Battle not forgotten but site almost lost

Fort Smith growth hid Massard Prairie

— The Battle of Massard Prairie was one of the last Confederate army victories in the Civil War, and it happened in Fort Smith’s back yard.

The battle has fascinated local historians for decades because of the audacity of the Confederate units involved and the stinging loss to the Union, which had an impregnable stronghold with superior equipment and ample supplies.

The site of the July 27, 1864, battle - now listed onthe Arkansas Register of Historic Places - lay hidden for more than a century as the city grew up around it. Today, a large residential subdivision lies against its boundary, with factories and businesses nearby.

Steve Cox of Van Buren, inspired by his discovery in the 1960s of the Devil’s Backbone battle site, took up the search for the Massard Prairie battle site in the 1970s.

“Everybody knew it took place, but nobody knew exactly where,” Cox said. “And if you go down and start talking to people, everybody tells youit’s on their own property.”

Cox found the battlefield site in spring 1979 and dug around in it for years, uncovering a multitude of artifacts. But it wasn’t until the late 1990s that local historians Justin Douglas and the late Fred Patton and Mayor Ray Baker took action to preserve the site.

PARK OUTSIDE SUBDIVISION

A 5-acre park at the south edge of the Millennium subdivision in south Fort Smith now marks the Massard Prai-rie Battlefield.

During the Civil War, Fort Smith had been in the hands of the Union since September 1863, when Union forces drove off the Confederates at the battle of Devil’s Backbone, a cannon battle fought between Greenwood and Hackett in south Sebastian County, Fort Smith National Historic Site Ranger Cody Faber said.

Fort Smith, with its forbidding 9-foot-tall stone walls, was a major Union stronghold in the West. Union forces in Texas, Louisiana and the Indian Territory (that today is Oklahoma) depended on the fort as a crucial link in their supply lines, Faber said.

But Fort Smith was an island in a sea of Confederate sympathy, Faber said. The lack of sufficient guns and supplies for the Confederates in western Arkansas forced them to fight a guerilla war.

He said the unconventional warfare forced everyone outside the fort to take a stand for the North or the South or face attacks, robberies and even death.

Many Union sympathizers, including townsfolk and freed slaves, had to seek refuge inside the fort against the danger of being attacked outside.

“The Civil War laid a pretty hard hand on Fort Smith,” Faber said.

The Union forces inside the fort didn’t cower behind their walls. Billy Higgins, associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, said the Union soldiers in the fort were well supplied, equipped and well mounted.

They would make periodic sweeps of the Ozark Mountains or forays to places like Ozark and Clarksville. But they would take casualties whenever they ventured out, he said.

The forces at Fort Smith were mainly cavalry. And the large herd of horses at Fort Smith required constant feeding and the need to find fresh grazing grounds.

GOOD GRAZING AT MASSARD

Higgins said the vast Massard Prairie always had been a popular grazing land for horses. Wagon trains and gold seekers heading west decades before the war fattened up their horses at Massard Prairie before hitting the trail.

According to published accounts, three Union companies of the 6th Kansas Cavalry stationed at Fort Smith and totaling about 200 men were camped in a grove of trees by a small stream on the edge of the prairie 5 miles south of the fort.

Shortly after daylight, a force of about 600 Texas Confederates and Choctaw Indians led by Brig. Gen. R.M. Gano swept in from the south and surprised the Union soldiers just waking up. The Yankees were forced to fight on foot as their mounts were grazing a mile away.

The soldiers on foot were no match for the Rebel cavalry and the fight turned into a running battle as the Union forces retreated back toward the fort.

“It was a rout,” Cox said.

The Confederate force killed and wounded 27 Union soldiers and took 127 prisoner. It also took the horses and, according to one account, 200 Sharps rifles and 400 sixshooters, ammunitions and other supplies. What the Confederate soldiers couldn’t carry, they stacked in a large pile and burned.

Faber said the horses and prisoners headed south, but the guns and ammunition stayed in the area and were used by the guerilla fighters against the Union forces.

Higgins said the prisoners were taken to Tyler, Texas, where they spent the rest of the war in captivity. Little is known about their ordeal, he said.

