Expedition from Helena to Clarendon (September 19–24, 1863)

The Civil War expedition from Helena (Phillips County) to Clarendon (Monroe County) was conducted to bring wagons to the new Union base that was established at DeValls Bluff (Prairie County) shortly after the Little Rock Campaign ended with Federal occupation of the state capital.

As Major General Frederick Steele consolidated Union control of Little Rock (Pulaski County) after driving Major General Sterling Price’s Confederate troops from the city on September 10, 1863, he created a base at DeValls Bluff to which supplies could be delivered via the White River and then transported to the capital using the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad. In late September, Colonel George A. Bacon of the Fifteenth Illinois Cavalry was ordered to escort a train of 150 wagons from Helena for use at DeValls Bluff.

Bacon left Helena early on September 19, 1863, with the wagons guarded by his own Fifteenth Illinois; Companies A, B, C, D, G, and K of the Third Iowa Cavalry; and detachments from several of Brigadier General John Wynn Davidson’s other cavalry regiments. After a difficult crossing of Lick Creek, where the bridge had been destroyed, they captured Lieutenants John S. Ligon and Phillip W. Lane of the Twenty-third Arkansas Infantry Regiment (CS).

The Federals camped on Spring Creek that night, with Bacon reporting “Bridge firm—Water plenty—an excellent camping ground.” After crossing Big Creek, where he noted the road runs through bottomlands that would be “impassable for Wagons in wet weather,” they captured a private of Colonel Archibald Dobbins’s cavalry regiment. They camped at Flat Fork that night, where Bacon complained: “Crossing wretched—no water for stock—Was obliged to build a temporary Bridge of rails.”

After crossing “ten miles of beautiful prairie land” on September 21, they arrived at Clarendon, bringing the wagons across the White River in a seven-hour operation the next day. Major Leander C. Noble of the Third Iowa Cavalry then led the wagon train to DeValls Bluff as the Fifteenth Illinois cavalrymen set off for Helena. The return trip was largely uneventful, though they captured a private of the Twenty-third Arkansas Infantry (CS), and they reached the Union base on the Mississippi River on September 24, having ridden 130 miles. Bacon reported that “the Country between Helena and Clarendon is flat and under no cultivation to speak of. I found but little forage upon the road.”

While little action occurred during the expedition from Helena to Clarendon, it did help to cement a solid supply line for Union troops in Little Rock, since the Arkansas River was not a dependable avenue to the capital.

For additional information:
Geo. A. Bacon to Captain T. C. Meatyard, September 25, 1863. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of Named Departments, 393P2E299, Box 1.

Hewett, Janet B. et al., eds. Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Vol. 8, pp. 198, 200, 204, 208, 214; Vol. 19, p. 251 Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing Co., 1995.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas