The Fall of Little Rock, September, 1863

From Rugged and Sublime: The Civil War in Arkansas;
Courtesy of the Department of Arkansas Heritage

One historian has described Little Rock at the time of the war as a "respectable town." The census of 1860 showed that it had a population of 3,727 people (2,874 white, 853 black). It had a college (St. John's Men's School) and was connected by steamboat to the outside world. Gaslights illuminated its streets, most of its businesses, and many of its residences, but its railroad system was "still largely in the blueprint stage," there were few manufacturing concerns, and banking was almost nonexistent. Still, residents held high hopes for the city's future. "It is apparent ... that Little Rock will ... be a point of some very considerable importance," a local editor wrote in 1859. "[I]t will become in a commercial view, a city to which every citizen of Arkansas can point with pride." An editor from neighboring Memphis added that "there can be no doubt but that a fair and flourishing future awaits our sister city ... situated on one of the most beautiful sites that can be imagined."

As it did for so many other communities across the country, the war dramatically altered the course of the city's future. Confederate leaders in Arkansas had long feared that the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, would have dire consequences for the capital. The editor of the Arkansas Patriot wrote, "Any head, with a thimble full of brains, ought to know, that should that city be captured.... the State of Arkansas falls an easy prey necessarily to the combined and various columns of the enemy - The fate of Arkansas rests intimately upon that of Vicksburg." 

These fears proved to be well founded. Grant's capture of the Confederate stronghold on July 4, 1863, freed thousands of Union troops for other campaigns, including the re-establishment of Federal control in Arkansas. Before the month of July was out, Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele had arrived at Helena to take command of all Federal forces in the state. Steele, a native of New York, had graduated from West Point the same year as Grant (1843) and had participated in the capture of Helena and Vicksburg. Grant later expressed doubts about Steele's ability to handle an entire department but considered him to be "a first-class commander of troops in battle." Steele's superiors recognized that control of the Arkansas River was necessary to secure Missouri and northern Arkansas against future Rebel incursions and as a base for operations against the rest of the state.

In Little Rock, Confederate General Theophilus Holmes had become ill following the debacle at Helena, and responsibility for the defense of the city had passed to Maj. Gen. Sterling Price. Price had long sought a command, but this command at this particular time was a dubious honor. For starters, there were only eight thousand men present for duty. In addition, there was a growing conviction that Lt. Gen. Kirby Smith, Confederate commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, despite his protestations to the contrary, had written off the state, choosing to establish a new defensive line along the Red River. Price pronounced his troops to be "in excellent condition, full of enthusiasm and eager to meet the enemy," but he confessed in a letter to Smith that he "did not believe it would be possible for us to hold it [Little Rock] with the forces then under my command." 

Nonetheless, Price set about devising a plan for the capital's defense. He ordered Marmaduke's and Walker's cavalry to observe and harass enemy movements and began the construction of a defensive position composed of rifle pits and redoubts on the north side of the Arkansas River about two-and-a-half miles downstream from the city. This position faced eastward and was bounded by a cypress swamp on the left and the river on the right. Price believed that his only chance of successfully defending Little Rock lay in the possibility that the Union commander would launch a straight frontal assault against this fortified position. But the fact that the Arkansas was fordable in several places immediately downstream from the capital made the possibility of such an attack remote. "Old Pap" could only hope that the Federal commander was foolhardy or incompetent.

Unfortunately for the Confederates, Frederick Steele was neither. On August 10 and 11, he sent his six thousand infantry, backed by sixteen pieces of artillery, west from Helena toward Clarendon on the White River. There he would rendezvous with a like number of cavalry moving south from Missouri under Brig. Gen. John Davidson, a West Pointer from Virginia who had allegedly turned down a commission in the Confederate army to cast his lot with the Union. Davidson reached Clarendon on August 8. By the time Steele arrived on the seventeenth, he had already encountered an enemy more troubling than the Rebels: disease. More than a thousand of his troops were sick. After taking command of the combined force, he made plans to move his base of operations upriver to the higher and allegedly healthier ground at De Valls Bluff, and he sent Davidson across the river to find the Rebels. As rumors of the Federal advance spread, many Arkansans in and around Little Rock fled south. A Confederate surgeon, Junius N. Bragg, who traveled with his regiment from Pine Bluff to Little Rock, wrote to his wife in August, "The country from here to Pine Bluff is the poorest most God forsaken country I have seen in Ark. No one, scarcely, lives on the road; all the little farms are deserted, and the people gone. They have fled long since from the supposed advance of the enemy, and starvation." 

