To Catch a Gar: A Soldier’s Letters from Helena, Arkansas in March 1863

On a recent trip to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, I was able to see a gar fish for the first time. What does this have to do with the Civil War, you might ask? Well, in his Civil War letters, my 3rd great grandfather, James Calaway Hale, wrote several times about catching and eating “garr” while he was staying in Helena, Arkansas, along the Mississippi River, and I had never heard of them before. They are not a fish common to California, where I have lived most of my life, and I’d never seen gar offered on a menu.

In an ECW post last month, I wrote about my new book, A State Divided: The Civil War Letters of James Calaway Hale and Benjamin Petree of Andrew County, Missouri, and discussed how I originally came into possession of these letters, as well as the writing and research journey they initiated. Here, I want to share a few excerpts from the letters Hale wrote in March 1863 as his Regiment – the 33rd Regiment, Missouri Infantry, Volunteers – camped along the Mississippi River in Helena, Arkansas, during the buildup to Vicksburg.

Hale first arrived in Arkansas in early January 1863, at which time his Regiment joined General Willis Gorman’s expedition to DeValls Bluff on the White River in Prairie County. There, as I explain in my book, they achieved modest success, managing to capture and occupy DeValls Bluff and Des Arc. They confiscated a large amount of weapons and other supplies, including several thousand bushels of corn, from the Confederate troops and captured at least 150 Confederate prisoners. They also destroyed three railroad cars, a depot, several miles of railroad track, two railroad bridges, a telegraph office, and Confederate ferries on the White River (1). The victory gave the Union control of the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad between DeValls Bluff and Little Rock.

By January 20, Hale’s regiment returned to Helena – where more than 100 men died of exposure in the following month (3). Since the army’s initial occupation of Helena in July 1862, the region had become known as “one of the most insalubrious locations in the Union,” and many soldiers there had succumbed to dysentery, malaria, typhoid, and typhus, with the situation made worse by “the lack of understanding by medical authorities of the etiological cause of the disease, the relationship among sanitation, the environment and health, and the types of drugs used” (4). Many soldiers feared army doctors and the medications they prescribed, preferring instead to take their chances with their own homemade remedies and alternative treatments. 

Hale began battling sickness – first a bad cold and diarrhea, then rheumatism – after their return, but he wrote to his family that he was determined to “keep heart” and fight to get his health back. He purchased his own “notions,” or medicines, in an effort to treat his symptoms and improve his health. He wanted to get home to see his family again.

As a result of his rheumatism, Hale did not accompany his Regiment on February 24 when they joined Brigadier General Leonard Ross’s expedition to Fort Pemberton, Mississippi, down near Yazoo Pass. Hale stayed back in camp, along with two others from his company that he knew from back home near Savannah, Missouri. While he felt anxious knowing his regiment was down river fighting with the Rebels, he was thankful to be alive and out of danger, having watched so many around him die over the past couple months.      

While he was in Helena, the mighty nearby Mississippi River kept rising. Hale wondered where it would stop – it became difficult to get around without a canoe. Heavy rains only exacerbated the situation. The troops – and the Cavalry – had found it difficult marching through the muddy marsh along the White River, and he could not imagine it was much better at the Yazoo Pass. He wrote his wife and children numerous letters during this time. The excerpts below come from letters dated throughout March 1863.

Dear wife and children,

I am again blessed with the present opportunity to address a few lines to you to let you know that I am in reasonable health with the exception of a cold that seems to be hard to get shut of, but I have got myself some notions that I am taking for bad cold. Hoping these few lines may find you and the children all well and hearty….

I am staying at camp in Helena. My rheumatism is giving me pain in my back and hip, so I can’t go with the Regiment. I bought some medicine so that if I get sick, I can take care of myself. If a man gets a little sick and gives up, he will die certain. Lots of men have died, but I never give up. I am in good spirits and I will keep, so that is half the battle. I hope I will be at home some time, but I cannot tell when. I want you to keep me in your heart….

I have not heard from our Reg. anything – that is, that you can rely on – since they left, but it is said they are only down a few miles below here in the Yazoo Pass. It may be that we do not go any farther. The report is that in a few days more they will have Vicksburg completely surrounded. The Mississippi is still rising – it is out of the banks. That is all the better so as our gun boats can get all round the Rebels, and then they can starve them out without firing a gun. That was all a mistake about our men being fired on going to Yazoo Pass and killing some eight or ten of our men. You can’t hear the truth….

