Following
the Union victory at Battle of Honey Springs in July 1863 Union Major General James Blunt
of the Army of the Frontier marched out of Fort Gibson looking for Confederate
Brigadier General William Steele’s force.
They found each other as Steele’s men were crossing the Canadian River. The Confederates did not want to stand and fight,
their defeat at Honey Springs had dispirited the men, there was a lack of
supplies and they deserting en masse.
Steele made
the decision to split his troops up. He
sent Confederate Brigadier General William Cabell’s Arkansas men to Fort Smith
to hold a defensive position where he could be reinforced, Brigadier General
Douglas Cooper’s Indian soldiers moved south to Perryville where they could be
resupplied, and Colonel Chilly McIntosh was sent to the west to cover Cooper’s
flanks. Steele hoped that Blunt would
pursue Cabell to Fort Smith, where he could be caught out in the open, but
Blunt pursued Cooper’s men instead.
Perryville
was a major Confederate supply depot located on the Texas Road. Blunt hoped to attack and destroy Cooper’s
5,000 men and take their supply depot, and then he would turn on Cabell and
Fort Smith. Cooper posted a strong
picket line that included two howitzers blocking the road into town. The Union troops arrived near town and
engaged the Confederates on the night of August 26th 1863. Cooper had his men behind some barricades
with artillery aimed on the road. Blunt
had his men deployed on either side of the road and brought up his own artillery. The firing went on for a short time in the
dark. The Union hit so fast that there
was no time to call in reinforcements, Cooper thought he might be surrounded
and so retreated leaving the supplies behind for the Union troops.
Blunt took
what supplies he could use and then had rest of things, along with the town
burned. The loss of the supply depot
crippled the Confederate forces in the Indian Territory.
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