Saturday, November 8, 2014

November 4, 1864---The Siege of Fayetteville, Arkansas



NOVEMBER 4, 1864:        

The Siege of Fayetteville, Arkansas. 

William “Buck” Brown, a notorious Confederate guerrilla attacked Union-held Fayetteville on October 25 with a force of 500 men and artillery. Brown began an indiscriminate and intermittent shelling of the town that continued for ten days. Civilians were killed, putting an end to any Confederate sympathy in Fayetteville. On November 4th, Brown finally decided to break the siege and attack the town with an assist from General Sterling Price C.S.A.’s battered and almost-pointlessly wandering force, which had been in and out of Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, and the Indian Territory in just the last two weeks. Price was hoping to redeem himself by taking Fayetteville, and his 5,200 men, along with Brown’s 500 made three successive infantry charges, each of which was beaten back by the 1,000 Federal defenders. The Confederates lost 100 men killed and captured. The Union suffered 9 wounded. After the third charge, Price pulled out, and Brown’s irregulars gave up the siege leaving Fayetteville a Union city.


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