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Runaway slaves attached themselves to the Union wagon train and were often so desperate that they abandoned their children.

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Many African Americans fleeing slavery were with Gen. Frederick Steele's Union army as it retreated to Little Rock. As army wagons became stuck in the thick mud, so too did wagons with refugee children. Some were abandoned by desperate parents; others were rescued by Union soldiers with "on one shoulder a rifle, on the other a black child". At least one refugee child would stay with the Chapple McElroy family near here, who found an abandoned youth they named Tom. Tom McElroy lived with them into the 1870s, later owning a farm southwest of Benton.

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Born in Kentucky in 1817, Chapple McElroy was in his late forties at the time of the Camden Expedition. A farmer of modest means in then Saline County, now Grant County, during the Civil War, he had a large family, had lost his first wife in 1861 and had already married his second wife in 1863 when he and his family found Tom in the spring of 1864. Tom was with them in the 1870 census, and he was listed as black. His age was given as eight years old, so he was probably two or three when he joined this white family. The census-taker without comment drew a line between him and the white McElroy children who preceded him in the 1870 census. Chapple McElroy died in 1875, and Tom may have left the family at that time. Whether he ever knew his birth parents is not known. Tom's story is but one example of the varied and devastating human costs of the Civil War.

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Photo by Peggy Lloyd

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The loss of valuable supplies and equipment was another result of the Camden Expedition for the Union Army.

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As Union Gen. Frederick Steele's army struggled along the muddy roads between Jenkins' Ferry and Little Rock, the starving mules hauling its wagons began to collapse from exhaustion. Steele ordered many wagons burned after their contents were moved to other wagons. Despite that effort, more wagons were destroyed as the teams hauling them collapsed. A 33rd Iowa Infantry soldier wrote: "All over the swamp, near the road, were the burning wagons and their scattered contents." Steele's army lost 635 wagons and tons of supplies in the Camden Expedition.

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Not only were lives lost but also valuable equipment and supplies were wasted and left as part of a trail of destruction on the road to Little Rock. And for what purpose? The Camden Expedition was an ill-conceived plan that ended in disaster as was the entire Red River Campaign. Southwest Arkansas would remain in Confederate hands until the end of the war.

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Photo by Peggy Lloyd

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The Union Army erroneously referred to the site of the fighting as "Whitmore's Mill". The owner of the mill was actually a man named David Whitten, but both the names Whitten's Mill and Whitmore's Mill are used to refer to the skirmish.

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Both Union and Confederate cavalry moved north of Jenkins' Ferry on April 29, 1864. Lt. Col. Benjamin Elliott's 1st Missouri Cavalry Battalion had been sent to Princeton on the 28th to seek Gen. Frederick Steele's army as it retreated from Camden. They skirmished heavily with Union troops until dark, then proceeded toward Pratt's Ferry on the Saline River on April 29. Gen. E. A. Carr's Union cavalry, meanwhile, rode north to head off a potential attack on Steele's troops by Confederate Gen. James Fagan's cavalry, reported in the area.

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Elliott's Missouri cavalry arrived at Pratt's Ferry on April 29, 1864, hoping to link up with Fagan's Confederate cavalry. They were not there, so Elliott crossed the Saline River to find forage for his horses. On April 30, about 2,000 Union troops approached Whitten's Mill, some driving in Elliott's pickets. The Confederates counterattacked and the U. S. troops, fearing it was Fagan's entire force, quickly fell back and began burning their wagons and gear. Elliott's men continued to follow Steele's army as it retreated, attacking pickets and foragers.

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On April 30, 1864, Gen. Frederick Steele's Union army fought Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith's Confederates in a desperate battle for survival at Jenkins Ferry on the Saline River. Smith's troops had marched hard from Louisiana to stop Steele's starving army as it retreated to Little Rock after the failed Camden Expedition. The two armies fought for five hours in the flooded Saline River bottoms before U.S. troops crossed the river and escaped. Reported casualties of 443 Confederates and 521 U.S. troops were almost certainly substantially higher.

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The Grant County Museum, located at 521 Shackleford Road just north of Arkansas 46 on the west side of Sheridan, is an unusually large local history museum with a variety of exhibits that include the Civil War and the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry. A Civil War Sesquicentennial marker stands in an outdoor collection of vintage buildings beside the museum. It summarizes this last major event of the Camden Expedition. The Museum is open from 9 to 4 from Monday to Friday. It also features a 700-foot boardwalk completed in 2008 through forest land on the three-acre grounds of the museum.

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Photo by Peggy Lloyd