History of the Nineteenth Army Corps

by Richard B. Irwin

After a short but spirited engagement Mouton's force was compelled to retreat. Weitzel pursued for about four miles.

Mouton then called in his outlying detachments, including the La Fourche regiment, 500 strong, 300 men of the 33d Louisiana, and the regiments of Saint Charles and St. John Baptist, burned the railway station of Terre Bonne and the bridges at Thibodeaux, La Fourche Crossing, Terre Bonne, Des Allemands, and Bayou Boeuf, and evacuated the district. By the 30th, every thing was safely across Berwick Bay. For this escape, he was indebted to an opportune gale that compelled Buchanan's gunboats to lie to in Caillou Bay on their way to Berwick Bay, to cut off the retreat. Mouton's report accounts for 5 killed, 8 wounded, and 186 missing; in all 199. Among the killed was Colonel G. P. McPheeters of the Crescent regiment.

Weitzel followed to Thibodeaux, and went into camp beyond the town. He claims to have taken 208 prisoners and one gun, and states his own losses as 18 killed, and 74 wounded, agreeing with the nominal lists, which also contain the names of 5 missing, thus bringing the total casualties to 97.

Arriving off Brashear a day too late, Buchanan was partly consoled by capturing the Confederate gunboat Seger. On the 4th and 5th of November he made a reconnoissance fourteen miles up the Teche with his own boat, the Calhoun, and the Estrella, Kinsman, Saint Mary's, and Diana, and meeting a portion of Mouton's forces and the Confederate gunboat J. A. Cotton, received and inflicted some damage and slight losses, yet with no material result.

Simultaneously with Weitzel's movement on La Fourche, Butler pushed the 8th Vermont and the newly organized 1st Louisiana Native Guards forward from Algiers along the Opelousas Railway, to act in conjunction with Weitzel and to open the railway as they advanced. Weitzel had already turned the enemy out of his position, but the task committed to Thomas was slow and hard, for all the bridges and many culverts had to be rebuilt, and from long disuse of the line the rank grass, that in Louisiana springs up so freely in every untrodden spot above water, had grown so tall and thick and strongly matted that the troops had to pull it up by the roots before the locomotive could pass.

So ended operations in Louisiana for the year. Until the following spring, Taylor continued to occupy the Teche region, while Weitzel rested quietly in La Fourche, with his headquarters at Thibodeaux and his troops so disposed as to cover and hold the country without losing touch. On the 9th of November, the whole of Louisiana lying west of the Mississippi, except the delta parishes of Plaquemine and Terre Bonne, was constituted a military district to be known as the District of La Fourche, and Weitzel was assigned to the command.

Meanwhile General Butler, with the consent of the War Department, had raised, organized, and equipped, in the neighborhood of New Orleans, two good regiments of Louisianans, the 1st Louisiana, Colonel Richard E. Holcomb, and the 2d Louisiana, Colonel Charles J. Paine, both regiments admirably commanded and well officered; three excellent troops of Louisiana cavalry, under fine leaders, Captains Henry F. Williamson, Richard Barrett, and J. F. Godfrey; and beside these white troops, three regiments of negroes, designated as the 1st, 2d, and 3d Louisiana Native Guards. This was the name originally employed by Governor Moore early in 1861, to describe an organization of the free men of color of New Orleans enrolled for the defence of the city against the expected attack by the forces of the Union.

This action was taken by Butler of his own motion. It was never formally approved by the government, but it was not interfered with. These three regiments were the first negro troops mustered into the service of the United States. At least one of them, the 1st, was largely made up of men of that peculiar and exclusive caste known to the laws of slavery as the free men of color of Louisiana. All the field and staff officers were white men, mainly taken from the rolls of the troops already in service; but at first all the company officers were negroes. As this was the first experiment, it was perhaps, in the state of feeling then prevailing, inevitable, yet not the less to be regretted, that the white officers were, with some notable exceptions, inferior men. Fortunately, however, courts-martial and examining boards made their career for the most part a short one. As for the colored officers of the line, early in 1863 they were nearly all disqualified on the most rudimentary examination, and then the rest resigned. After that, the government having determined to raise a large force of negro troops, it became the settled policy to grant commissions as officers to none but white men.

The 1st and 2d regiments were sent into the district of La Fourche to guard the railway.

Then, between Butler and Weitzel, in spite of confidence on the one hand and respect and affection on the other, began the usual controversy about arming the negro. To one unacquainted with the history of this question and of those times it must seem strange indeed to read the emphatic words in which a soldier so loyal and, in the best sense, so subordinate as Weitzel, declared his unwillingness to command these troops, and to reflect that in a little more than two years he was destined to accept with alacrity the command of a whole army corps of black men, and at last to ride in triumph at their head into the very capital of the Confederacy.