Destruction and Reconstruction: / Personal Experiences of the Late War

by Richard Taylor

"Flag-ship Cricket, Alexandria, April 28, 1864.

"Sir: I have written you an account of the operations of the fleet in these waters, but take the liberty of writing to you confidentially the true state of affairs. I find myself blockaded by a fall of three feet of water, three feet four inches being the amount now on the falls. Seven feet being required to get over, no amount of lightening will accomplish the object. I have already written to you how the whole state of things has been changed by a too blind carelessness on the part of our military leader, and our retreat back to Alexandria from place to place has so demoralized General Banks's army that the troops have no confidence in anybody or anything. Our army is now all here, with the best general (Franklin) wounded and unfit for duty in the field. General Banks seems to hold no communication with any one, and it is impossible for me to say what he will do. I have no confidence in his promises, as he asserted in a letter, herein inclosed, that he had no intention of leaving Grand Ecore, when he had actually already made all his preparations to leave. The river is crowded with transports, and every gunboat I have is required to convoy them. I have to withdraw many light-draughts from other points on the Mississippi to supply demands here. In the mean time the enemy are splitting up into parties of two thousand, and bringing in the artillery (with which we have supplied them) to blockade points below here; and what will be the upshot of it all I can not foretell. I know that it will be disastrous in the extreme, for this is a country in which a retreating army is completely at the mercy of an enemy. Notwithstanding that the rebels are reported as coming in from Washita, with heavy artillery to plant on the hills opposite Alexandria, no movement is being made to occupy the position, and I am in momentary expectation of hearing the rebel guns open on the transports on the town side; or if they go down or come up the river, it will be at the risk of destruction. Our light-clads can do nothing against hill batteries. I am in momentary expectation of seeing this army retreat, when the result will be disastrous. Unless instructed by the Government, I do not think that General Banks will make the least effort to save the navy here. The following vessels are above the falls and command the right of the town: Mound City, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Carondelet, Chillicothe, Osage, Neosho, Ozark, Lexington, and Fort Hindman. At this moment the enemy have attacked our outposts, and driven in our indifferent cavalry, which came up numbering six thousand, and have brought nothing but calamity in their train. Our whole army is cooped up in this town, while a much inferior force is going rampant about the country, making preparations to assail our helpless transports, which, if caught filled with men, would be perfect slaughter-houses. Quick remedies are required, and I deem it my duty to lay the true state of affairs before you. If left here by the army, I will be obliged to destroy this fleet to prevent it falling into the enemy's hands. I can not conceive that the nation will permit such a sacrifice to be made, when men and money can prevent it. We have fought hard for the opening of the Mississippi, and have reduced the naval forces of the rebels in this quarter to two vessels. If we have to destroy what we have here, there will be material enough to build half a dozen iron-clads, and the Red River, which is now of no further dread to us, will require half the Mississippi squadron to watch it. I am apprehensive that the turrets of the monitors will defy any efforts we can make to destroy them. Our prestige will receive a shock from which it will be long in recovering; and if the calamities I dread should overtake us, the annals of this war will not present so dire a one as will have befallen us."

Thus Admiral Porter, who even understates the facts.

In vain had all this been pointed out to General Kirby Smith, when he came to me at Pleasant Hill in the night after the battle. Granted that he was alarmed for Shreveport, sacred to him and his huge staff as Benares, dwelling-place of many gods, to the Hindoo; yet, when he marched from that place on the 16th of April against Steele, the latter, already discomfited by Price's horse, was retreating, and, with less than a third of Banks's force at Grand Ecore, was then further from Shreveport than was Banks. To pursue a retreating foe, numbering six thousand men, he took over seven thousand infantry, and left me twelve hundred to operate against twenty odd thousand and a powerful fleet. From the evening of the 21st of April, when I returned to the front near Grand Ecore, to the 13th of May, the day on which Porter and Banks escaped from Alexandria, I kept him advised of the enemy's movements and condition. Couriers and staff officers were sent to implore him to return and reap the fruits of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, whose price had been paid in blood. Not a man was sent me; even the four-gun battery with Liddell on the north of the river was, without my knowledge, withdrawn toward Arkansas. From first to last, General Kirby Smith seemed determined to throw a protecting shield around the Federal army and fleet.

