Sergeant William H. Shepard, Company K, to be second-lieutenant. Commissioned March 27th.
Corporal Augustus H. Young, Company C, to be second-lieutenant. Commissioned May 21st.
Private Edwin G. Sanborn, Company C, to be second-lieutenant. Commissioned May 23d.
Private Charles E. Warren, Company C, made assistant-surgeon, June 24th.
Private George F. Clark, Company C, appointed quartermaster-sergeant, June 26th.
Other men in Companies C and H had commissions tendered to them, which they declined for personal reasons. Some of the above-mentioned promotions were good—men adapted to carry out the spirit of Major-General Banks’ order.
An expedition made February 12th by the Third Division down Plaquemine Bayou, for the purpose of capturing Butte a la Rose, at the head of Grand Lake, was obliged to abandon the attempt on account of timber drifts in the swollen bayous, that made a passage through them impracticable, and returned February 19th. Lieutenant Swift, Thirty-Eighth Massachusetts, had got an idea into his head that he could, with a proper force, remove the greatest obstacle encountered by the Third Division: a completely-packed drift of wood like a raft, about three miles long, situated at the upper end of Bayou Sorrel, in St. Martins and Iberville Parishes, a narrow sheet of water about nine miles long. Swift had received permission, with orders from General Banks, to attempt it.
In winter months it had been the custom for light-draft river boats to make a short cut from Berwick Bay by way of Grand Lake, Lake Chilot, Bayou Sorrel, the Atchafalaya River, and Bayou Plaquemine to the Mississippi River. In summer months this route is almost dry in places, and not navigable for local boats. From Brashear City, via Grand Lake, to Lake Chilot is about thirty miles; Lake Chilot to Bayou Sorrel, about eight miles; through Bayou Sorrel, nine miles; and from Bayou Sorrel to Plaquemine, upon the Mississippi, is about twelve miles.
On April 26th, at the earnest request of Colonel Hodge, Lieutenant White consented to take command of two companies, about one hundred and thirty men, from the colored engineer regiment, under orders to proceed to Brashear City to assist Lieutenant Swift in his project.
The officers in command of these two companies were: Captain Samuel H. Everett, Captain William E. Melvin, Acting Lieutenant David C. Smith and Acting Lieutenant James S. Lovejoy, from Company C, Forty-Second Massachusetts Volunteers, Acting Lieutenant —— Purrington, from Twelfth Maine Volunteers, and Acting Lieutenant ---- McCown, a clerk to Colonel Hodge.