E-text prepared by Ed Ferris
Transcriber's note:
Footnotes in the main text are at the end of each chapter.
19th-century spellings, in particular the use of double-l, have been retained.
Chapter XI: "flag-ships" plural in original. Chapter XII et seq.: "St. Martinsville" corrected to "St. Martinville" Chapter XXI: "Brownville", Texas, corrected to "Brownsville". Chapter XXXIV: the Grant in temporary command of Getty's division is Brigadier-General Lewis Grant, not U. S. Grant as in the rest of the book.
The following changes have been made in the Appendix:
Military ranks have been abbreviated.
Footnotes have been re-numbered and headings repeated by section instead of page. The footnotes were all italics.
The box rules and period leaders have been removed from the Losses in Battle tables and the headings "Officers" and "Enlisted men", set vertically in the original, have been abbreviated "O" and "E". Text has been extended across columns for legibility.
HISTORY OF THE NINETEENTH ARMY CORPS
by
RICHARD B. IRWIN
Formerly Lieutenant-Colonel U. S. Volunteers,
Assistant Adjutant-General of the Corps and of the
Department of the Gulf
G. P. Putnam's Sons New York 27 West Twenty-Third Street London 24 Bedford Street, Strand The Knickerbocker Press 1892
Copyright, 1892
by
G. P. Putnam's Sons
Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
G. P. Putnam's Sons
IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF THEIR LATE COMMANDER MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM HEMSLEY EMORY AND OF THE MANY COMRADES WHO LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES IN THE SERVICE OF THEIR COUNTRY THIS HISTORY IS INSCRIBED BY THE SURVIVING MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY OF THE NINETEENTH ARMY CORPS
CONTENTS.
Chapter. Introductory I. New Orleans II. The First Attempt on Vicksburg III. Baton Rouge IV. La Fourche V. Banks in Command VI. Organizing the Corps VII. More Ways than One VIII. Farragut Passes Port Hudson IX. The Teche X. Bisland XI. Irish Bend XII. Opelousas XIII. Banks and Grant XIV. Alexandria XV. Back to Port Hudson XVI. The Twenty-Seventh of May XVII. The Fourteenth of June XVIII. Unvexed to the Sea XIX. Harrowing La Fourche XX. In Summer Quarters XXI. A Foothold in Texas XXII. Winter Quarters XXIII. The Red River XXIV. Sabine Cross-Roads XXV. Pleasant Hill XXVI. Grand Ecore XXVII. The Crossing of Cane River XXVIII. The Dam XXIX. Last Days in Louisiana XXX. On the Potomac XXXI. In the Shenandoah XXXII. The Opequon XXXIII. Fisher's Hill XXXIV. Cedar Creek XXXV. Victory and Home
Appendix:
Rosters
Losses in Battle
Officers Killed or Mortally Wounded
Port Hudson Forlorn Hope
Articles of Capitulation
Note on Early's Strength
Index
MAPS AND PLANS.
Map of Louisiana. Sheet I.
" " " " II.
" " " " III.
Battle Plan of Bisland, April 12-13, 1863
Battle Plan of Irish Bend, April 14, 1863
Battle Plan of Port Hudson
Map of Louisiana. Sheet IV.
Battle Plan of Sabine Cross-Roads, April 8, 1864. From General
Emory's Map
Battle Plan of Pleasant Hill, April 9, 1864. From General Emory's
Map
Battle Plan of Cane River Crossing or Monett's Bluff, April 23,
1864. From General Emory's Map
The Red River Dam
Map of Shenandoah Valley Campaign. From Major W. F. Tiemann's
"History of the 159th New York"
Battle Plan of Opequon, September 19, 1864. From the Official Map,
1873
Battle Plan of Fisher's Hill, September 22, 1864. From the Official
Map
Battle Plan of Cedar Creek, October 19, 1864. From the Official
Map of 1873
INTRODUCTORY
The history of the Nineteenth Army Corps, like that of by far the greater number of the organizations of like character, in which were arrayed the great armies of volunteers that took up arms to maintain the Union, is properly the history of all the troops that at any time belonged to the corps or served within its geographical limits.
To be complete, then, the narrative my comrades have asked me to write must go back to the earliest service of these troops, at a period before the corps itself was formally established, and must continue on past the time when the earlier territorial organization became merged or lost and the main body of the corps was sent into the Shenandoah, down to the peace, and the final muster of the last regiment.
If hitherto less known and thus less considered than the proud record of those great corps of the Armies of the Potomac, of the Tennessee, and of the Cumberland, on whom in the fortune of war fell the heat and burthen of so many pitched battles, whose colors bear the names of so many decisive victories, yet the story of the Nineteenth Army Corps is one whose simple facts suffice for all that need to told or claimed of valor, of achievement, of sacrifice, or of patient endurance. I shall, therefore, attempt neither eulogy nor apology, nor shall I feel called upon to undertake to criticise the actions or the failures of the living or the dead, save where such criticism may prove to be an essential part of the narrative. From the brows of other soldiers, no one of us could ever wish to pluck the wreaths so dearly won, so honorably worn; yet, since the laurel grows wild on every hill-side in this favored land, we may without trespass be permitted to gather a single spray or two to decorate the sacred places where beneath the cypresses and the magnolias of the lowlands of Louisiana, or under the green turf among the mountains of Virginia, reposes all that was mortal of so many thousands of our brave and beloved comrades.
THE NINETEENTH ARMY CORPS.
CHAPTER I. NEW ORLEANS.
The opening of the Mississippi and the capture of New Orleans formed important parts of the first comprehensive plan of campaign, conceived and proposed by Lieutenant-General Scott soon after the outbreak of the war. When McClellan was called to Washington to command the Army of the Potomac, one of his earliest communications to the President set forth in general terms his plans for the suppression of the Rebellion. Of these plans, also, the capture of New Orleans formed an integral and important part. Both Scott and McClellan contemplated a movement down the river by a strong column. However nothing had been done by either toward carrying out this project, when, in September, 1861, the Navy Department took up the idea of an attack on New Orleans from the sea.
