Battle of Jenkins' Ferry (April 30, 1864)

Jenkins' Ferry Battle Monument

Today marks the 148th anniversary of the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas.

A bloody and important engagement of the Arkansas portion of the Red River Campaign, the battle took place about 12 miles south of Sheridan in the lowlands and swamps along the Saline River.

Union General Frederick Steele had been badly mauled in a series of battles near Camden over the previous two weeks, particularly at the Battle of Poison Spring on April 18th. Learning that the Louisiana phase of the campaign to take Shreveport and advance into northern Texas had failed, he decided that discretion was the better part of valor and began to evacuate his fortified position at Camden on April 26, 1864.

Saline River at Jenkins' Ferry

The Confederates, who had hovered around Camden in large numbers and had defeated several efforts by General Steele to supply his hungry army, quickly moved in pursuit of the retreating Federals. Led by General Kirby Smith in person, they caught up with Steele at Jenkins' Ferry on the morning of April 30, 1864, 148 years ago today.

The ground over which the battle was fought was horrible for offensive operations. The river was running high and the bottoms were partially flooded. Thick swamps and mud hindered the movement of troops and cannon and greatly impacted Smith's ability to properly coordinate his forces.

Fighting on the defensive, the Federals were able to condense their lines and throw up breastworks of fence rails and logs. The Confederates had to come at them through the swamps and mud and without the protection of fortifications of their own. The result was a bloody fight that ended when Kirby Smith realized he would not be able to overwhelm the Union lines and ordered the attacks to stop. The Union army slipped across the Saline River during the night, destroying its pontoon bridge behind it, and moved on for Little Rock.

Total losses in the battle numbered nearly 1,000. The Confederates suffered casualties of at least 86 killed and 356 wounded. The Federals lost an estimated 63 killed, 413 wounded and 45 missing in action.

To learn more about the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry and Jenkins' Ferry State Park, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/jenkinsferry1.

The Battle of Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas - Capt. John Whiteford's letter to his wife

Jenkins' Ferry State Park

The letters of Captain John Whiteford, a Southern Unionist who commanded Company I, 1st Arkansas Infantry (U.S.) during the Camden Expedition of the Red River Campaign, reveal a great deal about the tribulations of a Southern family that fled north during the Civil War.

Whiteford was a resident of Texas when that state left the Union in 1861. Leaving his wife "among strangers" at Fort Riley in Kansas, he enlisted in the Union army. In September of 1863, he was appointed as the captain of Company I, 1st Arkansas (U.S.). In this capacity he served first in Sebastian County, but went on to fight in the Camden Expedition.

Saline River at Jenkins' Ferry Battlefield

On April 30, 1864, Whiteford was among the Union officers and soldiers who threw back the bloody attacks of Confederate forces at the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry on the Saline River near Sheridan, Arkansas. Under the command of General Kirby Smith, Southern troops tried to destroy the retreating Union army as it crossed the flooded Saline River at Jenkins Ferry. The attacks, however, were not well coordinated and the Federals escaped after inflicting heavy casualties on the Confederates.

Whiteford, who had never actually been mustered into the service and would later be labeled a "civilian" by the Union army, led his company in heavy fighting at Jenkins' Ferry and described the scene in a letter to his wife a short time later:

Jenkins' Ferry Battle Monument

...The infantry were in the rear to protect the train, and fight the rebels, while the balance of the army were crossing on the pontoon. It was a regular infantry fight. The rebels had four pieces of artillery in making the attack on us, but the Second Kansas Colored Volunteers captured that after the third charge, and then we had an even show. They massed their infantry on us and charged fiercely, but it was no go. Our regiment (Second Arkansas) distinguished itself. The dead rebels were thick over the ground. As we drove them back one man, by my side, was shot, and the bushes and sapplings were cutting down in front of me and bark and dirt thrown in my face, but no ball touched me. Thanks to God, who saw fit to spare my life awhile longer. The musketry was fiercer and more constant than at Prairie Grove. We fought all day on swampy land. The night before we were up all night in the rain in line of battle, and during the fight we were up to our knees in water, and when we had drove the enemy back we had to march on return four miles through mud knee deep. - Capt. John Whiteford, May 4, 1864.

Whiteford continued by describing the actual crossing of the Saline River, which took place at the site of today's Jenkins' Ferry State Park:

...Union families from Camden had to leave their carriages in the mud, and carry their children to the bridge. Men even dropped down in the confusion and wagons pass over them, it raining all the time. When we got across the bridge we had three miles more of such mud. Such a sight of women and children crying, and horses and mules dying, and wagons abandoned, I never saw. The rebels came to the river after we had crossed, but too late to do us any damage. We had destroyed the bridge that night, and all the wagons except one to each brigade. - Capt. John Whiteford, May 4, 1864.

Although the numbers may not be accurate, reported losses at the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry were 86 killed and 356 wounded for the Confederates and 63 killed, 413 wounded and 45 missing for the Federals.

You can learn more about the battle and today's Jenkins' Ferry State Park at www.exploresouthernhistory.com/jenkinsferry1.

The Battle of Jenkins' Ferry - Arkansas

It seems appropriate in a way that the last significant battle of the Arkansas phase of the Red River Campaign was fought in flooded swamps with the soldiers of both sides standing from a few inches to a few feet deep in water.

The campaign to seize Shreveport, an important strategic objective on the Red River, was already a disaster by the time the Union and Confederate armies tore into each other at Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas, on April 30, 1864. General Frederick Steele's troops from Little Rock and Fort Smith had been badly beaten in fighting at Poison Spring and Marks' Mills after they had bogged down due to a shortage of supplies and stiffening resistance at Camden earlier in the month.

The other arm of the Union army, led up from the Mississippi River by General Nathaniel P. Banks, had advanced as far as Alexandria, Louisiana, before they were soundly thrashed at the Battle of Mansfield by a much smaller Confederate army commanded by General Richard Taylor.

With the campaign in shambles, both Federal forces went into retreat. In Arkansas, the last major fight of that retreat took place at Jenkins' Ferry, an important crossing of the Saline River about 12 miles south of Sheridan. The fighting started on April 29th, when Confederate artillery opened an ineffectual fire on Union forces trying to move supply wagons across a pontoon bridge.

Heavy rains began to fall, and continued to fall through the night, and by the next morning the swamps along the Saline were flooded with muddy water. The road leading to the temporary bridge was a quagmire of mud and the Union troops were battling the elements in trying to cross the river when Confederate troops launched a dawn attack from the rear.

The Federals threw up temporary breastworks and hurled back repeated Confederate attacks in fighting that turned out to be confused and bloody. The Southern assaults were poorly coordinated, however, and General E. Kirby Smith was finally forced to call off the fight. Steele took advantage of the break in the fighting to move his army across the Saline and destroy the bridge behind him.

To learn more, please visit www.exploresouthernhistory.com/jenkinsferry1. Our page on the battle is newly updated. Among the new features is an aerial photograph of the battlefield.