History of the Nineteenth Army Corps

by Richard B. Irwin

On the same day, after a brief engagement, Cooke, with the gunboats Estrella, Arizona, and Calhoun, and a detachment of four companies of the 16th New Hampshire from Brashear, captured Fort Burton at Butte-à-la-Rose, with its garrison of 60 men of the Crescent regiment and its armament of two 32-pounders; thus at last gaining the complete control of the Atchafalaya, and at the same time opening communication with Banks by way of Port Barré or Barré's Landing on the Courtableau, distant about nine miles northeasterly from Opelousas. Then Cooke steamed up the Atchafalaya to make his report to Farragut, lying in the Mississippi off the mouth of the Red River, and to seek fresh orders.

At the outset of the campaign the 16th New Hampshire had been detached from Ingraham's brigade of Emory and left at Brashear to guard the main depots and the surplus baggage. After the battle of Bisland, the 4th Massachusetts was turned back to Brashear to relieve the 16th New Hampshire. This regiment having assisted in the capture of Butte-à-la-Rose, now formed the garrison of that desolate and deadly hummock.

While at Opelousas the army could draw its supplies from Brashear by the Atchafalaya and the Courtableau, but so long as the direction of the future operations remained uncertain, it was necessary to keep a firm hold of the communications by the Teche. Accordingly, the 175th New York took post at Franklin and the 22d Maine at New Iberia.

On the 22d of April the 162d New York, under Blanchard, with a section of the 1st Maine battery and one troop of the 2d Rhode Island cavalry, marched to Barré's Landing, seized the position, and captured the little steamboat Ellen, the last of the Teche fleet.

On the 23d of April the little Cornie arrived at Barré's Landing from the depot at Brashear, and the next day the first wagon-train came into camp laden with the supplies now sadly needed. At sight of the white-covered wagons winding over the plain, the men gave way to those demonstrations of delight so familiar to all who have ever seen soldiers rejoice. For fifteen days they had been subsisting upon an uncertain issue of hard bread, coffee, and salt, eked out by levies, more or less irregular, upon the countryside. They were sick of chickens and cornbread, and fairly loathed the very sight, to say nothing of the smell, of fresh-killed beef; tough at best, even in the heart of the tenderloin, the flesh had to be eaten with the odor and the warmth of the blood still in it, under penalty of finding it fly-blown before the next meal. Thus it was that, as Paine relates in his Diary, the men now "howled for salt pork and hard tack."

Although the army had now a double line of communication with its base, yet the long haul from New Iberia and the scarcity of light-draught steamboats adapted to the navigation of the narrow and tortuous bayous made the task of supplying even the urgent wants of the troops both tedious and difficult. The herds near Opelousas were fast disappearing under the ravages of the foragers, authorized and unauthorized, yet had it not been for the beef obtained from this source and for the abundant grass of the prairie men and horses must soon have suffered greatly.

On the 24th of April, Banks reviewed his army in the open plain, near Opelousas. The troops, not as yet inured to the long and hard marches, were indeed greatly diminished in numbers by the unaccustomed toil and exposure, as well as by the casualties of battle and the enervating effects of the climate, yet they presented a fine appearance, and were in the best of spirits.

On learning of Cooke's success at Butte-à-la-Rose, Banks detached Dwight, posted him at Washington in observation, and placed Grover with his remaining brigades at Barré's Landing, to secure the depots, while Emory and Weitzel covered Opelousas.

Having by burning the Vermilion bridge gained a day's rest for his tired soldiers, Taylor resumed the retreat at noon on the 17th of April, and passing through Opelousas and Washington on the 18th and 19th, on the following day found himself with all his trains behind the Cocodrie and the Boeuf. On the 20th he sent Mouton, with all the cavalry except Waller's battalion, westward over the prairie toward Niblett's Bluff, on the Sabine. Then, with Waller and the frayed remnant of the infantry, day by day wearing away at the edges, Taylor continued his retreat toward Alexandria, halting with what may be called his main body at Lecompte. To hinder the pursuit he burned the bridges over the Bayou Cocodrie and the Bayou Boeuf.

Opelousas, miles away from every thing, in the heart of a vast prairie, presented in itself no object for an invading army. Even the temptation of a good position was wanting.