Selfridge Cut-off

The Selfridge Cut-off was created to isolate a large bend on the Mississippi River that Confederate guerrillas were using as a base to attack Union shipping. The cut-off contributed to the eventual destruction of Napoleon (Desha County).

Rear Admiral David Porter wrote that the narrow isthmus just north of Napoleon was used by guerrillas, “those pests of the human race,” to “attack a vessel on one side and be ready to meet her on the other as she came around; the distance being 10 miles around and half a mile across” as Union boats steamed around a large bend in the river. Lieutenant Commander Thomas O. Selfridge, commanding the USS Conestoga, frequently patrolled the area and one day saw that high water had partially flooded the narrow neck. Surmising that if he cut a ditch through the area, the Mississippi River’s current would force a passage. He asked for and received Porter’s permission to make the attempt.

On April 11, 1863, he sent a party ashore and wrote that “a boat’s crew made short work of digging the necessary few hundred yards of ditch and before many hours a raging torrent was rapidly enlarging the cut, carrying away large trees.”

The next day, he decided to test the new channel by taking the Conestoga through it, though the “current…must have approached 12 knots in strength, so that once entered, the ship would no longer be under control.” However, “we shot through without any serious difficulty” and he declared that the cut-off would allow Union forces to defend both the White and Arkansas rivers more effectively since “it shortens the distance between the two rivers at least 10 miles [and] enables me to concentrate our strength very completely.” Porter wrote that “Captain Selfridge deserves credit for cutting this new river route.”

While it improved shipping conditions for Union vessels on the Mississippi, the new route also directed the river’s current directly toward the town of Napoleon. Selfridge later wrote in his memoirs that “the Selfridge cut-off so changed the course of the river as to wash away the whole town-site, and the property owners very seriously considered suing me for damages.”

For additional information:
Hammond, Michael D. “Arkansas Atlantis; or Napoleon, Arkansas, and Changes in the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers.” Ozark Historical Review 35 (Spring, 2006): 11–13.

Selfridge, Thomas O. What Finer Tradition: The Memoirs of Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr., Rear Admiral, U.S.N. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987.

The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies. Vol. 24, pp. 249–250. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1911.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas