The Battle of Old Fort Wayne, also known as Maysville, Beattie's Prairie, or Beaty's Prairie, was an American Civil War battle on October 22, 1862, in Delaware County in what is now eastern Oklahoma.
Confederate Major General Thomas C. Hindman, commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, had ordered his troops to put down bushwhackers in southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas. At the time, Colonel Douglas H. Cooper and his Indian Brigade were stationed near Newtonia, Missouri, preparing to move to Springfield, Missouri. Hindman ordered Cooper to hold Newtonia until he could move other troops to surround Springfield. There were several skirmishes between Confederate and Union forces from September 30 and October 3. On October 4, Blunt's troops surrounded Newtonia on three sides. Cooper and his Indian forces beat a hasty retreat back to Indian Territory.
Brig. Gen. James G. Blunt and his Cherokee, Indiana, and Kansas troops from the First Division of the Army of the Frontier attacked Col. Douglas H. Cooper and his Confederate command on Beatties Prairie near Old Fort Wayne at 7:00 a.m. on October 22, 1862. The Confederates put up stiff resistance for a half-hour, but overwhelming numbers forced them to retire from the field in haste, leaving artillery and other equipment behind. This was a setback in the 1862 Confederate offensive that extended from the Tidewater in the East to the plains of the Indian Territory of the West.
1st Division, Army of the Frontier – Brigadier General James G. Blunt.
1st Brigade, 1st Division, I Corps, Army of the Trans-Mississippi– Colonel Douglas Cooper
1st Choctaw/Chickasaw Regiment – Colonel S. N. Folsom
Creek Battalion – Lieutenant Colonel Chilly McIntosh
In mid-July 1862, the Confederate Army started concentrating forces at Fayetteville, Arkansas, for a planned raid into Missouri. Concurrently, Douglas Cooper was to raid Kansas with his force of Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Lower Creeks. After weeks of recruiting to bolster their numbers, Cooper led his men through Indian Territory to Old Fort Wayne, an abandoned pre-war Federal military garrison on the southern edge of the sprawling Beatties Prairie. He positioned pickets 4 miles (6.4 km) to the north in Maysville, a small village directly on the Arkansas - Indian Territory boundary (23 miles (37 km) west of Bentonville). He was within supporting distance of John S. Marmaduke's small 4,000-man force of mostly Texans, which was positioned at Cross Hollows (near Lowell, Arkansas).
The nearest Federal troops were from John Schofield's Army of the Frontier, encamped at Pea Ridge, Arkansas. Word had been received that Cooper, accompanied by Stand Watie's two Cherokee Indian Regiments, was at Maysville, and scouts reported his total force to be about 7,000 men. James Blunt's First Division was relatively small (3,500 men), but was better trained and equipped than many of the recently raised Confederate units. At 7 p.m. on October 20, Blunt departed camp with the Second and Third Brigades. His command consisted of the 2nd Kansas Cavalry in the lead, followed by the 6th Kansas Cavalry, 10th Kansas Infantry and 11th Kansas Infantry, the 1st and 3rd Cherokee Regiments, the 1st Kansas Battery, 2nd Indiana Battery, and four mountain howitzers. After a night march southward, he arrived in Bentonville shortly after sunrise and paused until 5 p.m. to wait for his cumbersome supply wagons to arrive. He was anxious to surprise the Confederates, who were unaware of his advance. After a forced march of 25 miles (40 km) westward late on October 21, he stopped his column at 2 a.m. and allowed most of his men to rest.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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