Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Chapter 8
Arkansas, Indian Territory
and Kansas, 1863–1865
While Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s army moved against Vicksburg during the
spring of 1863, Union garrisons elsewhere along the Mississippi River struggled
to hold their own. More than two hundred twenty miles north of Vicksburg by the
river’s tortuous course lay Helena, Arkansas. Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas had
stopped there early in April to promote the organization of black regiments. The seven
thousand white troops he addressed, some of whom would become officers in the
new regiments, responded “most enthusiastically,” he told Secretary of War Edwin
M. Stanton. Men from the nearby contraband camp, Thomas explained to the senior
officer there, would fill the ranks. They would be “induced” to join (see Map 5). 1
Maj. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss, commanding at Helena, had no trouble raising
the 1st Arkansas Infantry (African Descent [AD]). The regiment’s new colonel
quickly picked thirty-six officers from among the white troops in garrison—thirtyfour
of them, like himself, from Indiana. There was no dearth of enlisted men.
The contraband camp had been full for months, and Prentiss had been shipping
freedpeople up the river to St. Louis until Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis, commanding
there, threatened to turn the next boatload around and send it back. Curtis had
been a three-term Republican congressman from Iowa before the war and knew
that white Midwesterners were averse to an influx of former slaves. A month after
Thomas’ visit, the 1st Arkansas (AD) was complete and traveled downstream to
join the Union garrison at Goodrich’s Landing, Louisiana. 2
Organizing the 1st Arkansas (AD) nearly exhausted the supply of able-bodied
men in the Helena contraband camp. The 2d Arkansas (AD) took shape much more
slowly. Late in May, General Prentiss sent twenty-five men of the regiment, backed
by detachments from two white regiments, downstream as far as the mouth of the Ar-
1 The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies, 70 vols. in 128 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), ser. 3, 3: 117
(hereafter cited as OR); Brig Gen L. Thomas to Brig Gen B. M. Prentiss, 2 Apr 1863, Entry 159BB,
Generals’ Books and Papers (L. Thomas), Record Group (RG) 94, Rcds of the Adjutant General’s
Office, National Archives (NA).
2 OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 2, p. 147; List of Ofcrs, 7 Apr 63, 46th United States Colored Infantry
(USCI), Entry 57C, Regimental Papers, RG 94, NA; NA Microfilm Pub M594, Compiled Rcds
Showing Svc of Mil Units in Volunteer Union Organizations, roll 210, 46th USCI; Frederick H.
Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1959 [1909]), p.
999; Leslie A. Schwalm, Emancipation Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), pp. 82–97.