v1.1.2 / chapter 65 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* While Grant and Sherman prepared for their offensives, Nathaniel Banks continued his campaign up the Red River in western Louisiana, in principle supported by a thrust by Frederick Steele into southern Arkansas. Unfortunately, Banks soon found his advance stalled and then reversed, less by the aggressive actions of a much smaller Confederate force under Richard Taylor than by the complete lack of faith of Banks' generals and men in the whole exercise.
Steele's movement into Arkansas didn't go much better, with the Yankees ending up surrounded in Camden, Arkansas, by an inferior Confederate force. Steele was finally able to make his escape and return to Little Rock, much the worse for wear. The whole exercise had foundered mostly on the half-heartedness of the Federals, but the Confederates still had good reason to be pleased in driving off superior Union forces. Confederate satisfaction was increased when Confederate forces under Robert Hoke were able to make gains against Union forces in the North Carolina tidewater, with the support of a scrapheap ironclad, the ALBEMARLE.
* Nathaniel Banks might have initially had some concerns about the wisdom of conducting a campaign up the Red River, but by the beginning of April 1864, the progress of the effort seemed to prove there had been no reason for concern after all. Things had gone smoothly, the Confederates had put up no effective resistance, and Banks had every good reason to believe that would continue to be the case all the way up the Red to his objective, Shreveport.
Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter was nervous, however. The Red River generally underwent an annual rise this time of year, but nothing of the sort seemed to be happening, and if he took his fleet upstream and found the river was falling instead, he might lose all his ships. The Red hadn't risen in 1846 and 1855; the difference between those two dates was nine years, as was the difference between 1855 and 1864, a fact that hardly proved anything but was a bit worrisome. However, Porter continued with the plan, sending 13 gunboats and 20 transports over the rapids upstream from Alexandria on 3 April.
There was another person who didn't share Banks' confidence. On 2 April, as
Banks was getting ready to go upstream from Alexandria, he sent Halleck a
message:
OUR TROOPS NOW OCCUPY NATCHITOCHES, AND WE HOPE TO
BE IN SHREVEPORT BY THE 10TH OF APRIL. I DO NOT FEAR
CONCENTRATION OF THE ENEMY AT THAT POINT. MY FEAR
IS THAT THEY MAY NOT BE WILLING TO MEET US.
When Lincoln read the message, he scowled and shook his head. He'd heard
such bluster before and had learned what to expect from it. He said: "I am
sorry to see this tone of confidence. The next news we will hear from there
will be of a defeat."
* Major General Richard Taylor, in charge of the defense of the region, had every intention of handing Banks such a defeat. To be sure, Taylor had suffered two defeats of his own, at Fort De Russy and Hamilton Hill, the second costing him most of his cavalry, but as he fell back with his troops in the direction of Shreveport he was expecting reinforcements that had been promised him by his boss, Kirby Smith.
The reinforcements were slow in coming, and Taylor grew frustrated with the delays. He sent Smith increasingly hot messages on the subject and angrily complained about Smith's timidity and incompetence. This was to a degree unfair, since Smith was trying to hold down a huge department with minimal men and resources, while being confronted with two Federal thrusts, one under Banks in Louisiana and the other under Steele in Arkansas. In fact, Taylor had less reason for complaint than he believed. As far back as late February, well before the Yankee offensive had gone into motion, Smith had decided that Banks was the greater threat and decided to concentrate forces to deal with him.
Smith ordered his commander in Texas, Major General John B. Magruder, to loot his command for every man that could be spared and send them to help Taylor. Magruder managed to scrape up 2,500 horsemen, half the forces available in Texas, sending them out in early March in the form of a division under Brigadier General Thomas Green. Green was a survivor of the miserable Confederate campaign into New Mexico and had fought very well alongside Taylor before.
Smith simultaneously ordered Lieutenant General Theophilus Holmes, his lieutenant in Arkansas, to also send as many men as he could to help Taylor, with Holmes retaining cavalry to slow down Steele. Optimistically, Taylor could defeat Banks with his reinforced command, and then Confederate forces could be shifted to confront Steele. Holmes, who was getting way too old for his job, asked to be relieved, and his place was taken by his second-in-command, the energetic Major General Sterling Price. Price sent two small divisions of infantry totalling 4,500 men under Brigadier General Thomas J. Churchill, who had been exchanged after being captured at Fort Hindman in early 1863, to assist Taylor.
Green's men were unavoidably delayed by the fact that they had to travel a long distance. However, Smith's handling of Churchill's force did give some basis to Taylor's complaints. Steele had moved out of Little Rock with his 15,000 men on 23 March; on hearing reports of this movement, Smith became indecisive, keeping Churchill's troops for a time at department headquarters in Shreveport and later at a small town named Keatchie to the south. Smith couldn't make up his mind whether to commit them to deal with Banks or with Steele.
