Thanks R.D.

I was going from memory on the date, since it had been some time since I've read the report in the Naval OR's of the White River expeditions in January 1863. The Union navy had been chasing the after two 8 inch columbiah guns from the CSS Ponchartrain which had been at St. Charles and had found them at DuVall's Bluff loaded on to railroad flatcars ready to be shipped back to Little Rock.

They had destroyed the facilities and the railroad equipment there along with a hospital and other building and stores and had pretty well made the place useless at that time. It was at this time that the Confederates abandoned holding the White River line as a primary fotified line of defence.

It had always been the Confederate Grand Plan to force the Union army to have to come throught Duvall's Bluff when they attacked Little Rock, but the Union gunboats made the White River untendable for fixed defensive installation after the fall of Arkansas Post.