Battle of Mount Elba
| Battle of Mount Elba | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the American Civil War | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 United States
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 Confederate States
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Powell Clayton | Thomas Pleasant Dockery | ||||||
| Units involved | |||||||
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Fagan's Division, District of Arkansas | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 600 | 1500 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 100 | 320 | ||||||
The Battle of Mount Elba (March 30, 1864) was fought in present-day Cleveland County, Arkansas, Arkansas, as part of the Camden Expedition, during the American Civil War.
The town of Mount Elba, located on the Saline River in present-day Cleveland County, Arkansas, was established in the 1830s and became a thriving southern Arkansas commercial center. With the construction of the road from Pine Bluff, Jefferson County, to Camden , Ouachita County in the 1830s, and the establishment of a nearby ferry by Simeon Goodwin in 1845, a trade center began to develop. In the 1850s a two story Masonic Lodge and a Masonic Female College. The town's businesses included the ferry crossing, a post office, two stores, three doctors, a school, and a blacksmith. The largest business, which employed five workers, was a nearby steam-powered sawmill that produced approximately 600,000 board feet of lumber annually. A levee built by slave labor, stretched from the ferry crossing to the south to protect the town and local plantations from flooding from the Saline River. Further down river from the town was a ford that could be used during period of low water. The town was located between the road from Pine Bluff to Princeton and the road from Pine Bluff to Warren.
The village of Longview (also spelled Long View) was established around 1840, forty-three miles to the southeast of Mount Elba in Bradley County was also a port on the Saline River. Longview was also an important center of transportation for the counties both sides of the river, including Ashley, Drew, and Bradley counties. Local road networks brought travelers to and from the port. On the east side of the river, a branch of the Louisiana Trace led through Fountain Hill to the Pine Bluff and Monroe, Louisiana road. A north-south route passing through Longview connected Monticello, Fountain Hill and the Marie Saline landing on the Ouachita River. A road from the Mississippi river port town, Columbia, in Chicot County, passed through Longview on its way to Camden and served as a westward route to Texas. With the beginning of the Civil War, the port and ferry at Longview assumed even more importance because of the need to move troops from the west to the major theater of operations in the east. By the summer of 1864, the Confederates had constructed a pontoon bridge across the river to provide faster and more reliable crossings from the eastern part of Arkansas to the Camden and western areas of Arkansas and Texas.
After the capture of Little Rock on September 10, 1863 by the Federal army commanded by Major General Frederick Steele, the Confederate army commanded by Major-General Sterling Price retreated to Arkadelphia and then to Camden where they went into winter quarters. The Camden Expedition was launched in cooperation with the Red River Campaign of 1864. U.S. planners envisioned two federal armies converging simultaneously, one force under the command of General Nathaniel Banks pressing northward up the Red River commencing at Alexandria, Louisiana and the other federal army under the command of General Frederick Steele driving southwestward from Little Rock Arkansas. The objective was to press the rebel army of General E. Kirby Smith back upon the rebel stronghold at Shreveport and defeat him. If successful, a somewhat vague second phase envisioned the two federal armies combining into one large force and continuing their offensive with a westward push into Texas.
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