County: Chicot - Starting with G

This Civil War skirmish occurred in relation to strategic considerations of Major General Samuel R. Curtis after he occupied Helena (Phillips County) and established operational headquarters there in the summer of 1862. The location of Gaines’ (or Gaines) Landing in Chicot County—situated between Curtis’s base at Helena and the stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi—made it a useful base for Confederates to transport munitions and other supplies into Arkansas by flatboat and steamboat. In addition to his concern for the general strategic security of the Mississippi River, Curtis also worried that such activities could impinge upon possible operations against Little Rock (Pulaski County) and the area between Memphis, Tennessee, and the mouth of the Arkansas River. To address these concerns, Curtis led …

Located on the western bank of the Mississippi River in Chicot County, Gaines’ (or Gaines) Landing was a busy shipping point between Helena (Phillips County) and Vicksburg, Mississippi. A road heading west from Gaines’ Landing through Drew County was one of few in the area leading inland away from the river, making it very important to settlers, immigrants, and merchants. During the American Civil War, Gaines’ Landing was one of many points along the river used by Confederate troops to harass Federal steamboats. Long bends of the river were ideal for the Confederates’ hit-and-run tactics: they could attack a boat as it entered the bend and then race across the narrow neck of land to attack it again as it …

The Skirmish near Gaines’ Landing, in which Confederate cavalrymen ambushed a detachment of the Mississippi Marine Brigade, was fought on February 22, 1864. Gaines’ Landing in Chicot County was one of several places along the Mississippi River where Confederate troops would fire on steamboats and then race across narrow necks of land to attack them again as the boats traversed large loops of the river. There had already been skirmishes at Gaines’ Landing on July 20, 1862, and June 28, 1863. The Union four-gun ram USS Baltic was steaming down the Mississippi River off Chicot County on the morning of February 22, 1864, when it was fired on by “what was thought to be a small squad of the enemy.” The …

Margaret Garner, a Kentucky-born enslaved woman, gained national notoriety for killing one child and attempting to kill the rest of her children under duress of being recaptured and returned to her master following her family’s escape to Ohio. According to all accounts, she declared it a humane act to prevent her offspring from suffering the indignities of slavery. She and her controversial deed became immortalized through popular media, most notably in Toni Morrison’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Beloved. Garner lived briefly in Chicot County, Arkansas, prior to her death. Little is known about her early life. She lived on Maplewood Plantation in Boone County, Kentucky, owned first by John Pollard Gaines, who sold her to his brother, Archibald, in 1849. …