Battle of Poison Spring

Battle of Poison Spring
Part of the American Civil War
Date April 18, 1864 Location Poison Spring, northwest of Camden, Arkansas 33°38′19.7″N 93°00′15.6″W / 33.638806°N 93.004333°W / 33.638806; -93.004333 Result Confederate victory
Belligerents
Confederate States	United States
Commanders and leaders
Samuel Maxey John Marmaduke	James Monroe Williams
Strength
1,800 cavalry	824 infantry 291 cavalry 4 guns
Casualties and losses
34 dead and 218 wounded or missing	117 dead and 184 wounded or missing
Poison Spring Location of Poison Spring in Arkansas

Samuel Maxey

The Battle of Poison Spring (April 18, 1864) was fought in Ouachita County, Arkansas as part of the Camden Expedition, during the American Civil War. The battle is infamous for the Confederates' slaughter and mutilation of black U.S. soldiers of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry.

Dwindling supplies for his army at Camden, Arkansas forced Union Army Major-General Frederick Steele to send out a foraging party to gather corn that the Confederates had stored about twenty miles up the Prairie D’ Ane–Camden Road on White Oak Creek. The party loaded the corn into wagons, and on April 18, Colonel James Monroe Williams started his return to Camden. Brigadiers-General John Marmaduke’s and Samuel Maxey’s Confederate forces arrived at Lee Plantation, about fifteen miles from Camden, where they engaged Williams.

The Confederates eventually attacked Williams in the front and rear, forcing him to retreat north into a marsh where his men regrouped and then fell back to Camden. During the fight, Williams positioned the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry, a regiment made up of mostly ex-slaves, between the wagon train and Confederate lines; these black troops repelled the first two offenses, but ran low on ammunition and were beaten back by the third. The Confederates refused to take the wounded black soldiers as prisoners, and instead brutally killed, scalped, and stripped them. Confederate Colonel Tandy Walker (commanding Choctaw Brigade) reported:

...the train fell into our hands, and soon a portion of his artillery, which my troops found concealed in a thicket near the train. I feared here that the train and its contents would prove a temptation too strong for these hungry, half-clothed Choctaws, but had no trouble in pressing them forward, for there was that in front and to the left more inviting to them than food or clothing—the blood of their despised enemy. They had met and routed the forces of General Thayer, the ravagers of their country, the despoilers of their homes, and the murderers of their women and children.