The Civil War in Arkansas - Places

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Bluff City
POISON SPRING STATE PARK
Hwy. 76, Bluff City, AR 71722, (870) 685-2748

From The Civil War Trust's Official Guide to the Civil War Discovery Trail;
Courtesy of Macmillan Travel

Description: The Battle of Poison Spring took place on April 18, 1864, during the Camden Expedition of the Red River campaign. A Union column was bringing supplies to the Federal occupiers of Camden when attacked by Confederate troops.

Admission Fees: Free.

Open to Public: Daily: 6 a.m.-10 p.m.

Services: Trails; information.

Regularly Scheduled Events: March: Reenactment of the Battle of Poison Spring.

Directions: From I-30: take exit 44 for Prescott. Proceed east on State Hwy. 24 through Prescott for the next 33 miles. After passing through Bragg City, look for the Arkansas State Park sign for Poison Spring State Park. Turn right on State Hwy. 76 for about 5 miles. The park is located on the right.

What Happened...
The Battle of Poison Spring;
Steele's Camden Expedition in the Red River Campaign.

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

[Following the occupation of Camden on April 15, 1864, Union General Frederick Steele sent foraging parties to gather supplies for his army from the countryside]

Hopeful Arkansas civilians interpreted Steele's advance as a retreat. "Our cavalry a-re fighting Steele near Washington," a resident of Princeton recorded in her diary on April 16. "Report says Steele is slowly retreating towards Camden with Shelby and Marmaduke hanging like hungry wolves along his line." Safe but uncertain in Camden, Steele restrained his men admirably from pillaging the town (after some initial looting of food by the starved troops upon their arrival) and established a fairly harmonious relationship with the townspeople, as he had done in Little Rock. When civilians complained of soldiers raiding their smokehouses and corn cribs, Steele assigned safeguards to ward off potential thieves. When supplies that Steele had ordered sent to Camden from Little Rock and Pine Bluff a week earlier failed to appear, he sent out foraging parties to collect whatever they could from the neighborhood. One party of nearly two hundred wagons set out on April 17 to gather corn some twenty miles west of Camden.

The First Light Artillery Battery, entering service in August, 1863, was the only artillary unit raised for the Union in Arkansas. (Photo courtesy of the Washington County Historical Society)
Col. James M. Williams led the mixed column of infantry and cavalry and two guns. He commanded roughly 670 men, including over 400 black infantrymen from the First Kansas Colored Volunteers. Sterling Price, from his headquarters at Woodlawn, about sixteen miles west of Camden, had ordered his cavalry to be alert to Union movements, particularly attempts to forage. Consequently, his men covered all roads out of Camden, and that was how a force of nearly 3,600 men, including about 1,200 Arkansans and nearly 700 "hungry, half-clothed Choctaws," and twelve guns commanded by Marmaduke got between the forage train and Camden. The train was actually returning along the Washington-Camden Road when Marmaduke launched his attack. Having loaded approximately half of the wagons with five thousand bushels of corn, the expedition, expecting to fill the others from farms along the return route, had set a leisurely pace. Near Poison Spring, about fourteen miles from Camden, a relief column added two more guns and gave Williams about 1,160 men; but Williams had also lost men to fatigue as he marched homeward. When Marmaduke struck, Williams had only about 1,000 effectives.

It was nearly an ambush. Marmaduke, having the advantage over the slow-moving train, shifted easily into position across the road to Camden on high ground near Poison Spring and Lee's plantation. But Williams, who learned of the Confederate force ahead of him, quickly deployed his own men at about 9:30 a.m. He even managed to push back Marmaduke's pickets nearly a mile. But realizing the strength of the opposition, Williams hated his wagons and drew them up in a defensive line to receive the inevitable Confederate attack. He placed his black infantry in the center of the Formation his cavalry on the flanks. The black First Kansas, mostly former slaves from Missouri and Arkansas, bore the brunt of the attack. They stood little chance. General Maxey's men moved first against the Federal right flank. This initial advance was followed almost immediately by deadly artillery fire. The First Kansas repulsed the first charge, but the weight of Rebel men and arms began to tell on the bluecoats. Marmaduke followed within minutes with the full force of his command. Men broke out of the wooded ridge that had concealed them and descended at the double-quick upon the already wavering Federal line. Nearly half of the black soldiers fell dead or were wounded in a little over an hour of fighting.

Once penetrated, the Union line collapsed rapidly. Threatened with envelopment when the cavalry screen on their left flank was beaten back, the remains of the First Kansas broke and ran. This proved to be their undoing. Pursuing Confederates, enraged as the Rebels usually were when the Federals used blacks as combat troops, showed no mercy. They continued to fire into the fleeing ranks, and many wounded blacks were murdered as they lay on the ground. Other black troops, hunted down and trapped in the surrounding swamps and woods, were executed when they attempted to surrender. One Rebel colonel admitted, "Away trotted the poor black men into the forest, clinging to their rifles, but not using them, while the pursuing Confederates cut them down right and left." A private in Cabell's brigade believed Choctaws perpetrated most of the butchery. "You ought to see Indians fight Negroes," he recalled, "kill and scalp them. Let me tell you, I never expected to see so many dead Negroes again. They were so thick you could walk on them." A few blacks, realizing the vengeance being reaped on their comrades, feigned death by lying motionless on the field. After dark, they crawled into the woods and made their way back to Camden. Kirby Smith, who arrived from Louisiana on April 19, admitted that of some two hundred captured Federals, he saw "but two negro prisoners."

The remnants of Williams' command had long since retreated toward Camden. Following one last threatened charge by Col. Tandy Walker's Choctaws - aborted when the Indians turned their attention to the defenseless forage wagons-the Federals moved northward and then eastward in a wide arc toward their garrison. The head of the column reached Camden at about 11:00 p.m. In addition to losing 4 cannons, 170 wagons, and 1,200 mules, the Federals sacrificed 204 killed or missing and 97 wounded, or 30 percent of the entire command. The First Kansas lost 117 killed and 65 wounded, or 42 percent casualties. The Confederates lost 13 men killed, 81 wounded, and I missing. The Confederates also discovered, upon inspecting the wagons, that the Federal foraging party had secured far more than grain on its expedition: included in the cargo was "every kind of provision from the farm-yard, the pantry, the dairy, and the sideboard. . . . men's, women's and children's clothing, household furniture, gardening implements, the tools of the mechanic, and the poor contents of the negro hut."

The loss of the forage train and the military embarrassment at Poison Spring hit hard at Steele and his thirteen thousand men. A supply train from Pine Bluff did arrive on April 20, but it carried only ten days' worth of provisions. By this time, also, the Louisiana prong of the Federals' Red River advance had been thoroughly blunted by defeats at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. Steele received official notice that Banks was in retreat; he heard rumors that eight thousand Confederates led by Kirby Smith had arrived in Arkansas to join the attack against him. What was more, tensions had developed between his men and the citizens of Camden who, while adjusting to life with white occupation troops, resented Steele's black soldiers. "The one thing that really stirred my blood to heat was the sight of Negro troops going out to fight our men," reported one resident. Finally, too, the Rebels were closing in; artillery had been moved up for an apparent bombardment of the town.

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