Taylor's angry messages did nothing to help the situation and actually did much to thoroughly spook Smith. Taylor was talking hotly about taking on a Yankee force of far superior numbers the instant Green arrived with his reinforcements, which struck Smith as rash and suicidal. Smith did not place much faith in Taylor's insistence that Banks was "cold, timid, easily foiled", though Taylor had enough experience with thrashing "Commissary Banks" up in the Shenandoah Valley to give every reason to believe that one good solid blow would send Banks back to where he had come from.
On 5 April, Smith rode to confer with Taylor at Mansfield, 40 miles (64 kilometers) downriver on the Red from Shreveport, and the two met the next morning. Smith left that afternoon, even more undecided than before. By this time, Green had arrived to join Taylor's command, bringing Taylor's forces to 9,000 men.
If the conference between Smith and Taylor had left Smith even more befuddled, it had exactly the opposite effect on Taylor, convincing him that if anything was going to be done, he'd have to do it himself. He decided to confront Banks and moved out on the morning of 7 April, sending orders that evening on his own initiative to Churchill in Keatchie to join him.
* The distance between Alexandria and Shreveport along the Red is about 120 miles (195 kilometers). By this time Banks had advanced about half the way, making good progress and encountering no opposition to speak of. He had split his command, the riverboats continuing upstream with one of A.J. Smith's three divisions, while Smith's other two divisions and three of Franklin's divisions took an inland road; the two remaining divisions under Franklin's command were left behind to hold down the rear. Apparently Banks wanted to create some sort of pincers movement.
There was a perfectly good road that paralleled the river that Banks either did not know about or ignored. The inland road, in contrast, was in poor condition. The troops cursed Banks as they slogged through the dust and mud. Smith's "gorillas" were particularly loud in their grumblings, since they had nothing but contempt for "Napoleon P. Banks", as they called their fancy-dressing leader, and about as much respect for the "paper collar" Easterners who made up most of Franklin's divisions.
There was little water or forage on the inland trek, but the troops were supplied by wagons, Banks having accumulated over a thousand of them for the effort. The "gorillas" grumbled at this, claiming they were carting featherbeds and similar comforts for the city slickers. Grumbling was all that was, but the need to keep the column supplied led to its unraveling, with troops widely strung out to let the wagons pass and lines of wagons interspersed between masses of troops. If the rebels decided to attack, massive up forces to respond was likely to be difficult.
* On the afternoon of 7 April, Franklin's cavalry, under Brigadier General Albert Lee, was at the head of the inland column when they ran into several regiments of rebel cavalry. They were Tom Green's Texans, and they had plenty of fight in them. The Texans were driven off but Lee became nervous, worrying that if they showed up in greater numbers he would have a hard time of it. Lee asked Franklin to move infantry up past the wagons to support Lee's cavalry should push come to shove.
For whatever reasons, Franklin dismissed the request. When nightfall came and the Federal cavalry made camp, they found Green's horsemen to their front, in a position to block the Union advance the next morning. One of Banks' aides, Colonel John S. Clark, visited Lee and agreed that the situation left something to be desired. Clark went back to Franklin and asked him to move up infantry once more. Franklin refused again, and so Clark went back to Banks, who overruled Franklin and ordered a brigade of infantry moved up. Franklin did so grudgingly. When the sun rose on 8 April and the Federals moved forward, the rebels decided that they were outmatched and fell back.
Lee followed, encountering Confederate horsemen who would stand momentarily and then disappear. Lee didn't like the look of things, suspecting that he was being drawn into a trap, and in midmorning this was confirmed when he moved into a clearing at a place named Sabine Crossroads. There were woods at the edge of the clearing in front of him, full of Taylor's Confederates in line of battle.
Taylor had decided that he needed make a stand there, since once the Federals reached Sabine Junction they would be able to move in multiple directions, either marching directly on Shreveport, linking up there with the river element of the Union force, or blocking Churchill's movement from Keatchie. However, Taylor did not see this as a desperate last stand by any means; he was itching for a fight and sent a message to Kirby Smith that concluded: "I consider this as favorable a place to engage him [Banks] as any other." Taylor understood the lay of the land very well, had every intention of making the best use of that knowledge, and had made good preparations for combat, as well as, if it came to that, retreat.
With Churchill and his soldiers still on the march, Taylor only had 9,000 men, but Taylor was perfectly aware of how strung out the Yankees were. He had studied the practical art of war under the master, Stonewall Jackson, back in the Shenandoah Valley, and he knew that a smaller force that moved energetically could defeat a larger one if it was divided and attacked in detail. Banks had conveniently provided the division for him without any encouragement.
