The Camden Expedition of 1864

by Michael J Forsyth

  Walker’s Texans had a very difficult time in moving forward considering their place in the order of march. Steele’s entire army and Price’s command had preceded the “Greyhounds” and the tread of thousands of men and animals had churned the road into a thick mire. Blessington conceded that in spite of their enthusiasm for pursuing the enemy, “the severity of the march” had broken down a vast number of troops leaving them “in a wretched condition.”6 Troopers from the recently dismounted 28th Texas Cavalry found the pursuit especially difficult. “Lack of sleep and terrible marching conditions so fatigued the men” that many fell out of ranks due to exhaustion.7 This, of course, reduced the strength of the 28th Texas and other units as well. The straggling would have a detrimental effect on the Rebel army as it lost important striking power while preparing to launch a major assault.

  The Federals had remained busy that night as the rain continued without ceasing. After issuing orders for the evening, Steele proceeded to the ferry where he could exercise direct supervision of operations at the bridge. Perhaps the real hero of the expedition and Jenkins’ Ferry was the hard working chief engineer, Captain Junius Wheeler. Once again, as he had done on the Little Missouri and Ouachita, Wheeler bore down to task and improved the approaches to the river and constructed the pontoon bridge before dark. Elated by Wheeler’s effort, Steele immediately sent Carr to the far side to begin his mission of preventing Fagan from blocking the route to Little Rock. Carr quickly hustled his men clattering over the wooden planking and occupied the high ground above the Saline Bottom for the remainder of the evening. Shortly before midnight in the driving storm, Steele had successfully crossed all of his cavalry and half of the hundreds of wagons that comprised his supply and ordnance stores.8 Considering the atrocious nature of the weather this is an amazing testament to the perseverance of the Federal soldiers.

  The Federal infantry passed an uncomfortable night by snatching the little rest they could grab and improving the defensive dispositions. A seemingly indefatigable Frederick Salomon worked feverishly all night supervising his line for the morning. The immediate vicinity of the battlefield where Salomon’s line stood consisted of the inundated bottom cut by the Military Road and a tributary of the Saline running parallel to the road known variously as Cox or Toxie Creek. The area was heavily wooded with thick undergrowth in all directions except for three small farm fields that broke up the monotonous terrain. From west to east they were the Jiles’ Cornfield, Cooper’s Field, and Kelly’s Field. None of these was more than 300 yards by 100 yards in area. Initial contact on the 29th had occurred just west of Jiles’, but during the night Salomon contracted his defenses centering them on Cooper’s. Thayer’s Frontier Division assembled around Kelly’s Field providing a reserve for Salomon. Salomon moved down his line ensuring coherence of his defense in the early morning hours and was quite pleased with what he saw. The hearty Federal infantrymen had dismantled all the fences in the vicinity and stacked the rails to make crude breastworks for protection.9 The Union division held a formidable defensive position with its right anchored on Cox Creek and left resting in a thick swamp, and to its front an open Cooper Field that stood with one to three feet of water. This did not bode well for Rebel success in the morning.

  As the first gray streaks of dawn began to break through, the Confederate army was already in motion. Leading the advance was Greene’s cavalry brigade of Marmaduke’s Division. Marmaduke sent him forward shortly after daybreak to reestablish contact with the Yankees to prevent an easy escape, and determine the disposition of the enemy. Colonel Greene started forward personally leading the 3rd and 4th Missouri Regiments. The troopers moved gingerly feeling for bluecoated infantry in the thickets of the Saline Bottom. Due to Federal repositioning during the night the Confederates found the battlefield of the previous day abandoned. Upon reaching the Jiles’ farmhouse Greene decided to deploy skirmishers and dismount as they continued forward to avoid an ambush. Now on foot the cavalrymen pressed on in a light rain until they reached the Jiles’ Cornfield. Here, scattered shots greeted the Rebels as Salomon’s pickets from the 33rd Iowa fired the first rounds of the Battle of Jenkins’ Ferry.10

