For the Central Arkansas Library System and Little Rock Public Radio, I’m Mark Christ with an Encyclopedia of Arkansas Minute.
Appalling weather affected both armies in Civil War Arkansas in the summer of 1863. As Confederate troops approached Helena in June they had to march through flooded eastern Arkansas, with one infantryman writing “it was mud and water all the time from knee deep to the armpits.”
When they attacked Union fortifications on July 4, Rebel soldiers were tormented by the heat and many collapsed when retreating from the failed assault. A month later it was the Union army’s turn to suffer as they marched through the malarial swamps of east Arkansas, scraping green scum from shallow ponds in search of water and dropping by the score from the brutal heat.
A Minnesota soldier spoke for many when he wrote that “the heat and dust added to the debilitated state of the system in this climate is as much as humanity can stand.” A thousand men were down by the time they reached Clarendon in late August, but the Federal army’s health improved after the capture of Little Rock on September 10, 1863.
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