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★ 111 ★ Chapter Nine The Battle of Poison Spring, Arkansas Steele soon discovered that the ideal base at Camden was as much a trap as a resource. As his corps flowed into Camden, he received word that the Confederate army in Louisiana defeated General Banks’ large Union command, forcing Banks to withdraw back down the Red River. Steele had to hold tight in Camden to determine what would be the future course of the overall campaign to Shreveport.1 There was nothing available in Camden to sustain Steele’s corps. The departing Confederate soldiers had left behind a welcoming gift of water wells contaminated with the corpses of dead animals.2 The region around Camden for many miles was devoid of forage and rations. Confederate soldiers based in Camden before the Yankee incursion had picked the countryside bare.3 The wagon train of supplies he so urgently ordered from Little Rock a week earlier was not coming to Camden. To his dismay, an untimely riverboat collision would delay the shipment indefinitely.4 Steele was in a bind. He had taken his corps off its route to Shreveport to re-provision at Camden, and now found himself in a siege posture, with no forage. He needed to feed roughly twelve thousand troops, and a like number of horses and mules, as well as the hungry, restive citizens of Camden, and had no way to obtain food.5 Meanwhile, Confederate General Price’s nearby command was growing larger by the day. To make matters worse, Steele 112 ★ James M. Williams learned that Confederates were burning any remaining large stocks of corn in the immediate area. His only glimmer of hope was a report of a remaining stash of five thousand bushels of corn about fifteen miles west toward Washington. It would give him a few more days of cushion. He either had to act, or face the prospect of his corps decimated by starvation. On April 16, he directed the organization of a foraging expedition to that site.6 The mission was fraught with risk, but he was desperate. That night, General Thayer visited his Second Brigade headquarters. Colonel Adams, the brigade commander, was not available, so Thayer met with the brigade’s assistant adjutant and, together, they went to see Colonel Williams. They roused Williams from his bunk, and Thayer told Williams he was to command the foraging expedition. Thayer explained that General Steele had instructed him to select a good officer. Thayer believed Williams was best suited for the task, with no disrespect meant to Colonel Adams. Thayer ordered Williams to be ready to march at 5:00 a.m. the following morning with his own regiment, four squadrons of cavalry, and one section of Rabb’s Indiana battery.7 He was to take his foraging party back to the White Oak Creek area where the division headquarters had been the night of the fifteenth. There was said to be plenty of forage in the area. Thayer committed to sending out additional troops later in the day to reinforce Williams, if needed.8 This was some consolation as General Steele’s quartermaster originally specified several hundred more men when he determined the organizational strength of the wagon train escort. Steele’s adjutant overrode the request, ordering the reduced troop strength.9 The next morning, April 17, Williams and his foraging party marched out of Camden. His command at that time consisted of five hundred men from the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry under the command of Major Richard A. Ward, the regiment’s executive officer; fifty men from the Sixth Kansas Cavalry; seventy-five men from the Second Kansas Cavalry; seventy men from the Fourteenth Kansas Cavalry, and one section of the Second Indiana Battery. His total strength was 695 men, 2 cannon, and 198 wagons.10 Williams took the forage train about eighteen miles northwest from Camden toward Oak Creek, and established a command post. Major Ward deployed the wagons with security troops out in all directions to a radius of six miles. There was reason for caution because of the presence of Confederate patrols. The wagons returned to camp that night around midnight without The Battle of Poison Spring, Arkansas ★ 113 incident. Soldiers successfully filled over 140 of the wagons with corn. The stockpiles Williams’ men located were expected to have had five thousand bales of hay, but rebels had burned half of them before the forage parties managed to get there.11 Confederate troops monitored Williams’ progress every...

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