Skirmish at Cypress Bend (February 19, 1863)

The February 19, 1863, skirmish at Cypress Bend near present-day Rohwer (Desha County) was part of a Union expedition against Confederate forces in southern Arkansas and around Greeneville, Mississippi.

Brigadier General Stephen G. Burbridge led a U.S. force from the Union base at Young’s Point, Louisiana, on February 14, 1863, heading toward Greeneville, Mississippi, aboard the transport Fanny Bullitt. After bad road conditions around the Mississippi town impeded their pursuit of Confederate forces near Greeneville, they reembarked on their transport on February 18 and headed toward Cypress Bend in Chicot County, where Captain J. H. Pratt’s battery of Parson’s Texas Cavalry Brigade had fired on Federal shipping on the Mississippi River a few days before.

On the morning of February 19, Burbridge sent a detachment of Company C, Sixth Missouri Cavalry (US) and fifty mule-mounted infantrymen under Major Bacon Montgomery up Cypress Creek in pursuit of the Texans. After riding four miles, they encountered Confederate pickets, killing a man and capturing a lieutenant. After they continued another six miles, Pratt opened fire on the Federals from the other side of Amos Bayou (Burbridge referred to it as Boggy Bayou). A Texan recounted that, when the Federals landed, Pratt “skedaddled to the time of double quick; came up on Amos Bayou and made a stand.”

As the Union horsemen shot at the Texans, Burbridge arrived and deployed the Twenty-third Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, which also opened fire on the Confederates. The Seventeenth Ohio Battery shelled the Confederate line, and Pratt “giving them two salutes, struck the tune again and went to Silver Lake.” The Federals, “for want of sufficient knowledge of the roads,” remained on Cypress Creek until the next morning, when they found what the general described as a twelve-pounder howitzer “stamped U.S., 1828,” abandoned in a canebrake. Others, though, said the captured cannon was “an old iron-six pounder.”

Captain E. W. Sutherland of the Union ram Monarch, who had accompanied Burbridge, maintained that the Federals “would have captured their guns had he not given them an idea of his strength by engaging with his whole force a few pickets.”

Burbridge estimated that the Confederates lost two men killed, as well as three horses, in the skirmish, while the Federals only lost three horses.

After Confederate deserters told Burbridge that the Texans “had gone beyond our reach,” the Federals reembarked on their transports and returned to Mississippi, continuing their expedition until it returned to base on February 26, 1863, having captured as many as twenty-five prisoners.

For additional information:
Hewett, Janet B., et al., eds. Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. 35, pp. 172, 199; Vol. 76, pp. 345, 368, 380, 398. Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing Co., 1996.

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 1, pp. 349–352. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1889.

The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies. Vol. 24, p. 362. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1911.

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System