The battle began with long-range artillery dueling that gradually increased in intensity, reaching a steady pace by midmorning. Franklin's infantry had come up, as had Banks, who felt enthusiastic about engaging and defeating the rebels. Taylor was just as sure he would win; he was not troubled by the gradual buildup of Federals in front of him, and in fact was hoping that they would attack him so he could deliver a knockout counterstroke. Banks delayed, however, and so at about 4:00 PM Taylor threw his men forward at the two divisions Franklin had in the line.
They hit the Yankees "like a cyclone", as one Union soldier put it, coming on like "infuriated demons" as another remembered. Franklin took a bullet in the shin and was unhorsed, his men crumbled in short order, and the disorderly arrangement of men and wagons on the road now became an obstacle to the panicked rout. Franklin did manage to set up a workable defensive line with his third division, on good terrain about four miles (6.4 kilometers) down the road from Sabine Crossroads. The pursuing rebels ran into the Federal line and found it very solid.
Night was falling by now and Taylor decided to call it quits until the morning. He had good reason to feel very pleased with matters, since he had taken on a force of 12,000 Federals with 9,000 men of his own and sent the enemy packing, inflicting about 2,235 casualties for the loss of about half that number himself. He also managed to capture 20 guns and large numbers of wagons.
Banks was as dejected as Taylor was elated. Now the entire campaign to seize Shreveport was unraveling, and Banks worrying that his entire army might be destroyed. After a council of war, he ordered Franklin's divisions to conduct a night march to link up with A.J. Smith's troops, who were camped about a dozen miles away at a place named Pleasant Hill.
As the troops trickled in toward Pleasant Hill during the night, Banks began to feel more confident. Smith's troops were fresh and seemed to be itching for a fight. After the sun rose on 9 April, Banks saw no evidence that the Confederates were going to attack again that day, and felt that he might well be able to take the initiative himself and retrieve his fortunes. He spent the morning strolling about, thinking things over, chatting with his officers -- including his chief of staff, Brigadier General Charles P. Stone, the same man who had languished unjustly in prison for many months as a scapegoat for the Radicals. Banks had rescued him from bureaucratic oblivion in Washington to put him to use in the field.
Banks was wrong in thinking the Confederates had gone quiet for the day. Taylor had been joined by Churchill's command. Since they were weary from their forced march, Taylor had given them a rest break. However, Taylor was still determined to attack the Federals, and at 5:00 PM sent forward an assault to roll up their flanks.
Churchill's troops sent Franklin's men flying in disorder once again, but A.J. Smith had seen this coming and sent his Westerners in to smash the rebel attack in the flank in turn. Now it was the fortune of the Confederates to break and run as Smith's men drove them off the field. Taylor tried to stop the rout, but the most he could do was set up a defensive line a few miles back from the field as darkness fell, and wait for another Union push. The rebels had lost 1,626 men, while the Yankees had only lost 1,369.
Banks congratulated Smith on the victory: "God bless, you, General. You have saved this army." Now Banks felt very sure that he could continue the campaign and take Shreveport after all, and decided on the spot to resume the offensive. However, when he talked this over with Franklin and Franklin's division commanders, they all strongly discouraged him, insisting instead that he march his men back to the Red River so they could link up with the river fleet. Banks could not argue with this logic, and ordered a retreat back to Grand Encore on the Red.
A.J. Smith was shocked at this seeming lack of spine. They'd just won a battle, after all, and had good reason to think they could crush the rebels if they pushed again. He protested to Banks, who replied that he was in a difficult supply situation, had taken a large number of casualties, and had been advised by professional military men that charging forward was inadvisable.
Smith's shock turned to outrage when Banks also refused to give him time to bury his dead or even gather up the wounded, who were to be left for the rebels to pick up and care for as they thought best. Smith went over to Franklin and asked him to relieve Banks of his command and take over. Smith was apparently unaware of, or had discounted, the fact that Banks had made the decision to retreat on the insistence of Franklin and his lieutenants. The response was predictable. Franklin sipped at a tin cup of coffee and replied: "Smith, don't you know this is mutiny?" That was the end of that. The withdrawal began after midnight.
* Ridiculously, something very similar was going on in the rebel camp at about the same time. Kirby Smith had heard about the battle at Sabine Crossroads and got on the road from Shreveport before sunrise to figure out what the hell Taylor was up to. He arrived after dark to find that another battle had taken place, and that Taylor wanted to keep right on fighting the Yankees.
Smith had been rattled up to this time, but it didn't take a rattled person to worry that carrying on what would certainly be a war of attrition with a substantially larger force was a loser's game, and once Taylor had wrecked the army he had, Smith would have nothing left to defend the region. Smith would have no means of defense against Porter's gunboats and their troops, or Steele's column now menacing the region from Arkansas. Smith insisted, over Taylor's angry protests, that the army be marched to Mansfield.
