Skirmish near Helena (April 2, 1863)

One Union soldier was killed and two were wounded when Confederate forces attacked their picket post near the Federal base at Helena (Phillips County) on April 2, 1863.

After Major General Samuel R. Curtis’s Army of the Southwest occupied Helena on July 12, 1862, and established a Union base on the Mississippi River, the Federal troops established security perimeters around the town to protect it from incursions from Confederate troops and guerrillas while Curtis’s men built defensive fortifications. These precautions included picket posts on the major roads leading into the town.

On the morning of April 2, 1863, Company G of the Fifth Kansas Cavalry Regiment was manning a picket post on the Little Rock Road outside of Helena when “a superior force of the Rebels attacked our company….The enemy was repulsed.”

In the short, sharp skirmish, Corporal Alexander Moore was killed (the Kansas Adjutant General’s report lists him as killed on April 3), and Sergeant Thomas Summers and Private John H. Gast were wounded. Fifth Kansas troopers also lost a North & Savage revolver, a Colt revolver, and a pair of pistol carbines in the melee before driving off their attackers.

The deadly April 2, 1863, skirmish on the Little Rock Road was not an unusual occurrence as Union and Confederate forces vied for control of the country outside of the Federal base at Helena.

For additional information:
Hewett, Janet B., et al., eds. Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Vol. 21, p. 264. Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing Co., 1996.

Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kansas, Vol. I, 1861–1865. Leavenworth, KS: Bulleting Co-Operative Printing Co., 1867.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas