This condensed account of the Kentucky campaign, extending over many months, is given because of my personal intimacy with the commander, who apprised me of his plans. General Bragg died recently in Texas. I have rarely known a more conscientious, laborious man. Exacting of others, he never spared himself, but, conquering disease, showed a constant devotion to duty; and distinguished as were his services in the cause he espoused, they would have been far greater had he enjoyed the blessing of health.
Leaving Chattanooga, I proceeded to my destination, western Louisiana, and crossed the Mississippi at the entrance of Red River. Some miles below, in the Atchafalaya, I found a steamer, and learned that the Governor of the State was at Opelousas, which could be reached by descending the last river to the junction of the Bayou Courtableau, navigable at high water to the village of Washington, six miles north of Opelousas. Embarking on the steamer, I reached the junction at sunset, but the water in Courtableau was too low for steam navigation. As my family had sought refuge with friends in the vicinity of Washington, I was anxious to get on, and hired a boat, with four negro oarsmen, to take me up the bayou, twenty miles. The narrow stream was overarched by trees shrouded with Spanish moss, the universal parasite of Southern forests. Heavy rain fell, accompanied by vivid lightning, the flashes of which enabled us to find our way; and before dawn I had the happiness to embrace wife and children after a separation of fourteen months. Some hours later I reached Opelousas, and met the Governor, Thomas O. Moore, with whom I had served in our State Assembly. This worthy gentleman, a successful and opulent planter, had been elected Governor in 1860. He was a man of moderate temper and opinions, but zealously aided the Confederate cause after his State had joined it. Forced to leave New Orleans by the approach of Farragut's fleet, he brought my family with him, and was unwearied in kind attentions.
Melancholy indeed was the condition of the "District of Louisiana," to the command of which I was assigned.
Confederate authority had virtually ceased with the fall of New Orleans in the previous April. Fortifications at Barataria, Berwick's Bay, and other Gulf-coast points had been abandoned, the garrisons withdrawn, works dismantled, and guns thrown into the water. The Confederate Government had no soldiers, no arms or munitions, and no money, within the limits of the district. Governor Moore was willing to aid me to the extent of his ability, but, deprived by the loss of New Orleans and the lower river parishes of half the population and three fourths of the resources of his State, he could do little.
General Magruder had recently been assigned to command in Texas, and General Holmes, the senior officer west of the Mississippi, was far to the north in Arkansas. To him I at once reported my arrival and necessities. Many days elapsed before his reply was received, to the effect that he could give me no assistance, as he meditated a movement against Helena on the Mississippi River. Without hope of aid from abroad, I addressed myself to the heavy task of arousing public sentiment, apathetic if not hostile from disaster and neglect, and the creation of some means of defense. Such was the military destitution that a regiment of cavalry could have ridden over the State, while innumerable rivers and bayous, navigable a large part of the year, would admit Federal gunboats to the heart of every parish.
To understand subsequent operations in this region, one must have some idea of its topography and river systems.
Washed on the east, from the Arkansas line to the Gulf of Mexico, by the Mississippi, western Louisiana is divided into two not very unequal parts by the Red River, which, entering the State at its northwestern angle, near the boundaries of Texas and Arkansas, flows southeast to the Mississippi through a broad, fertile valley, then occupied by a population of large slave-owners engaged in the culture of cotton. From the southern slopes of the Ozark Mountains in Central Arkansas comes the Washita River to unite with the Red, a few miles above the junction of the latter with the Mississippi. Preserving a southerly course, along the eastern foot of the hills, the Washita enters the State nearly a hundred miles west of the Mississippi, but the westerly trend of the great river reduces this distance until the waters meet. The alluvion between these rivers, protected from inundation by levees along the streams, is divided by many bayous, of which the Tensas, with its branch the Macon, is the most important. These bayous drain the vast swamps into the Washita, and, like this river, are in the season of floods open to steam navigation. Here was one of the great cotton-producing regions of the South. Estates of 5,000 acres and more abounded, and, with the numerous slaves necessary to their cultivation, were largely under the charge of overseers, while the proprietors resided in distant and more healthy localities. Abundant facilities for navigation afforded by countless streams superseded the necessity for railways, and but one line of some eighty miles existed. This extended from Monroe on the Washita to a point opposite Vicksburg on the Mississippi; but the great flood of 1862 had broken the eastern half of the line. Finally, the lower Washita, at Trinity, where it receives the Tensas from the east and Little River from the west, takes the name of Black River. And it may be well to add that in Louisiana counties are called parishes, dikes levees, and streams bayous.
