Steele, Frederick

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Frederick Steele
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    Family
    Nathaniel Steele (father), Esther Benedict Steele (mother), John Benedict Steele (brother)
    Education
    West Point (US Military Academy)
    Occupation
    Military
    Military
    US military (Pre-Civil War)
    Union Army
    US military (Post-Civil War)

    Frederick Steele (American National Bibliography)

    Scholarship
    In the spring of 1864 Steele was directed to advance southward across the state and cooperate with Nathaniel Banks's campaign up the Red River in Louisiana. Steele's command departed from Little Rock on this so-called Camden expedition on 23 March. Steele advanced southwestward, colliding with Confederate forces at Okolona on 3 April before turning eastward and fighting at Prairie d'Ane on 10-13 April and at Poison Spring on 18 April. The Federals occupied Camden for nearly a fortnight before beginning a retreat to Little Rock. At Jenkins Ferry on the Saline River on 30 April, Steele's troops repulsed the attacks of a numerically superior Confederate force, securing their retreat route to the state capital, which they reached on 3 May. Banks's operations along the Red River resulted in failure, but Steele was blameless as the Confederates mobilized troops to prevent his juncture with Banks.

    Steele remained in Arkansas as department commander until the winter of 1865, when he commanded a division in Edward R. S. Canby's army in siege operations against Mobile, Alabama. At the close of hostilities, Federal authorities sent Steele to Texas, where he remained for nearly two years.
    Jeffry D. Wert, "Steele, Frederick," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00947.html.
    How to Cite This Page: "Steele, Frederick," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/26758.