Arkansas Civil War Chronicles
- 1863
January 5, 1863
The Union army
commanded by General Curtis, with headquarters at
Helena, was put under the orders of General U.S.
Grant, whose principal concern at that moment was
for the investment, siege, and capture of Vicksburg,
where the Confederates continued to hold out against
the efforts of Union arms to open and hold the
Mississippi river, as a means of isolating the
Trans-Mississippi Department from the Confederacy
east of the river.
General Thomas C.
Hindman was in camp at Van Buren, to which point he
returned with the main body of his army following
the battle of Prairie Grove.
January 11, 1863
Brigadier General
Thomas J. Churchill surrendered the fortified
position at Arkansas Post to a Union army commanded
by General John A. McClernand. Churchill, in
command of one of the six brigades of General
Hindman’s army at the battle of Prairie Grove, was
sent, late in December, hurrying across the state
from Van Buren with his command for the purpose of
fortifying and holding Arkansas Post against a
threatened invasion of Arkansas by Union gunboats
entering the state by the Arkansas river from the
Mississippi. This threat of invasion, as was
suspected, would be aided by the Union army of
General Curtis, then in possession of Helena.
General Churchill, as soon as his command arrived at
Arkansas Post, completed and strengthened the
fortification of earthwork and logs which he found
in process of construction, and to which was given
the name of “Fort Hindman.” In the morning of
January 8, General Churchill’s pickets reported a
fleet of gunboats and transports coming up the
Arkansas river. The next 20,000 Union troops,
commanded by General McClernand, were taken off the
fleet of boats near the Post, which they soon
surrounded and made ready to attack. Churchill
placed the earthworks of the fort in condition to
repel an assault, which came in the afternoon of
January 9. This attack was repulsed. Later in the
afternoon of that same day, the union gunboats,
commanded by David D. Porter, opened fire and
succeeded in inflicting some damage on the
defenses. At noon on January 10, the Union troops
made a general assault on the fort. Again the
attack was repulsed, and with heavy losses to the
Union side. The next day, January 11, because he
was outnumbered more than five to one, Churchill
surrendered the fort. He and his command of about
5,000 effective men were taken prisoners. Churchill
was taken to Camp Chase, Ohio, where he was held as
a prisoner of war until he was exchanged, about
three months later. The rest of the Confederates,
in time, were exchanged also, and many of the
re-entered the Confederate army. General Churchill,
after his exchange, returned to Arkansas and was
afterwards made a major-general in the
Trans-Mississippi Department.
January 18, 1863
The main body of
General Hindman’s army went into camp at Little
Rock. General Holmes, after ordering General
Churchill to the defense of Arkansas Post,
discovered that the attack at that point was to be
made with a much larger Union force than he had at
first suspected. Accordingly Hindman was then
ordered to hasten with the rest of the army to the
assistance of Churchill at Arkansas Post. Hindman
moved as promptly and rapidly as conditions
permitted; but, in spite of all his efforts, he had
started on the march across the state too late to
arrive in time to save Churchill’s command from
defeat and surrender. When news reached Holmes of
the surrender of Arkansas Post, and of the return of
the Union fleet to the Mississippi river, Hindman
was ordered into camp at Little Rock. When General
Hindman started on the march from Van Buren late in
December, snow, sleet and rain made the roads all
but impassable. The creeks and low places were all
overflowed. The army waded through mud and water
most of the way from Van Buren to Little Rock,
without tents, without ambulances, littering the
route with mules, which were used to draw the scanty
subsistence and ordnance. At Little Rock, the
drenched soldiers, arriving in a heavy snow storm,
were housed partly in the workshops of the Arsenal,
while they were being loaded on transports to
proceed down the Arkansas river. They got only as
far as Pine Bluff. There they learned what had
happened at Arkansas Post and were returned to
Little Rock, where they were put into camp south of
the city for the winter.
January 21, 1863
General John S.
Marmaduke, with Shelby’s brigade of Missouri cavalry
and some other smaller units of Arkansas and Texas
cavalry, returned from a Confederate raid of two or
three weeks into Missouri, occupied Batesville and
reported to General Holmes that there were no
impending threat of invasion by the enemy in force
from that quarter. Marmaduke had started on his
raid in Missouri from Lewisburg, being detached
there from Hindman’s army as it hurried forward from
Van Buren to the support of Churchill at Arkansas
Post.
January 28, 1863
The first shock of
alarm and apprehension, which spread over Arkansas
with the fall of Arkansas Post, was somewhat
relieved by the reassurances of General Holmes. By
this time General L.P. Walker’s command was know to
be holding the defenses on the Arkansas river below
Pine Bluff; Hindman was back at Little Rock with the
main body of his army; Marmaduke had taken his
position at Batesville; the Union fleet was supposed
to have returned to the Mississippi river, and for
the moment at all events, there seemed to be no
occasion for fear of an immediate attempt on the
part of the Union army at Helena to stir out of its
present positions in eastern Arkansas.
