Cane Hill

Fought on November 28, 1862, near the town of Cane Hill in the northwestern corner of Arkansas, this clash pitted Union soldiers against Confederate forces during the Civil War. Earlier that year, Confederate Major General Thomas C. Hindman had pushed into southwestern Missouri from Arkansas, only to see the campaign fail and pull his men back across the border. Brigadier General James G. Blunt's Union troops pursued him into northwestern Arkansas, and this pursuit created an opening that Hindman recognized: Blunt's division had become isolated from the remainder of the Army of the Frontier. Seizing on this, Hindman dispatched Brigadier General John S. Marmaduke and his force toward Cane Hill, a place also called Boonsboro, with orders to gather supplies. Earlier in November, Colonel William F. Cloud, leading a detachment under Blunt, had already clashed with and beaten a small Confederate unit under Colonel Emmett MacDonald in that same area.

Marmaduke's force stayed in the vicinity even after MacDonald's setback. On November 27, Blunt set his sights on Marmaduke and began his advance. Confederate leaders anticipated that the Union columns would come via the Cincinnati Road, but instead Blunt's men traveled the Ridge Road before shifting to the Fayetteville Road. Cloud's soldiers, at the head of the Union advance, encountered Colonel Joseph O. Shelby's Confederate horsemen the following morning, November 28. Following an exchange of artillery fire, Shelby pulled his men back from Cane Hill, and Marmaduke regrouped his line near Newburg.

Outgunned in artillery, the Confederates retreated further, this time from Newburg toward high ground called Reed's Mountain. As they withdrew, Shelby orchestrated a delaying action, sending small units forward to slow the Union advance before each fell back to let the next position take up the fight. Although the Confederates attempted to hold their ground at Reed's Mountain, they were eventually compelled to give way. Blunt kept pressing forward, and a few miles beyond the John Morrow house, Colonel Charles A. Carroll's Confederate troops sprang a trap on the advancing Union soldiers. To buy time for retreat, the Confederates then raised a flag of truce as a deceptive tactic, allowing their forces to disengage.

By early December, Hindman prepared to strike at Blunt's position, but Brigadier General Francis J. Herron brought reinforcements from Springfield, Missouri, reaching Blunt in time to bolster his defense. This set the stage for the Battle of Prairie Grove, fought on December 7. Though the battle itself produced no clear victor, Hindman ultimately pulled his forces from the field, leaving Union troops in control of both Missouri and the northwestern portion of Arkansas.

Background

Between December 1860 and the opening weeks of 1861, southern states broke away from the Union over a series of disputes with the federal government, the preservation of slavery foremost among them, and joined together as the Confederate States of America. Hostilities opened on April 12 when Confederate forces shelled Fort Sumter. Shortly after taking office, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the uprising, and this move pushed Arkansas toward secession and entry into the Confederacy. To the north, in Missouri, sporadic combat broke out during 1861.

The following March, a Union force under Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis bested a Confederate army led by Major General Earl Van Dorn at Pea Ridge, a battle fought in the northwestern corner of Arkansas. Following this setback, Van Dorn pulled his troops entirely out of Arkansas, hauling most of the state's remaining Confederate manpower and supplies across the Mississippi River into Tennessee. Meanwhile Curtis pushed his own army eastward and seized Helena, a city on the Mississippi. On May 31, command of Confederate forces spread across Arkansas, Missouri, and the Indian Territory passed to Major General Thomas C. Hindman, who set about restoring the region's military strength. His methods, however, proved controversial and at times operated outside legal bounds, alienating a number of influential Arkansas residents. Consequently, Confederate authorities stripped him of his district command, installing Major General Theophilus Holmes in his place.

Even so, Hindman kept a field command and pushed his troops northward into southwestern Missouri. On the Union side, Curtis, now heading the Department of Missouri, established the Army of the Frontier under Brigadier General John M. Schofield. Holmes then called Hindman back temporarily, and the officers left to manage affairs in his stead fared badly. By late October the Confederates had been pushed out of Missouri altogether and back into Arkansas, leaving Schofield with one division, under Brigadier General James G. Blunt, positioned in Benton County in the state's northwest. As November began, the Army of the Frontier's remaining two divisions withdrew toward Springfield, Missouri, even as Hindman's forces settled into Van Buren, Arkansas.

