Honey Springs, OK 
July 17, 1863
You enter the battlefield from the North and drive against the flow of the battle. I am setting up the pictures from start to finish chronologically. Unfortunately I couldn’t get my hands on a battlefield tour map so I’m setting things up the way they make sense to me.
Honey Springs
July 17, 1863
The Beginning
In April 1863 Col. William Phillips USA of Kansas occupied Fort Gibson to challenge Confederate control of the Oklahoma Indian Territory. The Confederates, under Brig. Gen Douglas Cooper CSA, responded by building up a fort of their own at Honey Springs from which their cavalry could harass Federal supply trains from Fort Scott.
The Confederate encampment of 6,000, straddled the Texas Road, and consisted of a commissary and a hospital. The troops slept in tents; other structures included corrals for the horses. Aside from blocking the road, the camp had the advantages of a year round water source and was easily supplied from other Confederate strong holds. Cooper was planning to use the forces at Honey Springs in an attack on Fort Gibson; but, Cooper was delaying his attack to wait for Brigadier General William L. Cabell, who was bring reinforcements.
Col Phillips was aware of the Confederate plans but there wasn’t much he could do with the forces on hand at Fort Gibson. Reinforcements were dispatched under the command of Maj. Gen James Blunt, who would become the ranking officer upon arrival. The Confederates attempted to intercept Blunt at Big Cabin Creek on July 1-2, 1863 but failed to stop his force from crossing the creek and joining Phillips at Fort Gibson.
Blunt was an aggressive officer known for offensive action and he decided to take the fight to the Confederates before the reinforcements arrived even though he would be outnumbered almost 2 to1 and he himself was quite ill. Blunt had several advantages working for him: first, the only about three quarters of the Confederates were armed, while Blunts men carried the late model Springfield rifles; second, Blunt had twelve cannon while the Confederates would only have four; lastly, the had been a heavy rain and the Confederates had wet powder.
Blunt had to hold up while his men built boats to ferry the Arkansas River but he had them across by 10 p.m. on July 16. In several minor skirmishes Blunt drove off the Confederates but with all of the activity it was easy for Cooper to track Blunts movements as he moved toward Honey Springs, so the attack came as no surprise.
The battle opened, as so many Civil War battles did, with an artillery duel that lasted an hour and a half. In the opening moments of the duel one of the Union howitzers was hit and taken out of action. The Union responded by destroying one of the Confederate guns, a tit for tat that the Confederates could not afford to play.
The Confederate Left
Both sides fought as dismounted cavalry and for two hours the Confederates held their position against a heavy Union fire. The Confederates tried a flanking movement on the Union right but the heavy underbrush made troop movement very difficult and the fighting degenerated into close range firing and even hand to hand combat. With all of their other disadvantages the numerical superiority of the Confederates appeared to be giving them the edge, but Blunt ordered a bayonet charge the Confederate artillery and while the Union troops did not capture the guns they did stop them from firing. This seemed to turn the tide of the battle, and as the Union kept up its very heavy fire Cooper fell back across Elk Creek.
The Battle in the Brush
The Confederate Final Stand
The Confederates head the bridge over the creek long enough to evacuate their remaining artillery, fell back a mile and a half, made another stand, and quit the field. Blunt let them go, his men were exhausted and nearly out of ammunition. Plus, the three thousand troops under Cabell were by now only about fifty miles away. Cooper fell back and joined Cabell bringing their combined artillery strength up to seven and their man power up to something like 8500; much too much for Blunt’s small force to tackle.
For a list of the Confederate dead buried at Honey Springs click here. It is in Excell format as transcribed by Carolyn Carter. The material was taken from The Prairie Was on Fire by Whit Edwards.
The battlefield today is largely contained on a 3,000 acre park that is much the same as it was on the day of the battle. Facilities are somewhat primitive with a trailer for a visitor’s center and outhouses. The day I visited the park office was closed while they hosted the Civil War Preservation Society and apparently they did not have enough staff to keep the office open.
Next: W.H. Brinlee's Letter