Are We There Yet?

Historical Camden home housed Union general

The McCollum-Chidester House, built in 1847, served as headquarters for Confederate Gen. Sterling Price and Union Gen. Frederick Steele during the Civil War’s Red River Campaign in 1864.
The McCollum-Chidester House, built in 1847, served as headquarters for Confederate Gen. Sterling Price and Union Gen. Frederick Steele during the Civil War’s Red River Campaign in 1864.

CAMDEN -- Even 150 years later, it's not all that easy to find kind words in Arkansas or other former Confederate states for Yankee generals who pursued what diehard Rebels still label "the War of Northern Aggression."

But Gen. Frederick Steele, who based himself in Camden's grand McCollum-Chidester House while Union troops briefly occupied the town in April 1864, gets a measure of respect from tour guides at the stately home.

During the week that Steele lived in the mansion, a guide told two recent visitors, the commander took pains to keep his troops from vandalizing or otherwise damaging the two-story edifice. And he insisted that civilian residents of the town be treated with respect.

"People in Camden who know the history believe that Steele was a decent person, even though he was the enemy," said the guide while showing the first-floor bedroom where the general slept.

She also related the supposed reason for the bullet holes that can be seen in an upstairs wall. That's where owner John Chidester is said to have hidden in a closet after his arrest was ordered on charges of spying for the Confederacy.

As Union troops searched the house, they suspected he might have taken refuge on the top floor. They fired through the wall concealing his hiding place, but he was crouching on the floor below the shots' trajectory. At least that's the story.

Steele's forces held Camden for only two weeks during the Red River Campaign, before being forced to retreat north to their base in Little Rock. As for Chidester, he fled to Texas for the rest of the war before returning to his Camden house with wife and six sons.

Chidester had bought the property in 1858 from Peter McCollum, who had shipped the expensive building materials from New Orleans by steamboat. Completed in 1847, the house boasted the first plastered walls, carpeting, wallpaper and closets in the Camden area.

Descendants of the Chidesters lived in the building until 1961. Two years later, the Ouachita County Historical Society bought the place, which contains a trove of family furnishings from the 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the oldest is an early sewing machine dating to 1857. Several rooms are adorned with their original pressed-tin window cornices.

Next door stands another antebellum structure, the Leake-Ingham Building. Erected in 1850, it served as a law office before the Civil War. During Reconstruction, it housed a Freedmen's Bureau that helped former slaves adapt to their new lives. Then it was a public library before being moved to its current location.

Chidesters from several generations are buried in Camden's oldest graveyard, Oakland Cemetery, on Maul Road between Pearl Street and Madison Avenue. The cemetery contains more than 250 tombstones marking Confederate dead, known and unknown, from the nearby Red River Campaign battles of Poison Spring and Marks' Mills.

Other facets of Ouachita County's past can be explored at Camden Visitors Center and Museum, in a restored 1913 train depot at 314 Adams St. S.W. Displays pay homage to Camark Pottery and Grapette soft drinks, both formerly made in Camden. There's more Civil War material as well, a reminder of that bloody conflict's presence here.

The McCollum-Chidester House, 926 Washington St. N.W., Camden, is open for guided tours 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday. The fee is $5 ($2 for students). For more information, call (870) 836-9243 or visit ouachitacountyhistoricalsociety.org.

Weekend on 11/05/2015

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