On August 23, Price ordered Marmaduke to join forces with Walker at Brownsville (near present-day Lonoke), along the major overland approach to Little Rock. Since Walker was the senior officer, he was Marmaduke's superior. Considering the bitterness that had arisen between these two the previous month at Helena, this was a volatile combination (and within a fortnight it would produce an explosion), but Price had other things to worry about.

At sunrise on August 25, advance elements of Davidson's cavalry collided with Marmaduke's thirteen hundred horsemen near Brownsville. Outnumbered four to one in men and eight to one in artillery, Marmaduke could not hope to defeat the Federals, but the Missourian gave ground grudgingly before retiring from the field. He formed a new battle line six miles west of the town, and there he temporarily halted the Union advance. On August 26, Price ordered Walker and Marmaduke to withdraw to Bayou Meto, a sluggish stream running east of the capital, and to "hold it as long as possible." Their combined forces took up positions at Reed's Bridge on Bayou Meto, approximately twelve miles northeast of Little Rock (near present-day Jacksonville). 

They did not have to wait on the Federals for long. Around noon on August 27, Davidson's cavalry drove the Rebel pickets across Bayou Meto and attempted to seize the bridge. But the Confederates had prepared to burn the bridge, and, as the northern cavalry advanced, the Rebels set it afire. Marmaduke reported that the Union troops "came dashing down toward the bridge (which ... was now handsomely burning) and the bayou. Suddenly, artillery and small arms fire opened upon them with deadly effect and caused a precipitate retreat. Soon the enemy formed their line, brought up their artillery, and the fight continued until sunset, when the enemy, failing to occupy the river, retired after a heavy loss, leaving a number of their dead on the ground." The repulse at Reed's Bridge cost the Federals seven killed and thirty-eight wounded and delayed their advance, but it did not stop them. That night the Confederate forces were ordered to withdraw to within five miles of Little Rock. Inside the city, Dr. Bragg wrote, "Things look rather gloomy about here.... [A]ll government property is being removed from town. I consider it merely a matter of time when Little Rock falls."

On September 2, Steele arrived at Brownsville with his infantry to join Davidson's force. Reinforcements had brought his total strength to nearly 14,500 men. He spent the next three days gathering information, then resumed his advance on September 6, moving south along Bayou Meto and crossing it at Shallow Ford. On the seventh, he reached the Arkansas River near Ashley's Mills (present-day Scott). Here, Davidson's cavalry, in advance of the main force, skirmished sharply with Confederate cavalry under R. C. Newton. Steele used the two days of September 8 and 9 to scout the Confederate positions, to bring up his supplies, and to finalize his plans for the attack. He could not have known that when he sent Davidson across the river the next morning there would be one less Confederate general to contend with.

The simmering feud between Marmaduke and Walker that had begun at Helena had been rekindled during the retreat from Brownsville to Little Rock. When rumors reached Walker that Marmaduke had accused him of cowardice in the recent actions before Little Rock, Walker demanded an explanation. Not receiving one that he considered satisfactory, he challenged the Missourian to a duel. Incredibly, with a Federal army of more than fourteen thousand men bearing down on the capital, the two Confederate generals met early on the morning of September 6 at the Godfrey Le Fevre plantation seven miles below the city to settle their differences with pistols at ten paces. Both men's initial volley missed, but Marmaduke's second shot struck Walker in the side, mortally wounding him. He died the next morning. Price had learned of the impending duel at midnight on September 5, but his order restricting both men to camp never reached Walker and was ignored by Marmaduke. Walker's untimely death only compounded the Confederates' dilemma. 

Downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. (Photo courtesy of the J.N. Heiskell Historical Collection, UALR Archives)

Price had issued an appeal to the citizens of Little Rock that urged every able-bodied man to arms, lest they "be overridden by a merciless and vindictive foe, and either driven with your wives and daughters into a homeless exile or forced to crouch in servile and degrading submission at the feet of the conqueror." In case that appeal did not work, he added, "If there be any among you too cowardly or base to volunteer under these circumstances, he shall be compelled to share your dangers.... The commandant of this post will be directed to arrest every able-bodied man who may be absent from his post ... and to place him wherever his services may be most required. Neither the appeal to honor nor the threat of arrest produced results. Dr. Bragg summed up the mood of the city as the Federal troops drew near: " [T]he danger now menacing her kindles no patriotic fire to blaze forth and consume the invader. Dull apathy sits upon the face of her people. Her chivalry has long since gone from her shores." 

Meanwhile, Price's troops were fortifying the heights opposite the capital city (in today's North Little Rock). They mounted three field guns on Big Rock and others along the crest of present-day Park Hill. Then they established gun emplacements and rifle pits as far east as today's Dark Hollow, with the aim to sweep the entire north shore of the Arkansas River so that the Union troops could be driven off or destroyed.