At the time of the secession of Louisiana, New Orleans was not only the first city in wealth, population, and importance in the seceded States, but the sixth in all the Union. With a population of nearly 170,000 souls, she carried on an export trade larger than that of any other port in the country, and enjoyed a commerce in magnitude and profit second only to that of New York. The year just ended had witnessed the production of the largest crop of cotton ever grown in America, fully two fifths of which passed through the presses and paid toll to the factors of New Orleans. The receipts of cotton at this port for the year 1860-1861 were but little less than 2,000,000 bales, valued at nearly $100,000,000. Of sugar, mainly the production of the State of Louisiana, the receipts considerably exceeded 250,000 tons, valued at more than $25,000,000; the total receipts of products of all kinds amounted to nearly $200,000,000. The exports were valued at nearly $110,000,000; the imports at nearly $23,000,000. It is doubtful if any other crop in any part of the world then paid profits at once so large and so uniform to all persons interested as the cotton and sugar of Louisiana. If cotton were not exactly king, as it was in those days the fashion to assert, there could be no doubt that cotton was a banker, and a generous banker for New Orleans. The factors of Carondelet Street grew rich upon the great profits that the planters of the "coast," as the shores of the river are called, paid them, almost without feeling it, while the planters came, nearly every winter, to New Orleans to pass the season and to spend, in a round of pleasure, at least a portion of the net proceeds of the account sales. In the transport of these products nearly two thousand sailing ships and steamers were engaged, and in the town itself or its suburb of Algiers, on the opposite bank, were to be found all the appliances and facilities necessary for the conduct of so extensive a commerce. These, especially the work-shops and factories, and the innumerable river and bayou steamers that thronged the levee, were destined to prove of the greatest military value, at first to the Confederacy, and later to the forces of the Union. For food and fuel, however, New Orleans was largely dependent upon the North and West. Finally, beside her importance as the guardian of the gates of the Mississippi, New Orleans had a direct military value as the basis of any operations destined for the control or defence of the Mississippi River.
About the middle of November the plan took definite shape, and on the 23d of December Farragut received preparatory orders to take command of the West Gulf Squadron and the naval portion of the expedition destined for the reduction of New Orleans. Farragut received his final orders on the 20th of January, 1862, and immediately afterward hoisted his flag on the sloop-of-war Hartford.
The land portion of the expedition was placed under the command of Major-General Benjamin F. Butler. On the 10th and 12th of September, 1861, Butler had been authorized by the War Department to raise, organize, arm, uniform, and equip, in the New England States, such troops as he might judge fit for the purpose, to make an expedition along the eastern shore of Maryland and Virginia to Cape Charles; but early in November, before Butler's forces were quite ready, these objects were accomplished by a brigade under Lockwood, sent from Baltimore by Dix. On the 23d of November the advance of Butler's expedition sailed from Portland, Maine, for Ship Island, in the steamer Constitution, and on the 2d of December, in reporting the sailing, Butler submitted to the War Department his plan for invading the coast of Texas and the ultimate capture of New Orleans.
On the 24th of January, 1862, McClellan, then commanding all the armies of the United States, was called on by the Secretary of War to report whether the expedition proposed by General Butler should be prosecuted, abandoned, or modified, and in what manner. McClellan at once urged that the expedition be suspended. In his opinion, "not less than 30,000 men, and it is believed 50,000, would be required to insure success against New Orleans in a blow to be struck from the Gulf." This suggestion did not meet the approval of the government, now fully determined on the enterprise.
Brigadier-General J. G. Barnard, the chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac, an engineer also of more than common ability, energy, and experience, was now called into consultation. On the 28th of January, 1862, he submitted to the Navy Department a memorandum describing fully the defences of Forts Jackson and St. Philip and outlining a plan for a combined attempt on these works by the army and navy. The military force required for the purpose he estimated at 20,000 men.
Meanwhile the work of transferring Butler's forces by sea to Ship Island had been going on with vigor. He had raised thirteen regiments of infantry, ten batteries of light artillery, and three troops of cavalry, numbering in all about 13,600 men. To these were now added from the garrison of Baltimore three regiments, the 21st Indiana, 4th Wisconsin, and 6th Michigan, and the 2d Massachusetts battery, thus increasing his force to 14,400 infantry, 275 cavalry, and 580 artillerists; in all, 15,255 officers and men.
On the 23d of February, 1862, Butler received his final orders: "The object of your expedition," said McClellan, "is one of vital importance—the capture of New Orleans. The route selected is up the Mississippi River, and the first obstacle to be encountered (perhaps the only one) is in the resistance offered by Forts St. Philip and Jackson. It is expected that the navy can reduce these works. Should the navy fail to reduce the works, you will land your forces and siege-train, and endeavor to breach the works, silence their guns, and carry them by assault.
"The next resistance will be near the English bend, where there are some earthen batteries. Here it may be necessary for you to land your troops to co-operate with the naval attack, although it is more than probable that the navy, unassisted, can accomplish the result. If these works are taken, the city of New Orleans necessarily falls."
After obtaining possession of New Orleans, the instructions went on to say, Butler was to reduce all the works guarding the approaches, to join with the navy in occupying Baton Rouge, and then to endeavor to open communication with the northern column by the Mississippi, always bearing in mind the necessity of occupying Jackson, as soon as this could safely be done. Mobile was to follow, then Pensacola and Galveston. By the time New Orleans should have fallen the government would probably reinforce his army sufficiently to accomplish all these objects.
On the same day a new military department was created called the Department of the Gulf, and Butler was assigned to the command. Its limits were to comprise all the coast of the Gulf of Mexico west of Pensacola harbor, and so much of the Gulf States as might be occupied by Butler's forces. Since the middle of October he had commanded the expeditionary forces, under the name of the Department of New England.
Arriving at Ship Island on the 20th of March, he formally assumed
the command of the Department of the Gulf, announcing Major George
C. Strong as Assistant Adjutant-General and Chief of Staff,
Lieutenant Godfrey Weitzel as Chief Engineer, and Surgeon Thomas
Hewson Bache as Medical Director. To these were afterward added
Colonel John Wilson Shaffer as Chief Quartermaster, Colonel John
W. Turner as Chief Commissary, and Captain George A. Kensel as
Acting Assistant Inspector-General and Chief of Artillery.
By the end of March all the troops destined for the expedition had landed at Ship Island, with the exception of the 13th Connecticut, 15th Maine, 7th and 8th Vermont regiments, 1st Vermont and 2d Massachusetts batteries. Within the next fortnight all these troops joined the force except the 2d Massachusetts battery, which being detained more than seven weeks at Fortress Monroe, and being nearly five weeks at sea, did not reach New Orleans until the 21st of May. Meanwhile, of the six Maine batteries, all except the 1st had been diverted to other fields of service.
While awaiting at Ship Island the completion of the preparations of the navy for the final attempt on the river forts, Butler proceeded to organize his command and to discipline and drill the troops composing it. Many of these were entirely without instruction in any of the details of service. On the 22d of March, he divided his forces into three brigades of five or six regiments each, attaching to each brigade one or more batteries of artillery and a troop of cavalry. These brigades were commanded by Brigadier-Generals John W. Phelps and Thomas Williams, and Colonel George F. Shepley of the 12th Maine. When finally assembled the whole force reported about 13,500 officers and men for duty, and from that moment its strength was destined to undergo a steady diminution by the natural attrition of service, augmented, in this case, by climatic influences.
