324   The next day Edmund Kirby Smith arrived with two additional divisions of Confederate troops. On April 23 a cavalry force crossed the Ouachita River below Camden and proceeded to capture a Federal supply train at Marks' Mills. To cover this movement Smith and Price made a demonstration along Two Bayou Creek south of town. One Federal officer laconically observed that "the Johnnies advanced and commenced shelling our picket line," but few of his colleagues reacted so calmly. The rebels' "brisk cannonading" greatly alarmed the Federals. Campsites just outside town were abandoned and masses of infantry and artillery were deployed in and around the redoubts to await the expected onslaught and "give the enemy a welcome reception (9)." Now outnumbered and seemingly faced with a threat far more immediate than starvation, Steele hastened to correct the deficiencies in the Camden fortifications which his engineers had uncovered (10).   The next day thousands of Federal soldiers went to work with a will. On the northwestern portion of the perimeter the entire Third Brigade, Third Division, turned out equipped with all the shovels, picks, and other useful implements the men had been able to appropriate from the harassed citizenry on such short notice. Engineers traced trenches along the military crest of the long, rolling ridge by laying boards end to end. The various regiments in the brigade then began digging in relays around the clock, with the unfortunate soldiers of the Fortieth Iowa toiling through the night. Parties of troops cautiously ventured out to fell trees and expand fields of fire below the ridge. ____________________ 9. O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XXXIV, Pt. I, 723, 781, 834; Johnson, Red River Campaign, 184-90; Sperry, 33rd Iowa Infantry, 83; "Federal Occupation," 217-18; Ralph R. Rea, ed., "Diary of Private John P. Wright, U.S.A., 1864-1865," Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XVI (Autumn 1957), 316; M. A. Elliot, comp., The Garden of Memory: Stories of the Civil War as Told by Veterans and Daughters of the Confederacy (Camden, 1976), 31; Boyd W. Johnson, The Civil War in Ouachita County (Camden, [1968]), 42; Washington Telegraph, May 25, 1864; Edwin C. Bearss, Steele's Retreat From Camden and the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry ([Little Rock, 1967]), 54-55. 10. Though the Confederates never assaulted or even fired upon the Camden fortifications, there were a number of violent "escapades" along the skirmish lines during the Federal occupation of the town. O. R., Ser. I, Vol. XXXIV, Pt. I, 833; Bell I. Wiley, ed., This Infernal War: The Confederate Letters of Sgt. Edwin H. Fay (Austin, 1958), 389-90; John N. Edwards, Shelby and His Men: Or, the War in the West (Cincinnati, 1876), 271.           Contents  Words  Study Questions  Related Sites Next