  Greene now shook out a regular line of battle in an attempt to develop the situation. The 3rd Missouri moved off the road into the muddy field taking the left, and the 4th Missouri followed moving up on the right. As the line drew near the edge of the woods outlining the field, a volley of musketry halted the advance. Greene’s men returned fire and a steady din of musketry echoed throughout the bottom for the next half-hour. The 3rd Missouri took advantage of cover offered north of the road and threatened to flank the Iowans as the 4th Missouri occupied their front. The combative and competent Union brigade commander Colonel Rice moved to the scene of the action to assess enemy intentions and to provide Salomon with a picture of the situation. Realizing the skirmish line would soon find itself outflanked, he ordered a slow withdrawal back toward the main line of Federal resistance. Simultaneously, he ordered the rest of his brigade forward to the edge of Cooper’s Field where the 33rd would form a solid line with the other regiments to halt the Rebel reconnaissance. This would deceive the Confederates about the true location of the main Federal line, thus drawing the unsuspecting Rebel main body into a Federal firestorm in Cooper’s Field. Greene followed the retreating skirmishers until stopped by Rice’s improvised line believing he had located the main Union defensive belt. The plucky Confederates traded shots with the Federals as Greene rendered a report to Marmaduke setting the stage for the infantry assault.11

  Battle of Jenkins’ Ferry. Smith caught up with Steele at Jenkins’ Ferry and immediately prepared to attack. His efforts quickly went awry as he fed individual brigades and divisions into the fight piecemeal. The Federals were able to parry every thrust and launch successful counterattacks allowing the beleaguered Union army to escape to Little Rock.

  As Greene had worked to regain contact with Steele’s army, the Confederate infantry divisions struggled forward against bottomless roads and relentless weather. Price’s command led the way with Churchill’s Arkansas Division, 2,000 strong, in front and Parsons’ Missourians close behind. Next in line, but farther back, were Walker’s Texans pushing forward in the same nasty conditions as their counterparts. Churchill pulled up on the ridge overlooking the Saline Bottom about 7:30 A.M. and allowed his division a much needed rest. The exhausted soldiers quickly broke ranks to find an appropriate place to snatch a short nap as the sounds of heavy skirmishing echoed up from the valley below. Moments after Churchill turned his men out Price and Smith arrived to confer with him at the Tyra Brown farmhouse. Smith was well aware that his opportunity to crush Steele against the Saline was slowly slipping away unless he could strike a blow immediately. Therefore, he ordered Churchill into the fray lest Steele use any respite to complete the extraction of his army from the trap in the Saline Bottom.12

  Smith’s hasty decision to throw in Churchill in an uncoordinated attack began a pattern at Jenkins’ Ferry that would continue until the engagement concluded in the early afternoon. Churchill’s Division set in motion a series of piecemeal, brigade-sized attacks that did little more than produce a lengthy casualty list for the Rebels. While Smith’s desire to close with Steele is understandable, the lack of thorough reconnaissance, failure to formulate a coherent plan of attack, and refusal to mass his larger army demonstrate a rather incompetent method of command. With poor information about the enemy, Smith deployed each Confederate unit forward on a narrow front as it arrived on the field. This gave the Federal division under Salomon, reinforced by Thayer, the ability to defeat each Confederate thrust in detail while never becoming seriously threatened. The result of Smith’s impatience is that he lost an excellent chance to destroy Steele. Had he consolidated his forces and sought out an assailable flank—which did exist—odds favored Smith in his endeavor to finish Steele.

  Churchill formed his groggy division at 8:00 A.M., placing Tappan’s Brigade in the van, followed
by Hawthorn, Gause and elements of Dockery’s Brigade dismounted. James C. Tappan’s Brigade soon formed a line of skirmishers and passed through Greene’s cavalry as they closed with Salomon’s defenses in the vicinity of Cooper’s Field. Dr. Bragg stated in his account that the brigade found the going very tough since the thick undergrowth and inundated ground served to throw the formation into disarray. The brigade made frequent halts as Tappan worked to realign his skirmish line. Finding his line too long to properly control, Tappan detached the 33rd Arkansas and assigned the regiment as the reserve. Tappan then led the remaining regiments forward as the 33rd watched and listened attentively. The 19th and 24th Arkansas (Consolidated) and 27th and 38th Arkansas (Consolidated) broke into the open on the west side of Cooper’s Field preceded by a group of Rebels dressed in blue frock coats. Tappan hoped that he could trick the Federals into believing that this group was a wayward foraging party returning to friendly lines. The Union soldiers would hold their fire upon seeing the blue coats enabling Tappan’s Brigade, following closely behind the imposters, to get in close before the Unionists opened up. But, the deception failed as Churchill’s men met a firestorm coming from Salomon’s skillfully deployed defense.13

