Then, in January, 1863, a naval force was sent to help the army capture Arkansas Post, fifty miles up the Arkansas River. The De Kalb (former St. Louis), the Louisville, and the Cincinnati, and all the tin-clads were in the expedition, and on January 9th and 10th they shot the forts to pieces, and disabled all the guns, seventeen in number, including two nine-inch Dahlgrens that had come all the way from the Norfolk Navy Yard. The white flag was raised before the army could make an assault.
General Grant arrived opposite Vicksburg on January 30, 1863, and the plan of attacking Vicksburg by turning the river line on the south was adopted, and that succeeded some months later. Meantime Porter, to control the river between Vicksburg and Port Hudson, sent Col. Charles R. Ellet, with his ram, Queen of the West, down past the Vicksburg batteries. Owing to trouble with her steering gear, she did not get off till daylight on February 2d; but the Ellets were the most recklessly brave family known to the Mississippi. The colonel started in the face of fire, rammed and set fire to a Confederate steamer at the Vicksburg wharf, and passed on without losing a man.
A small ferryboat, called the De Soto, was added to Ellet’s command when below Vicksburg, and then Porter sent down the Indianola, one of the newest armored boats. That seemed to give the Union forces full sway as far as Port Hudson; but within a week Ellet attacked a fort near Gordon’s Landing, on the Red River, got his ship aground, and had to abandon her. He retreated in the De Soto until a prize they had captured was reached, when the De Soto was burned, and in the prize (a steamer called the Era) they reached the Indianola. But the Confederates were still after them, using the abandoned Queen of the West and one of the original Confederate rams, called the Webb, with a couple of ordinary river steamers, the whole fleet being protected with cotton. The Indianola tried to escape up the river, but the rams being swifter, chose their own time, and rammed her to death on the night of the 24th. The Confederates once more held the river.
A curious thing then happened. The Indianola was sunk on the easterly bank, not far below Vicksburg. A Confederate force set to work to raise and repair her. They were getting on well, when, early on the morning of the 26th, a Federal gunboat was reported coming down the river. There was a most furious cannonading at the Vicksburg batteries, and the four steamers that had so gallantly captured the Indianola at once fled militia-fashion. A lieutenant with a hundred men was left on the wreck (she was awash and near shore); but when he saw what a fearsome aspect the coming monster had, he set the Indianola’s two big guns muzzle to muzzle, fired them to destroy them, and then fled. The story of these doings made the government forces laugh and the Confederates curse for many a day after that, for the so-called gunboat was a dummy in the form of a monitor, sent adrift for a lark by Porter’s men.
Admiral Farragut Passing Port Hudson.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.
The U. S. Flotilla Passing the Vicksburg Batteries.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.