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

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[556] them on one stretch, by the way of Princeton, to the banks of the Sabine River, a large affluent of the Washita which, like the Bayou Moro, flows from north to south. This river, which he had reached at Jenkins' Ferry, more than halfway between Camden and Little Rock, was the only serious obstacle in his way. The Union army arrived exhausted, for it had travelled in twentyfour hours more than fifty miles, but it had seized the crossing without striking a blow, and on the morning of the 28th it was engaged in making it practicable for the wagons and the artillery. It was high time, for Fagan, by Kirby Smith's orders, started immediately after the battle of Marks' Mill for the Sabine River, and tried to cross this stream in order to occupy the left bank and dispute it with the Federals. Luckily for them, he had not been able to find a ford, and, passing by Jenkins' Ferry, he had been seeking a crossing higher up, near Benton; but having, it appears, run short of forage, he had turned aside, in spite of the instructions of his chief, for the purpose of seeking it in the neighborhood of Arkadelphia. He had thus missed the opportunity of holding Steele in check on the banks of the Sabine until Kirby Smith had been able to come up with all his army. The latter marched more slowly than the Federals. On the evening of the 29th it was écheloned between Princeton and Tulip, and did not appear till the afternoon of the 30th on the hills which command the wide valley of the Sabine, after a march begun at one o'clock in the morning and rendered very laborious by the rain.

Steele was still in the valley, for it had become needful to give his soldiers rest and to construct at both ends of the bridge of boats thrown across the river a corduroy road nearly five miles long. But this undertaking was finished on the 30th, and a part of the army, with all its equipments, had already crossed the bridge, and a single regiment, the Thirty-third Iowa, forming the rearguard, occupied the edge of the woods which fill the valley and extend along the two banks of Sabine River in a thick belt. Without losing a moment, Kirby Smith, astride on the road followed by his column, deploys Churchill's division, which is at the head of it. Dockerey's brigade, which its commander had left in Arkansas and found again before Camden, is formed on the left beyond a creek which flows parallel with the road, and will seek