Confederate General J.S. Marmaduke tried to expel the Union Army in the Battle of Pine Bluff October 25, 1863, but was repulsed by a combined effort of soldiers and freedmen (former slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation). In the final year of the war, the 1st Regiment Kansas Volunteer Infantry (Colored) (composed primarily of escaped slaves from Arkansas and Missouri), was the first African-American regiment in the civil war to go into combat. It was dispatched to guard Pine Bluff and was eventually mustered out there.