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THOUGH A LARGELY UNHERALDED ENGAGEMENT, the battle of Fitzhugh's Woods suggests much about the course the Civil War had taken in northern Arkansas by early 1864. Following the capture of Little Rock by Union forces under Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele in September 1863, the city's Confederate defenders were sent streaming toward southwest Arkansas. The loss of Little Rock without much of a fight had been a disaster for the morale of Confederates, particularly troops from Arkansas. "[I]t produced intense indignation, resulting in great demoralization, and the men in great numbers abandoned their colors and returned home," Brig. Gen. Dandridge McRae wrote years later. "Three of my regiments had been recruited in north Arkansas, and from above cause, my loss was great, much greater than it would have been had a battle been fought."1 McRae himself had been in a kind of military limbo after the battle of Helena on July 4, 1 863, because Lt. Gen. Theophilus Holmes had selected him as a scapegoat for that disastrous Confederate defeat. McRae had participated in the capture of Battery C at Helena before being ordered to assist those attacking the adjacent Battery D. Holmes reported that McRae "utterly failed to render the slightest aid, making no attempt to assault the hill," an accusation that McRae said had "done both my brigade and myself gross injustice." Though McRae retained command of his brigade during the subsequent Little Rock campaign, he had been relieved by October 7, 1863. Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, who had defended McRae's actions at Helena, gave the displaced brigadier command ofthat part of Arkansas lying between the White and Mississippi Rivers. Aided by forty-six commissioned officers left without commands by the flood of Confederate desertions, McRae went to northeast Arkansas with orders to "collect and return to their commands all absentees found in that section." By October 26, Union officers reported that McRae "has his headquarters at Jacksonport, and is conscripting strongly."2 McRae's new area of command was infested, as was much of the rest of the state, with bands of irregular cavalrymen. Following the Confederate defeat at Pea Ridge in 1862 and the abandonment of Arkansas by most organized Confederate forces, Maj. Gen. Thomas Hindman organized guerrilla units to combat Union troops while he cobbled together a conventional army. By early 1863, many of these bands had begun to display the marauding tendencies that would plague Arkansas for the duration of the war. Confederate orders that the irregular companies disband and their members join infantry units were largely ignored. In addition, many who had deserted after the battle of Helena and the fall of Little Rock chose to join irregular companies that operated in regions closer to their families. While many of the irregular commands worked in close cooperation with Confederate leadership, others were little more than organized brigands. Historian Robert Mackey calls the northern half of the state "the most guerrilla-infested region of Arkansas for the last two years of the war, as groups from Missouri, the Indian Territory, Louisiana and Texas, as well as homegrown irregulars, preyed on the local population for survival."3 McRae's mission summed up the Confederate situation north of the Arkansas River. He not only sought to "collect" some of the many Rebel deserters in the region but also use irregular companies to attack isolated Union outposts at places like Jacksonport. By November 1863, Lt. T. G. Black of the 3rd Missouri Cavalry (U.S.), which then occupied Jacksonport, reported that McRae had "1,500 men in his squads, with a roll of 1,500 more that are scattered through the country, dodging him." Black complained that "they annoy my pickets almost every night. I send out a scout every day, but find it very difficult to catch them, as they have the entire country picketed, and there are so many hiding places. About the only chance to capture them would be to send force enough to make a regular 'wolf-drive. … |