Steele, meanwhile, was preparing to send Davidson's cavalry across the river at a place called Terry's Ferry. Here the river made a horseshoe bend to the north, enabling Steele to cover the crossing with artillery placed near the neck of the bend. Construction of a pontoon bridge was begun on September 9 and finished on the morning of the tenth. A Confederate battery of four guns attempted to contest the crossing but was driven off by the counterfires of twenty Federal cannon.

By 11 a.m. Davidson had all three brigades across the river and was moving toward Little Rock along the south bank. Steele led his infantry toward the city along the north bank. He had hoped that Davidson's flanking movement would force Price to weaken or abandon his fortified position on the north shore, and he was not disappointed. At 11 a.m. Price realized his defensive line had been by-passed, and began to withdraw his men from their entrenchments and to cross them back into Little Rock on pontoon bridges. He then began to evacuate the city; his troops falling back toward Arkadelphia.

South of the river, Confederate forces under Marmaduke fell back toward the capital, skirmishing with the advancing Federals as they went. Along Fourche Bayou, about five miles from the city (present-day Port of Little Rock Industrial Park), they made a stand. A Federal cavalry unit moving through a cornfield east of the bayou ran into "a heavy crossfire of grape, canister, and spherical case." The fierce Rebel resistance brought Davidson's advance to a standstill, but enfilading fire from Steele's artillery across the river came to the rescue. A captain of Illinois artillery on the north bank reported that his gunners twice broke up the Confederates' line, producing disorder and the "tallest kind of skedaddling." 

Davidson reported, "Every advantageous foot of ground from this point onward was warmly contested by them, my cavalry dismounting and taking it afoot in the timber and cornfields." The engagement at Fourche Bayou cost the Federals seven killed and sixty-four wounded and gave Price time to evacuate the capital. The last Confederate defenders rode out of town about 5 p.m. with the Federal cavalry entering hard on their heels. At 7 p.m. Little Rock's civil authorities formally surrendered the City.

The Federal campaign against Little Rock lasted forty days and cost 137 casualties (18 killed, 118 wounded, 1 missing). Incomplete Confederate reports listed 64 casualties. Price had managed to evacuate his army and a large portion of his supplies to Arkadelphia, but the Little Rock arsenal, with three thousand pounds of powder and a considerable quantity of cartridges, fell into Union hands.

As the demoralized Confederates retreated after yet another setback, many simply faded away. William W Garner of Quitman, a soldier in Marmaduke's division, wrote to his wife on September 15, "[O]ur company have nearly all deserted.... I will never, no never, desert .... I expect our property will be taken by January or before, but only hope that they may leave enough for you and the children to live on comfortably." Two months later, he wrote again, this time an emotional letter, which expressed the pain of separation and the depression that the surrender of the capital had caused: "In bygone days I thought that I felt the sting of being deprived of my family; but I acknowledge that I have never until the fall of Little Rock felt the sting of being an exile."

Civilians in the Little Rock area also felt the sting of Federal occupation. Susan Bricelin Fletcher was left alone on her Pulaski County plantation after her husband enlisted in the Confederate service. She recalled, "After we were visited by the first half dozen squads of blue coats, we knew what civil war was when it was brought to your door. They first demanded water, then feed, after which they began to look around to see what could be carried away or destroyed.... They killed the cattle on one occasion. I saw my hillside pasture red with the blood of slain cattle. They tore photographs from the wall, burnt the cotton bales, took our combs and every vestige of food. We would have to send neighbors back to the woods for food, as not a crumb of anything would be left." She could sympathize with the captured Rebel soldier who told her, "Mrs. Fletcher, I hate blue so hard I never expect to allow anything blue on my farm, not even a blue hog." To her surprise, she found General Steele to be "a quiet, kind man, very different from the officers who had come to my country home on scouting parties." 

The city itself experienced something of a revival after the Federal occupation. A local editor wrote, " [T]he streets are filled with a restless, quick-motioned business people.... [E]very store and storehouse is full, drays and wagons crowd the streets; two theaters are in full blast and all is bustle and business."

Steele made only a half-hearted pursuit of the retreating Rebels, choosing instead to consolidate his control of the city and to secure his line of supply to his base at DeValls Bluff. He seemed to feel that the capture of Little Rock had effectively brought an end to organized Confederate resistance in Arkansas. On September 19, he wrote to his superior, Maj. Gen. Stephen Hurlbut, "From all accounts, Price's army is demoralized, and half disbanded.... I am told they have made preliminary arrangements to move into Texas.... I am satisfied that the majority of the people of the State are tired of the rebel oppression, and earnestly desire the re-establishment of the old Government."

It was an overly optimistic assessment. John Sappington Marmaduke would soon demonstrate to Steele that there was life yet in the Arkansas Confederacy.