The Union forces at the fort attempted to pursue the Confederate force, but Faber said the poor quality of the remaining horses at the fort made pursuit impossible.

BATTLE SITE FORGOTTEN

The war, which was going badly for the South, ended less than a year later. As the years passed, the site of the battlefield faded from memory.

Then in 1966, Cox, a Civil War enthusiast, located the Devil’s Backbone battlefield. He was able to locate the site by reading over interviews and records and using those observations and descriptions of the battle and its surroundings.

Inspired by his success, he said it was natural for him to begin looking for the Massard Prairie battlefield.

Cox’s grandfather, who was born in 1897, told him he hoed cotton for an old man who witnessed the battle.

“I thought that was fascinating because everybody knows about these battles but most people don’t have a clue where they’re actually at,” he said.

Cox started with a topographical map of the area and the old military dispatches and reports from the war. He would read the old reports and pick out details that would lead him to a certain location. He would talk to people and even used his grandfather’s recollections.

He would then take to the field with his metal detector.After Cox finished searching one area, he would mark it off on the map.

He said it took him years because of the size of the prairie, which he said stretched from the Oklahoma state line to what is now Village Harbor in east Fort Smith.

A breakthrough came when Cox found what was then Caldwell’s Dairy, which the records said was where the soldiers in the Union camp got their drinking water. It turned out to be a mile from the camp but it put him in the right vicinity.

He and his wife, Ginger Cox, were searching an area in spring 1979. He got a hit on his metal detector. Thinking he was going to find a roll of rusty barbed wire, he dug down and pulled out a .44-caliber Remington cap and ball pistol. It was loaded but it also was badly rusted. Digging around, he found bulletsand buttons.

GUARD’S OUTPOST FOUND

He enlarged the search area but didn’t find anything else, leading him to conclude he had discovered a guard’s outpost for the camp. So, he reasoned the camp had to be on or just behind the high ground to the north because the guard would be looking out to the south for the enemy.

He surmised the guard on duty saw the Confederate force charging at him from the south and dropped his gun and everything else and ran.

Less than a week later, he was searching in a grove of trees. He said he knew the Kansas soldiers had Cosmopolitan carbines and he found a couple of the Cosmopolitan carbine bullets just before dark.

“My heart raced and I thought, ‘If this is the camp, it would be right off down in front of me,’” he said.

He took his metal detector and walked to an area that matched descriptions from his research. The metal detector shrilled everywhere he pointed it.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CAMP

“I dug three or four holes, and every one was carbine bullets,” he said. “And they were everywhere, so I knew I was inthe middle of” the camp.

Cox was excited also because the site, within a grove of trees, had not been disturbed by plowing. The camp was untouched.

He spent the next several years excavating and mapping the site, turning up 3,000 bullets, belt buckles, buttons, a name tag with the name George Giant, a latch from a carpet bag and even the tip of a mechanical pencil.

Cox said he found the spot where the Confederates had burned the supplies they couldn’t take with them. The fire was so hot, he said, it melted solid brass sword belt buckles, melted bullets, melted glass. He found traces of charcoal created from the fire.

“Eventually, a picture came together of where each company was camped and how the camp was laid out,” he said. He drew up a map so others after him could orient themselves to features of the camp.

After some years, Cox decided to move on to different projects. He said his friend, Justin Douglas of Fort Smith, was interested in the battlefield site so he let Douglas pick up where he left off.

Mayor Baker, a retired high school history teacher, said Douglas came into his office one day with a box filled with bullets, buttons and other things found at the site. Baker said Douglas told him Stephens Production Co. planned to sell the site and enlisted Baker’s help trying to preserve the battlefield.

Baker said he was fascinated by the battlefield and agreed that it had to be preserved.

“We couldn’t lose a perfectly preserved battlefield,” he said.

Baker said he also brought in Will Patton, a local historian, to help persuade Stephens Production to donate the battlefield site to the city.

Stephens did not donate all of the land but agreed to donate the 5 acres that made up the central portion of the camp.

In October 1998, Fort Smith city directors approved a resolution accepting the donation of land from Stephens Production for the battlefield park.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 21 on 07/25/2010

Upcoming Events