The story of the Thirty Eighth regiment of Massachusetts volunteers

by George Whitefield Powers

Cross the Atchafalaya—The Fleet and Army part Company.—Morganza—Saw-mill Expedition—Up the River—Embark for Algiers—Serenade the Lieutenant-colonel—Good-by to Louisiana.

ON the 18th, the Nineteenth Corps crossed the Atchafalaya, near which it remained, merely changing camp several times, until the 20th; and on the evening of that day, the entire naval and military force left Semmesport for the Mississippi. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Corps were on the transports, on their return to the department from which they had been borrowed; while the Thirteenth and Nineteenth Corps, with the cavalry, were to continue the march through the country.

At the junction of the Atchafalaya and the Red Rivers the main army and the navy separated. The sun was setting as the long procession of river-boats, gun-boats, and monitors swept around the bend of the river; and a feeling of loneliness fell on the army as it turned inland, and took the course for the Mississippi.

The previous year, the country was everywhere flooded, and the water-mark could now be seen on the houses and trees; but the summer of 1864 was a dry one, and the roads in good condition to march. At midnight, the army went into camp; and the day following reached the banks of the Mississippi, at Morganza Bend, after one of the most fatiguing marches the regiment had ever experienced. After a great deal of manœuvring on the evening of the 21st and the forenoon of the following day, the division finally encamped on the sandy plain between the new levee and the river, where it quietly remained, recovering from the fatigue of the march, until the morning of the 30th, when the third brigade of the second division, and a portion of the Thirteenth corps, with cavalry and artillery, left the camp and took the road to the Atchafalaya.

The column marched until 10 A. M., halted during the heat of the day, and started again at 8 P. M. As night came on, the road became poor, and marching difficult; but no danger was evidently anticipated by the commanding officer, for the usual precaution, when in an enemy’s country, of throwing out flankers, was dispensed with. Suddenly, from a thickly wooded hill on the left, across a bayou, a volley of musketry broke upon the stillness of the night, taking effect in the Twenty Second Iowa, in advance of the Thirty Eighth. “Ambushed!” was the thought of all, as the ranks closed up, and formed in line of battle in good order. A battery sent a shell into the woods from whence the discharge had come; but there was no response; and, after remaining in line for a short time, the column moved forward, but had scarcely started when another volley came from the woods, this time directed against the regiments in the rear. The echoes had not died away, when a sheet of flame flashed along the line of the One Hundred and Fifty Sixth and One Hundred and Seventy Fifth, followed by a crashing report.

Nothing more was heard from the enemy; and as soon as a bridge was reached, the Thirty Eighth was sent across the bayou, to act as “flankers.” The darkness could almost be felt; and as the men groped their way through the woods, falling into holes, tumbling over stumps, and occasionally running into a thorn-tree, with a lurking suspicion all the time, which was afterward confirmed, that the main army did not know of their presence across the stream, and that the accidental discharge of a rifle would be the signal for a murderous volley from their friends, it will not be wondered at that respect for those in command was, for the time being, lost, and that officers and men alike were disgusted at the incompetency shown. It is needless to say that Gen. Emory was not with the expedition.

After a mile or two of this stumbling work, the column halted, it being then midnight, and “bivouacked in rear of the stacks.” One officer in the Twenty Second Iowa had been killed, and several men in the One Hundred and Fifty Sixth and One Hundred and Seventy Fifth New York, wounded, by the fire of the guerillas; and it was reported that a number of the enemy had been killed by the heavy volley of the two latter regiments. Several parties living near the spot were arrested, but their fate was never made known.

In the morning, the command retraced its steps, and marched back, to the resting-place of the day previous, where it remained during the night, getting the benefit of a summer rain. The next day, June 1, the expedition again marched toward the Atchafalaya, and remained in reserve a short distance from that river while the Seventh Massachusetts Battery shelled a saw-mill on the opposite side, destroying its machinery, and rendering it useless. Another night was spent in the vicinity, and on the morning of the 2d the command marched back to camp, glad that the “saw-mill expedition” was over.