Camden Expedition Timeline

Union armies from Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Fort Smith (Sebastian County) marched south in late March 1864 to link with another Federal force at Shreveport, Louisiana, and together invade eastern Texas. The Louisiana force was repulsed by early April, and the Federal troops under Major General Frederick Steele changed course to Camden (Ouachita County) on the Ouachita River, arriving there on April 15. After disastrous losses in combat at Poison Spring and Marks’ Mills, Steele’s starving army retreated toward Little Rock, fighting a desperate rear-guard action against Confederate infantry under Lieutenant General Edmund Kirby Smith at Jenkins’ Ferry. The surviving Union troops returned to Little Rock on May 3, 1864, ending the Camden Expedition of the Red River Campaign.

TIMELINE

For additional information:
Bearss, Edwin C. Steele’s Retreat from Camden and the Battle of Jenkins’ Ferry. Little Rock: Arkansas Civil War Centennial Commission, 1967.

Christ, Mark K. “‘War to the knife’: Union and Confederate Soldiers’ Accounts of the Camden Expedition, 1864.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 72 (Winter 2014): 381–413.

Forsyth, Michael J. The Camden Expedition of 1864 and the Opportunity Lost by the Confederacy to Change the Civil War. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003.

———. The Red River Campaign of 1864 and the Loss by the Confederacy of the Civil War. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002.

Gill, John P. “Union Retreat from Camden: The So-Called ‘Camden Expedition.’” Pulaski County Historical Review 64 (Spring 2016): 23–28.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas