Although not present at the battle of Milliken’s Bend on June 7, 1863, the 1st Arkansas Infantry, African Descent, was posted nearby, just upriver a ways at Goodrich’s Landing. Like all the other black Union regiments forming at the time in this region, the 1st Arkansas was composed mostly of former slaves, many of them from nearby cotton plantations in southeastern Arkansas and northeastern Louisiana.  Two companies of the First Arkansas would be surrendered wholesale at the so-called “Battle of the Mound” (though few shots were fired), leaving the men to an uncertain fate in the hands of the Confederates. The few white officers present seemed willing enough to trust that the Confederate cavalrymen would at least spare their lives, as officers and as white men.

A little over six months later, on Jan. 20, 1864, Captain Lindley Miller – who had just joined the 1st Arkansas in November – jotted down the words to a song his men had been singing to the tune of “John Brown’s Body” and sent it in a letter to his brother. This became known as the “Song of the First of Arkansas” and was published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard a month later. It is one of very few Civil War songs closely identified with a particular USCT regiment, and the song and lyrics have an extensive and well-documented history.

 

By Capt. Lindley Miller (died 1864) – American Memory, Library of Congress: http://memory.loc.gov/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3997312

Learn more:

David Walls, “Marching Song of the First Arkansas Colored Regiment: A Contested Attribution” 12 Jan. 2007.

More music relating to the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War in a virtual exhibit from Duke University. Caution: language may be offensive, and not all songs featured were in support of the U.S. Colored Troops