South of the Red River, population and industries change. The first is largely composed of descendants of French colonists, termed creoles, with some Spanish intermixed, and the sugar cane is the staple crop, changing as the Gulf is approached to rice. At the point where the united Red and Washita Rivers join the Mississippi, which here changes direction to the east, the Atchafalaya leaves it, and, flowing due south through Grand Lake and Berwick's Bay, reaches the Gulf at Atchafalaya Bay, two degrees west of its parent stream, and by a more direct course. Continuing the line of the Red and Washita, it not only discharges much of their waters, but draws largely from the Mississippi when this last is in flood. Midway between the Atchafalaya and the city of New Orleans, some eighty miles from either point, another outlet of the great river, the Bayou Lafourche, discharges into the Gulf after passing through a densely populated district, devoted to the culture of sugar cane and rice. A large lake, Des Allemands, collects the waters from the higher lands on the river and bayou, and by an outlet of the same name carries them to Barataria Bay. Lying many feet below the flood level of the streams, protected by heavy dikes, with numerous steam-engines for crushing canes and pumping water, and canals and ditches in every direction, this region resembles a tropical Holland. At the lower end of Lake Des Allemands passed the only line of railway in southern Louisiana, from a point on the west bank of the river opposite New Orleans to Berwick's Bay, eighty miles. Berwick's Bay, which is but the Atchafalaya after it issues from Grand Lake, is eight hundred yards wide, with great depth of water, and soon meets the Gulf in Atchafalaya Bay. A few miles above the railway terminus at Berwick's there enters from the west the Teche, loveliest of Southern streams. Navigable for more than a hundred miles, preserving at all seasons an equal breadth and depth, so gentle is its flow that it might be taken for a canal, did not the charming and graceful curves, by which it separates the undulating prairies of Attakapas from the alluvion of the Atchafalaya, mark it as the handiwork of Nature. Before the war, the Teche for fifty miles, from Berwick's Bay to New Iberia, passed through one field of sugar canes, the fertile and well-cultivated estates succeeding each other. The mansions of the opulent planters, as well as the villages of their slaves, were situated on the west bank of the bayou overlooking the broad, verdant prairie, where countless herds roamed. On the east bank, the dense forest had given way to fields of luxuriant canes; and to connect the two parts of estates, floating bridges were constructed, with openings in the center for the passage of steamers. Stately live oaks, the growth of centuries, orange groves, and flowers of every hue and fragrance surrounded the abodes of the seigneurs; while within, one found the grace of the salon combined with the healthy cheeriness of country life. Abundance and variety of game encouraged field sports, and the waters, fresh and salt, swarmed with fish. With the sky and temperature of Sicily, the breezes from prairie and Gulf were as health-giving as those that ripple the heather on Scotch moors. In all my wanderings, and they have been many and wide, I can not recall so fair, so bountiful, and so happy a land.
The upper or northern Teche waters the parishes of St. Landry, Lafayette, and St. Martin's—the Attakapas, home of the "Acadians." What the gentle, contented creole was to the restless, pushing American, that and more was the Acadian to the creole. In the middle of the past century, when the victories of Wolfe and Amherst deprived France of her Northern possessions, the inhabitants of Nouvelle Acadie, the present Nova Scotia, migrated to the genial clime of the Attakapas, where beneath the flag of the lilies they could preserve their allegiance, their traditions, and their faith. Isolated up to the time of the war, they spoke no language but their own patois; and, reading and writing not having come to them by nature, they were dependent for news on their curés and occasional peddlers, who tempted the women with chiffons and trinkets. The few slaves owned were humble members of the household, assisting in the cultivation of small patches of maize, sweet potatoes, and cotton, from which last the women manufactured the wonderful Attakapas cotonnade, the ordinary clothing of both sexes. Their little cabanes dotted the broad prairie in all directions, and it was pleasant to see the smoke curling from their chimneys, while herds of cattle and ponies grazed at will. Here, unchanged, was the French peasant of Fénelon and Bossuet, of Louis le Grand and his successor le Bien-Aimé. Tender and true were his traditions of la belle France, but of France before Voltaire and the encyclopædists, the Convention and the Jacobins—ere she had lost faith in all things, divine and human, save the bourgeoisie and avocats. Mounted on his pony, with lariat in hand, he herded his cattle, or shot and fished; but so gentle was his nature, that lariat and rifle seemed transformed into pipe and crook of shepherd. Light wines from the Médoc, native oranges, and home-made sweet cakes filled his largest conceptions of feasts; and violin and clarionet made high carnival in his heart.
On an occasion, passing the little hamlet of Grand Coteau, I stopped to get some food for man and horse. A pretty maiden of fifteen springs, whose parents were absent, welcomed me. Her lustrous eyes and long lashes might have excited the envy of "the dark-eyed girl of Cadiz." Finding her alone, I was about to retire and try my fortune in another house; but she insisted that she could prepare "monsieur un dîner dans un tour de main," and she did. Seated by the window, looking modestly on the road, while I was enjoying her repast, she sprang to her feet, clapped her hands joyously, and exclaimed: "V'là le gros Jean Baptiste qui passe sur son mulet avec deux bocals. Ah! nous aurons grand bal ce soir." It appeared that one jug of claret meant a dance, but two very high jinks indeed. As my hostess declined any remuneration for her trouble, I begged her to accept a pair of plain gold sleeve buttons, my only ornaments. Wonder, delight, and gratitude chased each other across the pleasant face, and the confiding little creature put up her rose-bud mouth. In an instant the homely room became as the bower of Titania, and I accepted the chaste salute with all the reverence of a subject for his Queen, then rode away with uncovered head so long as she remained in sight. Hospitable little maiden of Grand Coteau, may you never have graver fault to confess than the innocent caress you bestowed on the stranger!