The fleet under Farragut consisted of seventeen vessels, mounting 154 guns. Four were screw-sloops, one a side-wheel steamer, three screw corvettes, and nine screw gunboats. Each of the gunboats carried one 11-inch smooth-bore gun, and one 30-pounder rifle; but neither of these could be used to fire at an enemy directly ahead, and, in the operations awaiting the fleet, it is within bounds to say that not more than one gun in four could be brought to bear at any given moment. With this fleet were twenty mortar-boats, under Porter, each carrying one 13-inch mortar, and six gunboats, assigned for the service of the mortar-boats and armed like the gunboats of the river fleet. Farragut, with the Hartford, had reached Ship Island on the 20th of February; the rest of the vessels assigned to his fleet soon followed. Then entering the delta, from that time he conducted the blockade of the river from the head of the passes.
The Confederacy was now being so closely pressed in every quarter as to make it impossible, with the forces at its command, to defend effectively and at the same moment every point menaced by the troops and fleets of the Union. Thus the force that might otherwise have been employed in defending New Orleans was, under the pressure of the emergency, so heavily drawn from to strengthen the army at Corinth, then engaged in resisting the southward advance of the combined armies of the Union under Halleck, as to leave New Orleans, and indeed all Louisiana, at the mercy of any enemy that should succeed in passing the river forts. At this time the entire land-force, under Major-General Mansfield Lovell, hardly exceeded 5,000 men. Of these, 1,100 occupied Forts Jackson and St. Philip, under the command of General Duncan; 1,200 held the Chalmette line, under General Martin L. Smith, and about 3,000, chiefly new levies, badly armed, were in New Orleans. Besides this small land-force, the floating defences consisted of four improvised vessels of the Confederate navy, two belonging to the State of Louisiana, and six others of what was called the Montgomery fleet. These were boats specially constructed for the defence of the river, but most of them had been sent up the river to Memphis to hold off Foote and Davis. The twelve vessels carried in all thirty-eight guns. Each of the boats of the river-fleet defence had its bows shod with iron and its engines protected with cotton. This was also the case with the two sea-going steamers belonging to the State. Of this flotilla the most powerful was the iron-clad Louisiana, whose armor was found strong enough to turn an 11-inch shell at short range, and, as her armament consisted of two 7-inch rifles, three 9-inch shell guns, four 18-inch shell guns, and seven 6-inch rifles, she might have proved a formidable foe had her engines been equal to their work.
At the Plaquemine Bend, twenty miles above the head of the passes and ninety below New Orleans, the engineers of the United States had constructed two permanent fortifications, designed to defend the entrance of the river against the foreign enemies of the Union. These formidable works had now to be passed or taken before New Orleans could be occupied. Fort St. Philip, on the left or north bank, was a work of brick and earth, flanked on either hand by a water battery. In the main work were mounted, in barbette, four 8-inch columbiads and one 24-pounder gun; the upper water battery carried sixteen 24-pounders, the lower one one 8-inch columbiad, one 7-inch rifle, six 42-pounders, nine 32-pounders, and four 24-pounders. Besides these, there were seven mortars, one of 13-inch calibre, five of 10-inch, and one of 8-inch. Forty-two of the guns could be brought to bear upon the fleet ascending the river.
Fort Jackson, on the south or left bank of the river, was a casemated pentagon of brick, mounting in the casemates fourteen 24-pounder guns, and ten 24-pounder howitzers, and in barbette in the upper tier two 10-inch columbiads, three 8-inch columbiads, one 7-inch rifle, six 42-pounders, fifteen 32-pounders, and eleven 24-pounders, in all sixty-two guns. The water battery below the main work was armed with one 10-inch columbiad, two 8-inch columbiads, and two rifled 32-pounders. Fifty of these pieces were available against the fleet, but of the whole armament of one hundred and nine guns, fifty-six were old 24-pounder smooth-bores.
The passage of the forts had been obstructed by a raft or chain anchored between them. The forts once overcome, no other defence remained to be encountered until English Turn was reached, where earthworks had been thrown up on both banks. Here at Chalmette, on the left bank, it was that, in 1815, Jackson, with his handful of raw levies, so signally defeated Wellington's veterans of the Peninsula, under the leadership of the fearless Pakenham.
Fort St. Philip stands about 700 yards higher up the river than Fort Jackson; the river at this point is about 800 yards wide, and the distance between the nearest salients of the main works is about 1,000 yards. A vessel attempting to run the gauntlet of the batteries would be under fire while passing over a distance of three and a half miles. The river was now high, and the banks, everywhere below the river level, and only protected from inundation by the levees, were overflowed. There was no standing room for an investing army; the lower guns were under water, and in the very forts the platforms were awash.
When the fleet was ready, Butler embarked eight regiments and three batteries under Phelps and Williams on transports, and, going to the head of the passes, held his troops in readiness to co-operate with the navy. On the 16th of April the fleet took up its position. The mortar-boats, or "bombers," as they began to be called, were anchored between 3,000 and 4,000 yards below Fort Jackson, upon which the attack was mainly to be directed. From the view of those in the fort, the boats that lay under the right bank were covered by trees. Those on the opposite side of the river were screened, after a fashion, by covering their hulls with reeds and willows, cut for the purpose.
On the 18th of April the bombardment began. It soon became evident that success was not to be attained in this way, and Farragut determined upon passing the forts with his fleet. Should he fail in reducing them by this movement, Butler was to land in the rear of Fort St. Philip, near Quarantine, and carry the works by storm. Accordingly, he remained with his transports below the forts, and waited for the hour. Shepley occupied Ship Island with the rest of the force.
Early in March the raft, formed of great cypress trees, forty feet long and fifty inches through, laid lengthwise in the river about three feet apart, anchored by heavy chains and strengthened by massive cross-timbers, had been partly carried away by the flood. To make good the damage, a number of large schooners had then been anchored in the gap. On the morning of the 21st of April this formidable obstruction was cleverly and in a most gallant manner broken through by the fleet.
On the night of the 23d of April, Farragut moved to the attack. His fleet, organized in three divisions of eight, three, and six vessels respectively, was formed in line ahead. The first division was led by Captain Bailey, in the Cayuga, followed by the Pensacola, Mississippi, Oneida, Varuna, Katahdin, Kineo, and Wissahickon; the second division followed, composed of Farragut's flag-ship, the Hartford, Commander Richard Wainwright, the Brooklyn, and the Richmond; while the third division, forming the rear of the column, was led by Captain Bell, in the Sciota, followed by the Iroquois, Kennebec, Pinola, Itasca, and Winona.