  The beleaguered Confederates took cover in a swale at about the mid-point of the field and found themselves pinned down under heavy fire. Colonel Hiram Grinstead and his 33rd Arkansas had waited in reserve about twenty minutes when they received orders from Tappan to come forward to assist the brigade in continuing the assault. Dr. Bragg recorded that his regiment dutifully moved forward as the rain slackened slightly. “There was nothing of the romance of war” as they marched into a torrent of fire from the Union line that gray morning. The “cold, wet and hungry” Rebels were greeted in the same way that their sister regiments had been only minutes earlier. However, the 33rd advanced farther, moving to within “30 paces” of the Federal line before their assault collapsed with the survivors running for cover in the swale with their comrades. Among the 92 casualties from the 33rd was the regimental commander, the respected Colonel Grinstead.14

  Churchill now called Hawthorn’s Brigade to the front while placing Gause in reserve. Hawthorn fared a little better than Tappan. His left became entangled with Tappan’s in the swale, but the right made some progress as Colonel R. G. Shaver found an unprotected flank on the Federal left. Passing around the 50th Indiana, Shaver for a time threatened to unhinge the whole Federal defense. Shaver’s success quickly turned sour when the ubiquitous 33rd Iowa and 12th Kansas reacted on their own initiative to halt the advance. Shaver now withdrew back to the main line taking shelter in the ditch with the rest of the division. For the next two hours Churchill’s Division traded shots with Salomon unsupported in a ditch barely 150 yards from the well-protected Federals. “The struggle,” Churchill described in his after action report, “was desperate beyond description.”15 Finally, after what must have seemed an eternity to the miserable soldiers in the Confederate line, Parsons’ Division arrived on the field. Unfortunately, the same lack of planning and coordination that characterized Churchill’s attack awaited Parsons’ as Kirby Smith fed this division piecemeal into the fight.

  Elements of Rice’s Federal infantry brigade manned the forward positions on the gray April morning. As dawn broke revealing another dreary day ahead, the Union soldiers pulled what food they had from their haversacks, if any. For most this consisted of a hardtack cracker and an ear of corn, not nearly enough to subsist exhausted, wet infantrymen poised for a fierce day of fighting. While the Union soldiers munched on their sparse breakfast, Salomon made his way around inspecting the defenses. He felt that Rice’s brigade constituted an unnecessary bulge in the division line and ordered the aggressive brigadier rearward to present a seamless front. Rice’s commanders were in the process of assembling when Greene’s skirmishers broke the morning stillness with the intermittent pop-pop of muskets. Posted on the east side of Jiles’ Cornfield, the 33rd Iowa slowly withdrew from their exposed position drawing Greene’s dismounted troopers after them. The firing became quite hot at times, but the competent Colonel Cyrus Mackey commanding the Iowans, skillfully thinned his lines with few losses.16

  Rice’s 1st Brigade initially halted on the west side of the Cooper Field to leave the impression on Greene that here stood the Federal main defense. Upon running up against this line Greene halted and sent back his report that he had located the Federal defense and would maintain contact until the infantry arrived. In the meantime, Rice pulled back passing through Salomon’s division posted in the thick woods fronting Cooper’s Field and took up a strong position to the left rear in echelon of Englemann’s 3rd Brigade. Englemann had heard the sounds of heavy skirmishing to his front and prepared his men to receive the forward outposts. Simultaneously, his regimental commanders steeled their line for a Rebel assault while the sound grew louder as it approached the brigade. The van of Churchill’s Division, Tappan’s Brigade, had just arrived and passed through Greene in preparation for its assault. Fearing a sudden burst of fire as they crossed the open field, Tappan outfitted several men with blue jackets hoping the Yankees would spare these “foragers” as they got in close to the main line. Englemann would not allow the Rebels to beguile him, and his double line of riflemen unloosed a sheet of flame staggering Tappan. The graybacks quickly scrambled into the ditch midway into Cooper’s Field to return fire. Pinned down, the grim Rebels banged away at the puffs of smoke emanating from the woods while awaiting the arrival of Hawthorn’s infantry.17 Elated by breaking up this weak assault the Federals gained confidence in their defensive position. However, stiffer challenges would test the Federal army as Parsons’ and Walker’s stout divisions would soon hit them in front and begin curling around their flanks.

