Southern Camps

Prior to the battle, Confederate camps stood on both sides of Elk Creek and near Honey Springs Depot, where six thousand men needed ample room for themselves, their equipment, tents, wagons, and horses. After the fighting and the overwhelming Union victory, the Confederates abandoned these camps hastily. Immediately after the fighting ceased, Captain Henry Hopkins of the 3rd Kansas Battery wrote on July 21, 1863, that while selecting a campground, his men found at the edge of the woods in the former camp nearly the entire camp equipage of one regiment, including cooking utensils and tents, and destroyed it.

Oklahoma · United States