At half-past two o'clock on the morning of the 24th of April the whole fleet was under way; a quarter of an hour later the batteries of Forts Jackson and St. Philip opened simultaneously upon the Cayuga. It was some time before the navy could reply, but soon every gun was in action. Beset by perils on every hand, the fleet pressed steadily up the river. The Confederate boats were destroyed, the fire-rafts were overcome, the gunners of the forts were driven from their guns, and when the sun rose Farragut was above the forts with the whole of his fleet, except the Itasca, Winona, and Kennebec, which put back disabled, and the Varuna, sunk by the Confederate gunboats. The next afternoon, having made short work of Chalmette, Farragut anchored off New Orleans, and held the town at his mercy.
The casualties were 37 killed and 147 wounded, in all 184. The
Confederate loss was 50, 11 killed and 39 wounded. The Louisiana,
McCrea, and Defiance, sole survivors of the Confederate fleet,
escaping comparatively unhurt, took refuge under the walls of Fort
St. Philip.
Leaving Phelps, with the 30th Massachusetts and 12th Connecticut and Manning's 4th Massachusetts battery, at the head of the passes, in order to be prepared to occupy the works immediately on their surrender, Butler hastened with the rest of his force to Sable Island in the rear of Fort St. Philip. When the transports came to anchor on the morning of the 26th, the Confederate flags on Forts St. Philip and Jackson were plainly visible to the men on board, while these, in their turn, were seen from the forts. Here the troops received the news of Farragut's arrival at New Orleans. On the morning of the 28th they saw the Confederate ram Louisiana blown up while floating past the forts, and on the same day Jones landed with the 26th Massachusetts and Paine with two companies of the 4th Wisconsin and a detachment of the 21st Indiana, to work their way through a small canal to Quarantine, six miles above Fort St. Philip, for the purpose of seizing the narrow strip by which the garrison must escape, if at all. This was only accomplished by a long and tiresome transport in boats, and finally by wading. However, at half-past two on the afternoon of the 28th April, the Confederate flags over Forts Jackson and St. Philip were observed to disappear; the national ensign floated in their stead; and soon it became known that Duncan had surrendered to Porter.
Porter immediately took possession and held it until Phelps came up the river to relieve him. Then Major Whittemore, of the 30th Massachusetts, with about two hundred men of his regiment, landed and took command at Fort St. Philip, while Manning occupied Fort Jackson. Almost simultaneously the frigate Mississippi came down the river, bringing Jones with the news that his regiment was at Quarantine, holding both banks of the river, and thus effectually sealing the last avenue of escape; for at this time the levee formed the only pathway. On the 29th Phelps put Deming in command of Fort Jackson, intending to leave his regiment, the 12th Connecticut, in garrison there, and to place Dudley, with the 30th Massachusetts, at Fort St. Philip; but before this arrangement could be carried out, orders came from Butler, designating the 26th Massachusetts as the garrison of the two forts, with Jones in command. Phelps, with his force, was directed to New Orleans.
On the 1st of May Butler landed at New Orleans and took military possession of the city. Simultaneously, at five o'clock in the afternoon, the 31st Massachusetts with a section of Everett's 6th Massachusetts battery, and six companies of the 4th Wisconsin, under Paine, disembarked and marched up the broad levee to the familiar airs that announced the joint coming of "Yankee Doodle" and of "Picayune Butler."
The outlying defences on both banks of the river and on the lakes were abandoned by the Confederates without a struggle. Forts Pike and Wood, on Lake Pontchartrain, were garrisoned by detachments from the 7th Vermont and 8th New Hampshire regiments. The 21st Indiana landed at Algiers, and marching to Brashear, eighty miles distant on Berwick Bay, took possession of the New Orleans and Opelousas railway. New Orleans itself was occupied by the 30th and 31st Massachusetts, the 4th Wisconsin and 6th Michigan, 9th and 12th Connecticut, 4th and 6th Massachusetts batteries, 2d Vermont battery, and Troops A and B of the Massachusetts cavalry. At Farragut's approach Lovell, seeing that further resistance was useless, abandoned New Orleans to its fate and withdrew to Camp Moore, distant seventy-eight miles, on the line of the Jackson railway.
CHAPTER II. THE FIRST ATTEMPT ON VICKSBURG.
With the capture of New Orleans the first and vital object of the expedition had been accomplished. The occupation of Baton Rouge by a combined land and naval force was the next point indicated in McClellan's orders to Butler. Then he was to endeavor to open communication with the northern column coming down the Mississippi. McClellan was no longer General-in-chief; but this part of his plan represented the settled views of the government.
On the 2d of May, therefore, Farragut sent Craven with the Brooklyn and six other vessels of the fleet up the river. On the 8th, as early as the river transports could be secured, Butler sent Williams with the 4th Wisconsin and the 6th Michigan regiments, and two sections of Everett's 6th Massachusetts battery, to follow and accompany the fleet. The next day Williams landed his force at Bonnet Carré, on the east bank of the river, about thirty-five miles above the town. After wading about five miles through a swamp, where the water and mud were about three feet deep, the troops halted at night at Frenier, a station of the Jackson railway, situated on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, about ten miles above Kenner. A detachment of the 4th Wisconsin, under Major Boardman, was sent to Pass Manchac. The Confederates made a slight but ineffective resistance with artillery, resulting in trivial losses on either side. The bridges at Pass Manchac and Frenier being then destroyed, on the following morning, the 10th, the troops marched back the weary ten miles along the uneven trestle-work of the railway from Frenier to Kenner and there took transport. After their long confinement on shipboard, with scant rations, without exercise or even freedom of movement, the excessive heat of the day caused the troops to suffer severely. The embarkation completed, the transports, under convoy of the navy, set out for Baton Rouge. There on the morning of the 12th of May the troops landed, the capitol was occupied by the 4th Wisconsin, and the national colors were hoisted over the building. The troops then re-embarked for Vicksburg.
Natchez surrendered on the 12th of May to Commander S. Phillips Lee, of the Oneida, the advance of Farragut's fleet. On the 18th of May the Oneida and her consorts arrived off Vicksburg, and the same day Williams and Lee summoned "the authorities" to surrender the town and "its defences to the lawful authority of the United States." To this Brigadier-General Martin L. Smith, commander of the defences, promptly replied: "Having been ordered here to hold these defences, my intention is to do so as long as it is in my power."
On the 19th the transports stopped for wood at Warrenton, about ten miles below Vicksburg, and here a detachment of the 4th Wisconsin, sent to guard the working party, became involved in a skirmish with the Confederates, in which Sergeant-Major N. H. Chittenden and Private C. E. Perry, of A Company, suffered the first wounds received in battle by the troops of the United States in the Department of the Gulf. The Confederates were easily repulsed, with small loss.
Almost at the instant when Farragut was decided to run the gauntlet of the forts, Beauregard had begun to fortify Vicksburg. Up to this time he had trusted the defence of the river above New Orleans to Fort Pillow, Helena, and Memphis.
