Attack on the Steamboat Gladiator at Bledsoe's Landing

Confederate guerrillas attacked the mail packet Gladiator at Bledsoe’s Landing (Phillips County) on October 19, 1862, killing two men and leading Union forces to burn the settlement, the first of several retaliatory burnings after Federal shipping was attacked on the Mississippi River.

The Gladiator was on its regular run on the Mississippi River between Memphis, Tennessee, and Helena (Phillips County) when four men hailed it from Bledsoe’s Landing at Council Bend, saying they had four bales of cotton they wanted to ship to a Memphis firm. The steamboat stopped, and as a crew member was tying it to a sapling, a group of ten “guerrillas rushed on board and commenced shooting at every man that could be found.”

One man shot and killed engineer A. J. Tucker (one article refers to him as McKee) “while [he was] engaged at the engine trying to back the boat.” New York cotton speculator William H. Babcock was shot four times and killed; a newspaper reported that “he was shouting out that he ‘surrendered’ when the guerrillas shot him.” W. H. Davis, the sutler for the Fourth Iowa Cavalry Regiment, “was shot in the privates and severely wounded.”

As the attack continued, the “crew launched the small boats, and many of them with some of the passengers escaped.” African Americans on the Gladiator “jumped into the river and were doubtless drowned; others escaped in the small boats.”

The bushwhackers set the Gladiator on fire in four different places, but when the sapling the vessel was tied to broke and the steamboat began to drift away from shore, the guerrillas “dropped their guns and swam ashore.” Passenger J. M. Conley volunteered to serve as engineer and get the vessel underway while the guerrillas continued “a destructive fire upon her, but fortunately doing no damage.”

Nine white men and one Black man were taken prisoner, with one riding behind each of the guerrillas on their horses. After two days, they reached the camp of Colonel William H. Parsons’s Texas cavalry brigade, where they “were treated kindly” by the troopers. They were then taken to the state penitentiary in Little Rock (Pulaski County), where “they were not treated so kindly.” They were paroled in late October, and one man said that while in Little Rock they were held “for several days…during which time he and his comrades suffered much from exposure and want of food.”

Initial reports said the attackers were Arkansans led by a man named Harris, but it turned out that Harris was being held in Little Rock for horse theft. A Memphis newspaper reported on October 26 that it was not Harris but “Wild Irish John” who led the ambush and “had only a small force under him, and they appear to have been actuated only by a desire to kill and plunder.” The guerrilla leader was actually Private Thomas Keenan of Company C, Twelfth Texas Cavalry, “who is known in Arkansas as the ‘Wild Irishman.’”

On hearing about the attack on the Gladiator, General William Tecumseh Sherman wrote Lieutenant Commander Richard W. Meade of the USS Louisville that “I hope…you will proceed to Bledsoe’s Landing and then destroy all the houses and cornfields along the river on that side.” Meade arranged for 300 men of the Eleventh and Twenty-fourth Indiana Infantry Regiments to board the steamboat Meteor and accompany the Louisville, leaving on October 20, 1862.

The little flotilla arrived at Bledsoe’s Landing at 8:00 a.m. on October 21. The Meteor continued on toward Elm Grove while a party from the gunboat went ashore. Meade reported that “the inhabitants of this place were given half an hour to remove necessary articles from the houses, when the buildings and fields were laid in ashes. Hamblin’s, 2 miles below, was similarly served, the guerrillas having quartered there three nights since.”

He added that “the people along the river bank were duly informed that every outrage by the guerrillas upon packets would be similarly dealt with,” a policy that was followed when Hopefield (Crittenden County) was burned in February 1863 and Eunice (Chicot County) and Gaines’ Landing (Chicot County) were put to the torch in June 1863.

Keenan would himself be killed in April 1864 when he attacked the steamboat Curlew on the Arkansas River near Pine Bluff (Jefferson County).

For additional information:
“Abolition Reports from Arkansas.” Memphis Daily Appeal, November 4, 1862, p. 1.

“Federal Reports from Helena and the River.” Memphis Daily Appeal, October 29, 1862, p. 2.

“From Dixie.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, November 6, 1862, p. 2.

“Partisan War on the River.” Memphis Daily Appeal, October 23, 1862, p. 1.

The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies. Vol. 23, pp. 431–432. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1910.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas