Battle of Bayou Meto: The Bridge That Burned Before Little Rock Fell
Near Little Rock, Arkansas
On August twenty-seventh, eighteen sixty-three, Union cavalry and Confederate infantry collided at a wooden bridge over Bayou Meto, a slow-moving stream northeast of Little Rock. What happened that afternoon would set the stage for the fall of Arkansas's Confederate capital two weeks later.
Union Major General Frederick Steele had been pushing steadily across eastern Arkansas all summer with a combined force drawn from Helena and Missouri. His cavalry arm, commanded by Brigadier General John W. Davidson, reached the Bayou Meto crossing on the twenty-seventh and attacked Confederate positions commanded by Brigadier General John Sappington Marmaduke. The Confederates had dug in well, but Union numbers and Steele's aggressive drumming order, literally ordering regimental drummers to beat the charge, forced the Southern troops back across Reed's Bridge.
As the last Confederate soldiers crossed, they set the bridge on fire. Davidson ordered the First Iowa Cavalry to charge the burning span. It was a desperate gamble, and it failed. Marmaduke's defenders poured small arms and artillery fire into the narrow crossing, and the Iowans pulled back having suffered one killed and thirty-six wounded. Confederate casualties were never officially reported. The two sides traded artillery fire until nightfall, then the Union forces withdrew toward Brownsville.
Bayou Meto was the last effective Confederate stand before Little Rock. Steele, thwarted at the direct crossing, swung his army south and came at the city from the opposite bank of the Arkansas River, forcing the engagement known as Bayou Fourche on September tenth. Confederate General Sterling Price evacuated Little Rock that same evening without a major fight.
The battle left a strange coda. The tensions at Reed's Bridge had simmered between two Confederate commanders. About ten days after the fight, Generals Walker and Marmaduke met in a duel. Walker died of his wound. Little Rock had fallen, and the Confederacy in Arkansas was unraveling, one burned bridge at a time.