The end result was that both forces retreated the next day, 10 April. Nobody
was in a very happy state of mind, least of all Banks, who was the target of
contempt from his division commanders down. Some joker in the ranks came up
with a ditty that quickly circulated through the columns, to be chanted
loudly as Banks rode past:
In eighteen-hundred and sixty-one
We all skedaddled to Washington!
In eighteen-hundred and sixty-four
We all skedaddled to Grand Encore!
NAPOLEON P. BANKS!
The mockery was not restricted to A.J. Smith's gorillas. Franklin's men
joined in as well, with at least tacit encouragement from Franklin himself,
who characteristically was building up a brief to deflect any blame for
failure onto Banks.
The Federals completed their march into Grand Encore late on 12 April, unmolested by the Confederates except for a determined cavalry attack at the very end. The troops immediately and spontaneously began to dig in. Franklin told a group of diggers: "You don't need any protection. We can whip them easily here." While the troops might have been completely contemptuous of Banks, that didn't mean they placed much trust in Franklin. One of them replied: "We have been defeated once, and we think we will look out for ourselves."
* In reality, Banks' men were in no immediate danger. Kirby Smith had decided that Frederick Steele's columns moving through Arkansas were the greater threat for the moment. Although Taylor had returned to Shreveport to plead for a focused attack on Banks, Banks was clearly not going to cause more trouble for the moment. Smith had also got wind of the fact that Sherman's divisions had to be returned very soon, meaning the odds were good that Banks would complete his withdrawal down the Red without any further encouragement. In the meantime, Steele appeared to be aggressive and powerful, and so on 16 April Kirby Smith took most of the forces available around Shreveport north into Arkansas.
The fact of the matter was that Smith didn't need to worry about Steele all that much, either, since the Federal offensive into southern Arkansas was already up a tree. It hadn't got off to a good start and things didn't get any better later.
Steele had never been enthusiastic about the whole Red River campaign, even protesting against the whole idea to Halleck, writing him the month before, on 12 March: "The roads are most if not quite impracticable; the countryside is destitute of provisions." There was also the reality that even in his stronghold in Little Rock he was in territory that was only barely pacified. Should he move out with his main force, rebel guerrillas might well decide to rise up in his rear and threaten his supply depots. The most Steele wanted to do was a feint at Arkadelphia, southwest of Little Rock on the road to Shreveport, or some other target in hopes of diverting Kirby Smith's attention from Banks. However, on 15 March Steele got a message from Grant, who bluntly told him to move out in force. Steele, who had fought under Grant as a division commander during the Vicksburg campaign, knew that further protests were useless and might not be good for his career.
On 23 March, Steele set out from Little Rock with 5,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry. Another force of 2,000 cavalry left Pine Bluff, downstream on the Arkansas River from Little Rock, to provide a diversion and watch for movements of rebel forces in the area. The troopers were to particularly keep an eye on Confederate activities in the vicinity of Camden, downstream on the Ouachita River from Arkadelphia and in use by Sterling Price as his headquarters.
A third force of 4,000 men, the "Frontier Division", under the command of Brigadier General John M. Thayer, had already set out from Fort Smith, in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). In principle, they were to link up with Steele's main column at Arkadelphia on 1 April. The combined force would then fall on Shreveport, presumably as part of a pincers movement along with Banks' force.
Unfortunately, Steele's fears proved to have much basis in fact. The weather was poor, the conditions of the roads wretched, and Federal movements through Arkansas slowed to a crawl as they took time to corduroy the muddy roads to let their wagons pass. 1 April came, the Frontier Division was nowhere to be found, and Price's cavalry were performing hit-and-run attacks on Steele's men.
Price had only about 5,000 men, in the form of five brigades of cavalry, all that was left to defend the entire state after sending away Churchill and his two divisions. There was no way that such a small force could stand and fight Steele and his men, but they could at least harass the Yankees and slow them down. Brigadier General John S. Marmaduke was ordered to take three of the five brigades, giving him a force of 3,200 men, and see what he could do to inconvenience Steele. Marmaduke kept two of the brigades, taken from their base in Camden, in front of Steele's troops, and sent the third, under Brigadier General Jo Shelby, to disrupt Steele's communications.
These cavalry were all experienced and good fighters, and if they could not win in a standup fight, they could at least make the Federals miserable. They skirmished and ran, massing for a serious attack on 3 April at Okolona. None of this hurt Steele very seriously but it cost him time, and he was steadily running out of supplies.
