CHAPTER VII. MORE WAYS THAN ONE.
Since Port Hudson could neither be successfully attacked nor safely disregarded, the problem now presented to Banks was to find a way around the obstacle without sacrificing or putting in peril his communications. The Atchafalaya was the key to the puzzle, and to that quarter attention was early directed, yet for a long time the difficulties encountered in finding a way to the Atchafalaya seemed well-nigh insuperable. The rising waters were expected to render the largest of the bayous that connect the Atchafalaya and the Mississippi navigable for steamboats of small size and light draught. Of these there were, indeed, but few, so that the work of transporting troops from the one line to the other must have been, at the best, slow and tedious, yet, once accomplished, the army would have found itself, with the help of the navy, above and beyond Port Hudson, with a sufficient line of communications open to the rear, and the Mississippi and the Red River closed against the enemy.
The Confederates had in Western Louisiana, near the mouth of the Teche, a small division of Taylor's troops, about 4,500 strong, with one gunboat. At first Banks thought to leave a brigade, with two or three light-draught gunboats, on Berwick Bay to observe Taylor's force, and then to disregard it as a factor in the subsequent movements. This, while the Atchafalaya was high and the eastern lowlands of the Attakapas widely overflowed, might have been safely done, but all these plans were destined to be essentially modified by a series of unexpected events in widely different quarters.
In the second week of January, Weitzel heard that Taylor meditated an attack on the outlying force at Berwick Bay, and that with this view the armament of the gunboat Cotton was being largely augmented. Weitzel resolved to strike the first blow. For this purpose he concentrated his whole force of seven regiments, including four of his own brigade, besides the 21st Indiana, 6th Michigan, and 23d Connecticut, with Carruth's and Thompson's batteries, four pieces of Bainbridge's battery, Barrett's Troop B of the Louisiana cavalry, and Company B of the 8th New Hampshire, commanded by Lieutenant Charles H. Camp. The 1st Louisiana held Donaldsonville and the 114th New York guarded the railway. To open the way, as well as to meet the fire of the Cotton, there were four gunboats of the light-draught flotilla under Buchanan—the flagship Calhoun, Estrella, Kinsman, and Diana.
At three o'clock on the morning of the 13th of January the crossing of Berwick Bay began; by half-past ten the gunboats had completed the ferriage of the cavalry and artillery; the infantry following landed at Pattersonville; then the whole force formed in line and, moving forward in the afternoon to the junction of the Teche with the Atchafalaya, went into bivouac. The next morning began the ascent of the Teche. The 8th Vermont was thrown over to the east or left bank of the bayou, while the main line moved forward on the west bank to attack the Cotton, now in plain sight. The gunboats led the movement, necessarily in line ahead, owing to the narrowness of the bayou. On either bank Weitzel's line of battle, with skirmishers thrown well forward, was preceded by sixty volunteers from the 8th Vermont and the same number from the 75th New York, whose orders were to move directly up to the Cotton and pick off her gunners. The line of battle moved forward steadily with the column of gunboats. Between the Union gunboats and the Cotton the bayou had been obstructed so as to prevent any hostile vessel from ascending the stream beyond that point. A brisk fight followed. Under cover of the guns of the navy and of the raking and broadside fire of the batteries, the 8th Vermont and 75th New York first drove off the land supports and then moving swiftly on the Cotton silenced her. In this advance the Vermonters captured one lieutenant and forty-one men. The Cotton retreated out of range. That night her crew applied the match and let her swing across the bayou to serve as an additional obstruction. In a few moments she was completely destroyed.
Then, having thus easily gained his object, Weitzel returned to La Fourche. His losses in the movement were 1 officer and 5 men killed, and 2 officers and 25 men wounded. Lieutenant James E. Whiteside, of the 75th New York, who had volunteered to lead the sharpshooters on the right bank, was killed close to the Cotton, in the act of ordering the crew to haul down her flag. Among the killed, also, was the gallant Buchanan—a serious loss, not less to the army than to the navy.
During a lull in the naval operations above Vicksburg, occasioned by the want of coal, eleven steamboats that had been in use by the Confederates on the Mississippi between Vicksburg and Port Hudson, took advantage of Porter's absence to slip up the Yazoo for supplies. There Porter's return caught them as in a trap.
Toward the end of January Grant landed on the long neck opposite Vicksburg, and once more set to work on the canal. Porter now determined to let a detachment of his fleet run the gauntlet of the batteries of Vicksburg for the purpose of destroying every thing the Confederates had afloat below the town. The ran Queen of the West, Colonel Charles R. Ellet, protected by two tiers of cotton bales, was told off to lead the adventure. On the 2d of February she performed the feat; then passing on down the river, on the 3d, ran fifteen miles below the mouth of the Red River, and the same distance up that stream, took and burned three Confederate supply steamboats, and got safely back to Vicksburg on the 5th. Porter was naturally jubilant, for, as it seemed, the mastery of the great river had been the swift reward of his enterprise.
A week later Ellet again ran down the Mississippi and up the Red, burning and destroying until, pushing his success too far, he found himself under the guns of Fort De Russy. A few shots sufficed to disable the Queen of the West, which fell into the hands of the Confederates, while Ellet and his men escaped in one of their captures.
Below Natchez they met the Indianola coming down the river, after safely passing Vicksburg. On the 24th the Confederate gunboat Webb, and the ram Queen of the West, now also flying the Confederate colors, came after the Indianola, attacked her off Palmyra Island, and sank her. Thus, as suddenly as it had gone from them, the control of the long reach of the Mississippi once more passed over to the Confederates.
At this news Farragut took fire. Between him and the impudent little Confederate flotilla, whose easy triumph had suddenly laid low the hopes and plans of his brother admiral, there stood nothing save the guns of Port Hudson. These batteries he would pass, and for the fourth time, yet not the last, would look the miles of Confederate cannon in the mouth. Banks, whose movements were retarded and to some extent held in abeyance, from the causes already mentioned, promptly fell in with the Admiral's plans, and both commanders conferring freely, the details were soon arranged.