Expedition from Fort Pinney to Friar’s Point, Mississippi (December 19, 1864)

A detachment of U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) mounted an operation to Mississippi in December 1864 in an unsuccessful attempt to capture a pair of deserters near Friar’s Point (usually spelled Friars Point).

Captain Benjamin Thomas of Company D, Sixty-third United States Colored Troops, who served as District Superintendent of Freedmen for the Eastern District of Arkansas, reported on December 20, 1864, that a Lieutenant Phelps (likely Second Lieutenant Edwin A. Phelps of Company F, Sixtieth USCT), “having suspicion that the deserters from the Cavalry were at Friars Point,” proposed a night expedition to attempt to capture them.

Thomas agreed and sent a boat full of men under Phelps across the Mississippi River from Fort Pinney, which was located about eleven miles south of Helena (Phillips County). The Federal officer noted that the two deserters—Harry B. Dustin and Sergeant Duff G. Stewart of Company E, Fifteenth Illinois Cavalry, who had deserted on November 30, 1864—had been seen at the Apperson plantation and at Friar’s Point earlier that day. Thomas wrote that someone tried to steal a horse from the Fort Pinney corral after the boat had left but fled after being fired on.

A second boat with ten men, nine of them Black, was sent across, and Phelps ordered it to land south of Friar’s Point. When they reached shore, “the Colored Soldiers…were fired at with Henry riffles [sic] and revolvers. They had from forty to Sixty Shots fired at them and they returned the fire very hansomely [sic].” Thomas noted that the “firing was rapid on both sides,” and the USCT soldiers “were protected by heavy timber that was on the ground.” One man was wounded “Severely, flesh wound, not dangerously,” and continued firing “as Though nothing had occured [sic] nor did he say he was wounded until the firing ceased.”

Thomas theorized that Dustin and Duff had eaten at the Apperson place earlier and had possibly acquired whiskey “from a colored man by the name of Sam” before crossing the river in a dugout and attempting to steal the horse from Fort Pinney, recrossing the Mississippi “perhaps about the same time with our Second boat load and sought a good opportunity to fire on us for pursuing them.” Dustin would ultimately be captured during the expedition from Fort Pinney to Kimball’s Plantation about one month later; Stewart’s fate is not known.

For additional information:
Benj Thomas to Capt. T. C. Meatyard, December 20, 1864, National Archives and Records Administration, Records of Named Departments, 393P2E299, Box 1.

Dyer, Frederick. A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion. Des Moines, IA: Dyer Publishing Co., 1908, p. 1733.

Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls. Office of the Illinois Secretary of State. https://apps.ilsos.gov/isaveterans/civilMusterSearch.do (accessed March 19, 2025).

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas