Harvest of Death: The Battle of Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas Book

In the spring of 1864 following the failed Red River Campaign, two vast armies marched across Southern Arkansas. The Federal Army, trying desperately to get back to the safety of Little Rock, having marched toward Louisiana in support of the Union's failed invasion of Texas was running out of food and supplies. Union General Frederick Steele knew he had to get his army back to the safety of Little Rock if they were to survive. In hot pursuit of the Federals were thousands of Confederates under command of General Edmund Kirby Smith. Their mission: destroy the Union Army at all cost. As both armies marched north toward Little Rock, the rain that had plagued the march early on had returned with a vengeance, turning the Federal retreat into a mud march. Standing in the way of the Federal retreat was the rain swollen Saline River crossing at Jenkins' Ferry. The frustrated Federals were forced to construct a pontoon bridge across the rising river slowing their march, enabling the Confederates to close the gap. The resulting Battle of Jenkins' Ferry was one of the largest and certainly one of the most vicarious in Arkansas Civil War history.

Harvest of Death: the Battle of Jenkins ' Ferry, Arkansas is the first major work dedicated to the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry in fifty years. Author Joe Walker tells the story of two armies and their epic clash alongside the Saline River. Through the use of previously unpublished photographs and stories, Walker brings the battle to life as never before. Through the use of a previously unpublished map of the battle, drawn by a Confederate Engineer shortly after the battle, Walker shows the battle in a completely new light and changes forever the way historians believed the Battle of Jenkins' Ferry was fought.

Walker also discusses the discovery of previously forgotten accounts of the battle that suggest the Federal Army used more that skill and tactics to out battle the Confederates – they may have outwitted and defeated the Confederates through one altered courier dispatch – an alteration that may have affected the outcome of the battle and changed the balance of power in Civil War Arkansas.

The Battle of Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas was one of the most violent Civil War battles in our history with accusations of atrocities committed by both sides. It will make you rethink the history of Civil War Arkansas.

Excerpt from Harvest of Death: The Battle of Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas:

"As the surgeons tended to the needs of the wounded, others turned their attention to a more gruesome task. Burial details were soon dispatched across the battlefield to separate the dead from the living. The fields, where days earlier were green with the spring corn crop, were now pits of mud seeded with the pale, bloated bodies of soldiers whose last breath escaped them so far from home. Burial crews worked day and night gathering the dead in this macabre harvest of death."