Cypress Bend, Skirmish at (June 20–21, 1863)

Confederate Missourians under Colonel John B. Clark skirmished with Union gunboats at Cypress Bend in southeastern Arkansas on June 20 and 21, 1863.

The USS Juliet was returning to its base after escorting a pair of steamboats up the Mississippi River on June 20, 1863, when it suffered engine damage and had to set anchor at Cypress Bend near the Newman plantation in Chicot County. A party of six men was sent to shore to seek fresh vegetables for the gunboat.

The men had been ashore for only a few minutes when several of Colonel John B. Clark’s Missourians charged toward them from a house about an eighth of a mile away, firing as they approached. Acting Lieutenant Ed Shaw ordered the gunboat’s cannon to open fire, forcing the Confederates to break off their attack.

A larger party of armed men was then sent ashore to burn the house that the Confederates had been using. They also went to the Newman plantation and brought forty-six enslaved people to the Juliet. That evening, the steamboat New National towed the damaged gunboat to the White River to undergo repairs.

The next day, Clark’s artillery opened fire on the tinclad USS Little Rebel and a pair of steamboats, the Jacob Strader and Prima Donna, which were carrying supplies for Union forces. The Little Rebel “had the fighting chocks carried away,” disabling its forward guns, and the Prima Donna was damaged to the point that it had to be towed to river fleet facilities at the mouth of the Yazoo River for repairs. There apparently were no casualties in either of the engagements.

While of no great individual significance, the June 1863 skirmishes at Cypress Bend reflected the continuing Confederate efforts to disrupt Union shipping on the Mississippi River amid the Federal campaign to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, which would surrender a few weeks later.

For additional information:
Bearss, Edwin Cole. The Vicksburg Campaign, Vol. 1: Vicksburg is the Key. Dayton, OH: Morningside House, 1986.

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 Armies, Series I, Vol. 24, part 3, p. 431. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1889.

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

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System