* Steele was a seemingly odd sort for a general, what one observer called a "velvet-collared esthete" whose personal lifestyle was as luxurious as he could make it, but he was competent and had plenty of solid combat experience. Still, he had never wanted this campaign to begin with, and with everything going wrong his determination to press on gradually crumbled away. His doubts grew when the Frontier Division, which had been unsurprisingly delayed by the bad weather and roads, finally showed up on 9 April. It proved to be an indifferent, disorganized, badly equipped force; worse, they hadn't brought much in the way of food, aggravating Steele's logistics problem.
In the meantime, Price was getting reinforcements, in the form of two brigades from the Indian Territory under the command of Brigadier General Samuel B. Maxey. The removal of the Union Frontier Division from Fort Smith had allowed the Confederates to pull their own forces from the area. One of these two brigades consisted of Choctaw Indian tribesmen, who had a blood score to settle with the Frontier Division for insults and injuries against their tribespeople. Once these troops arrived, Price would have about half as many men as Steele, but the balance wasn't as lopsided as it sounded and Steele knew it. The Federals were at the end of a long and tenuous supply line. Even 2 to 1 odds didn't sound so good for the Yankees if they were starving while running out of ammunition and forage.
Price set up a line of defense in the open spaces at Prairie d'Ane, south of the Little Missouri River, to block the Federal advance towards Spring Hill. The Federals made contact on 8 April and skirmished lightly on that day and the next, then made probing attacks on the 10th, 11th, and 12th, as if preparing to hit the Confederates in main force. Price braced for the assault.
* It didn't come. Steele hadn't been eager for a fight from the outset and had no intention of standing his ground. Under cover of darkness, he had moved east towards Camden, which was now generally empty of rebel troops. The Federals could occupy the town and use the defenses that the Confederates had built against their makers.
There was a running series of skirmishes for the next two days, with Thayer's Frontier Division doing a surprisingly creditable job of protecting the rear of the Federal movement. Price sent Marmaduke and his cavalry ahead to block the road, but the troopers weren't strong enough to hold the Federals. After a sharp two-hour fight on the morning of 15 April, the Yankee column pushed through, filing into Camden that evening and occupying the Confederate defenses.
Price moved in to surround the city, leaving Steele in the bizarre situation of being under siege by a force half the size of his own, though by that time Kirby Smith was on the way with the reinforcements that would tip the balance against Steele. The Federals were by now almost completely out of supplies, and were forced to send out wide-ranging parties to scrounge up food and forage from the barren countryside. The parties were extremely vulnerable, and on 18 April one consisting of 198 wagons and 1,100 men with four cannon was jumped by over 3,000 rebels under Marmaduke and Maxey at Poison Spring. All the wagons and the four guns were lost, as well as 301 Union troops. The Confederates only lost 115 men. The casualty ratio was even more lopsided than the simple numbers indicated, because a high proportion of the Federals were killed. Maxey's Choctaws found out that they were facing a black regiment of the Frontier Division, the First Kansas (Colored). The Choctaws had a particular grudge against that regiment; the Indians took no prisoners and killed the wounded.
* Kirby Smith had looted Taylor's command for resources to help Price deal with Steele, leaving Taylor with only 5,000 men to deal with the 25,000 Yankees under Banks. Taylor was further discouraged when he learned of the death of Texan General Tom Green, killed on 12 April in a confrontation with Yankee gunboats upstream from Grand Encore. Green had been a valuable lieutenant and Taylor felt the loss keenly.
Taylor remained aggressive. After spending a few days in Shreveport to attend to logistical matters, he left the town on 19 April to rejoin his small command, which he had left in the vicinity of Grand Encore. Although Taylor's soldiers didn't have the numbers to take on the Federals in Grand Encore directly, they were numerous enough to put on a show to make him nervous "by sending drummers to beat calls, lighting campfires, blowing bugles, and rolling empty wagons over fence rails." These corny tricks worked perfectly, with Banks concluding that he was faced with a rebel force about as big as his own. When Taylor arrived on the evening of 21 April, he found that the Yankees were already pulling out.
* When Banks had entered Grand Encore, he still had some reasons to believe that he could continue his offensive, since his force was largely intact. In fact, it could said very truthfully that he hadn't suffered any real defeat, that all he had done was abandon an overland route that wasn't a good idea to begin with. Now, so this line of thinking went, he could continue his campaign upriver, properly supported by Porter's river fleet.
This was ignoring a number of inconvenient realities. The first was that A.J. Smith's divisions had to be sent back to Sherman very soon, and in fact there was a reminder from Sherman waiting for Banks in Grand Encore when he arrived there. The second was that Porter's fleet was not in a position to accompany the ground forces upriver, since the Red had continued to fall. In fact, if it fell much lower, Porter's vessels would be stranded, and he would have to destroy them to keep out of Confederate hands. In other words, the fleet had to start downstream immediately.
