History of the Nineteenth Army Corps

by Richard B. Irwin

Marching thence at six o'clock on the morning of the 25th of April, the head of the column arrived at Alexandria at two o'clock that afternoon, and on the following day A. J. Smith brought up the rear. Here the fleet, with the exception of the ill-fated Eastport, was found lying in safety, yet unfortunately above the falls.

Here, too, early on the 27th came Hunter, with fresh and very positive orders from Grant to Banks, bearing date the 17th, requiring him to bring the expedition to an immediate end, to turn over his command at once to the next in rank, and to go himself to New Orleans. In truth, this was but the culmination of an earnest and persistent wish on Grant's part, shown even as far back as the beginning of the campaign, to replace Banks in command by Hunter or another. When, afterward, Grant came to learn of the perilous situation of the fleet, and moreover perceived that none of the troops engaged in the expedition could be in time to take part in the spring campaigns east of the Mississippi, he suspended these orders, and, without recalling that portion of them that required Banks to go to New Orleans, directed the operations for the rescue of the navy to go on under the senior commander present. In any case, however, it was now clearly impossible to abandon the fleet in its dangerous and helpless position above the rapids, with the river falling, and an active enemy on both banks.

And Steele,—where was Steele all this time? Having rejected Banks's advice to join him near Alexandria, marching by way of Monroe and so down the Ouachita, Steele set out from Little Rock on the 24th of March, moved by his right on Arkadelphia, and arrived there on the 28th. His object in preferring this direction was, not only to avoid the heavy roads in the low lands of the Ouachita, but to take up Thayer, who was already on the march from Fort Smith, thus making a fourth concentration in the enemy's country. The exigencies of the wretched farce called a State election in Arkansas had reduced Steele's effective force by fully 3,000, so that he now moved with barely 7,000 of all arms, and six batteries. Opposed to Steele was Price, with the cavalry divisions of Fagan and Marmaduke, the former at Spring Hill to meet the advance from Arkadelphia, and the latter at Camden, to guard the line of the Ouachita. To strengthen himself, Price drew in Cabell and Maxey, who with three brigades were at first engaged in watching Thayer.

On the 1st of April, hearing nothing from Thayer, Steele advanced from Arkadelphia, crossed the Little Missouri at Elkin's Ferry on the 3d, was joined by Thayer on the 6th, and on the 10th had a sharp engagement with an outlying brigade, under Shelby, of Price's army. Price was then at Prairie d'Ane, covering the crossing of the roads that led to Camden and to Shreveport, but on the evening of the 11th he drew back beyond the prairie to a strong position eight miles north of Washington. To have followed Price would have been to put Steele's long and lengthening line of communication at the mercy of Marmaduke. This was what Price wanted; but when, on the 12th, Steele saw the road to Camden left open, he promptly took it, and, harried by Price in his rear, and not seriously impeded by Marmaduke in his front, he marched into Camden on the 15th, and occupied the strong line of the Confederate defences. This was four days after the return of Banks to Grand Ecore, which of course put an end to any farther advance of Steele in the direction of Shreveport, and while he was waiting for authentic news, Price was busy on his line of communication with Pine Bluff, and Kirby Smith, with Churchill and Walker, was moving rapidly to join Price. On the 20th of April Kirby Smith appeared before the lines of Camden; but Steele had already begun his inevitable retreat a few hours earlier, and having destroyed the bridge across the Ouachita, gained so long a start that he was enabled make good the difficult crossing of the Saline at Jenkins's Ferry, but only after a hard fight on the 30th of April with the combined forces of Smith and Price. Finally, the 2d of May saw Steele back at Little Rock with his army half starved, greatly reduced in men and material in these six ineffectual weeks, thinking no longer of Halleck's wide schemes of conquest, or even of Grant's wish to hold the line of the Red River, but rather hoping for some stroke of good fortune to enable him to defend the line of the Arkansas and to keep Price out of Missouri.

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE DAM.

Directly after the capture of Port Hudson, Bailey offered to float the two Confederate transport steamers, Starlight and Red Chief, that were found lying on their sides high and almost dry in the middle of Thompson's Creek. With smiles and a shrug or two permission was given him to try; he tried; he succeeded; and this experience it undoubtedly was that caused his words to be listened to so readily when he now proposed to rescue the fleet in the same way. But to build at leisure and unmolested a pair of little wing-dams in the ooze of Thompson's creek and to close the opening by a central boom against that sluggish current was one thing; it was quite another to repeat the same operation against time, while surrounded and even cut off by a strong and active enemy, this too on the scale required to hold back the rushing waters of the Red River, at a depth sufficient for the passage of the heaviest of the gunboats and for a time long enough to let the whole fleet go by. Yet, bold as the bare conception seems, and stupendous as the work looks when regarded in detail, no sooner had it been suggested by Bailey then every engineer in the army at once entered heartily into the scheme. Palfrey, who had previously made a complete survey of the rapids, examined the plan carefully, and approved it. Franklin, to whose staff Bailey was attached, himself an engineer of distinguished attainments and wide experience, approved it, and Banks at once gave orders to carry it out.

