(Fort Smith: Cradle of The First Southern Free State - continued)
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UNION TROOPS RETREAT FROM SOUTH While the losses were heavy for all, they were the heaviest for the Negro Union troops. As feared, the enemy showed no mercy to the Negro wounded and their white officers. The Negro troops, however, proved themselves excellent fighters in extreme circumstances with considerable esprit de corps. From thirty miles out of Pine Bluff, the troops took four days and nights to arrive back into Little Rock. Everything they had was carried on their backs. Only one wagon was allowed for each brigade and that was for returning papers and records. Fatigue and hunger plagued the troops. On May 13th, the troops met up with Union boats Ad Hine, Carrie Jacobs, Des Moines City and Chippeway at Dardanelle. The boasts were loaded with Quartermaster and ordinance stores on the way to Fort Smith. As the boats moved slowly along the river, they protected the troops and arrived with the soldiers in Fort Smith. The defeated troops, mortified and indigent, were welcomed by townspeople who were more than glad to see the return of General Thayer and his Army of the Frontier rather than the Rebel troops not too far away threatening in Indian Territory. Taking advantage of the disastrous retreat, the Rebel's pushed forward to the Arkansas River to take all the small stations along the stream. There was a battle at Dardanelle after the Army of the Frontier had marched through. This established a blockade of sorts to hamper movement of supplies. Clarksville was vacated on May 20th by Union troops. The Rebels wanted to interrupt navigation and cut off supplies being shipped to Fort Smith from Little Rock. Hospital wards were filled with wounded. The general hospital was in six locations across town and consisted of the St. Charles Hotel, Sutton Mansion, Rector Mansion, the prison, the smallpox ward, and the colored ward. The Belle Grove Seminary also was used at one time as a hospital. The hospitals were clean but not many iron beds were available. Many patients slept outside the buildings on tent floors. REFUGEES FLEE During the week of May 23, 1864, about one hundred refugee wagons crossed the river on their way to Kansas. After Union troops took back control of the Arkansas, the steamers were finally able to leave for their return to Little Rock with one hundred twenty white refugees and three hundred Negroes.The flight was on. Twelve hundred refugees crossed the river at Fort Smith on their way to Fort Scott in early June. Most were wives and children of Union Arkansas 1st Infantry soldiers, and they were in a very destitute condition. |
May 31, General Thayer sent out a special letter to
the people in the area. The letter said that it had
come to Thayer's attention that anonymous letters
had been sent to some people living in Fort Smith
warning them to leave and threatening them with
assassination if they did not. Thayer said he
considered this kind of warfare the same as guerrilla
and bushwacking. He also stated that he was
warring against organized troops according to
recognized principles of civilized warfare and all
other modes of warfare he detested. He reserved the
right, as Military Commander of the District, to tell
anyone to leave. General Thayer made it plain that
he had no use at all for the Rebel cause and that he
would not permit such conduct as the threatening
letters in his District. General Thayer also snapped out General Orders #31 in an effort to settle the troops into camp life. He ordered all officers to stay in their respective camps at night and cut down on trips to town in the daytime. The order stated the grog shop was no place an officer and the closing line warned "these orders had better not fall as dead letters 126 General Thayer was very concerned about there being sufficient supplies stockpiled in Fort Smith during good boating water on the Arkansas and sufficient early summer forage on the way to Fort Scott. Several boats were able to bring supplies by the second week of June. One boat, the J. R. Williams, was captured by Confederate Colonel Stand Watie's Creeks and Seminoles on its way from Fort Smith to Fort Gibson. The boat was loaded with commissary stores of mostly flour and bacon along with some Indian trade goods. The boat was attacked about seventy miles above Fort Smith and eventually set on fire. The Union soldiers made it back to Fort Smith unharmed in what must have been record overland time. Thayer then sent an excursion by the 2nd Kansas Colored Regiment and 11th U. S. Colored Infantry and an artillery unit into Indian Territory. They were successful in fighting the Indians who had burned the little steam boat. Thayer than determined that it was unsafe to ship supplies to Fort Gibson and within a brief time, General Maxey's Indian Territory Confederates reoccupied the country west of the Poteau and south of the Arkansas Rivers. Early in June, 1864, Major Reed of the Home Guards took about twenty-five of his troops and part of the 9th Kansas Cavalry and searched lower Sebastian County and Franklin County for bushwackers. Near a Mr. Pearl's house at Potato Hill, there was a fight with twenty-five bushwackers and the popular Chaplain William Wilson of the 6th Kansas Cavalry, was wounded and his arm was amputated below the elbow. He died of the wounds in late summer. WOMEN VOLUNTEER Notation was made in The New Era that all over the United States, women were volunteering for the Army and taking the places of clerks at $13 a month, a soldiers pay. They also printed a piece of genuine Arkansas Poetry from a girl to her lover in the Confederate Army: It's hard for you'uns to live in camp
NATIONAL UNION CONVENTION The National Union Convention (Republican) met in Baltimore June 7th, 1864, at high noon. At the Convention, Abraham |