Andrews at once took up the work of organization and instruction in earnest, rightly conceiving it not merely possible, but even essential, to give to the officers and men of the colored regiments, thus formed into an army corps under his command, a degree of instruction, as well in tactics as in the details of a soldier's duty, higher then was to be found in any save a few picked regiments of the volunteer and regular service. The prejudice at first entertained against the bare idea of service with colored troops had not entirely disappeared, yet it had so far lost its edge that it was now possible to select from a number of applicants for promotion, especially to the higher grades, officers who had already shown their fitness and their capacity, while holding inferior commissions or serving in the ranks of the white regiments. Thus the original source of weakness in the composition of the first three regiments was avoided, and, small politics and local influence being of course absent, and Banks's instructions being urgent to choose only the best men, the colored regiments soon had a fine corps of officers. To the work now before him Andrews brought an equipment and a training such as few officers possessed. Experience had shown him the merit, the capacity, and the defects of the American volunteer officer. At the very bottom of these defects was the looseness of his early instruction in the elements of his duty; once wrongly taught by an instructor, himself careless or ignorant, he was likely to go on conscientiously making the same mistake to the end of his term. Realizing his opportunity, Andrews set about establishing uniformity in all details of drill and duty by establishing a school of officers. These he himself taught with the greatest pains and industry, correcting the slovenly, yet encouraging the willing, until the whole corps was brought up to a uniform standard, and on the whole a high one.
Stone succeeded Andrews as Chief of Staff at department headquarters on the 25th of July.
Franklin's staff, as commander of the Nineteenth Army Corps in the
field, included Major Wickham Hoffman, Assistant Adjutant-General;
Colonel Edward L. Molineux, Acting Assistant Inspector-General;
Lieutenant-Colonel John G. Chandler, Chief Quartermaster;
Lieutenant-Colonel Henry D. Woodruff, Chief Commissary of Subsistence;
Surgeon John H. Rauch, Medical Director; Captain Henry W. Closson,
Chief of Artillery; Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey, Acting Chief
Engineer; Captain William A. Pigman, Chief Signal Officer.
CHAPTER XXI. A FOOTHOLD IN TEXAS.
Banks now wished and proposed to move on Mobile, which he rightly supposed to be defended by about 5,000 men.(1) This had indeed been among the objects specially contemplated by his first instructions from the government, and in the progress of events had now become the next in natural order. Grant and Farragut were of the same mind; but other ideas had arisen, and now the government, anxious to avert the impending risk of European complications, deemed it of the first importance that the flag of the nation should, without delay, be restored at some point in Texas. The place and the plan were left discretionary with Banks, but peremptory orders were given him to carry out the object.(2)
Texas had no military value at that moment. To have overrun the whole State would hardly have shortened the war by a single day. The possession of Mobile, on the other hand, would, besides its direct consequences, have exercised an important if not a vital influence upon the critical operations in the central theatre of war; would have taken from the Confederates their only remaining line of railway communication between the Atlantic seaboard and the States bordering on the Mississippi; would have weakened the well-nigh fatal concentration against Rosecrans at Chickamauga and Chattanooga; would have eased the hard task of Sherman in his progress to Atlanta; and would have given him a safe line of retreat in the event of misfortune. What was it, then, that persuaded the government to put aside its designs on Mobile, to give up the offensive, to refrain from gathering the fruits of its successes on the Mississippi, in order to embark in the pursuit of objects avowedly "other than military"?
A series of acts and events, more or less menacing in character, seemed to indicate a concerted purpose on the part of some, at least, of the leading nations of Europe to interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States against the government of the United States. The powerful rams, intended for the recapture of New Orleans, that were being almost openly built to the order of the Confederacy in the port of Liverpool, in the very shipyards whence the Alabama had gone to sea, were approaching completion. Other iron-clads, not less powerful, were under construction in France, with the personal connivance of the Emperor, under the flimsy pretence that they were intended for the imperial government of China. Finally, on the 10th of June, casting all promises and pretexts to the winds, the French troops had marched into the capital of Mexico, made themselves masters of the country, vamped up a sham throne, and upon it set an Austrian puppet. That Napoleon III. nursed among his favorite dreams the vision of a Latin empire in America, built upon the ruins of Mexican liberty and taking in at least the fairest portion of the Louisiana that his illustrious uncle had parted with so cheaply, was well known. Against the inconvenient spread of his ambition the occupation of some part, of any part, of Texas, was intended as a diplomatic caution. That the warning cast its shadow even upon the dark mind of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte there can be no doubt; yet in the meantime there had occurred in quick succession three events that must have sounded in his ears with tones that even his dull imagination could not easily misunderstand. These were Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Port Hudson. He had not the least notion of helping the unsuccessful.
The whole Confederate force under Kirby Smith in the trans-Mississippi region numbered at this time about 33,000 effective. Of these, about 4,000 were in the Indian country, 8,000 in Arkansas, less than 14,000 in Western Louisiana, and rather less than 7,000 in Texas. Of the forces in Louisiana under Taylor, about 3,000 were in the extreme northern district. Magruder, whose headquarters were at Houston, and who commanded not only the whole of Texas but nominally New Mexico and Arizona besides, was keeping rather more than two thirds of his forces for the defence of Galveston and the line of the Sabine, while the remainder were distributed on the Rio Grande, at Corpus Christi, San Antonio, and Indianola; he had not 2,000 men together anywhere, nor could even Kirby Smith have concentrated 20,000 at any single point without giving up all the rest of the vast territory confided to his care.
At the end of August Banks had nearly 37,000 officers and men for duty. Of these, about 13,000 belonged to the Thirteenth Corps and about 6,500 to that portion of the Nineteenth Corps, being the First and Third divisions, that was concentrated and ready for active service in the field. The defences of New Orleans, including La Fourche, absorbed 7,000; Port Hudson, 5,500; the rest were holding Baton Rouge, Key West, and Pensacola.
Yielding his own views as to Mobile, Banks entered heartily into the project of the government for gaining a foothold in Texas. Learning from the Navy that the mouth of the Sabine was but feebly defended, while the entrance was practicable for gunboats of light draught, he conceived the plan of descending suddenly upon the coast at that point with a force sufficient to march to Houston and take Galveston in reverse. He selected the troops, and collected the transports and the stores. When he was ready he gave the command of the expedition to Franklin, and caused Beckwith to replace Emory in command of the defences of New Orleans, to enable him to rejoin his division for service in the field.