A Rebel Shot Causes ‘Torture and Despair’

Brown. That is the only way to describe the White River as it passes St. Charles, Arkansas. It rises in the Ozark highlands where the rocky ground keeps it clear, swift, and sparkling (hence its name). But when it descends the Ozark Plateau and plunges into the lowlands of the delta, it slows and turns a mucky brown. Navigable by steamer only part of the year, it is narrow and crooked, and often choked with timber and debris. On this unlikely stream, the U.S. Navy won a costly victory.

The Civil War moved quickly in the Western Theater during the spring of 1862. Major General Earl Van Dorn and his Confederate army met defeat at Elkhom Tavern, and Missouri was all but given up to the Union. Van Dorn’s adversary, Major General Samuel R. Curtis, soon marched triumphantly across northern Arkansas. A month after Elkhom, Confederate General Albert S. Johnston was killed and his army driven from the field at Shiloh in Tennessee. By early June, Federal troops occupied Corinth, Mississippi, a vital supply depot and rail junction.

Events on the vital Mississippi River also foreshadowed gloom for the Confederate cause. U.S. Flag Officer David Farragut’s naval force captured New Orleans in late April. After a pitched gunboat battle early in June, Memphis fell into Union hands. After that, the only major Confederate-controlled defensive positions on the Mississippi were at Helena in Arkansas, Vicksburg in Mississippi, and Port Hudson in Louisiana. Of the eight-ship Confederate fleet at the Battle of Memphis, only the General Van Dom escaped destruction or capture.¹ This ship and a few other Rebel gunboats were left to defend the Mississippi and its tributaries between Memphis and Baton Rouge.

The Army of the Southwest, General Curtis’s command, moved east across northern Arkansas in early May. The army’s advance, however, began to slow by the time it reached Batesville and Jacksonport. Curtis had stretched his supply line too thin and had to rely on a new “cracker line.” He began to send urgent requests for equipment and supplies, while his army came to a halt near the White River.

Major General Thomas C. Hindman, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department, anticipated the fall of Memphis three days before it occurred.² After beginning a crash program to defend the White River, it was obvious to him that any effort to resupply Curtis had to use this waterway. Hindman chose to defend the White River at St. Charles, a small village 88 miles north of the river’s mouth. This spot was chosen because of its easily defended high bluffs, the first heights to appear above where the White River flows into the Arkansas.³ On 8 June, the Confederate gunboat Pontchartrain arrived at St. Charles, bringing with her two 32-pounder rifled cannons for the defenses of the town.⁴

Lieutenant John W. Dunnington of the Pontchartrain had his crew emplace the weapons 200 feet from the shore and 75 feet above the water.⁵ The guns not only were on high ground, but also were on a strategic bend in the river, which afforded a sweeping angle of fire up and down the waterway. The guns themselves were hidden from view by dense undergrowth and trees.

Many of the local citizens began to leave the village when the sailors told them a fight was expected. Dunnington stayed at the home of one of the citizens who did not plan to leave, Mary S. Patrick. She wrote in her diary that, “Many families have moved some miles from town. .. . I conclude to wait and face the foe, if they come.”⁶ As the fortifications neared completion, Dunnington left a small force at St. Charles and departed for Little Rock for additional men and equipment.

While Dunnington was busy at St. Charles, preparations of a different kind were made at Memphis. Flag Officer Charles H. Davis, the commander of the Western Gunboat Flotilla, informed Washington on 10 June of plans for an expedition up the White River. He planned this expedition for two purposes: to open communications with General Curtis, and to clear the White River of any remaining Rebel gunboats. Three ironclads made steam that morning—the Mound City, St. Louis, and Lexington.

The remainder of the small fleet left Memphis the next day. This consisted of the gunboat Conestoga, the transport New National (which carried the 46th Indiana Infantry), and the transport White Cloud (which contained provisions for Curtis’s army). Two tugs towing coal barges brought up the rear. Colonel Graham N. Fitch of the 46th Indiana was in overall command of the expedition.

The Federals met their first opposition at the mouths of the Arkansas and White Rivers. With little effort, the Mound City captured the Rebel steamer Clara Dolsen, “one of the largest, handsomest and in every respect finest steamers on the river.”⁷ Captain Augustus H. Kilty of the Mound City sent the captured vessel back to Memphis as a prize of war. The Confederates also had attempted to block the river by sinking wet timber in the channel; with the protection of the Indiana infantry, the sailors removed the obstacles quickly.

