Reminiscences of a Private, Company "G", First Arkansas Regiment Infantry: May, 1861 to 1865

A private’s notebook brings Jacksonport’s bustling river town to life, recalling the clatter of steamboats on the Black and White Rivers, the thriving cotton trade, and the close‑knit community that rose around a courthouse, a general store and the occasional elegant lady of the South. The author paints vivid pictures of overgrown streets that later fell to decay, of youthful games watching ships unload bales of cotton, and of a genteel hospitality that seemed unshakable before the war’s shadow fell.

When the call to arms sounded, the town’s best young men—sons of planters, lawyers, doctors and merchants—assembled under Captain A. C. Pickett, forming Company “G,” the “Jackson Guards.” Their first march to the Presbyterian church, flag‑raising under rain‑soaked skies, and the tender pride of the women who sewed the banner capture the hopeful—yet naïve—spirit of those barely twenty‑year‑old volunteers. The memoir preserves their early hopes, daily hardships, and the intimate voice of a soldier who witnessed a world in transition.