When Smith took command at Vicksburg on the 12th of May, in accordance with the orders of Lovell, the department commander, three of the ten batteries laid out for the defence of the position had been nearly completed and a fourth had been begun. These batteries were intended for forty-eight guns from field rifles to 10-inch columbiads. The garrison was to be 3,000 strong, but at this time the only troops present were parts of two Louisiana regiments. When the fleet arrived, on the 18th, six of the ten batteries had been completed, and two days later twenty-three heavy guns were in place and the defenders numbered more than 2,600.
The guns of the navy could not be elevated sufficiently for their projectiles to reach the Confederate batteries on the bluff, and the entire land-force, under Williams, was less than 1,100 effectives. Even had it been possible by a sudden attack to surprise and overcome the garrison and seize the bluffs, the whole available force of the Department of the Gulf would have been insufficient to hold the position for a week, as things then stood.
The truth is that the northern column with which, following their orders, Butler and Farragut were now trying to co-operate had ceased to exist; Jackson meant Beauregard's rear; and, as for any co-operation between Halleck and Williams, Beauregard stood solidly between them. On the 17th of April, the day before Porter's mortars first opened upon Forts Jackson and St. Philip, the whole land force of this northern column, under Pope, at that moment preparing for the attack on Fort Pillow, had been withdrawn by imperative orders from Halleck, and, on the very evening before the attack on Fort Pillow was to have been made, had gone to swell the great army assembled under Halleck at Corinth; but as yet neither Butler nor Farragut knew anything of all this. Save by the tedious roundabout of Washington, New York, the Atlantic, and the Gulf, there was at this time no regular or trustworthy means of communication between the forces descending the Mississippi and those that had just achieved the conquest of New Orleans and were now ascending the river to co-operate with the northern column. Thus it was that a single word, daubed in a rude scrawl upon the walls of the custom-house, meeting the eyes of Paine's men after they had made a way into the building with their axes, gave to Butler the first intelligence of the desperate battle of the 6th and 7th of April, on which the fate of the whole Union campaign in the West had been staked, if not imperilled, and which in its result was destined to change materially the whole course of operations in the Gulf Department. That word was Shiloh.
By the 26th of May the Oneida had been joined by the rest of the fleet, under the personal command of the restless and energetic flag-officer. On the afternoon of this day the fleet opened fire. The Confederates replied sparingly, as much to economize their ammunition and to keep the men fresh, as to avoid giving the Union commanders information regarding the range and effect of their fire.
The river was now falling. The Hartford in coming up had already grounded hard, and so remained helpless for fifty hours, and had only been got off by incredible exertions. Provisions of all kinds were running very low. On the 25th of May, after a thorough reconnoissance, Farragut and Williams decided to give up the attempt on Vicksburg as evidently impracticable. Farragut left Palmer with the Iroquois and six gunboats to blockade the river and to amuse the garrison at Vicksburg by an occasional bombardment in order to prevent Smith from sending reinforcements to Corinth.
While Williams was descending the river on the 26th, the transports were fired into by the Confederate battery on the bluff at Grand Gulf, sixty miles below Vicksburg. About sixty rounds were fired in all, many of which passed completely through the transport Laurel Hill, bearing the 4th Wisconsin, part of the 6th Michigan, and the 6th Massachusetts battery. One private of the 6th Michigan was killed and Captain Chauncey J. Bassett, of the same regiment, wounded. The Ceres, bearing the remainder of the 6th Michigan and the 6th Massachusetts battery, was following the Laurel Hill and was similarly treated. After a stern chase of about twenty miles, the convoy was overhauled, and the gunboat Kineo, returning, shelled the town and caused the withdrawal of the battery. During the evening Williams sent four companies of the 4th Wisconsin, under Major Boardman, to overtake the enemy's battery and break up the camp, about one mile and a half in the rear of the town. Boardman came upon the Confederates as they were retiring, and shots were exchanged. The casualties were few, but Lieutenant George DeKay, a gallant and attractive young officer, serving as aide-de-camp to General Williams, received a mortal wound.
On the 29th the troops under Williams once more landed and took post at Baton Rouge. During their absence of seventeen days, the Confederates had improved the opportunity to remove much valuable property that had been found stored in the arsenal on the occasion of the first landing of the Union forces.
On his return to New Orleans Farragut received pressing orders from the Navy Department to take Vicksburg. He therefore returned with his fleet, reinforced by a detachment of the mortar flotilla, and Butler once more despatched Williams, this time with an increased force, to co-operate. Williams left Baton Rouge on the morning of the 20th of June with a force composed of the 30th Massachusetts, 9th Connecticut, 7th Vermont, and 4th Wisconsin regiments, Nims's 2d Massachusetts battery and two sections of Everett's 6th Massachusetts battery. This time a garrison was left to hold Baton Rouge, consisting of the 21st Indiana and 6th Michigan regiments, the remaining section of Everett's battery and Magee's Troop C of the Massachusetts cavalry battalion. On the 22d of June the transports arrived off Ellis's Cliffs, twelve miles below Natchez, where Williams found three gunboats waiting to convoy him past the high ground. Here he landed a detachment consisting of the 30th Massachusetts regiment and two guns of Nims's battery to turn the supposed position of two field-pieces said to have been planted by the Confederates on the bluffs, while a second force, composed of the 4th Wisconsin, 9th Connecticut, the other two sections of Nims's battery, and the four guns of Everett's, marched directly forward up the cliff road. An abandoned caisson or limber was all that the troops found.
On the 24th, anticipating more serious resistance from the guns said to be in position on the bluffs at Grand Gulf, Williams entered Bayou Pierre with his whole force in the early morning, intending to strike the crossing, about seventeen miles up the stream, of the railway from Port Gibson to Grand Gulf, and thence to move directly on the rear of the town. Half-way up the bayou the boats were stopped by obstructions and had to back down again. Toward noon the troops landed and marched on Grand Gulf in two detachments, one under Paine, consisting of the 4th Wisconsin and 9th Connecticut regiments and a section of Nims's battery; the other, under Dudley, embracing the remainder of the force. Paine had a short skirmish with the enemy near Grand Gulf, and captured eight prisoners, but their camp, a small one, was found abandoned. The same evening the troops re-embarked, and on the 25th arrived before Vicksburg.
The orders from Butler, under which Williams was now acting, required him to take or burn Vicksburg at all hazards. Here, too, we catch the first glimpse of the famous canal upon which so much labor was to be expended during the next year with so little result. "You will send up a regiment or two at once," Butler said, "and cut off the neck of land beyond Vicksburg by means of a trench, making a gap about four feet deep and five feet wide."
To accomplish this purpose Williams had with him four regiments and ten guns, making an effective force in all less than three thousand, rapidly diminished by hard work, close quarters, meagre rations, and a bad climate nearly at its worst.