The third was that Banks had no more heart for the campaign anyway. The lack of faith loudly expressed by everyone from the generals down to the privates unsurprisingly discouraged him. He was energetic enough to dismiss some of his staff, most notably Charles P. Stone, who he found "very weak" and sent back to New Orleans, and Albert Lee, who Banks believed had the right spirit but lacked skill. This exercise hardly did anything to build up a new head of steam. To complete his demoralization, on 18 April Banks received a message from Grant written in late March, which assumed that Banks had already taken Shreveport and urged him to move on Mobile without delay. The letter unintentionally mocked Banks and also underlined the sideshow nature of the whole Red River campaign.
Banks had never been the toughest of commanders, and under the circumstances it was no surprise that he was easily buffaloed by the deceptions of Taylor's men into thinking that he was facing some huge rebel force. Banks wavered for a few days, and then decided to withdraw downstream to Alexandria, below the shallows in the Red that might trap Porter's fleet, and in a position that could be much more easily resupplied and defended.
* Taylor was determined to intercept the Federal march. Even though he had far fewer men than Banks, Taylor hoped to catch them strung out on the march and destroy them in detail. He underestimated the speed with which the Yankees skedaddled downstream. In addition, despite the rapid march, A.J. Smith's "gorillas" still found time to leave nothing but ruins and ashes behind them, even burning the shanties of slaves. Grand Encore was destroyed, though Natchitoches was saved by energetic rebel fire-fighting. The Federals marched at night with fires dotting the horizon all around them.
The Confederates were outraged, Taylor saying that it was "difficult to restrain one's inclination to punish the ruffians engaged in this work." Any Yankees who straggled behind the end of the march and were picked up by the rebels could expect harsh treatment. This helped keep the march together, and the devastation left behind it made life more difficult for the rebels who tried to follow.
A fast-moving rebel brigade of 2,000 cavalrymen managed to get ahead of the Union line of march to set up a roadblock at Monett's Ferry. The rebels were under Brigadier General Hamilton Bee, older brother of the late General Barnard Bee of South Carolina who had given "Stonewall" Jackson his nickname a seeming eternity ago at First Manassas. Taylor had ordered Bee to halt the Federal march, but on the morning of 23 April the Yankees maneuvered quickly and competently, hit Bee's force in the flank, and sent the rebels packing without much trouble. The rebels did manage to inflict about 400 casualties to only about 50 of their own, but Taylor was far from happy. In fact, Taylor was indignant that Bee had pulled out when his casualties were so light and sacked Bee immediately.
The rebels snapped at the end of the Federal column but that only made the Yankees move faster. They began to file into Alexandria on the evening of 25 April and continued to march in during the next day. They didn't spend much time nursing their sore feet, instead immediately turning to the shovel and digging in.
* Bank's soldiers had reached safety, but Porter and his fleet were still in serious trouble. The retreat had not gone well for the Navy in the first place. Porter's most powerful ironclad gunboat, the EASTPORT, had been sunk by a torpedo downstream of Grand Encore, to be raised by two pump boats, only to firmly ground herself farther downstream. Nothing could be done to unstick the big vessel and so she was blown up by her crew, the great fragments of metal narrowly missing the ship's captain as he tried to get away in a small boat.
The Confederates had also been very active, with rebel sharpshooters picking off crewmen and Confederate cannon firing on the vessels from hidden positions. The two unprotected pump boats were both sunk, with heavy loss of life, and the gunboat CRICKET was badly chewed up by rebel artillery.
This was by no means the worst of Porter's troubles. When he reached the shallows of the Red upriver from Alexandria on the morning of 27 April, he found that the water was much too low to allow him to bring his fleet across. He was now faced with the prospect of destroying all of the ships he had brought upriver, an action which would almost certainly be the end of his career.
* On 18 April, the same day that Steele's foraging party sent out from Camden came to grief, a scout that Steele had sent south to check on Banks the week before returned with news that Banks had suffered setbacks, was holed up in Grand Encore, and was likely to give up and retreat back down the Red.
Now Steele began to take fright. Not only was he way out on a limb in terms of his supply line, but if Banks gave up the fight, Kirby Smith would be able to concentrate forces against Steele and his troops. Steele knew he outnumbered Price at the present time and could beat him in a stand-up fight, but once other Confederate forces arrived, the odds against the Federals would be very bad. In fact, Kirby Smith showed up 20 April with three divisions of infantry. Steele was now in a really difficult situation. If Smith could capture the entire Federal army hunkered down in Camden, the rebels would be able to regain the upper hand in Arkansas and put pressure on the Union in southern Missouri.
