Surrender at Jacksonport

Right here at Jacksonport, on the bank of the White River, the Civil War ended for Arkansas. After agreeing to terms in May, Confederate General Meriwether Jeff Thompson's army of Northern Arkansas was formally surrendered and paroled here on June fifth, eighteen sixty-five. They called him the Swamp Fox, a Missouri cavalryman who had fought across the Trans Mississippi for years.

By the end his men were almost without food or weapons, traveling in dugout canoes. More than five thousand officers and enlisted men were paroled here, along with several hundred others from scattered commands. Thompson gave his farewell address from the deck of a steamboat tied up at the landing.

It was one of the last Confederate surrenders, weeks after Appomattox. The riverport town that witnessed it slowly faded when the railroad passed it by, but this ground saw the war's quiet last act in Arkansas.