Colonel Cahill, Ninth Connecticut Infantry, commanding Second Brigade, Second Division, Nineteenth Army Corps, issued, June 9th, 1863, Special Orders No. 97, for Lieutenant-Colonel Stedman to have Company B, with details from other companies sufficient to make the full strength three officers and one hundred men, with one day’s cooked rations in the haversacks and at least forty rounds of ammunition to each man, proceed at once to Algiers and report to Captain Schenck, ordnance officer at the New Orleans, Opelousas and Great Western Railroad depot, for transportation to Brashear City, and there report to Lieutenant-Colonel Stickney, Forty-Seventh Massachusetts Infantry, commanding the post.
Regimental Special Orders No. 107 were immediately issued, detailing Sergeant Charles L. Truchon, Corporal Francis N. Luce and eighteen privates of Company E, Corporals Charles M. Marden, —— Smith and twenty-three privates of Company H, Corporal John F. Cushing and eleven privates of Company A, to report to Captain Cook, commanding Company B. The lieutenants who accompanied the detachment were First-Lieutenant Benjamin C. Tinkham and Second-Lieutenant Joseph C. Clifford, both of Company B.
In heavy marching order this detachment left Gentilly Camp about half-past two o’clock the same afternoon orders were issued, and took the train for New Orleans, proceeding at once to Algiers, where a train made up of box and platform cars carried the men to Brashear City. They started about five o’clock and arrived about midnight, after a tiresome ride of eighty miles. In passing through New Orleans to the Algiers Ferry suspicious actions of two privates in the detachment were noticed, and Sergeant T. M. Turner, Company B, was ordered to keep in the rear and watch them, to prevent their desertion, an object they evidently had in view.
When General Banks made his first campaign through the Teche country towards Red River, in April and May, 1863, a garrison was left at Brashear City, and Berwick on the opposite side of the Atchafalaya River; Colonel Walker, Fourth Massachusetts Infantry, in command of the post, with his own regiment, and the Sixteenth New Hampshire Infantry forming a part of the garrison. The post was a base of supplies for the army in the field, and contained general hospitals to relieve the field hospitals of sick and wounded men, who are always sent to the rear as fast as possible. Naturally, a large amount of army material would accumulate at such a post.
From Algiers to La-Fourche the posts upon the railroad line were occupied by the Twenty-Third Connecticut Infantry, and the posts from Terrebonne to Brashear were in charge of the One Hundred and Seventy-Sixth New York Infantry.
All was quiet at these various posts until the latter part of May, the detachments on duty having what soldiers call “a soft thing.” On the twenty-first of May Colonel Chickering, commanding Forty-First Massachusetts Infantry, and other troops, convoying an immense train of six hundred wagons, three thousand horses and mules, one thousand five hundred head of cattle, with six thousand negro camp followers, who expected to locate on Government plantations in La-Fourche and adjoining parishes, left Barre’s Landing at daybreak on the march for Berwick, where he arrived May 26th, closely followed by the Confederate forces operating under the command of Major-General “Dick” Taylor. By the thirtieth all of this force under Colonel Chickering had proceeded to Port Hudson, including the Fourth Massachusetts and Sixteenth New Hampshire Regiments. On June 1st Colonel Holmes, Twenty-Third Connecticut, assumed command of Brashear City, with portions of his own regiment and that of the One Hundred and Seventy-Sixth New York in occupancy of the post.
In a few days Colonel Holmes was taken sick, and, as Colonel Nott, One Hundred and Seventy-Sixth New York, was also sick, the command fell to Lieutenant-Colonel ----, Twenty-Third Connecticut. He, frightened by the situation of affairs and deficient in nerve, was relieved by General Emory, who sent Lieutenant-Colonel Stickney from New Orleans to take command. Stickney was on detached service from his regiment, having been made inspector-general of the Defences of New Orleans June 6th, with orders to commence a thorough inspection of convalescent and other camps.
The troops on duty in Brashear under Stickney comprised detachments from the One Hundred and Seventy-Sixth New York, Twenty-Third Connecticut and Forty-Second Massachusetts Infantry, Twenty-First Indiana Artillery, one company of the Corps de’Afrique (colored troops), and various cavalry squads, in all about six hundred effective men. Adjutant Whiting, Twenty-Third Connecticut, was post-adjutant; Quartermaster Kimball, One Hundred and Seventy-Sixth New York, post-quartermaster; Lieutenant Kinsley, Forty-Seventh Massachusetts, was serving as an aide-de-camp.
The post hospital contained many sick and wounded soldiers, who were removed to New Orleans when able to undergo the journey. At one time near one thousand convalescent soldiers, capable of bearing arms in an emergency, were in camp at Brashear. A large amount of baggage, commissary, quartermaster and medical stores, cannon, arms and ammunition was stored in various buildings and places. Part of the baggage and stores was removed to Algiers previous to June 21st.
Passing the night of their arrival in bivouac about the depot, next day the detachment was ordered by Stickney to quarter in the depot building, and do picket duty upon the railroad line and guard a water tank used by locomotives of the road. Excursions across the river to Berwick were in order almost every day, to drive out cavalry scouts of the enemy and obtain cattle. The enemy always returned when the way was clear for them to do so, and an exchange of shots across the river was of frequent occurrence. The weather was extremely hot. There was some movement made by the troops each day, with guard, patrol and picket duty to be done at night. Mosquitos were thick and blood-thirsty enough to cause refreshing sleep to be an impossibility. With difficulty could food be obtained to serve out with any semblance of regularity. Food was plenty, but there was no system in delivering rations. The men were gradually becoming worn out.