The Battle of Jenkins' Ferry, also known as the Engagement at Jenkins' Ferry, was fought on April 30, 1864, in Hot Spring and Saline counties (present-day Grant County), Arkansas, during the American Civil War. Ending in a tactical Union victory, the Confederacy saw it as a strategic success as they prevented Frederick Steele from holding southwest Arkansas. Due to the chaotic nature of the battle, casualty figures vary.
Jenkins' Ferry was the decisive engagement of Steele's Camden Expedition (a part of the Red River Campaign) and E. Kirby Smith's last. As a result of the battle, Federal forces could complete a retreat from a precarious position at Camden to their defenses at Little Rock.
The battlefield has largely been preserved as a unit within the Arkansas State Park System.
In March 1864, the United States Army in Louisiana under the command of Major-General Nathaniel Banks and the United States Navy operating on the Mississippi River under the command of Admiral David Porter launched the Red River Campaign. The campaign's immediate objective was the capture of Shreveport, Louisiana, which was the headquarters of General E. Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department. Shreveport also was the temporary capital of Louisiana, a major supply depot and a gateway to Texas. An incidental objective of the campaign was to purchase cotton, which was in short supply in the northern States, and possibly win the loyalty of planters along the river for the United States. It was thought this action might expand Reconstruction in Louisiana. Henry Halleck, Major-General and General-in-Chief of the Armies of the United States, who devised the plan, also wanted to open the road to the occupation of Texas by U.S. forces and to discourage French incursions from Mexico. France had invaded and occupied Mexico in June 1863, setting up a government under their puppet "emperor," Maximilian.
Since President Lincoln had approved the Red River Campaign plan before promoting Ulysses Grant to lieutenant general and appointing him General-in-Chief, Grant felt he could not stop the campaign. Grant did try to hurry its execution because he would have preferred to use a 10,000-man force which was diverted to the campaign to reinforce Sherman in his March to the Sea through Georgia. Grant also would have liked to have pinned down more Confederate troops in Alabama with an attack on the Confederate stronghold at Mobile.
General Banks had a force of at least 20,000 men available near New Orleans for the campaign. He was to be joined by 10,000 men of Sherman's army from Vicksburg, Mississippi, under the command of Brigadier-General Andrew Smith. Smith's force accompanied Porter's flotilla up the Red River. Initially, they were successful in capturing Fort DeRussy to open passage up the Red River. Major-General Frederick Steele commanding approximately 14,000 men also was supposed to move his forces in support of Banks against Shreveport from their bases to the north at Little Rock, Fort Smith, and Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
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.
This page covers Skirmish at Saline River (Jenkins' Ferry approaches). A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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