History of the Nineteenth Army Corps

by Richard B. Irwin

As it was, the wretched man's punishment furnished chiefly matter for regret, and an example to be avoided.

CHAPTER XIII. BANKS AND GRANT.

The first effect of the despatches from Grant and Farragut, referred to in the preceding chapter, was to cause Banks to reconsider his plan of campaign, and to put the direction of his next movement in suspense. While waiting for fresh advices in answer to his own communications and proposals Banks halted, and while he halted Taylor got time to breathe and Kirby Smith to gather new strength.

This correspondence has been so much discussed, yet so little understood, that, chronology being an essential part of history, the narrative of the events now at hand may be rendered clearer, if we turn aside for a moment to consider not only the substance of what was said upon both sides, but, what was even more important, the time at which it was heard.

Farragut's letter, written from the Hartford above Port Hudson on the 6th of April, was the first communication Banks had received from Farragut, save a brief verbal message brought to him by the Admiral's secretary, Mr. E. C. Gabaudan, on the 10th of April, just before the army set out from Brashear. Mr. Gabaudan had come straight from the Admiral, but without any thing in writing, having floated past Port Hudson by night in a skiff covered with twigs so as to look like a drift log. Farragut's letter gave assurance of the complete control of the Red River and the Atchafalaya by the navy of the Union.

Grant's despatch bore date the 23d of March. It was the first writing received from him. It conveyed the answer to the letter addressed to him by Banks on the 13th of March, and placed in the hands of Farragut just before the Hartford ran the batteries of Port Hudson. Thus on either side began a correspondence clearly intended by both commanders to bring about an effective co-operation between the two armies, aided by the combined fleets of Farragut and Porter. Yet in the end, while the consequences remained unfelt in the Army by the Tennessee, upon the Army of the Gulf the practical effect, after the first period of delay and doubt, was to cause its commander to give up the thought of moving toward Grant and to conform all his movements to the expectation that Grant would send an army corps to Bayou Sara to join in reducing Port Hudson. Thus, quite apart from the confusion and the eventual disappointment, much valuable time was lost while the matter was in suspense; and so was demonstrated once more the impossibility, well established by the history of war, of co-ordinating the operations of two armies widely separated, having different objectives, while an enemy strongly holds the country between them.

When Banks wrote his despatch of the 13th of March, he was at Baton Rouge, about to demonstrate against Port Hudson. When Grant received this despatch he was on the low land opposite Vicksburg, with the rising river between him and his enemy, laboriously seeking a practical pathway to the rear of Vicksburg, and in the meantime greatly troubled to find dry ground for his seventy thousand men to stand on. Grant's first idea, derived from Halleck's despatches, was that Banks should join him before Vicksburg, with the whole available force of the Army of the Gulf. When he learned from Banks that this would be out of the question so long as Port Hudson should continue to be held by the Confederates, Grant took up the same line of thought that had already attracted Banks, and began to meditate a junction by the Atchafalaya, the Red, the Tensas, and the Black rivers. What Grant then needed was not more troops, but standing-room for those he had. Accordingly, he began by preparing to send twenty thousand men to Banks, when the Ohio River steamers he had asked for should come.(1) They never came, yet even after he had embarked upon the campaign, alike sound in conception and splendid in execution, that was to become the corner-stone of his great and solid fame, Grant kept to his purpose.

On the 14th of April he penned this brief telegram to Banks:

"I am concentrating my forces at Grand Gulf; will send an army corps Bayou Sara by the 25th, to co-operate with you on Port Hudson. Can you aid me and send troops after the reduction of Port Hudson to assist me at Vicksburg?"

This message, although Banks and Grant were then only about two hundred miles apart, had to travel three thousand miles to reach its destination. Banks received it just before marching from Opelousas on the 5th of May, twenty-one days after it left Grant's hands. As received, the message was in cipher and without a date. As the prevailing practice was, in conformity with the orders of the Secretary of War, the only persons in the Department of the Gulf who held the key to the cipher were the Superintendent of Military Telegraphs and such of his assistants as he chose to trust, and Mr. Bulkley was at New Iberia, where the wires ended. The code employed was the route cipher in common use in the service, and with the help of the words "Bayou" and "Sara" as guides the meaning was not hard to make out. Banks did not trust to this, however, and waited until, late at night, he received from the Superintendent an official translation, still without date, as indeed was the original document received at headquarters from New Orleans. The 25th Banks naturally took to mean the 25th of May. Grasping eagerly at the first real chance of effective co-operation, he at once replied: "By the 25th probably, by the 1st, certainly, I will be there." This despatch was not in cipher, because he had no code. Captain Crosby carried it to the Hartford at the mouth of Red River. Captain Palmer, who was found in command, the Admiral having crossed Fausse Point and joined his fleet below, at once forwarded the despatch. Near Natchez Crosby met Captain Uffers of Grant's staff and turned back with him bringing Grant's despatch of the 10th of May, written at Rocky Springs. This Banks received at Alexandria on the 12th of May. From it he learned that Grant was not coming. Having met the Confederates after landing at Grand Gulf and followed on their heels to the Big Black, he could not afford to retrace his steps; but he urged Banks to join him or to send all the force he could spare "to co-operate in the great struggle for opening the Mississippi River." The reasons thus assigned by Grant for his change of mind were certainly valid; yet it must be doubted whether in these hurried lines the whole of the matter is set forth, for three weeks earlier, on the 19th of April, five days after the promise to send an army corps to Bayou Sara by the 25th, Grant had reported to Halleck: "This will now be impossible." Moreover, until the moment when he crossed the river with his advance on the 30th of April he not only held firmly to his intention to send the twenty thousand men to join Banks at Bayou Sara as soon as the landing should have been secured, but the corps for this service had been designated; it was to be made up of the main body of McClernand's corps and McPherson's, and Grant himself meant to go with it. It was indeed the 2d of May when Grant received at Port Gibson Banks's despatch sent from Brashear on the 10th of April indicating his purpose of returning to Baton Rouge by the 10th of May, and although Grant also attributes to this despatch the change of his plans, the 10th of May had already come before he made known the change to Banks.