Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

---

[551] bank, to follow up the enemy's column. The Southern cavalry on the evening of the 2d overtook his rearguard at Terre Noire Creek, but they were vigorously repulsed, and on the next day the whole Union army had crossed the Little Missouri. It was high time, for a sudden and considerable rise in the river had covered all the fords. Steele, not wishing to leave an obstacle like that between Thayer and himself, decided to wait for the latter, while his soldiers constructed a ‘corduroy road’ (a roadway of trunks of trees) which traversed the whole inundated valley of the Little Missouri: a bridge had been thrown across this river. It was finally learned that the Army of the Frontier had on the 5th reached at Rockport the road from Little Rock to Arkadelphia. It was much behind time, and could not join Steele before the 9th. On the next day the latter set out upon the march; the weather was fair again, the roads were better, and the Federals, knowing their numerical superiority, marched boldly into a country hitherto unknown to them and as yet little more than a wilderness.

Price, for his part, went to meet them with all the forces at his disposal. Kirby Smith had directed him to make a determined stand at Camden, but only in case he believed the place able to hold out, and to send a brigade to the other side of the Washita to interfere with the enemy's line of communication. He had taken advantage of the latitude allowed him in the first part of this order to evacuate Camden, and had not deemed it possible to comply with the second. He had—very wisely, we believe—concentrated all his forces and left to guerillas the business of harassing the enemy's wagon-trains. Maxey himself, recalled from the Indian Territory, has brought to him his two brigades. At several miles beyond the Little Missouri, on the plateau which separates this river from the Terre Rouge, there is a vast extent of prairie-land, bounded by a stream with wooded banks, to which the early French trappers, who had scoured this country, gave the name of Prairie daAne. After crossing it you reach, in the very skirts of the woods, an important cross-road: the road followed by the army, and which leads to Spring Hill, crosses at this place that from Washington to Camden. In order to cover as much as possible these two points, Price had resolved to defend the cross-roads.