Hon. D. W. Gooch,
Of Committee on Conduct of the War.
Headquarters Norfolk and Portsmouth,
Norfolk, Virginia, May 7, 1864.
Sir: At my own request having been relieved from duty as military governor of Louisiana, and ordered to report for duty to the commanding general of the army, I left New Orleans, on the evening of the 6th of April, as a passenger in the Olive Branch, a New Orleans and St. Louis passenger steamer not in the service of the government, but loaded with male and female passengers and cargo of private parties. The steamer was unarmed, and had no troops and no muskets for protection against guerillas when landing at wood yards and other places.
The boat stopped at Vicksburg, and I went ashore. When I returned to the boat as she was about leaving, I found that a detachment of a portion of the men of two batteries—one Ohio and one Missouri—belonging to the 17th army corps, with the horses, guns, caissons, wagons, tents, and baggage of the two batteries, had been put on board, with orders, as I afterwards learned on inquiring, to report to General Brayman, at Cairo.
The horses occupied all the available space, fore and aft, on the sides of the boilers and machinery, which were on deck. The guns, caissons, baggage wagons, tents, garrison and camp equipage, were piled up together on the bows, leaving only space for the gang plank.
The men had no small arms, so that when the boat landed, as happened in one instance at a wood yard where guerillas had just passed, the pickets thrown out to prevent surprise were necessarily unarmed.
As the boat was approaching, and before it was in sight of Fort Pillow, some females hailed it from the shore, and said the rebels had attacked Fort Pillow, and captured two boats on the river, and would take us if we went on.
The captain of the Olive Branch said they had probably taken the Mollie Able, which was due there about that time from St. Louis.
He turned his boat, saying he would go back to Memphis.
I objected to going back; stopped the boat below the next point; hailed another smaller steamer without passengers which I saw approaching, and ordered it alongside. I ordered the captain of this boat to cast off the coal barges he had in tow, and take me on board with a section of a battery to go to Fort Pillow.