On the 24th of June the Monarch, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred W. Ellet, arrived in the reach above Vicksburg. This was one of the nondescript fleet of rams, planned, built, equipped, and manned, under the orders of the War Department, by Ellet's elder brother, Colonel Charles Ellet, Jr., but now acting under the orders of the Commander of the Mississippi fleet. Ellet promptly sent a party of four volunteers, led by his young nephew, Medical Cadet Charles R. Ellet, to communicate with Farragut across the narrow neck of land opposite Vicksburg. This was the first direct communication between the northern and southern columns. By it Farragut learned of the abandonment of Fort Pillow by the Confederates on the 4th of June, and the capture of Memphis on the 6th, after a hard naval fight, in which nearly the whole Confederate fleet was taken or destroyed. There Charles Ellet was mortally wounded. When the Monarch party went back to their vessel, they bore with them a letter from Farragut, the contents of which being promptly made known by Ellet to Davis, brought that officer, with his fleet, at once to Vicksburg. On the following day, June 25th, a detachment of the 4th Wisconsin, sent up the river overland by Colonel Paine, succeeded in establishing a second communication with the Monarch, believing it to be the first.
Farragut's fleet, now anchored below Vicksburg, comprised the flagship Hartford, the sloops-of-war Brooklyn and Richmond, the corvettes Iroquois and Oneida, and six gunboats. Porter had joined with the Octorara, Miami, six other steamers, and seventeen of the mortar schooners. The orders of the government were peremptory that the Mississippi should be cleared. The Confederates held the river by a single thread. The fall of Memphis and the ruin of the famous river-defence fleet left between St. Louis and the Gulf but a solitary obstruction. This was Vicksburg.
Vicksburg stand at an abrupt turn, where within ten miles the winding river doubles upon itself, forming on the low ground opposite a long finger of land, barely three quarters of a mile wide. Opposite the extreme end of this peninsula, known as De Soto, the bluff reaches the highest point attained along the whole course of the river, the crest standing about 250 feet above the mean stage of water. Sloping slowly toward the river, the bluff follows it with a diminished altitude for two miles. Here stands the town of Vicksburg, then a place of about ten thousand inhabitants. Below the town the bluffs draw away from the river until, about four miles beyond the bend, their height diminishes to about 150 feet. For the defence of this line, as has been already seen, a formidable series of batteries had been constructed, extending from the bluff at the mouth of Chickasaw Bayou on the north to Warrenton on the south. These batteries now mounted twenty-six heavy guns, served by gunners comparatively well trained and instructed, and supported against an attack by land by about 6,000 infantry under Lovell. Almost simultaneously with the arrival of Farragut and Williams, came Breckinridge with his division, augmenting the effective force of the defenders to not less than 10,000. On the 30th of May Beauregard evacuated Corinth and drew back to Tupelo; Halleck did not follow; and so 35,000 Confederates were now set free to strengthen Vicksburg. Thus defended and supported Vicksburg was obviously impregnable to any attack by the combined forces of Farragut and Williams. On the 28th of June, Van Dorn arrived and took command of the Confederate forces.
After some preliminary bombarding and reconnoitring Farragut, who was well informed as to the condition of the defences, determined upon repeating before Vicksburg his exploit below New Orleans. Accordingly, on the 28th of July, in the darkness of the early morning, under cover of the fire of Porter's mortar flotilla, Farragut got under way with his fleet to pass the batteries of Vicksburg. The fleet was formed in two columns, with wide intervals, the starboard column led by the Hartford, the port column by the Iroquois. The battle was opened by the mortars at four o'clock, the enemy replying instantly. By six o'clock the Hartford and six of her consorts had successfully run the gauntlet, and lay safely anchored above the bend, while the rest of the fleet, through some confusion of events or misapprehension of orders, had resumed its former position below the bend. The losses of the navy in this engagement were fifteen killed and thirty wounded, including many scalded by the effect of a single shot that pierced the boiler of the Clifton. The eight rifled guns of Nims's and Everett's batteries having been landed, were placed in position behind the levee at Barney's Point, and replied effectively to the fire of the heavy guns on the high bluff, at a range of about fourteen hundred yards. This slight service was the only form of active co-operation by the army that the circumstances admitted; yet all the troops stood to arms, ready to do any thing that might be required.
On the 1st of July Davis joined Farragut with four gunboats and six mortar-boats of the Mississippi fleet. On the 9th Farragut received orders from the Navy Department, dated on the 5th, and forwarded by way of Cairo, to send Porter with the Octorara and twelve mortar-boats at once to Hampton Roads. Porter steamed down the river on the 10th. This was obviously one of the first-fruits of the campaign of the Peninsula just ended by the withdrawal of the Army of the Potomac to the James. Indeed, at this crisis, all occasions seemed to be informing against the Union plan of campaign, and the same events that drew the Confederate armies together served to draw the Union armies apart. Just as we have seen Pope called away from Fort Pillow on the eve of an attack that must have resulted in its capture, and taken in haste to swell the slow march of Halleck's army before Corinth, so now, when for a full month Corinth had been abandoned by the Confederates, Halleck's forces were being broken up and dispersed to all four of the winds, save that which might have blown them to the south. Halleck declared himself unable to respond to Farragut's urgent appeal for help. "I cannot," he said, when urged by Stanton; "I am sending reinforcements to General Curtis, in Arkansas, and to General Buell, in Tennessee and Kentucky." Not only this, but he was being called upon by Lincoln himself for 25,000 troops to reinforce the Army of the Potomac before Richmond. "Probably I shall be able to do so," Halleck told Farragut, "as soon as I can get my troops more concentrated. This may delay the clearing of the river, but its accomplishment will be certain in a few weeks."
Meanwhile Williams was hard at work on the canal. In addition to such details as could be furnished by the troops without wholly neglecting the absolutely necessary portions of their military duties, Williams had employed a force of about 1,200 negroes, rather poorly provided with tools. The work was not confined to excavation, but involved the cutting down of the large cottonwoods and the clearing away of the dense masses of willows that covered the low ground and matted the heavy soil with their tangled roots. By the 4th of July the excavation had reached a depth in the hard clay of nearly seven feet. The length of the canal was about one and a half miles. By the 11th of July the cut, originally intended to be four feet deep and five feet wide, with a profile of twenty square feet, had been excavated through this stiff clay to a depth of thirteen feet and a width of eighteen feet, presenting a profile of 234 feet. The river, which, up to this time, had been falling more rapidly than the utmost exertions had been able to sink the bottom of the canal, had now begun to fall more slowly, so that at last the grade was about eighteen inches below the river level. In a few hours the water was to have been let in. Suddenly the banks began to cave, and before any thing could be done to remedy this, the river, still falling, was once more below the bottom of the cut. Although with this scanty and overworked force he had already performed nearly twelve times the amount of labor originally contemplated, Williams does not seem to have been discouraged at this; his orders were to make the cut, and his purpose clearly was to make it, even if it should take, as he thought it would, the whole of the next three months. He set to work with vigor to collect laborers, wheelbarrows, shovels, axes, carts, and scrapers, and "to make a real canal," to use his own words, "to the depth of the greatest fall of the river at this point, say some thirty-five to forty feet." But this was not to be.
