their technological advantage was
nullified by the Rebel numbers and
terrain. A determined midday assault
by the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry
against the center of the Confederate
line, however, forced the outgunned
Southern artillery to withdraw, and
with it the rest of Cooper’s force.
Though Honey Springs would be
the largest battle ever fought in the
Indian Territory, in terms of casualties
the engagement was insignificant—
Union losses were fewer than 200
and Confederate casualties no more
than 600. But the Union victory all
but assured the conquest of Little
Rock. About seven weeks later, on
September 10, the Arkansas capital
fell to the other half of the Union
pincer movement, placing three-
quarters of Arkansas firmly under
Northern control.
Honey Springs also demonstrated, at
a sensitive point in the war, the fighting
prowess of black Northern troops. Blunt
lavished praise on the 1st Kansas in his
report but unfortunately the deeds
of the regiment were destined to pass
almost unnoticed by the Northern
public, because the 54th Massachusetts’
assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina,
occurred one day later.The Battle of Sabine Pass
The Union went on the offensive in
Texas as well, occupying the major port
of Galveston in October 1862. Having
then lost the port to a miraculous
Confederate counterattack on January
1, 1863, Major General Benjamin
Butler, commanding Union forces in
New Orleans, decided to retake it.
On September 7, four gunboats,
19 transports, and 5,000 bluecoats
arrived offshore from Sabine Pass,
which commanded a seaborne
approach toward Galveston. There were
only 47 Southern gunners in the main
fort commanding the pass, but they had
relieved their boredom over the
previous months with target practice.
Each of the guns was accurately
registered to hit a designated target in
the Texas Channel. The practice paid off
when, waiting patiently until the Union
gunboats passed directly by thosein April 1863 and reestablished a post
at Fort Gibson, briefly held by the
Union in 1861. After reoutfitting his
men, he planned to march on Little
Rock as part of a pincer strategy
focused on the Arkansas capital. The
Confederates,
however, were not
going to give him
that opportunity.
Brigadier General
Douglas Cooper
collected about 6,000 troops at Honey
Springs, a Rebel outpost some 20 miles
(32km) southwest of Fort Gibson, and
awaited only the arrival of another
3,000 to launch an attack on Blunt.
Cooper’s men were badly armed—only
75 percent of them had serviceable
firearms, many of these being old
smoothbore guns. They also had only
four artillery pieces. But the Texas
cavalry and Cooper’s Choctaw and
Chickasaw regiments had high
morale and were aching for a
fight. Blunt, now well aware
of the danger if the two
Confederate commands united,
launched a preemptive
attack on Cooper on
July 17. Outnumbered
two to one, Blunt’s
multiracial
command was
composed of a
black regiment,
some Unionist
Native American
units, and white
regiments from the
Midwest. As one
historian put it, it was
“the first rainbow
coalition.” Blunt’s men
were almost all armed
with the rifled
Springfield musket and
had good artillery. For
the first half of the battle,
which lasted four hours,General James G. Blunt
A prominent abolitionist before the war,
Blunt helped raise Native American
regiments for the Union in 1861 and led
them to victory at Maysville in October 1862.Operations in the Indian
Territory and Texas
Although they were fought with great intensity, the battles in the Western states and territories
took place on a much smaller scale than those in the East. Neither did they conclude with such
overwhelming Union success as eventually resulted in other areas.
BEFORE
Texas and Arkansas both declared for the
South and Missouri was the focus of much
prewar conflict. Other territories had
divided loyalties.
THE INDIAN TERRITORY
The Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma),
was occupied primarily by eastern Native
American tribes that had been forcibly
relocated there in the 1830s. When the war
broke out, most of these tribes sided with
the Confederacy in the belief that Southern
independence represented their best chance
for greater autonomy.
THE BATTLE OF PEA RIDGE
On March 7, 1862 a Union army routed a
numerically superior Confederate force at Pea
Ridge, the battle in northern Arkansas often
termed the Gettysburg of the West.
THE BATTLE OF PEA RIDGE
Native American fighter
Units of Native Americans from the Indian Territory
fought on both sides in the Civil War, which divided
tribes and pitted them against each other. The units
were known for their fearless mounted rifle attacks.
T
he Trans-Mississippi area—Texas,
Arkansas, the Indian Territory,
Missouri, and Kansas—did not see
as much conventional fighting as the
Western and Eastern Theaters. But
military events in this region affected
Northern and
Southern morale,
and thus the
political arena.
Confederate
domination of this
region would spell political disaster for
Abraham Lincoln, whereas Union
control could hamper, but not cripple,
the Rebel struggle for independence.Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove
The Union victory at Pea Ridge opened
up much of Arkansas to Union
conquest and wrecked Confederate
strategic aspirations in the Trans-
Mississippi. General Earl Van Dorn
and his routed army transferred to
the eastern side of the Mississippi
in the late spring of 1862. Arkansas
now lay open to Federal invasion,
and after some initial skirmishes in
the north of the state, Union
general James G. Blunt
pushed south. At Prairie
Grove on December 7,
1862, he and his small
army defeated a hastily
created Confederate
force led by General
Thomas C. Hindman.The Confederates react
Despairing over the series of
defeats in Missouri and
Arkansas, Jefferson Davis
reorganized the command
structure of the Trans-
Mississippi Department in
the spring of 1863, giving
overall command to
General Edmund Kirby
Smith. But before Smith could
gather sufficient forces to
challenge the Federals, they had
marched quickly toward Little
Rock, the Arkansas capital.
General Blunt, with a small
Union army of 3,000, had
entered the Indian TerritoryThe approximate
number of Native
Americans who served either in the
Union army or the Confederacy.28,700
THE UNION TIGHTENS ITS GRIP 1863