On February 5 the regiment received a few old “Sibley” tents, a lot which had been left behind by some departing regiment. They were musty old things, but some of the boys went into them until our new ones, which we are entitled to, should arrive. Today the 48th was brigaded with the 116th New York, the 21st Maine and the 49th Massachusetts, constituting the 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 19th Army Corps, with Maj.-Gen. C. C. Augur—a regular army officer—in command of the Division; Col. E. P. Chapin of the 116th New York (Senior Colonel) in command of the Brigade, and Maj.-Gen. N. P. Banks in command of the Department, which was designated as the “Department of the Gulf,” and on February 6 muskets and ammunition were dealt out and we then for the first time considered ourselves full-fledged soldiers of “Uncle Sam.”
On March 11 there was a grand review of the troops then at Baton Rouge. The sight of 20,000 well-drilled troops, infantry, cavalry, and artillery is no ordinary spectacle. Banks on his coal-black stallion with his Division and Brigade Commanders made a distinguished appearance, but the writer recalls that his interest centered chiefly in Farragut who with the Captains of the fleet had been invited to witness the parade.
At length on March 12 at 9 P. M. an order came to have twenty-four hours cooked rations and forty rounds of ammunition and be ready to march at a moment’s notice. At daybreak the next morning we marched to the levee at Baton Rouge where we embarked on board a steamer and sailed slowly up the river. Another regiment accompanied us and two companies of cavalry. We had started on a reconnaissance. We were convoyed by the famous gunboat Essex which kept a half a mile ahead of us and occasionally threw a shell into the woods along the shore. We disembarked a few miles below Port Hudson under cover of the guns of the Essex. The road leading to the bluff a distance of a quarter of a mile from the river, swollen by the spring freshets, was entirely under water, in some places reaching nearly to the waists of the shorter men. Wading through this the order of march was formed upon the bluff. The cavalry went ahead, filling the road and stretching out over the fields on either side. We approached within a few miles of the Confederate works and drove in their pickets who left their posts so rapidly as to leave their cooking utensils lying near the smouldering embers of the fire where they had cooked their morning meal. Presently we came upon a company of guerillas who fled to the woods, all but one young fellow who was captured. At about noon, hot, tired and thirsty, we halted for a brief rest at a plantation some sixteen miles from Baton Rouge and I doubt if at any time or place during the great conflict the confiscation law was more vigorously and thoroughly enforced. Within a few minutes after our arrival the feathered inhabitants of the plantation had nothing further to say. Our march from this place to Baton Rouge was a rapid one. We were within a short distance of a comparatively large and powerful army of the enemy and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that a force might be sent out to fall upon us before we could reach our camp. But the reconnaissance on the whole was a success. The road was clear of rebels and about five miles from Baton Rouge where the Montecino Bayou crosses the road we met the division of General Cuvier Grover fresh from their camp at Baton Rouge. No one who witnessed those regiments of infantry and cavalry and the fine batteries accompanying them as they crossed the pontoon bridge and came springing up the hillside, and with their gun-barrels glistening in the rays of the setting sun disappeared from view on the winding road ahead will ever lose the impression there gained.
We reached our camp at Baton Rouge at about 9 o’clock. Most of us were footsore and all were weary, and creeping into our tents we were just settling down to a good night’s rest when down from headquarters came an order to march at 3 the next morning. So in the early morning we fell in each heavily laden with knapsack, a full supply of cartridges and two days’ rations, and started on the road over which we had come the previous day. The morning was cool, the road in good order, trees just budding out and festooned with vines and moss. On the whole we enjoyed the scenery of the Southern forest road and the fresh morning air. Neither the heavy burdens nor the blistered feet caused by yesterday’s weary march could wholly repress our enthusiasm, ignorant as we were of campaign life and eager for a change. But as we got out into the open country and old Sol rising higher and higher got in his work upon us our burdens seemed heavier and heavier every moment and every step was an agony. With rout step and arms at will, on, on we plodded through clouds of dust. No wonder that some of the boys sank by the side of the road exhausted, only to come up late in the evening after the regiment had bivouacked. But the longest day and the weariest march must have an end and as the shades of night were falling we halted at a corn field where, after a hasty meal, we bivouacked for the night. With knapsacks for pillows and the starry heavens for canopy we lay along the ridges of the corn field and tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep, soon came to our relief.
The writer remembers being hastily awakened after a few hours sleep by the comrade by his side who said, “Look up over the trees!” and there we could easily trace the course of the shells from Farragut’s mortar boats and could hear their dull, explosive thud as they fell inside the works at Port Hudson. But even that display of fireworks interested us but for a moment. Soon we were again sleeping soundly unconscious of the tumult on the river. Shortly after midnight the cry, “fall in” passed along the lines and slinging knapsacks and shouldering rifles we passed out of the field past the long, long lines of sleeping men and were again on the march, this time away from Port Hudson. What this movement meant we could not comprehend. Had disaster befallen the fleet or our troops at the front? Were we beginning the retreat? All was doubt and uncertainty. We stumbled along in the thick darkness through the dense woods, the silence of which was broken only by an occasional heavy booming sound from the river. The black darkness of the night grew heavier and heavier. It was at that darkest hour just before the dawn when all at once the entire heavens were aglow. An instant flash of lights as bright as the brightest noonday penetrated the inmost recesses of the forest and for a moment sharply outlined every soldier’s form—then came a sound that shook the very earth, that thundered and reverberated along the entire horizon—then all was still and dark. “What is it?” was the question on every lip. Not until morning had fully dawned did we learn that it was the dying cry of the old warship Mississippi as she sank to her rest beneath the waters of the river whence she had received her name.
