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

---

[558] them safely across the river, but, fearing the approach of the enemy, he is obliged to abandon a small detachment that had stayed behind to bury the dead, and to sacrifice some of his pontons. His losses are about seven hundred men—those of the Confederates about eight hundred. If he has left behind him some of his wounded, he has captured from the assailants three cannon. These have lost a fine chance to deal him a fatal blow. They will not find another, for they cannot cross the river, and Fagan, to make worse the blunder which led him to Arkadelphia, has returned to Jenkins' Ferry on learning of Steele's arrival, instead of seeking to outmarch him on the road to Little Rock by crossing the Sabine at Benton. He appears on the battlefield an hour after the last Federal soldier has set foot on the opposite bank. Realizing his powerlessness, Kirby Smith gives his wornout soldiers the order for retreat.

The battle of Jenkins' Ferry closed in a humiliating manner a campaign which was expected to assure the destruction of Steele's army, and to which Kirby Smith had sacrificed the more certain hope of making the victory at Mansfield complete. Without showing a disposition to acknowledge his mistake, he sought to repair it, but it was too late. Steele, on his side, after having despatched Carr with all his cavalry on the road to Little Rock for exploration, and to protect the train which he was impatiently awaiting, set out slowly on the march. His famished soldiers finally saw the train arrive, and on the 2d of May they re-entered in low spirits the capital of Arkansas. So, then, their campaign had miscarried, but through the fault of another.

It was time that it closed in order to allow them to pursue the guerillas who had profited by their concentration to reorganize and renew their depredations. A few words will suffice us to recount the hostilities on a smaller scale caused by the presence of some of the bands of guerillas during the six weeks that this campaign lasted. At the end of March a guerilla chief, General McRae, had established his headquarters at Augusta, on the White River, in the north-western part of the State of Arkansas, where he was disturbing the line of communication established between Little Rock and Memphis by the Devall's Bluff Railroad. Colonel C. C. Andrews with one hundred and eighty infantry and fifty cavalry