Until toward the end of June, the Polk and Livingston, the last vestiges of the Confederate navy on the Mississippi spared from the general wreck at Memphis, lay far up the Yazoo River, with a barrier above them, designed to cover the building of the ram Arkansas. This formidable craft was approaching completion at Yazoo City. The Ellets, uncle and nephew, with the Monarch and Lancaster, steamed up the Yazoo River to reconnoitre. The rams carried no armament whatever, but this the Confederate naval commander in the Yazoo did not know; so, unable to pass the barrier, he set fire to his three gunboats immediately on perceiving Ellet's approach. On the 14th of July, Flag-Officers Farragut and Davis sent the gunboats Carondelet and Tyler, and the ram Queen of the West, on a second expedition up the Yazoo to gain information of the Arkansas. This object was greatly facilitated by the fact that the Arkansas had at this very moment just got under way for the first time, and was coming down the Yazoo to gather information of the Federal fleet. The Arkansas, which had been constructed and was now commanded by Captain Isaac N. Brown, formerly of the United States Navy, was, for defensive purposes, probably the most effective of all the gunboats ever set afloat by the Confederacy upon the western waters. Her deck was covered by a single casemate protected by three inches of railroad iron, set aslant like a gable roof, and heavily backed up with timber and cotton bales. Her whole bow formed a powerful ram; the shield, flat on the top, was pierced for ten guns of heavy calibre, three in each broadside, two forward, and two aft. Had her means of propulsion proved equal to her power of attack and defence, it is doubtful if the whole Union navy on the Mississippi could have stood against her single-handed. The situation thus strangely recalls that presented by the Merrimac, or Virginia, in Hampton Roads before the opportune arrival of the Monitor. On board the Tyler was a detachment of twenty sharpshooters of the 4th Wisconsin regiment, under Captain J. W. Lynn, and on the Carondelet were twenty men of the 30th Massachusetts regiment, under Lieutenant E. A. Fiske. About six miles above the Yazoo the Union gunboats encountered the Arkansas. The unarmed ram Queen of the West promptly fled. After a hard fight the Carondelet was disabled and run ashore, and the Tyler was forced to retire, with the Arkansas in pursuit. The sharpshooters of the 4th Wisconsin suffered more severely than if they had been engaged in an ordinary pitched battle, Captain Lynn and six of his men being killed and six others wounded.
The Queen of the West, flying out of the mouth of the Yazoo under a full head of steam, gave to the fleet at anchor the first intimation, though perhaps a feeble one, of what was to follow. Not one vessel of either squadron had steam. The ram Bragg, which might have been expected to do something, did nothing. The Arkansas, so seriously injured by the guns of the Carondelet and Tyler that the steam pressure had gone from 120 pounds to the square inch down to 20 pounds, kept on her course, and proceeded to run the gauntlet of the Union fleet, giving and taking blows as she went. Battered, but safe, she soon lay under the guns of Vicksburg.
This decided the fate of the campaign, and extinguished in the breast of Farragut the last vestige of the ardent hope he had expressed to the government a few days earlier that he might soon have the pleasure of recording the combined attack of the army and navy, for which all so ardently longed. The river was falling; the canal was a failure. Of the officers and men of the army, two fifths, and of the effective force of the army nearly three fourths, were on the sick-list. There was no longer any thing to hope for or to wait on. The night that followed the exploit of the Arkansas saw Farragut's fleet descending the river and once more running the gauntlet of the batteries of Vicksburg. A flying attempt was made by each vessel in succession, but by all unsuccessfully, to destroy the offending Arkansas.
On the 24th of July, Williams, with his small force, under convoy of Farragut's fleet, sailed down the river. So ended the second attempt on Vicksburg, usually called the first, when remembered. Its sudden collapse gave the Confederates the river for another year.
CHAPTER III. BATON ROUGE.
On the 26th of July, the troops landed at Baton Rouge. In the five weeks that had elapsed since their departure their effective strength had been diminished, by privations, by severe labor, and by the effects of a deadly climate, from 3,200 to about 800. For more than three months, ever since their re-embarkation at Ship Island on the 10th of April, they had undergone hardships such as have seldom fallen to the lot of soldiers, in a campaign whose existence is scarcely known and whose name has been wellnigh forgotten; but their time for rest and recreation had not yet come.
No sooner did Van Dorn see the allied fleets of Davis and Farragut turning their backs on one another and steaming one to the north and the other to the south, than he determined to take the initiative. His preparations had been already made in anticipation of this event. He now ordered Breckinridge to hasten with his division to the attack of Baton Rouge, and even as the fleet got under way, the train bearing Breckinridge's troops was also in motion.
Breckinridge received his orders on the 26th, and arrived at Camp Moore by the railway on the 28th. At Jackson he had been told that he would receive rations sufficient for ten days, but he could get no more than half the quantity. Van Dorn had estimated the Union force to be met at Baton Rouge as about 5,000, and had calculated that Breckinridge would find himself strong enough to dislodge the Union army and drive it away. In fact, Van Dorn estimated Breckinridge's division, including 1,000 men under Brigadier-General Ruggles that were to meet him at Camp Moore, at 6,000 men. The Arkansas was to join in the attack, and she was justly considered a full offset to any naval force the Union commander would be likely to have stationed at Baton Rouge. Breckinridge left Vicksburg with less than 4,000. On the 30th of July he reports his total effective force, including Ruggles, at 3,600. The same day he marched on Baton Rouge, and on the 4th of August encamped at the crossing of the Comite, distant about ten miles from his objective. His morning report of that day shows but 3,000 effectives, according to the methods by which effective strength was commonly counted by the Confederates.
The distance from Camp Moore to Baton Rouge is about sixty miles, and the march had been thus retarded to await the co-operation of the Arkansas. This Breckinridge was finally assured he might expect at daylight on the morning of the 5th of August. The Arkansas had in fact left Vicksburg on the 3d.
Van Dorn's object obviously was by crushing Williams to regain control of the Mississippi from Vicksburg to Baton Rouge, to break the blockade of Red River and to open the way for the recapture of New Orleans. Williams was expecting the attack and awaited the result with calmness.
