February 6, 2010

In the summer of 1863, Major General Benjamin M. Prentiss, commander of the District of Eastern Arkansas, made his Union headquarters at Helena (Phillips County). Prentiss’s force of approximately 20,000 manned four fortified positions—known as Batteries A, B, C, and D—around the city. His forces, reduced to 4,129, repelled an attack by Confederate forces on July 4, 1863, in the Battle of Helena. Combined casualties in that battle, one of the largest in Arkansas, were more than 1,800.