In all the ages since the establishment of the Assyrian monarchy no commander has possessed equal power to destroy a cause. Far away from the great centers of conflict in Virginia and Georgia, on a remote theatre, the opportunity of striking a blow decisive of the war was afforded. An army that included the strength of every garrison from Memphis to the Gulf had been routed, and, by the incompetency of its commander, was utterly demoralized and ripe for destruction. But this army was permitted to escape, and its 19th corps reached Chesapeake Bay in time to save Washington from General Early's attack, while the 13th, 16th, and 17th corps reënforced Sherman in Georgia. More than all, we lost Porter's fleet, which the falling river had delivered into our hands; for the protection of an army was necessary to its liberation, as without the army a dam at the falls could not have been constructed. With this fleet, or even a portion of it, we would have at once recovered possession of the Mississippi, from the Ohio to the sea, and undone all the work of the Federals since the winter of 1861. Instead of Sherman, Johnston would have been reënforced from west of the Mississippi, and thousands of absent men, with fresh hope, would have rejoined Lee. The Southern people might have been spared the humiliation of defeat, and the countless woes and wrongs inflicted on them by their conquerors.

It was for this that Green and Mouton and other gallant spirits fell! It was for this that the men of Missouri and Arkansas made a forced march to die at Pleasant Hill! It was for this that the divisions of Walker and Polignac had held every position intrusted to them, carried every position in their front, and displayed a constancy and valor worthy of the Guards at Inkermann or Lee's veterans in the Wilderness! For this, too, did the handful left, after our brethren had been taken from us, follow hard on the enemy, attack him constantly at any odds, beat off and sink his gunboats, close the Red River below him and shut up his army in Alexandria for fifteen days! Like "Sister Ann" from her watch tower, day after day we strained our eyes to see the dust of our approaching comrades arise from the north bank of the Red. Not a camp follower among us but knew that the arrival of our men from the North would give us the great prize in sight. Vain, indeed, were our hopes. The commander of the "Trans-Mississippi Department" had the power to destroy the last hope of the Confederate cause, and exercised it with all the success of Bazaine at Metz.

"The affairs of mice and men aft gang aglee," from sheer stupidity and pig-headed obstinacy. General Kirby Smith had publicly announced that Banks's army was too strong to be fought, and that the proper policy was either to defend the works protecting Shreveport, or retreat into Texas. People do not like to lose their reputations as prophets or sons of prophets. Subsequently, it was given out that General Kirby Smith had a wonderful plan for the destruction of the enemy, which I had disturbed by rashly beating his army at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill; but this plan, like Trochu's for the defense of Paris, was never disclosed—undoubtedly, because c'était le secret de Polichinelle.

After many days of energetic labor, the enemy on the 13th of May succeeded in passing his fleet over the falls at Alexandria, evacuated the place, and retreated down the river, the army, on the south bank, keeping pace with the fleet. Admiral Porter, in his report to the Secretary of the Navy, gives a graphic account of the passage of the falls, and under date of May 19th, says: "In my report in relation to the release of the gunboats from their unpleasant position above the falls, I did not think it prudent to mention that I was obliged to destroy eleven thirty-two-pounders, not having time to haul them from above the falls to Alexandria, the army having moved and drawn in all their pickets. For the same reason I also omitted to mention that I was obliged to take off the iron from the sides of the Pook gunboats and from the Ozark, to enable them to get over."

To harass the retreat, the horse and artillery, on the river above Alexandria, were directed to press the enemy's rear, and the remaining horse and Polignac's infantry to intercept his route at Avoyelles Prairie. During the 14th, 15th, and 16th he was constantly attacked in front, rear, and right flank; and on the 17th Wharton charged his rear near Mansura, capturing many prisoners, while Colonel Yager, with two regiments of horse, cut in on the wagon train at Yellow Bayou, killed and drove off the guard, and destroyed much property. Meanwhile Liddell, on the north bank of the Red, followed the fleet and kept up a constant fire on the transports. But for the unfortunate withdrawal of his battery, before alluded to, he could have destroyed many of these vessels. On the 18th we attacked the enemy at Yellow Bayou, near Simmsport, and a severe engagement ensued, lasting until night. We held the field, on which the enemy left his dead, but our loss was heavy, four hundred and fifty-two in killed and wounded; among the former, Colonel Stone, commanding Polignac's old brigade. Polignac, in charge of division, was conspicuous in this action. The following day, May 19, 1864, the enemy crossed the Atchafalaya and was beyond our reach. Here, at the place where it had opened more than two months before, the campaign closed.

The army I had the honor to command in this campaign numbered, at its greatest strength, about thirteen thousand of all arms, including Liddell's force on the north bank of Red River; but immediately after the battle of Pleasant Hill it was reduced to fifty-two hundred by the withdrawal of Walker's and Churchill's divisions. Many of the troops marched quite four hundred miles, and from the 5th of April to the 18th of May not a day passed without some engagement with the enemy, either on land or river. Our total loss in killed, wounded, and missing was three thousand nine hundred and seventy-six; that of the enemy, nearly three times this number.