Poison Springs Battleground State Park

About Poison Springs Battleground State Park

Arkansas has fought three civil war battles, all of which are on the state's National Register of Historic Places (NPS) list. Arkansas' three historic parks commemorating these battles each host one or more of these battlegrounds.

The first battle occurred in Poison Spring when Confederate troops captured a supply train from Poison Spring and drove the Union troops out. Arkansas was divided into two parts during the Civil War, with Union troops occupying the state's two largest cities, Little Rock and Arkansas City. The Confederates camped in Monticello, Camden and Washington, while the Union Army camped out in Arkansas State Prison and the Army of the Potomac in Arkansas.

A sophisticated Union offensive was launched to capture the last rebel strongholds in West Texas. Shreveport, Louisiana, was supposed to be the doorstep to Texas, but the Battle of the Red River, a battle between the Union Army and the Confederate Army, stood in the way. Thus began the so-called "Red River" campaign, the biggest battle in Texas history and a major turning point for the war.

A concentration of Confederates in southwest Arkansas had forced the Union to migrate east, but a few days after leaving Little Rock, Union Army Gen. Frederick Steele arrived in Camden with his Army of the South.

When federal troops arrived on April 15, they found that the Confederate troops had withdrawn, and there was heavy rain and mud, leading to slow movement and a dangerous reduction in supplies. To make matters worse, Steele also learned that Confederate loyalists had moved in and destroyed the vast corn stockpiles he had tried to loot. On April 17, General Steele received the news that the federal forces advancing north from Louisiana were withdrawing because they needed supplies, but when they arrived in Camden on the morning of April 18 - a few days after Steele's arrival - he learned that they had withdrawn.

The Union General then sent his own team of scouts to get the remaining supplies, and it was not long before they were received by a team of scouts led by Brig. The cars were spotted by General John S. Marmaduke's men camped out in Camden. Confederates, Marmaduke suggested, ambushed him, but his men did not.

Union carriages were reinforced that night by another 400 soldiers sent by Steele of Camden, preparing to attack about 1,500 Confederates along the side of the blocked road. The attack on 18 April began at what locals described as a "source of poison," a place of great danger to Union troops and their supplies.

By the time the battle ended, the Union force had been reduced from over 1,100 to about 800, and 80 were killed on their way back to Camden from the depths of the country. Fewer than 20 Confederates were also killed in that victory, leaving much of the supplies out of enemy hands.