Operations in Chicot County (June 13–15, 1863)

U.S. Navy warships destroyed the town of Eunice (Chicot County) and the settlement at Gaines’ Landing (Chicot County) in June 1863 after being fired on by Confederate guerrillas from the Arkansas shore.

The USS Marmora, commanded by Acting Volunteer Lieutenant Robert Getty, was steaming down the Mississippi River on the evening of June 13, 1863, after escorting some steamboats when a party of twenty to thirty Confederate guerrillas opened fire on the vessel, which was about a mile above Eunice. Getty reported that they “ordered me with curses to come to and land.” The warship instead shelled the attackers before continuing down the river and anchoring.

The same day, Lieutenant Edward E. Brennard of the USS Prairie Bird reported that his warship found that a Union coal barge at Gaines’ Landing had been set “on fire in nine places” by bushwhackers. The sailors extinguished the blazes and loaded up with coal “as we observed the guerrillas lurking around.”

On the morning of June 14, a Union flotilla steamed down the Mississippi past the Marmora. The steamboat Nebraska was passing Eunice when guerrillas opened fire on it, leading Getty to get his warship underway. He “commenced shelling the town and woods on that side of the river for some 2 miles distance, up and down” before landing and setting fire to “the entire place, including the railroad depot, with locomotive and car inside…in fact, every house and shed within a mile of the landing,” concluding that “not a vestige of the town of Eunice can be seen.”

The Marmora then steamed to Gaines’ Landing, relieving the Prairie Bird, which steamed down the Mississippi to conduct escort duty. Guerrillas fired on the Marmora twice, leading Getty to burn “all the houses at Gaines’ Landing except Batchelder’s,” a nearby plantation house that the bushwhackers had been using as a base.

At 3:00 a.m. on June 15, the Prairie Bird returned and took on thirty-two men from the Marmora before steaming to Batchelder’s, where that group and thirty-five men from Brennard’s vessel landed at daylight, intent on surprising the guerrillas there. They found only four men, but “from appearance of the apartments of the house, a large breakfast was being prepared, and a much larger number of beds had been occupied than there were inmates in the house.” The Federal sailors burned the house to the ground.

The Union naval operations at Eunice and Gaines’ Landing are indicative of the continuing challenges Confederate fighters presented to Federal shipping on the Mississippi River and the increasingly drastic responses of the U.S. forces.

For additional information:
Simons, Don R. In Their Words: A Chronology of the Civil War in Chicot County, Arkansas and Adjacent Waters of the Mississippi River. Lake Village, AR: D. R. Simons, 1999.

The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies. Vol. 25, pp. 172–174. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1912.

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System