In the spring of 1864, as Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele's Union army marched into southwest Arkansas, Col. C.C. Andrews led an expedition to Woodruff County to prevent Brig. Gen. Dandridge McRae from recruiting Confederate forces in the region and attacking the strategically important Memphis to Little Rock Railroad. With 186 men of the Third Minnesota Infantry Regiment and 45 troopers of the Eighth Missouri Cavalry, Andrews traveled by steamer up the White River to Augusta on April 1, marched north, and nearly captured McRae before he escaped on horseback. After going twelve miles past Augusta, the Union column turned back and, at Fitzhugh's Plantation, repelled a charge by Confederate cavalry before hurrying to Fitzhugh's Woods, where a combined Confederate force of 595 men attacked from three sides. The two sides exchanged fire for nearly three hours until Andrews crossed a bayou to the south and marched back to Augusta, while McRae's troops, nearly out of ammunition, could not pursue. The Third Minnesota lost seven killed, sixteen wounded, and four left wounded on the battlefield, and the Eighth Missouri Cavalry lost one killed and one missing; Confederate forces lost twenty to twenty-five killed or mortally wounded and sixty to seventy-five wounded.