Frederick Steele

Major General Frederick Steele captured the City of Little Rock with fourteen thousand Union troops in September 1863.

C.S.A. Major General Sterling Price attempted to defend the city with eight thousand men and miscellaneous cavalry, which he described as "in excellent condition, full of enthusiasm and eager to meet the enemy." Price erected rifle pits and earthen fortifications two-and-a-half miles downstream from the capital city on the Arkansas River, at Dark Hollow, and along the high ground on the north side of the river opposite downtown Little Rock. Three large cannon were stationed on Big Rock and [[Park Hill]. He also ordered strategic cavalry attacks of the Union Army camp.

General Steele bypassed this installations by crossing the Arkansas River on a pontoon bridge erected at Terry's Ferry on September 9th. The crossing was completed the next day. At 11 AM on the 10th Price began evacuating his soldiers from the north side of the River using his own pontoons, and decamped for Arkadelphia. Confederate cavalrymen under the leadership of Brigadier General John Sappington Marmaduke met Union cavalry under Brigadier General John W. Davidson at Fourche Bayou east of the city (site of the present Port of Little Rock). "Every advantageous foot of ground from this point onward was warmly contested by them," Davidson later reported, "my cavalry dismounting and taking it afoot in the timber and cornfields." The Confederate stand at Fourche Bayou gave Price time to evacuate all of his troops from the city by 5 PM. The capitol surrendered to Steele at 7 PM.

Total casualties among the Confederates in this campaign, called the Battle of Little Rock by the South and the Battle of Bayou Fourche by the North, numbered about sixty-four men. The tally on the Union side was eighteen killed, one hundred and eighteen wounded, and one missing.

References

• "Arkansas Back to the Union," New York Times, June 3, 1862.
• "Important from Arkansas; Capture of Fort Smith by General Blunt; Little Rock Evacuated by the Rebels," New York Times, September 11, 1863.
• "Important from Arkansas; Defeat of the Rebel Forces Under Marmaduke and Price," New York Times, September 3, 1863.
• "Occupation of Little Rock, the Capital of Arkansas, by Our Forces," New York Times, June 1, 1862.
• "Official Reports of Gen. Steele's Movements; The Defeat of Marmaduke's Forces," New York Times, September 6, 1863.
• "The Rebels in Arkansas; Kirby Smith and Price Reported at Little Rock, with 40,000 Men," New York Times, September 2, 1863.
• Ira Don Richards, "And in the War Came," in Story of a Rivertown: Little Rock in the Nineteenth Century (1969), 59-79.
• "The War in Arkansas; An Expedition Moving Toward Little Rock," New York Times, August 9, 1863.
• "The War in Arkansas; Gen. Steele's Expedition to Little Rock," New York Times, August 16, 1863.
• "The War in Arkansas; Gen. Steele's Expedition to Little Rock," New York Times, August 24, 1863.
• "The War in Arkansas; The Rebels Evacuating Little Rock," New York Times, September 12, 1863.