The skirmish was one of the earlier engagements associated with Steele’s attempt to push southwest from Little Rock, Arkansas to join Banks, who was expected to reach Shreveport in early April.
[8] Banks's plan in March 1864, as conceived by Halleck, was to advance to Shreveport, Louisiana along the Red River where he could be supported by Union gunboats commanded by Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter.
Major General Frederick Steele would move a large force from Little Rock, Arkansas to join Banks at Shreveport.
President Abraham Lincoln agreed to this plan because he was concerned that Napoleon III of France, who might be sympathetic to the Confederacy, was setting up a puppet regime under Maximilian I in Mexico.
[3] In furtherance of the plan, Halleck assigned 10,000 men from Major General William T. Sherman's army at Vicksburg, Mississippi temporarily to Banks.
[3] Under the circumstances involving politics and a plan set in motion before he was in charge, Grant could not stop the campaign but he ordered Banks to go no further than Shreveport, to leave Steele to control the territory, to return to New Orleans for further assignment against Mobile and to send Sherman's troops back to him by mid-April if it appeared that Shreveport could not be taken by the end of that month.
[9] As spring approached, he agreed to get back to Halleck's plan to take control of Texas by moving up the Red River via Alexandria, Louisiana and Shreveport.
Banks's enthusiasm for the campaign grew as he became aware of the cotton that could be seized for the government and the manufacturing plants that had been set up in Shreveport and Texas that could be captured or destroyed and political advantages which could be gained in permitting Louisiana to return to the Union if most of it could be occupied and ten percent of the citizens took an oath of allegiance under Lincoln's Ten-Percent plan.
He would meet the 10,000 men from Sherman's force, under Major General Andrew Jackson Smith, at Alexandria on March 24, 1864, a week behind schedule, but a day before his own troops arrived.
[13] Steele actually opposed participation of his troops in the Red River Campaign because of the difficulty in marching across the wet Arkansas roads, "destitute of provision", and the likelihood his flanks would be exposed and his depots would be inadequately defended from guerrilla attack.
Two other Confederate cavalry brigades under Colonel Colton Greene and Brigadier General William Lewis Cabell moved out of Camden on March 28 to get in front of Steele's column.
[23] After leaving Arkadelphia, before dark on April 1, Steele's men had several large skirmishes with Cabell's brigade before going into camp near Hollywood, Arkansas, also known as Spoonville or Witherspoonville.
[26] On the morning of April 2, Marmaduke ordered Cabell and Greene to move to a point on the road to Washington called Cottingham's Store, 3 miles (4.8 km) from the Little Missouri River, while each brigade commander left a regiment or battalion behind, along with an artillery battery.
[1] Union Colonel Thomas Benton of the Twenty-ninth Iowa Infantry pursued the Confederates for about 1 mile (1.6 km) in order to keep them from making a flank attack.
[1] While Benton was fighting on the hill, other Confederates from Cabell's brigade attacked the wagon train three more times and were driven back by the Fiftieth Indiana under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Well and Captain Martin Voegel's Wisconsin battery, all led by Union brigade commander, Brigadier General Samuel A.
[28] Rice reported: "From 12 m. to 6 p.m. there was more or less skirmishing most of the time, and owing to the length of the train, which was some 3 miles, it made its protection a matter of serious difficulty.