The events of that memorable night form one of the most stirring chapters of the history of the war. Farragut having learned of our loss of the steamer Queen of the West between Vicksburg and Port Hudson determined to run past the batteries at the latter place and recover command of the river above. So in his stout flagship, the Hartford, lashed side by side with the Albatross he led the perilous adventure arriving abreast of the rebel works at about midnight. The rebels were on the watch and immediately the flames of a vast bonfire in front of the heaviest batteries lighting up the entire breadth of the river shot up into the sky and the next instant the earth trembled to the roar of all the rebel batteries, whereupon our mortar boats below began firing thirteen-inch shell, and four frigates and five gunboats moved up into the fight. As our ships came past within pistol shot of the batteries grape and canister swept their decks with murderous discharges, the crescent shape of the river enabling them to rake each vessel as it approached and again as it receded. By 1 o’clock the fight was virtually over, the Hartford and the Albatross having passed while most of their consorts had failed and dropped down to their anchorage below, when a fresh blaze told of a heavy loss. The Mississippi had run aground directly abreast of the heaviest and most central battery where her helpless plight was soon discovered and she at once became a target for them all. Here Capt. Melancthon Smith fought her nearly half an hour until she was completely riddled, when he ordered her set on fire and abandoned, and she was burning ashore until she was so lightened that she floated, when she drifted down the river a blazing ruin, exploding several miles below when the fire had reached her magazine.
The morning after this memorable night found the 48th guarding a bridge on a road parallel to the main road from Baton Rouge to Port Hudson. We had fuel prepared ready in an emergency to burn the bridge as it was feared the enemy’s cavalry might attempt to make a dash on the flank of our army. No cavalry appeared, however, and we were soon withdrawn and went into camp on the banks of the Montecino Bayou. And now the troops came pouring back from Port Hudson. They had advanced to the outer works, fired a few shots and retired. Not realizing that the movement was but a feint intended to deceive the enemy in the hope that they might withdraw some of their heavy guns from the bluff and thus make easier the passage of the fleet, Bank’s soldiers showered curses on him and his tactics. They grew calmer when he issued a proclamation saying that the object of the expedition had been successfully accomplished. A week later all the troops were withdrawn to Baton Rouge. Banks with the larger part of the army left for an expedition in Western Louisiana and our Division was left to garrison Baton Rouge. We took up again the daily routine of picket duty, guard duty, and drill, varied occasionally by a night alarm from the picket line when we would hastily fall in in the darkness and prepare to meet an enemy that did not come. Such was our life for two months. Its monotony was broken on the 2d of May when Grierson with his troopers dusty, haggard and wayworn, rode into Baton Rouge. The story of their coming and of their incredible adventures flew like wild fire through the camps and the excitement was at a high pitch. Nothing like it had been known before in the war. Seventeen hundred men had ridden through the entire length of the State of Mississippi from the northeast to the southwest corner, encountering every conceivable danger and hardship. Thousands of Confederates had been trying to find and intercept them. But with matchless skill Grierson had escaped them by circuits, outwitted them by ruses, and attacked and routed them with far inferior numbers. In this raid of 600 miles through a country swarming with foes they had cut two railroads, burned nine bridges, destroyed two locomotives and nearly 200 cars, broken up three rebel camps, destroyed more than $4,000,000 worth of Confederate government property, captured and paroled 1,000 prisoners and brought in with them 1,200 captured horses. Hundreds of dark-hued patriots accompanied them into Baton Rouge mounted on mules and horses they had borrowed from their late masters. Some idea of the pluck and endurance of the Westerners may be obtained from the fact that during the twenty-eight hours preceding their arrival at Baton Rouge they had marched more than sixty miles, had four fights and crossed the Comite River where it was necessary to swim their horses.
As the month of May wore away boat load after boat load of troops arrived at Baton Rouge and it soon became evident that the long-looked for movement against Port Hudson was at hand. The 48th received marching orders on the 11th and on the 18th was again on the familiar road to Port Hudson, starting on an expedition from which many in that column were never to return.
That night we camped sixteen miles from Baton Rouge where we remained until the 21st, on which day we received our baptism of fire. The regiment got into line at an early hour and took up line of march for Port Hudson. We had not moved a mile before the booming of guns ahead announced that our advance had found the enemy and in all probability we would soon be engaged.
On arriving at the intersection of the Bayou Sara and Port Hudson roads near the “Plains Store,” so called, located at that point, the advance was checked by shots from a rebel battery planted at the “store.” Col. Dudley’s Brigade was in the advance and received the first shock; some of his troops skirmished in front while others made a flank movement, and the rebels were routed after quite a sharp engagement.