The Union fleet was not aware of the meager resistance on the White River. When the Pontchartrain left for Little Rock with Lieutenant Dunnington, only one Southern ship of war was left on the river. This, the side-wheel steamer Maurepas, was part of a six-vessel fleet purchased in New Orleans at the beginning of the war. These wooden steamers had little protection except for their iron plating around the bow and engine.⁸ Under the command of Captain Joseph Fry and with only five light guns, the Maurepas had proved quite formidable in her short career, scaring away a Union cavalry regiment at Jacksonport in May.⁹ On 15 June this small vessel arrived at St. Charles. As the senior officer present, Captain Fry took command immediately and began unloading his guns in the fortifications.¹⁰ Soon after the Maurepas arrived, another group of Southerners appeared: 35 infantrymen commanded by Captain A. M. Williams of the Confederate Engineers. These men were detailed from five companies of the 37th Arkansas Infantry.¹¹

Lieutenant Dunnington was forced to leave the Pontchartrain in Little Rock for repairs and made the return trip to St. Charles overland. He brought with him two 10-pound Parrot rifles he had found in the arsenal at Little Rock. Fry knew his small squadron was no match for Union ironclads. He therefore decided to scuttle the Maurepas in an effort to block the river channel, and he had the Eliza G. and the Mary Thompson sunk in the river as well. By the afternoon of the 16th, smoke from the Federal fleet could be seen rising from the river five miles below.

That night, Fry organized his defenses. Dunnington commanded the 3 5-man crew of the Pontchartrain in the upper battery of two 32-pounder rifles. Midshipman F. M. Roby took command of the 40-man crew of the Maurepas and three 10-pounder Parrot rifles in the lower battery. A 12-pounder howitzer from the Maurepas and Captain Williams’s men were detailed as skirmishers to protect the land approaches to the lower battery. The Confederate troops bedded down as close as possible to their guns on the evening of the 16th for the expected attack the following morning.¹²

By daylight, the Union fleet had built up steam and started slowly upriver. Shortly after 0900, the lead boat, the Mound City, encountered a squad of Williams’s infantry two miles below the main fortifications. The giant guns on board the vessel began belching grapeshot and shell onto the riverbank, opening the battle of St. Charles.¹⁵

Just before the Federal fleet arrived, Mary Patrick had invited the Confederate officers for breakfast. Most of the officers declined so they could stay near their guns, but several, including Roby, found the offer too tempting. “We had just been seated a few moments,” Mary Patrick wrote in her diary, “when the loud booming of cannon startled Leut. Roby and others. . . . Another loud boom and the ball came whizzing over my house and fell in the stable yard. Another and another. Close enough to be distinctly heard as they passed through the air.”¹⁴ The officers hurriedly left Patrick’s dining room and sprinted the 300 yards back to the lower battery. Mrs. Patrick, who had been so determined to stay, used better judgment and made hasty preparations to leave.

It did not take long for the giant shells to drive the tiny squad of infantry away from the riverbank. As the Confederate sharpshooters pulled back, the steamer New National headed toward the shore two and a half miles below the main battery and began unloading the 46th Indiana. The Union regiment advanced cautiously, driving the Rebel skirmishers back to the village.¹⁵

As the New National was unloading her cargo of infantrymen, the ironclads came abreast of the lower battery. A brisk but ineffective artillery duel began between the lead boats and Roby’s battery. The firing had been going on for 30 minutes when skirmishers of the 46th Indiana reached the home of Mary Patrick. There Williams and his men attempted to make a stand.¹⁶ Colonel Fitch knew his men were but a few hundred yards from their destination and had received only slight casualties—but he paused. Fitch notified Captain Kilty of the Mound City that he had the option of allowing the infantry to charge the batteries, or of steaming ahead, locating the main battery, and silencing it with the gunboats. Kilty chose to keep heading upriver.¹⁷

As the St. Louis continued to engage the lower battery, the Mound City steamed ahead in search of the main fortification. The gunners were ignorant of the location of the Rebel guns of the upper battery until one of them opened an accurate fire on the charging Union ironclad. Kilty steamed on and placed his boat between and below the rifled guns. This put him in point-blank range of both weapons.¹⁸

On the third shot from the number-two gun, Dunning- ton stepped up and personally sighted and fired the weapon. The solid iron projectile penetrated the forward casemate of the Mound City. Three seamen were killed quickly before the shot passed through a bulkhead and punctured the boiler and steam chest. In an instant, the entire vessel was filled with scalding steam. All those who were not killed or seriously injured immediately began pouring out of the gun ports into the river. A correspondent for Harper’s Weekly who witnessed the battle reported:

The gundeck was covered with miserable, perishing wretches: Some of the officers who were in their cabins rushed out frantic with pain, to fall beside some poor though fortunate fellow who had just breathed his last. The close burning atmosphere of the vessel was rent with cries, and prayers, and groans, and curses—a pandemonium of torture and despair.

