Tag: Arkansas in the Civil War

  • Clerking for Cleburne

    Clerking for Cleburne

    This staff included not only officers who served as aides, but enlisted men that served as clerks. Two of these clerks were cousins from Helena.

  • Captain Thomas Jefferson Williams

    Captain Thomas Jefferson Williams

    Captain Thomas Jefferson Williams Arkansas was a divided state in 1862.  East versus West; Hill versus Delta; Rich versus Poor.  All of these factors were at play in 1862 Arkansas as a Union Army came marching into the state.  Many of the small hill farmers had never supported secession and not many slaves were found…

  • Skirmish at Lick Creek: January 12, 1863

    Skirmish at Lick Creek: January 12, 1863

    Helena was a city under siege in January 1863.  The Army of the Southwest had marched into the town about six months earlier in 1862.  Since that day they had been fortifying Helena and making it a center of Union operations in the area around the town in both Arkansas and Mississippi. However, there were…

  • John Smith Phelps: Military Governor of Arkansas

    John Smith Phelps: Military Governor of Arkansas

    John Smith Phelps was born in Sinsbury, Hartford County, Connecticutt on December 22, 1814.  He graduated from Trinity College and was admitted to the bar in 1835.  Soon after, the Phelps family moved to Springfield in Greene County, Missouri. Mr. Phelps married Mary Whitney and together they would have five children.  They were John Elisha,…

  • Some Delta delegates to the Arkansas and Mississippi Secession Conventions

    Some Delta delegates to the Arkansas and Mississippi Secession Conventions

        Map of Mississippi before the Civil War Tunica County, Mississippi Andrew Miller was born on December 6,1801 in South Carolina.  He moved to Mississippi and began planting near Austin in Tunica county.  Representing Tunica County in the secession convention, he voted strictly secessionist. Miller was too old to join the Confederate Army and…