On 23 April, Steele received a message from Banks in Grand Encore, proposing that the two armies link up so Banks could resume the offensive on Shreveport. Steele responded that his situation was so difficult that such a movement was out of the question. He needn't have bothered to answer, since by the time Steele got the message, Banks had been on the retreat for two days. Even as Steele was writing the reply, Kirby Smith opened up on Camden with his guns. Smith didn't want to attack the Federals in their trenches, believing it made more sense to persuade Steele to retreat and then deal with the Yankees out in the open.
A simple bombardment didn't do the job. However, on 25 April, 3,000 rebel cavalry under Marmaduke descended on a Federal supply column of over 240 wagons protected by 1,440 troops near Marks' Mills, about halfway between Camden and the column's objective, the Union stronghold at Pine Bluff to the northeast. The Yankees put up a very stiff four-hour fight but they were outmatched, and the Confederates bagged them all, except for about 150 who managed to slip away.
That was the last straw for Steele. On 26 April, the Federals packed up to return to Little Rock, doing their work quietly while practicing deceptions to fool the rebels. The Yankees cleared out of Camden in the dark hours of the morning on 27 April, crossing the rain-swollen Ouachita River on a pontoon bridge that they pulled up behind them and carted off.
* Steele seemed to have a knack for executing well-organized retreats, a notoriously difficult operation: the Confederates didn't have a clue the Yankees were gone until well after sunrise, and when they finally moved into Camden they found they had no way to cross the river and pursue. They worked day and night to build a pontoon bridge of their own, but when they finally got across the river the Federals had a full day's head start on them.
Despite their starved condition, Steele's troops made good time towards the Saline River, where they could lay down a pontoon bridge, cross over, and then cut the bridge to halt pursuit. However, on 29 April the rains began to fall again, bogging down the Federal column. It bogged down the Confederates as well, but they were moving more lightly and managed to catch up with the Yankees on the morning of 30 April at Jenkin's Ferry, on the Saline, just as Steele's men were beginning to cross the river.
The rebels attacked the Federals, but the weather was damp and foggy, the mud was deep and thick, and though the Yankees were hungry and tired they had been energetic enough to throw up log breastworks that proved perfectly solid. Even if Steele's men couldn't see the Confederates in the fog, the Union troops had protection and the rebel infantry did not, so blind firing cut more painfully one way than it did in the other. The rebels persisted until the afternoon, but in the end all they had to show for it was about a thousand casualties and the loss of three cannon. The Federals lost only about 700 men. By this time, the entire Federal column was across the river except for the rearguard, and when the fighting went quiet the rearguard packed up and got across the Saline. Then they set the pontoon bridge on fire and cut it loose. Steele had made good his escape.
* The next two days of the march of Steele's men back to Little Rock was difficult, since the rain and mud continued. The land was barren and there were few trees that they could cut down to corduroy roads. Wagons that became hopelessly stuck were simply burned so the rebels could not have them, and the column moved on.
By 2 May they were on drier roads. They were met that day by a very welcome supply column out of Little Rock that allowed them to fill their stomachs again. They arrived at the outskirts of Little Rock in the midmorning of 3 May, feeling good enough to dress their columns and march into the city looking something like soldiers.
Steele tried to put a good face on the "Camden Expedition" as he called it, but it had been a complete bust. For his 42 days of campaigning in southern Arkansas, all Steele had to show for it were almost 3,000 casualties, about two-thirds of whom had been killed or captured, plus a loss of ten guns, 635 wagons, 2,500 mules, and a good quantity of horses, supplies, and sutler's goods. The only good thing was that he had known when to cut his losses and had conducted a competent retreat from a deeply exposed position.
A large part of the material losses of Steele's army ended up in rebel hands. Kirby Smith was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. Taylor had frustrated Banks in Louisiana, and now Price and Smith had done the same to Steele in Arkansas. Price and Smith had only suffered about 2,000 casualties, many who had not been seriously hurt and were now back in the ranks, and lost only three guns. Kirby Smith was disappointed that he had not been able to bag Steele's army whole, but under the circumstances Smith had done better than he had any right to expect. Now he could take his force into Louisiana and threaten Banks.
* After George Pickett's fiasco at New Berne, North Carolina, Braxton Bragg, in his capacity as chief military advisor to Jefferson Davis, suggested a change in leadership. Brigadier General Robert Hoke, then 26 years old, had been the only one of Pickett's officers to press the attack, and so Hoke was placed in charge of offensive operations in the tidewater area. Pickett remained in overall command of the Department of Virginia & North Carolina.
Hoke, with direction from Bragg, organized his forces to attack the Federal supply base at Plymouth on the Roanoke River. The Federals had thoroughly fortified the place and there were over 2,800 Union soldiers there under Brigadier General Henry Walton Wessels, backed up by four US Navy gunboats.
