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Battle of Middle Boggy Depot
The Battle of Middle Boggy Depot, also known as the Battle of Middle Boggy River or simply Battle of Middle Boggy, took place on February 13, 1864 in Choctaw Indian Territory, 4 miles (6.4 km) south of what is now Allen in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma. Advancing down the Dragoon Trail toward Fort Washita, Union Colonel William A. Phillips sent out an advance of approximately 350 men from the 14th Kansas Cavalry (led by Maj. Charles Willetts) and two howitzers (led by Captain Solomon Kaufman) to attack a Confederate outpost guarding the Trail's crossing of Middle Boggy River.[A] The Confederate force was led by Captain Jonathan Nail and composed of one company of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Cavalry, a detachment of the 20th Texas Cavalry and part of the Seminole Battalion of Mounted Rifles.[1] The outpost was about 12 miles (19 km) from Muddy Boggy Depot, which was held by the Confederates. The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture says that the battlefield was 15 miles northeast of the depot, whereas the battlefield marker says the distance was 12 miles.[2] The Confederate force at the outpost, consisting of 90 poorly armed men, were caught off guard when Willetts attacked them.[3] Outnumbered and outgunned, the Confederates held off the Union cavalry attack for approximately 30 minutes before retreating to the rest of Lt. Col. John Jumper's Seminole Battalion, who were not at the main skirmish. The Confederates retreated 45 miles (72 km) southwest down the Dragoon Trail.[4] The Union advance continued south toward Ft. Washita the next day, but when the expected reinforcements did not arrive Philips' Expedition into Indian Territory stalled on February 15, near old Stonewall. BackgroundUnion Colonel William A Phillips led an expedition consisting of about 1,500 soldiers to divide the Confederate forces in Indian Territory along a line from Fort Gibson to the Red River. The force represented three companies of the 14th Kansas Cavalry,[1] a battalion of Kansas Infantry and two regiments of the Indian Home Guard, supported by howitzers from the 3rd Regiment of the Indian Home Guards.[B] The expedition had four objectives: (1) establish Union Control over the Indian Territory, (2) offer amnesty to the Creek, Seminole, and Chickasaw Indians provided in President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of December 1863; sever Confederate treaties with the tribes and (4) gain new recruits.[4] Colonel Phillips issued the following message to his troops before they departed from Fort Gibson to begin the expedition:[4]
Phillips' expedition left Fort Gibson on February 1, 1864 and moved southwest along the Dragoon Trail toward Fort Washita. This trail (also called the Texas Cattle Trail),[1] roughly parallelled the more heavily used Texas Road. Phillips chose this route because guerilla warfare had decimated the area along the Texas Road, and Phillips believed that there would be better forage along the Dragoon route.[5] [C] He stopped on February 4, to await the arrival of the remaining nine companies of the 14th Kansas Cavalry. On February 11, Phillips paused near Edwards' Post, south of the Canadian River, and awaited the arrival of reinforcements from Fort Smith. When the reinforcements failed to arrive, Phillips decided to proceed to the Middle Boggy, a tributary of the Red River.[5] Skirmish at the outpostThe Confederate outpost was very near the point where the Dragoon Road crossed the Middle Boggy. Maj. Willetts' advance group camped a short distance away on the night of February 12 and made final preparations to attack. Willett's group began the skirmish with an artillery barrage at 7 A.M. the following morning. The 14th Kansas Cavalry immediately charged, throwing the Confederates into confusion.[4] Some of the surviving members of Capt. Nail's command retreated to Boggy Depot, abandoning the wounded on the battlefield. The rest of the Chickasaw Battalion remained near Cochran to escort Chickasaw Governor Winchester Colbert's family from Pontotoc to Tishomingo. General Douglas H. Cooper, who had returned that night to his headquarters at Boggy Depot from Fort Washita, had sent a request to Texas for more reinforcements. A Confederate burial detail sent to the battlefield found all the abandoned wounded had been killed with their throats cut.[4] Col. Phillips reported that his soldiers had killed 48 Confederate soldiers and had taken no prisoners. BG Cooper reported that only 11 Confederate soldiers were killed.[1] AftermathCol. Phillips camped at a site called Camp Kansas on the night after the battle. By now, he knew that the remainder of the 14th Cavalry would not be coming to his assistance.[4] The next day, Phillips divided his command into two groups. He sent the cavalry soldiers south under Major Willetts in pursuit of the fleeing Confederates and seeking Gov. Colbert. He ordered Colonel Wattles to take command of the infantry and proceed to old Fort Holmes.[D] On February 15, Phillips ordered his troops to burn Pontotoc Court House and all the Confederate and Chickasaw buildings in the town of Cochran. He also ordered the destruction of Colbert Institute, a pre-war Chickasaw school that had been used to house Confederate troops.[4] The battle was a defeat for the Confederates. However, the mistreatment of civilians and killings of wounded soldiers by the Union troops strengthened the resolve of Confederates and their sympathizers to continue the fight.[7] The Atoka County Historical Society celebrates the Battle of Middle Boggy with a reenactment every third year.[1] In 2010, the National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program noted:
CemeteryA cemetery, now called the Confederate Cemetery near Atoka, was established along the Butterfield Stage road before the Civil War. Local residents believed that the people buried here were all soldiers who had died during the Battle of Middle Boggy Depot. However, forensic research in 1988 enabled site manager Gwen Walker to positively identify some of the victims as soldiers of the 19th Arkansas Infantry. Walker discovered that these men had been sent to construct earthworks at Fort McCulloch in 1862, and that they had died of an epidemic of measles.[9] Battlefield markerIn 1959, the Oklahoma Historical Society erected a marker at a small cemetery about 1 mile (1.6 km) north of Atoka, Oklahoma. The marker was replaced with a new and different marker in 2014. It now reads:
See alsoNotes
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External links34°19′12″N 96°18′29″W / 34.319976°N 96.30814°W
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