Memphis Daily Appeal CS, 4 November, 1862
Abolition Reports from Arkansas.
From the Memphis Bulletin, November 2.]

The prisoners taken from the steamer Gladiator, on the occasion when she was attacked at Bledsoe’s landing, have been paroled, and most of them reached the city.

They state that the Gladiator was attacked by ten men only, under a private whose real name is Keenan*, but who is known in Arkansas as “The Wild Irishman,” and belonging to Colonel Parson’s regiment. Their object was pillage. They proposed to take all on board prisoners, to appropriate all that was valuable to themselves, and then burn the boat. They attribute their failure to the breaking of the sapling to which the boat was tied.

It was Keenan himself who shot the engineer McKee, but he said he did it because the latter drew a revolver upon him.

Keenan and five others were on the boat when she drifted away from shore. They dropped their guns and swam ashore.

The prisoners were put on horses behind the guerrillas, and all started directly for Parson’s camp, which they reached after two days’ travel. They were treated kindly by Parson’s men. They were not treated so kindly at Little Rock.

The prisoners give it as their belief that the Confederates will endeavor to plant cannon in the cane-brake along the river, so as to sink every boat which passes. They have been somewhat stopped from this plan by the report which reached them, that Federal gunboats would accompany every steamer.

At Little Rock the adjutant under Holmes, and Provost Marshal Danley utterly reprobated the interference with the Gladiator, though all seemed agreed that it was a different matter attacking government transports.

Prices for articles at Little Rock are said to be up to the highest mark. Provisions are very scarce. Indeed there is but little for the people to eat, of any sort. Some idea may be formed of the ruling prices at Little Rock when we state that one sheet of letter paper is sold for twenty-five cents, a penholder fifty cents, and negro brogans $12 per pair.

*Only one person of this name, Private Thomas Keenan of Company C, 12th Texas Cavalry, is listed in the records as a member of Parson’s Brigade. He enlisted in Hempstead, Texas 10 March, 1862, and was killed in action 15 April, 1864.