I am again blessed with the present opportunity of addressing a few lines to you all to let you know that I am feeling better than I was before, thank god for his blessings. We are still staying here doing nothing but cooking and eating. I have not got stout yet, but it is no ways dangerous here. I’m just sick enough to keep from being with the Regiment, and that suits me very well.

I would not care if they don’t let me come home so long as I don’t have to wade the mud and water this summer. I see a man just come from the Regiment a day or so ago. They are only about 200 miles below here in mud and water part of their time. They have had a little scrimmage with the Seesech since they went down, but none of our men killed. We can’t get no letters from them. They won’t let letters pass, so we don’t know what is going on.

I bought myself a high pair of boots the other day – water proof – so as I could wade deep mud, but it has cleared off and has not rained for over a week. The mud has all dried up, but the River has got up so high that it is all over the bottoms and all over town. I see that canoes is in demand. It is all round the people’s houses. They is but one way now you can get in town, and the soldiers laid timber all over town from the fort to the levy.

The boys is catching fish every day out on this back water. The town is right up on the bank of the river. Our quarters is built about two or three hundred yards back next to the bluff, above highwater mark. I can set in the door and see five or six miles up and down the River. They is no time that you may look up or down that you cannot see people coming or going. They is soldiers going down all the time from Ioway, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, and very near all over the Federal States. They will be a big fight at Vicksburg soon. We heard the Seesech will be evacuating that place, but I don’t believe it. You can’t hear the truth….

But now I will tell you how I have been living since the Regiment went down the river. They was part of what was left here was sent up to Memphis. Christopher Baker and myself and John Dobbs was left here – only us three of Co. H. We have a whole house to ourselves – a good floor and a door and a brick fireplace – and we are living like kings. None sick but what we have a good stomach to eat, and we have plenty. We drawed a half bushel of Irish potatoes and we have no. 1 flour and we bought soda, so we can have good biscuits all the time. I can beat either of them making biscuit or potato soup. Mollie, I can beat you a making biscuits and can come in on beating your mother. Don’t be uneasy about me, for I hope I am in no danger.

We have plenty of fresh fish every day. They is a man that catches fish all the time. I go down to the River every morning and buy two or three fish, and before I even get back, I will sell one for what all cost me, and I get mine for nothing. We have all the fresh fish we can eat. The fisherman gave me two large gars, and I shouldered them up and started home. I sold one for three pounds of sugar before I got home, and I made myself molasses out of the sugar, and I gave the other to Christopher Baker, and he skinned and dressed him up, and every day we have a pot of gar soup with Irish potatoes….

This is the blamedest place to build a town ever I seen. The water is nearly all round every house in town though it is a small place. They is but one road to get down to the wharf, and that is the road runs from the fort to the landing. We stay in bout fifty yards of  the fort, but the fort is on a high hill just like them hills at St. Joseph, and our house is up on the side of the hill. They go all over town in canoes.

I was going down to the river the other day, and they was a lady and her daughter come out on the porch trying to get a long  plank from the top of the porch to the road, water all round the house, so I took a hold of one end of the plank and raised up on the edge of the road so as they could walk out. Says I to the old lady, I would not like to live here. Why, says she. Says I, everybody will die with sickness here after a while. Says she, it is always heaps healthier after an overflow than if they was none. It cleans everything off, says she….

I love reading that last conversation between James and the old lady. It sounds like something out of a Mark Twain novel, says I.

If you want to read these and many other letters in full, I hope you’ll check out my book. And if you’ve ever eaten gar, let me know how it tastes!

Endnotes:

1. “White River Expedition (January 13-19, 1863).” Encyclopedia of Arkansas, 2022, https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/white-river-expedition-7461/.
2. “DeValls Bluff in the Civil War.” The Historical Marker Database, 13 July 2022, https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=96455.
3. “[Report, possibly by Lieutenant Colonel William Heath, regarding the 33rd Missouri Volunteers] | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.” Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History |, https://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/glc006530201.
4. Kohl, Rhonda M. “”This godforsaken town”: death and disease at Helena, Arkansas.” The Free Library, https://www.thefreelibrary.com/%22This+godforsaken+town%22%3A+death+and+disease+at+Helena%2C+Arkansas%2C…-a0117451097.