They suffered, writhed, and twisted like coils of serpents over burning fagots; but many who were less injured than others, felt even in that hour the instinct of self-preservation, and, running to the ports, leaped into the river. The water, for a while, relieved them of their pain, and they struck out bravely for the shore opposite the fortifications, or for the Conestoga or the Lexington, perhaps a half mile in the river.¹⁹

All those capable of controlling the Mound City had jumped overboard, and the powerless ironclad drifted helplessly. The river was filled with struggling men. Boats from all the vessels were in the water in a matter of minutes, picking up the wounded as the St. Louis and Lexington continued to engage the battery. As the Conestoga came to the aid of the Mound City, Mr. Dominy, the first master of the stricken vessel, stood on the stem crying out, “Come and tow me down; we are all lost, we are all lost.” The Conestoga hooked on and towed her out of the engagement.²⁰

Captain Williams saw the dozens of Union sailors jump into the river. Fie recalled in his after-action report that, “I immediately ordered all the sharpshooters that remained on the field, about 20 in number, to the river bank to shoot them. Numbers were killed in the water.”²¹ After the engagement, and in the years after, Captain Fry (there was some question as to which officer, Williams or Fry, ordered the sharpshooters to fire) was vilified by both Northern and Southern sources for giving the order to fire on these men. It was reported that he alone was guilty of what was then considered a great atrocity.

Meanwhile, the men of the 46th Indiana were anxious to make their assault on the Rebel works. Upon learning of the catastrophe on the Mound City, Colonel Fitch directed all the other vessels to fall back, fearing they might suffer the same fate. Fitch then gave the order to do what the Navy could not. In five minutes the infantry overran Midshipman Roby’s field guns and started to climb the bluff to the main battery.²²

Williams and his remaining troops fell back to the main battery only a few seconds ahead of the Federals. Captain Fry realized the situation was hopeless. The enemy outnumbered them ten to one and was advancing on two sides. Just as he gave the order to retreat, Fitch’s troops broke over the hill 50 yards distant and poured a galling volley of musketry into the fleeing Rebels. Fry himself was wounded severely in the shoulder. The rest of the men scattered, the officers bringing up the rear. The retreating Southerners ran a half-mile gauntlet of fire before they dispersed through a cornfield into the forest.^{2 3} An officer in Fitch’s command hailed Lieutenant James Shirk of the Lexington and cried triumphantly, “We have the battery!”²⁴

Mary Patrick returned to her home later that day to find her home had been visited by Union soldiers. “It had been broken open,” she wrote, “everything of value had been taken away. . . . [B]ooks lay around the gallery with holes through them made by the bayonet. A large mirror bore the marks of the same weapon. Feather beds were emptied on the upper hall floor and suppose they needed large sacks to a carry off their plunders and needed the bed ticks for that purpose.”²⁵

The 46th Indiana was fortunate; it received no serious casualties when it stormed the works at St. Charles. Confederate casualties also were light. Reports are incomplete, but it appears that 8 were killed and 24 wounded and captured, among them Captain Fry. It was a completely different situation on board the Mound City. Of a crew of 175 officers and men, 82 were killed in the casemate, 43 were killed or drowned in the river, and 25 were severely wounded, among them Captain Kilty. Only 3 officers and 22 men escaped uninjured or with only slight scalding.²⁶ No other U.S. ship in any engagement suffered so many casualties during the Civil War. Of the 1,804 U.S. Navy personnel killed and mortally wounded during the war, 7% of the total occurred as a result of this one well-placed shot at St. Charles.²²

The wounded and prisoners, along with four small captured guns, were loaded on board the Conestoga and taken to Memphis. The other ships remained at St. Charles, their crews destroying fortifications and burying the dead. The two large 32-pounders were spiked and rolled into the river. Scalded bodies of Mound City crew members washed ashore and rose to the surface for several days after the battle. All the dead who were recovered were buried on the bluffs at St. Charles.²⁸

The Conestoga returned to St. Charles on 20 June. With her came additional troops and boilermakers to repair the Mound City. Soon the fleet was moving north, passing easily over the wreck of the Maurepas.²⁹ Because of the low water level, Des Arc was as far as the Federal expedition could travel. This still was 70 miles short of the intended destination of Jacksonport. Even so, communications with General Curtis were opened overland from Des Arc, and his army began to receive the supplies it required to continue the campaign.

The Battle of St. Charles was a limited Union success. After opening communications with his superiors in Memphis, Curtis was able to march through eastern Arkansas and eventually to the banks of the Mississippi River at Helena on 13 July 1862. The real value of the White River was not realized until higher water levels permitted more efficient navigation. Occupied ports on the river, such as Des Arc and Devall’s Bluff, were essential in later stages of the war as supply bases for the Union Army. With eastern Arkansas in Union hands and the White River undefended, Major General Frederick Steele and his army of 15,000 easily captured Little Rock on 10 September 1863.