Prelude

Hindman recognized a chance to exploit the Union deployment, given that Blunt sat cut off from the rest of the Army of the Frontier. His plan called for sending a cavalry force toward Cane Hill to draw Blunt's attention, then cutting him off and crushing his command before help could arrive from Springfield. Command of this Confederate cavalry fell to Brigadier General John S. Marmaduke, whose division, roughly 2,000 strong with six cannons, marched north toward Cane Hill in early November, gathering supplies from local civilians along the way. When word of this advance reached Blunt, he dispatched Colonel William F. Cloud on November 7 with 500 troops and an artillery battery to strike the Confederates. Cloud's men scattered a Confederate cavalry unit under Colonel Emmett MacDonald the following day before heading back to the main camp.

Marmaduke's horsemen lingered in the region afterward, raiding mills and stockpiling provisions. Although his actual numbers stood near 2,000, Union intelligence estimated the Confederate force at 5,000. In response, Blunt shifted

Battle

The advance resumed at 5:00 am on November 28, and once Blunt's column passed where the Ridge Road met the Fayetteville Road, command of the front was handed to Cloud. He pushed the 2nd Kansas Cavalry Regiment forward along with an attached battery carrying two mountain howitzers. Roughly half a mile from the Confederate camp, the Kansans ran into Shelby's scouts, who traded a few shots before falling back toward the main body. Following them, Union troops came to a hill beneath which Bledsoe's battery waited. Accounts differ on who fired first in the artillery duel that followed: Cloud insisted a mountain howitzer opened it, while Confederate staff officer John Newman Edwards credited his own side's guns. Historian William L. Shea, along with a journal article by Kim Allen Scott and Stephen Burgess, sides with the Confederate version. Around 10:00 am the guns began exchanging fire.

Reinforcing cannon soon arrived on both sides. Bledsoe moved his second piece into a new position, and two guns from Shoup's Arkansas Battery came up to join the line. The Union answered with six cannons belonging to the 2nd Indiana Battery. For roughly an hour the batteries traded shots without much damage on either side. Meanwhile Shelby concluded that the Union force was not making use of the Cincinnati Road. Blunt, for his part, had only the small vanguard with him, since the bulk of his column had fallen behind. He dispatched aide Verplanck Van Antwerp to find out why and speed things along. Van Antwerp discovered that an infantry regiment had been placed second in the marching order, clogging the route. The cavalry units stuck behind that regiment, the 11th Kansas Infantry, were told to pass by, and the 11th Kansas itself pushed on at double time in their wake.

With his brigade finally assembled, Cloud arranged his added strength: the leading elements of the 2nd Kansas Cavalry stood at the front alongside the 1st Indian Home Guard, while Hopkins's Kansas Battery took up a position to the rear, protected by the 2nd Kansas Cavalry. The 11th Kansas Infantry filled the gap between Hopkins's guns and the 2nd Indiana Battery. Watching this buildup, Shelby chose to pull his men back. Cloud then struck with 1,500 troops, and the clash carried into the town itself, damaging Cane Hill College with artillery fire in the process. Beyond the town, 200 Confederates under MacDonald also found themselves compelled to retreat.

Farther on, at a spot called Kidd's Mill, Colonel Charles A. Carroll's brigade waited with about 400 men, far short of its paper strength, supported by two mountain howitzers set on the right flank. Those guns briefly checked the Union advance, but once Hopkins's battery answered, the Confederate gunners were driven off. Some of Carroll's soldiers carried nothing heavier than shotguns, and after a few ineffective volleys the whole force withdrew, with Shelby's men covering their retreat. It was now close to noon, and the fighting had drifted another half mile south, toward Newburg.

Near Newburg, Marmaduke arranged a defensive line that struck Blunt as formidable, prompting him to pause and regroup, letting Cloud's scattered brigade reassemble while also bringing forward Colonel William Weer's brigade. Six Parrott rifles of the 1st Kansas Battery joined the 2nd Indiana Battery in opening fire on the Confederate position around 1:00 pm, and Bledsoe's guns, together with Carroll's two mountain howitzers, answered in kind. Not long into this exchange, Marmaduke's men pulled back down the Van Buren Road. Both Shea and historian Henry F. Hartsell suggest that the inferior performance of Confederate artillery played a part in that decision.

From here the engagement turned into a running battle. A mile south of Newburg rose Reed's Mountain, standing some 400 feet above the surrounding land. As the retreat approached this high

Aftermath

Historians disagree considerably on how many men fell at Cane Hill. Shea, along with Scott and Burgess, put Union casualties at eight killed and thirty-six wounded, and Scott and Burgess add that Blunt claimed his men had captured a Lieutenant Campbell. Confederate official accounts acknowledged five dead, twenty-eight wounded, and six missing, though no casualty figures survive from Shelby's command. One Confederate officer later guessed