Engagement at Poison Springs

The Union column came for corn. Camden was short of food once Steele's army arrived, and a report of about 5,000 bushels sent Colonel James Williams west on April 17 with more than 600 men, four cannon and 198 wagons. His soldiers fanned out over farms and plantations along White Oak Creek, around eighteen miles from town. Confederate cavalry destroyed about half the corn, and Union troops took the rest, along with other plunder. Wagons full of that harvest were what Marmaduke's and Maxey's cavalry captured the next day.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Poison Spring Battleground State Park — steps away
  An 85-acre roadside battlefield west of Camden, where Confederates routed a Union foraging column on April 18, 1864, and many Black soldiers of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry were killed after surrendering.
• White Oak Lake State Park — 6.6 mi
  A 725-acre park on the lower of two 1961 lakes, where white sand marks an ancient shoreline and the visitor center carries a Poison Spring display eight miles from the battlefield.
• McCollum-Chidester House Museum — 10 mi
  An 1847 Greek Revival house in Camden that served as a stagecoach headquarters and, in April 1864, as General Steele's headquarters, with bullet holes still visible upstairs.
• Logoly State Park — 23 mi
  Arkansas's first environmental education state park, built on the Magnesia Springs resort and a Boy Scout camp, with about 200 acres of mature forest kept as a natural area.

More markers nearby

• The Civil War Battle of Poison Spring — steps away
• Ouachita County Poison Springs Battlefield — steps away
• 1st Kansas Colored Infantry — 2.2 mi
• Ouachita County Ecore a-Fabre or Fabre's Bluff — 11 mi