details “all along where our lines had
stood to pick up such of our wounded as might have been overlooked.” A number of
black soldiers could not resist the temptation to interrupt their errands of
mercy to seek additional revenge for Poison Spring. A few crept as close as they
dared to enemy units to fire some farewell shots. Others turned their attention
to the wounded Confederates who lay near Union lines.35
Hours earlier, a bullet had hit Private John H. Lewis of the 18th Texas
Infantry in the leg, rendering him unable to walk. He took shelter behind a tree
stump and waited for the battle to play itself out. “After a while the firing
ceased,” he related, “and our army was gone. Soon I looked around and saw some
black negroes cutting our wounded boys’ throats, and I thought my time would
come next.” The adrenalin rush produced by that terrifying discovery restored
the use of Lewis’ wounded leg, and he limped hurriedly to safety.36
Once the 2nd Kansas Colored finally crossed the Saline River, the
Confederates took possession of the battlefield. In numerous spots, they came
across evidence of the horrors witnessed by Private Lewis. “The negros killed
some of our Wounded,” James McCall Dawson of the 34th Arkansas Infantry
disclosed in a letter home. Assistant Surgeon Junius N. Bragg of the 33rd
Arkansas Infantry wrote his wife that A. J. Williams, the regiment’s acting
sergeant major, “had his throat cut by a negro” and lived long enough to tell
the tale. David S. Williams, the 33rd’s senior surgeon and A. J.’s brother,
provided more details on this case and those of other atrocity victims: “We
found that many of our wounded had been mutilated in many ways. Some with ears
cut off, throats cut, knife stabs, etc. My brother . . . was shot through the
body, had his throat cut through the windpipe and lived several days. I saw
several who were treated in the same way. One officer . . . wrote on a bit of
paper that his lower jaw and tongue were shot off after the battle was over or
during the falling back as referred to above.” Another Confederate surgeon,
Edward W. Cade of Colonel Horace Randal’s Texas brigade, grimly informed his
wife: “Our command fell back, and when they again advanced they found several of
our wounded who had their throats cut from ear to ear by the Negroes.”37
|
