How little expectation there had been of fighting a battle that day, especially on the line where the extreme outposts chanced to be, and how suddenly all was changed, is aptly shown by what was happening in Emory's camp when, at a quarter before four o'clock, he received Franklin's order to go to the front. The wagons of the Thirteenth Corps were in the road in the act of passing the lines of the Nineteenth Corps on the way to join their proper command. Emory's wagons had been with him for some little time and several of the quartermasters were even engaged in issuing clothing when the summons came. There had been no heavy firing as yet, such as indicates a battle, and the exact degree of urgency may be best represented by saying that the marching orders were delivered to Emory in writing by a mounted orderly and were in these words: "Move your infantry immediately to the front, leaving one regiment as guard to your batteries and train. If your train has got up, you will take two days' rations and the cooking utensils." The language of this order, which may fairly be taken as an authentic reflection of the oral message from Banks, on which it was directly based, would have justified Emory in taking an hour or more for the issue of the rations; but Emory, whose nature it was to forecast danger, had from the first hour of the campaign been apprehensive of some sudden attack that should find the army unprepared; and thus it was that, merely stopping to take a double ration of hard bread, twelve minutes later the head of his column filed into the road and marched to the front. At this hour the battle was just beginning, and the first sounds, rolling to the rear, served to quicken the march of Emory's men. About a quarter before five he was met by an aide-de-camp with orders to hasten, coupled with the first direct information that an engagement was in progress. A mile farther on an ambulance was met bearing Ransom to the rear. Emory exchanged a few words with the wounded officer, and then ordered his division to take the double-quick. A mile beyond, the usual rabble of camp followers and stragglers was encountered, and soon the road was filled with the swollen stream of fugitives, crying that the day was lost.
And now from Emory down to the smallest drummer-boy every man saw that the hour had come to show what the First division was made of. The leading regiments and flankers instantly fixed bayonets; the staff-officers drew their swords; hardly a man fell out, but at a steady and even quickened pace, Emory's men forced their way through the confused mass in the eager endeavor to reach a position where the enemy might be held in check. This, in that country, was not an easy task, and it was not until the last rush of the flying crowd and the dropping of stray bullets here and there told that the pursuing enemy was close at hand, that Emory found room to deploy on ground affording the least advantage for the task before him. He was now less than three miles from the field where Lee had been beaten back and Ransom had been overwhelmed. The scene was a small clearing with a fenced farm, traversed by a narrow by-road and by a little creek flowing toward the St. Patrice. Here the Confederates could be plainly seen coming on at such a pace that for some moments it was even doubtful whether Emory might not have delayed just too long the formation of his line of battle. Such was his own though as in the dire need of the crisis he determined to sacrifice his leading regiment in order to gain time and room for the division to form. Happily the Confederates helped him by stopping to loot the train and the rejoice loudly over each discovery of some special luxury to them long unfamiliar.
Then rapidly sending orders to Dwight to hold the road at any cost, to McMillan to form on the right, to Benedict to deploy on Dwight's left, Emory himself rode up to Kinsey, and together they led forward the 161st New York and deployed the regiment widely as skirmishers across the whole front of the division, in the very teeth of the Confederate line of battle, rapidly advancing with wild yells and firing heavily as they came. Not a man of the division, not one of the 161st, but felt as well as Emory the imposing duty laid on that splendid regiment and the hard sacrifice expected of it; yet they stood their ground so well and so long that not only had the whole division time to deploy, but, when at last the Confederate line of battle refused any longer to be held back by a fringe of skirmishers, it became a serious question whether friend and foe might not enter the Union lines together. Then, when Emory saw that his line was formed, he gave to word to Kinsey to retire. For some seconds his skirmishers masked fire of their own lines, but, as the Confederates followed with great impetuosity, Dwight's whole line, kneeling, waiting, and ready, opened a fierce fire at point-blank range and soon threw off the attack with heavy loss to their assailants. The brunt of the attack was borne by the 28th Maine, holding the centre and the road. An attempt followed to turn Emory's right flank; in this Dwight's right was pressed so heavily that Emory was obliged to deploy McMillan nearly at right angles to the main front, and thus the onset was easily checked. About the same time the Confederates, whose line was longer than Emory's, made a like attempt to turn the left, but Benedict held on firmly, and although his position was a bad one, soon drove off his assailants. The whole fight was over in twenty minutes, but while it lasted it was sharp. It rolled back the pursuit and changed the fortunes of the evil day.
In no other battle of the war was so little use made of artillery. In Ransom's fight only a few guns could be brought into action on either side, though these indeed were served with vigor. As for Emory, he left his batteries and his baggage to the safekeeping of the 153d New York and swept to the front with all the rest of his infantry, while the same jam of wagons that entrapped the guns of Lee and Ransom likewise held back the guns of Taylor. Thus Emory's fight was fought by infantry alone against infantry and dismounted cavalry, and no roar of cannon was heard to break the rattle and the wail of the musketry.
So great a change had these few hours wrought that the same sun rose upon an army marching full of confidence that within two days Shreveport would be in its grasp, and set up the same army defeated, brought to bay, its campaign ruined, saved only by a triumph of valor and discipline on the part of a single division and of skill on the part of its intrepid commander from complete destruction at the hands of an enemy inferior in everything and outnumbered almost as two to one. The passage of a wood is the passage of a defile; there, then, was a blind defile, where of six divisions four were suffered to be taken in detail and attacked in fractions on ground of the enemy's choosing. Hardly any tactical error was wanting to complete the discomfiture. Ransom was overwhelmed and double outflanked by two or three times his numbers; even Emory had but five thousand against a force reduced by casualties and straggling, yet still half as large again as his and flushed with victory; moreover, his position was, whether for offence or defence, worthless beyond the passing hour.
Banks's losses in the battle of Sabine Cross-Roads were as follows:
Killed. Wounded. Missing. Total.
Cavalry Division . . . . 39 250 144 433
Cameron's " . . . . . 24 99 195 318
Landram's " . . . . . 28 148 909 1,085
Emory's " . . . . . 24 148 175 347
Staff of Nineteenth Corps 0 3 0 3
____ ____ _____ ______
In all . . . 115 648 1,423 2,186
By Taylor the action is called the battle of Mansfield. He puts his losses at 1,000, all told. Foremost among the slain, while leading the fierce onset against Ransom's right, Mouton fell, a regimental color in his hand, and with him perished many of his brave Louisianians.
Clearly the next thing, whatever might be the next after, was to concentrate and reform on the first fair ground in the rear. Such were Banks's orders. Accordingly at midnight Emory marched in orderly retreat, with all his material intact, and at eight o'clock the next morning, the 9th of April, went into bivouac at Pleasant Hill, where A. J. Smith was found near his resting-place of the night before, and with him Gooding. Thither Lee and the shattered remnants of Ransom's Corps, now under Cameron, had already retired, and there they now reformed in comparative order.