ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 24 (Spring 1965), p. 82     A Bluecoat's Account Of the Camden Expedition   Edited by LONNIE J. WHITE Memphis State University   TWO COLUMNS---ONE FROM FORT SMITH, THE OTHER FROM LITTLE ROCK---MOVED SOUTH in the spring of 1864 to cooperate with General N. P. Banks in the Union effort to take Shreveport and invade Texas. They united in southern Arkansas, occupied Camden, and later retreated to Little Rock. The piece reproduced below is a short, partisan account of this expedition written by an unidentified member of the Fort Smith column and published in a Kansas newspaper early in 1866 (1). * * * We [the Lawrence Kansas Daily Tribune] publish below a brief history of the Camden expedition, under Gen. Steele, in the spring of 1864. It is written by a gentleman who was then in the service, and participated in the vicissitudes of the unfortunate affair (2). _________________________ 1. "The Camden Expedition," Lawrence Kansas Daily Tribune, February 15, 1866. Portions of this expedition are dealt with in Ira Don Richards, "The Battle of Poison Spring," Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XVIII (Winter, 1959), 338-349; J. H. Atkinson, "The Action at Prairie De Ann," ibid., XIX (Spring, 1960), 40-50; Ira Don Richards, "The Engagement at Marks' Mills," ibid., XIX (Spring, 1960), 51-60; Ira Don Richards, "The Battle of Jenkins' Ferry," ibid., (Spring, 1961), 3-16; Alwyn Barr, "Confederate Artillery in Arkansas," ibid., XXII (Autumn 1963), 264-271. The full story of the expedition is told in Ludwell H. Johnson, Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War (Baltimore, 1958), 170-205. 2. Though the writer was a member of a Negro regiment, one suspects from the tenor of several of his statements below that he was probably one of its white officers.           Contents  Words  Study Questions  Related Sites Next