Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Kansas, 1863–1865 241
bad roads, and short supplies, the Frontier Division did not catch up with Steele’s
force south of Arkadelphia until 9 April. 31
By feinting toward the Confederate state capital at Washington, Steele’s command
drew the enemy garrison out of Camden, on the Ouachita River some ninety
miles south of Little Rock. Union troops occupied the undefended town on 15
April. “They had marched the whole distance on half rations of hard bread, quarter
rations of bacon, and full rations of coffee and salt,” one of Steele’s staff officers
reported, “and of this short allowance we had very little left.” Besides food for the
men, the expedition needed forage for the animals that pulled the supply wagons.
On the evening of 16 April, Colonel Williams and the 1st Kansas Colored received
orders to escort a forage train the next day. 32
Five hundred officers and men of the regiment, with some 200 cavalry, 2 tenpounder
field guns, and a train of 198 wagons, got under way shortly before dawn.
They marched eighteen miles west of Camden before Williams called a halt and
broke up the party to search nearby farms for feed. The detachments returned by
midnight with nearly one hundred wagons full of corn. The next day, the expedition
began its return march to Camden, with scouts and wagons still out to gather
any available grain. Not long after starting, Williams’ column met reinforcements:
more than three hundred fifty men of the 18th Iowa Infantry and eighty cavalry
from Camden, along with two twelve-pounder mountain howitzers. These were
a welcome addition to the force, for the previous day’s exertions, on top of a 24day
march from Fort Smith on reduced rations, had put about one-fifth of the men
in the 1st Kansas Colored out of action. With cavalry outriders and many of the
wagons still seeking forage and the usual stragglers fallen behind or wandered off,
Williams’ immediate command had dwindled to barely one thousand men. 33
For weeks, Confederate horsemen had been retreating, first from Arkadelphia
and then from Camden, while they observed the federal advance. When the cavalry
division commander, Brig. Gen. John S. Marmaduke, learned that a Union forage
train was on the road, he decided to capture or destroy it and perhaps reverse the
course of the campaign. Overnight, he assembled a force of some two thousand
men from his scattered brigades, along with eight cannon. Marmaduke’s scouts
had told him about the federal reinforcements, and he believed the Union strength
to be about twenty-five hundred (more than twice its actual size). Nevertheless, he
placed his available force in a position to block the Union foragers’ return route at
a place called Poison Spring, fourteen miles west of Camden. The wagons rolled
into sight about 10:00 on the morning of 18 April. As the opposing sides began to
exchange shots, Marmaduke welcomed the arrival of Brig. Gen. Samuel B. Maxey
with twelve hundred Texas and Choctaw cavalry. He put the new arrivals on the
31 “The Camden Expedition,” (Lawrence) Kansas Daily Tribune, 15 February 1866; OR, ser.
1, vol. 34, pt. 1, p. 657. The anonymous former officer who described the campaign for the Tribune
said that the 2d Kansas Colored broke camp on 23 March; the regimental record says 24 March. The
1st Kansas Colored’s record of events lists a departure date of 25 March. NA M594, roll 213, 79th
USCI, and roll 214, 83d USCI.
32 OR, ser. 1, vol. 34, pt. 1, pp. 676 (quotation), 680, 682–83, and pt. 3, p. 237.
33 Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 743–44.