History of the Nineteenth Army Corps

by Richard B. Irwin

On the 4th of May, while riding to the front to join the advance commanded by his brother, Captain Howard Dwight, Assistant Adjutant-General, was surprised and cut off at a sharp turn in the Bayou Boeuf by a party of armed men on the opposite bank. Having no reason to apprehend any special danger so far in the rear of the advance, the little party was proceeding along the road without precaution. At the moment of the encounter Captain Dwight was quite alone, concealed by the turn in the road from the ambulance and the few orderlies that were following at leisure. Armed only with his sword, and seeing that escape was hopeless, he instantly declared his readiness to surrender. "Surrender be damned!" cried the guerillas, and, firing a volley without further parley, shot him dead. When the orderlies who were with the ambulance heard the firing they galloped forward, only to find poor Dwight's lifeless body lying in the dusty road. The murderers had fled.

By this painful event the service lost a brave and promising young officer and the staff a pleasant and always cheerful comrade. The distinguished family to which this gallant gentleman belonged had given four brothers to the service of their country. Of these Howard himself most nearly resembled in character, looks, and bearing his elder brother Wilder, who fell at Antietam, honored and lamented by all that knew him.

Upon hearing the news, Banks instantly sent order to Brigadier-General Dwight to arrest all the white men he might find near the line of his march to the number of one hundred, and to send them to New Orleans to be held as hostages for the delivery of the murderers. "The people of the neighborhood who harbor and feed these lawless men," Banks wrote, "are even more directly responsible for the crimes which they commit, and it is by punishing them that this detestable practice will be stopped." There were not a hundred white men in the region through which Dwight was marching, but many were punished by imprisonment after this order—a harsh measure, it must be admitted, yet not without the justification that the countryside was infested by men wearing no uniform, who acted in turn the part of soldiers in front of the Union army, of citizens on its line of march, and of guerillas in its rear. When, under a flag of truce, Dwight presently demanded from Taylor the surrender of his brother's murderers, the Confederate officers not only disavowed but severely condemned the crime, declaring themselves, however, unable to pick out the criminals.

Two miles beyond Washington the Bayous Boeuf and Cocodrie unite to form the Bayou Courtableau, out of which again, below the town, flows the Bayou Maricoquant, forming a double connection with the Teche at its head. For a long distance the Boeuf and the Cocodrie keep close company, each following a crooked channel cut deeply into the light soil. Crossing the Courtableau above Washington, the line of march now lay along the east bank of the Boeuf, by Holmesville and Cheneyville, through a country of increasing richness and beauty, gradually rising with quickened undulations almost until the bluffs that border the Red River draw in sight.

Banks had promised that he would be in Alexandria on the morning of the 9th of May; but no opposition was encountered; the roads were good, dry, and easy under foot; the weather fine, and the men were filled with a desire to push the march, and with an eager rivalry to be first in Alexandria. Early on the afternoon of the 7th of May the brigades of Dwight and Weitzel, both under Weitzel's command, arrived at the beautiful plantation of Governor Moore, and went into bivouac. Here the cavalry, who had ridden well forward, returned, bringing the news that Porter, with his gunboats, was already in the river off Alexandria, where the fleet had cast anchor early that morning, a full day before its time. This made Banks desire to push on, and he at first ordered Paine to continue the march, preceded by all the cavalry. When Weitzel heard this, his spirit rose for the honor of his brigade, and in emphatic yet respectful terms he protested against being deprived at the last moment of the post he had held almost since leaving Brashear. Banks yielded to Weitzel's wishes, and his men, not less eager than their commander, notwithstanding the long march of twenty miles they had already made, at once broke camp and with a swinging stride set out the accomplish the twelve miles that still separated them from the river. One of the ever-present regimental wits sought to animate the spirits and quicken the flagging footsteps of his comrades by offering a turkey ready trussed upon his bayonet to the man that should get to Alexandria before him. For a long part of the way the men of the 8th Vermont and the 75th New York amused themselves by taking advantage of the wide and good roadway to run a regimental race. As the eager rivals came swinging down the hill, they found their progress checked by a momentary halt of the horsemen in their front, while watering their jaded animals. Then, "Get out of the way with that cavalry," was the cry, "or we'll run over you!"

It was ten o'clock at night when Weitzel's men led the way into Alexandria. A full ration of spirits was served out to the men, who then threw themselves on the ground without further ceremony and used to the full the permission to enjoy for once a long sleep mercifully unbroken by a reveille. Paine followed and encamped near Alexandria on the following morning; Grover rested near Lecompte, about twenty miles in the rear.

Beside his own vessels, Porter brought with him to Alexandria the Estrella and Arizona from the flotilla that had been operating on the Atchafalaya under Cooke. Porter was thus fully prepared to deal with any opposition he might encounter from the Confederate batteries at Fort De Russy; but, although only the day before the Albatross, Estrella, and Arizona had been driven off after a sharp fight of forty minutes, when, on the 5th of May, Porter arrived at Fort De Russy, he found the place deserted and the guns gone.(2)

On the 8th of May, finding that the river was falling, Porter, after conferring freely with Banks, withdrew all his vessels except the Lafayette, and descending the Red River, sent four of the gunboats seventy miles up the Black and its principal affluent, the Washita, to Harrisonburg. This latter expedition had no immediate result, but it served to show the ease with which the original plan of campaign might have been followed to its end.

While Banks was still at Opelousas, Kirby Smith, taking Dwight's approach to signify a general advance of the Union army, had arranged to retire up the Red River and to concentrate at Shreveport. Thither, on the 24th of April, he removed his headquarters from Alexandria and called in not only Taylor but a division of infantry under Walker, and three regiments of Texans already on the Red River. All the troops that Magruder could spare from the 8,000 serving in Eastern Texas he was at once to put in march to the Sabine. These orders, though too late for the emergency, brought about the concentration that was presently to threaten the ruin of Banks's main campaign on the Mississippi.

Weitzel, with Dwight, followed the Confederate rear-guard to Lawson's Ferry, forty-one miles by the river beyond Alexandria, taking a few prisoners. Taylor himself appears to have had a narrow escape from being among them.