The Battle of Prairie D'Ane

The Battle of Prairie D'Ane. . , April 7 - Confederate General Sterling Price arrives at Prairie D'Ane to take personal charge of 5,000 men., April 10 - After Thayer and his Frontier Division's late arrival on April 9, Steele's command starts from the Cornelius Farm and enters the prairie in the afternoon on the military road. The open grasslands reveal a visible enemy. Action and cannon fire begin and continue into the night with the Confederate troops on the prairie's high ridge., April 11- Hungry Union troops spend the morning hunting rabbits or relaxing in their camps. In the afternoon, the larger Union force advances with a line of battle stretching for miles across the prairie. Action ensues before the Union troops withdraw at dark. Price withdraws Marmaduke's Division in the night to Prairie DeRoane while he seeks a better defensive position to stop Steele at a point eight miles east of Washington, the Confederate state capital and supply center., April 12 - The Union Army advances on the defenses along the Washington Road. Action follows until the smaller Confederate unit abandons their defensive works. Steele quickly turns his wagon train east and rushes to Camden., April 13 - Thayer's forces in a rearguard action at Moscow Church thwart attacks by Dockery's mounted infantry and Tandy Walker's Choctaw troops who disengage and withdraw., April 14 - Steele's army slogs through muddy creek bottoms toward Camden, an important river town. Marmaduke's outnumbered division reaches the head of the column but cannot long delay Steele's advance into the state's then second largest city., April 15 - Steele's army enters Camden in the afternoon, hoping to find food for some 13,000 hungry soldiers and 12,000 horses and mules used to carry cavalry and pull 800 wagons plus artillery. They will be disappointed., There will be bloodier fights than Prairie D'Ane in the remaining days of the Camden Expedition. Poison Spring, Marks' Mills, and Jenkins Ferry would soon follow, but the Battle of Prairie D'Ane is the turning point., (sidebar) , Moscow Church and Cemetery , After Prairie D'Ane. Gen. Steele turns i his army away from Louisiana toward Camden to seek supplies. Confederate cavalry attacks Steele's rearguard, he at the village of Moscow on April 13., Moscow was a scattered village on the road between Camden and Washington. Today only the church and cemetery remain. The church and cemetery were 4„e placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006. Choctaw Confederate troops took part in the fighting at Moscow and the site is also a Choctaw historic site., (caption) Detail from the map of Arkansas created by the Confederate topographical engineers of the Trans-Mississippi Engineering Department in Shreveport in April 1864., This program was made possible in part by a grant from Arkansas Heritage, a division of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism, funded by your 1/8 cent conservation tax, Amendment 75.