In the month that had elapsed since the fleet ascended the rapids, the river had fallen more than six feet; for more than a mile the rocks now lay bare. In the worst places but forty inches of water were found, while with seven feet the heavy gunboats could barely float, and in some places the channel, shallow as it was, narrowed to a thread. The current ran nine miles an hour. The whole fall was thirteen feet, and at the point just above the lower chute, where Bailey proposed to construct his dam, the river was 758 feet wide, with a fall of six feet below the dam. The problem was how to raise the water above the dam seven feet, backing it up so as to float the gunboats over the upper rapids.

Heavy details were made from the troops, the working parties were carefully selected, and on the 30th of April the work was begun. From the north bank a wing-dam was constructed of large trees, the butts tied by cross logs, the tops laid towards the current, covered with brush, and weighted, to keep them in place, with stone and brick obtained by tearing down the buildings in the neighborhood. On the south bank, where large trees were scarce, a crib was made of logs and timbers filled in with stone and with bricks and heavy pieces of machinery taken from the neighboring sugar-houses and cotton-gins. When this was done there remained an open space of about one hundred and fifty feet between the wings, through which the rising waters poured with great velocity. This gap was nearly closed by sinking across it four of the large Mississippi coal-barges belonging to the navy.

When on the 8th of May all was thus complete, the water was found to have risen five feet four and a half inches at the upper fall, giving a measured depth there of eight feet eight and one half inches. Three of the light-draught gunboats, Osage, Neosho, and Fort Hindman, which had steam up, took prompt advantage of the rise to pass the upper fall, and soon lay in safety in the pool formed by the dam; yet for some reason the other boats of the fleet were not ready, and thus in the very hour when safety was apparently within their reach, suddenly they were once more exposed to a danger even greater than before. Early on the morning of the 9th the tremendous pressure of pent-up waters surging against the dam drove out two of the barges, making a gap sixty-six feet wide, and swung them furiously against the rocks below. Through the gap the river rushed in a roaring torrent. At sight and sound of this, the Admiral at once mounted a horse, galloped to the upper fall, and called out to the Lexington to run the rapids. Instantly the Lexington was under way, and as, with a full head of steam she made the plunge, every man in the army and the fleet held his breath in the terrible silence of suspense. For a moment she seemed lost as she reeled and almost disappeared in the foam and surge, but only to be greeted with a mighty cheer, such as brave men give to courage and good fortune, when she was seen to ride in safety below. The Osage, the Neosho, and the Fort Hindman promptly followed her down the chute, but the other six gunboats and the two tugs were still imprisoned above by the sudden sinking of the swift rushing waters; the jaws of danger, for an instant relaxed, had once more shut tightly on the prey. Doubt and gloom took the place of exultation. As for the army, hard as had been the work demanded of it, still greater exertions were before it, nor was their result by any means certain, for the volume of the river was daily diminishing, and there would be no more rise that year.

So far Bailey had substantially followed, though on a larger scale, the same plan that had worked so successfully the year before at Port Hudson. But against a weight, a volume, and a velocity of water such as had to be encountered here, it was now plainly seen that something else would have to be tried. No emergency, however great or sudden, ever finds a man of his stamp unready. As soon therefore as the collapse showed him the defect in his first plan, he instantly set about remedying it by dividing the weight of water to be contended with. At the upper fall three wing-dams were constructed. Just above the rocks a stone crib was laid on the south side, and directly opposite to this on the north side a tree-dam, like those already described when speaking of the original dam. Just below the rocks, projecting diagonally from the north bank, a bracket-dam was built, made of logs having one end sunk to meet the current, the other end raised on trestles, and the whole then sheathed with plank. By this means the whole current was turned into one very narrow channel, and a new rise of fourteen inches was gained, giving in all six feet six and one half inches of water. Every man bending himself to this task to his utmost, by the most incredible exertions this new work was completed in three days and three nights, and thus during the 12th and 13th the remainder of the fleet passed free of the danger.