  Parsons’ arrived on the field at about 9:00 A.M. shortly after Churchill’s Division shot its bolt against Steele’s improvised breastworks. Parsons met with Price on the ridge overlooking the bottom as he allowed his men to rest in the Tyra Brown field. Price had just received word that Churchill’s assault had failed and that if support did not arrive quickly the pinned down attackers might suffer a serious setback. Accordingly, Price briefed his subordinate as to the situation and sent the Missourians forward into a firestorm. While Churchill had attempted piecemeal brigade attacks, Parsons decided to deploy his division as a massed two-brigade front with artillery accompanying the line of battle. He pulled his brigade commanders together for a quick huddle to discuss the dispositions. Colonel Simon Burns would take the left extending from Cox Creek to Cooper’s Field. Lesueur and Ruffner’s batteries would move up the Military Road and deploy just off the road on the west side of Cooper’s Field to deliver supporting fire. Brigadier General John Clark’s Brigade would tie in with Burns’ right in Cooper’s Field while extending his own right flank deep into the woods on the south end of the field. Parsons hoped his line would then overlap the Union left exposing it to a wheeling movement, thus turning Salomon out of his position.18

  It took Parsons about an hour to get his worn out men into line for the assault. As Parsons worked to deploy his division, Kirby Smith met with Price to confer about Churchill’s situation. As Smith learned the fate of the Arkansans, his own disgust for Price’s lack of frontline leadership began to rise. However, instead of taking Price to task for not moving forward to command the fight, Smith decided to move to the front himself to provide the guidance that Price seemed unable to provide. Smith knew that Parsons’ assault would probably meet with the same results as Churchill’s and wanted to await the arrival of Walker before launching another attack. But, several factors pushed him to commit Parsons prematurely. First, Walker was still several miles from the field and would not arrive for at least another two hours. This could possibly give Steele the respite he needed to make a clean withdrawal from the Saline Bottom. Second, Churchill was making periodic and ever more desperate requests for support as his division struggled to hold its position in front of Salomon’s division. Therefore, rather than
exercising tactical patience, Smith concluded that he must throw in Parsons immediately lest Salomon annihilate Churchill, or worse, Steele once again escape relatively unscathed. Following the precedent set by Churchill’s earlier forlorn assault, Smith assented to launching another major unsupported attack against a determined Federal defense.19

  As Parsons’ 2,000 men rolled forward, Smith decided to accompany the assault to oversee the execution and assist in any way he could. As events would show, his presence only seemed to muddle the tactical situation as he began to give individual units orders bypassing the established chains of command. As Smith rode forward he encountered some of Churchill’s broken regiments streaming to the rear after their abortive attack. Realizing that another purely frontal assault would result in another thrashing at the hands of the obstinate Federal resistance, Smith began to organize a second strike column. A part of Dockery’s cavalry had recently been attached to Churchill’s command as the pursuit got under way at Camden. These men, now dismounted and commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Horatio Gates Perry Williams, had done little more than listen with disinterest as Tappan and Hawthorn’s brigades had been mishandled in Cooper’s Field. Williams had put together a solid combat record over the course of the war, serving recently as Dockery’s second-in-command. The erratic Dockery was currently riding with Fagan’s Division and Williams found himself in command of the 400–odd dismounted and ragged soldiers left behind when Fagan left for Marks’ Mills. This skeleton unit was suffering from poor morale, but if anyone could restore this sad lot to fighting trim, Williams seemed the right choice based on reputation.20