The Civil War Battle of Poison Spring

Steele's march was meant to be half of a pincer. Union General-in-Chief Henry Halleck wanted Nathaniel Banks to go up the Red River with Admiral Porter's fleet while Steele came south from Little Rock, and the two would meet near Shreveport before moving into East Texas. Banks failed first. He lost at Mansfield on April 8, ordered a retreat after Pleasant Hill the next day, and was still fighting his way out of Louisiana when Steele pulled back from Camden. Federal losses topped 8,700, Confederate about 6,500, and Grant could not press more valuable targets that year.

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

• Ouachita County Poison Springs Battlefield — steps away
• Engagement at Poison Springs — steps away
• 1st Kansas Colored Infantry — 2.2 mi
• Ouachita County Ecore a-Fabre or Fabre's Bluff — 11 mi