Hoke had three times as many men and a powerful ace up his sleeve. The ironclad ram ALBEMARLE was at dock up the Roanoke at Hamilton and was now ready for action. The ALBEMARLE had been built in a cornfield near Hamilton from scrap and salvage and only mounted two middling-caliber guns, but she was more than a match for any wooden Union gunboat. She wouldn't fare so well against a Union monitor, but they were all concentrated outside Charleston at the time.
Hoke's attack on Plymouth began on 17 April. The ALBEMARLE, under the command of Commander James W. Cooke, was to join in the attack on the 18th, but due to mechanical breakdowns and obstructions the Yankees had placed in the Roanoke, the ironclad did not show up on time. Hoke was forced to suspend his attack.
The ALBEMARLE did not arrive until the dark hours of the morning of 19 April. Federal gunners on shore fortifications fired on the smoking monster, which steamed on unharmed towards her targets, the Union gunboats MIAMI and SOUTHFIELD, which were "double ender" sidewheel wooden ships.
The Federals had received warning about the scrapheap ironclad the Confederates were building upriver, and the two gunboats were linked by chains in hopes of ensnaring the ALBEMARLE so boarding parties could throw black-powder charges down her smokestack. The ALBEMARLE dodged the trap and, ignoring the solid shot that bounced off her iron sides, rammed the SOUTHFIELD, sending the gunboat to the bottom. The ironclad then turned on the MIAMI. The two vessels fought at point-blank range until shell fragments bounced off the ironclad's tough armor and killed many of the MIAMI's crew, including the captain, Commander Charles W. Flusser, the senior US Navy officer in the area. The MIAMI then prudently withdrew out into Albemarle Sound, following by two other Union gunboats that had been observing the fight from a distance. The ALBEMARLE tried to pursue, but the creaky ironclad's engines weren't up to the task.
With the Federal gunboats gone, Hoke was able to press coordinated attacks against Plymouth, overwhelming Union defenses. The Yankees withdrew into a strongpoint named Fort Williams, but they were caught between Hoke's artillery and sharpshooters and the guns of the invulnerable ALBEMARLE. General Wessels was forced to surrender at midmorning on 20 April. The Confederates seized over 2,800 men, 500 horses, 28 guns, and large quantities of small arms and ammunition, for a loss of about 300 rebels dead and wounded. Hoke was made a major general by the order of Jefferson Davis, and promptly turned his attention on Washington, North Carolina, beginning his assault on 27 April.
There were murky tales of atrocities following the surrender of the Yankees at Plymouth. According to the later report of one Union sergeant taken prisoner there, the Confederates showed no mercy to any black men wearing Union uniforms: they were lynched, shot, or had their skulls crushed in with rifle butts. The sergeant also claimed that some of the white officers in charge of black regiments suffered a similar fate. The Confederates tended to see them as leaders of slave insurrection, a capital offense in the South.
* The fact that the war in the tidewater was nothing more than a sideshow was emphasized by the fact that even as Hoke began his attacks, the Federals were pulling out, abandoning Washington to allow the garrison to reinforce Grant's operations in northern Virginia. The last of the Yankees left on 30 April, setting fires that burned half the town to the ground. The place had already been looted of everything that could be carried off. The destruction of the town was so extensive that even the US Army set up a court of inquiry over it.
Hoke was enraged. He was determined to drive the Federals out of their main stronghold at New Berne, the third Confederate attempt to do so. The ALBEMARLE was to support the attack, requiring the ironclad to steam out of the Roanoke River into Albemarle Sound, cruise south through Croatan Sound and Pamlico Sound, and then move up the Neuse River. However, when the ALBEMARLE reached Albemarle Sound on the afternoon of 5 May, seven wooden US Navy gunboats were waiting.
The Union gunboats were vulnerable and took a terrible beating while their cannonballs bounced off the ALBEMARLE's armor, but the Federals courageously pressed their attacks, and finally one of the wooden gunboats, the SASSACUS, rammed the ironclad. The ALBEMARLE put a shot into the SASSACUS's boilers, but the battered Confederate ship was in no condition to keep on fighting. Commander Cooke took her back upstream to Plymouth to dock and make repairs. As it turned out, the ALBEMARLE would sink no more Union ships.
Hoke went ahead with his attack on New Berne anyway and was making good progress when he received a message from General Beauregard, in command at Petersburg, Virginia, to "repair to Petersburg, no matter how far the operations might have advanced." Union forces were threatening Petersburg, and its loss would isolate Richmond. The message was more evidence, if any were needed, of the irrelevance of the war in the tidewater. That was further underlined by the fact that although there were hardly any Confederate forces left in the region, the Yankees remained almost completely passive until well into the fall.