At Baton Rouge the Mississippi washes for the last time the base of the high and steep bluffs that for so many hundreds of miles have followed the coasts of the great river and formed the contour of its left bank, overlooking its swift yellow waters and the vast lowlands of the western shore. The bluff is lower at Baton Rouge than it is above and slopes more gently to the water's edge; and here the highland draws back from the river and gradually fades away in a southeasterly direction toward the Gulf, while the surface of the country becomes more open and less broken. The stiff post-tertiary clays that compose the soil of these bluffs were in many places covered with a rich growth of timber, great magnolias and beautiful live oaks replacing the rank cottonwood and tangled willows of the lowlands, as well as the giant cypresses of the impenetrable swamps, with their mournful hangings of Spanish moss, and the wild grape binding them fast in a deadly embrace.
Six roads led out of the town in various directions. Of these the most northerly was the road from Bayou Sara. Passing behind the town its course continued toward the south along the river. Between these outstretched arms ran the road to Clinton, the Greenwell Springs road, by which the Confederates had come, the Perkins road, and the Clay Cut road.
In numbers the opposing forces were nearly equal. The Confederates went into action with about 2,600, without counting the partisan rangers and militia, numbering 400 or 500 more. Williams had about 2,500 fighting men. He had eighteen guns, the Confederates eleven. On both sides the men were enfeebled by malaria and exposure; yet the Confederates had left their sick behind, while the Union force included convalescents that came out of the hospital to take part in the battle. "There were not 1,200," said Weitzel after the battle, "who could have marched five miles. None of our men had been in battle; very few had been under fire." Among the Confederates were many of the veterans of Shiloh and more of the triumphant defenders of Vicksburg. The advantages of position was slight on either side. On the one hand Williams was forced to post his left with regard to the expected attack of the Arkansas, so that in the centre his line fell behind the camps. To offset this his right rested securely on the gunboats. As it turned out the Arkansas was not encountered, and the gunboats told off to meet her were therefore able to render material assistance on the left by their oblique fire across Williams' front.
Breckinridge commanded four picked brigades, three selected from his own division and one of Martin L. Smith's Vicksburg brigades, the whole organized in two divisions, under Brigadier-Generals Charles Clark and Daniel Ruggles. Clark had the brigades of Brigadier-General Bernard H. Helm and Colonel Thomas B. Smith, of the 20th Tennessee, with the Hudson battery and Cobb's battery. Ruggles had the brigades of Colonel A. P. Thompson, of the 3d Kentucky, and Colonel Henry W. Allen, of the 4th Louisiana, with Semmes's battery. From right to left the order of attack ran, Helm, Smith, Thompson, Allen. Clark moved on the right of the Greenwell Springs road, and Ruggles on the left. Scott's cavalry was posted on the extreme left, four guns of Semmes's battery occupied the centre of Ruggles's division, while in Clark's centre were the four guns of the Hudson battery and one of Cobb's; the other two having been disabled in a panic during the night march before the battle. On the extreme right the Clinton road was picketed and held by a detachment of infantry and rangers and the remaining section of Semmes's battery.
To meet the expected attack, Williams had posted his troops in rear of the arsenal and of the town, occupying an irregular line, generally parallel to the Bayou Sara road, and extending from the Bayou Grosse, on the left, to and beyond the intersection of the Perkins and Clay Cut roads, on the right. On the extreme left, behind the Bayou Grosse, was the 4th Wisconsin, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Bean. Next, but on the left bank of the bayou, stood the 9th Connecticut. Next, and on the left of the Greenwell Springs road, the 14th Maine. On the right of that road was posted the 21st Indiana, under Lieutenant-Colonel Keith, with three guns attached to the regiment, under Lieutenant J. H. Brown. Across the Perkins and Clay Cut roads the 6th Michigan was formed, under command of Captain Charles E. Clarke, while in the rear of the interval between the 6th Michigan and the 21st Indiana stood the 7th Vermont. The extreme right and rear were covered by the 30th Massachusetts in column, supporting Nims's battery, under Lieutenant Trull. On the centre and left were planted the guns of Everett's battery, under Carruth, and of Manning's 4th Massachusetts battery.
The left flank was supported by the Essex, Commander William D.
Porter; the Cayuga, Lieutenant Harrison; and the Sumter,
Lieutenant Erben; the right flank by the Kineo, Lieutenant-Commander
Ransom, and Katahdin, Lieutenant Roe.
These dispositions were planned expressly to meet the expected attack by the ram Arkansas, and in that view the arrangement was probably the best that the formation of the ground permitted. But the fighting line was very far advanced; the camps still farther; the reserve on the right was posted quite a mile and a half behind the capitol, and, as at Shiloh, no portion of the line was fortified or protected in any way, though the field was an open plain and the converging roads gave to the attacking party a wide choice of position.
About daylight Breckinridge moved to the attack in a summer fog so dense that those engaged could at first distinguish neither friend nor enemy. The blow fell first, and heavily, upon the centre and right, held by the 14th Maine, 21st Indiana, and 6th Michigan. As our troops were pressed back by the vigor of the first onset, the exposed camps of the 14th Maine, 7th Vermont, and 21st Indiana fell into the hands of the Confederates. The 9th Connecticut, with Manning's battery, moved to the support of the 14th Maine and 21st Indiana, on the right of the former, and the 4th Wisconsin formed on the left of the 14th. Further to the right, the 30th Massachusetts advanced to the support of the 21st Indiana and 6th Michigan, covering the interval between the two battalions to replace the 7th Vermont. In the first fighting in the darkness and the fog this regiment had been roughly handled; its colonel fell, a momentary confusion followed, and the regiment drifted back into a convenient position, where it was soon reformed, under Captain Porter. Nims brought his guns into battery on the right of the 6th Michigan.
The battle was short, but the fighting was severe; both sides suffered heavily, and each fell into some disorder. At different moments both wings of the Confederate force were broken, and fell back in something not very unlike panic. The colors of the 4th Louisiana were captured by the 6th Michigan. As the fog lifted, under the influence of the increasing heat, it became clear to both sides that the attack had failed. The force of the fierce Confederate outset was quite spent. The Union lines, however thinned and shattered, remained in possession of the prize. "It was now ten o'clock," says Breckinridge. "We had listened in vain for the guns of the Arkansas: I saw around me not more than 1,000 exhausted men." The battle was over. Indeed it had been over for some hours; these words probably indicate the period when the Confederate commander gave up his last hope.
The Arkansas, disabled within sight of the goal by an accident to her machinery, was run ashore and destroyed by her commander to save her from capture. The Confederate losses were about 84 killed, 313 wounded, and 56 missing; total, 453. Clark was severely wounded and made prisoner. Allen was killed, and two other brigade commanders wounded. Helm, Hunt, and Thompson had been previously disabled by an accident during the night panic.
The Union losses were 84 killed, 266 wounded, and 33 missing; total, 383. The heaviest loss fell upon the 21st Indiana, which suffered 126 casualties, and upon the 14th Maine, which reported 118. Of the killed, 36, or nearly one half, belonged to the 14th Maine, while more than two thirds of the killed and nearly two thirds of the total belonged to that regiment and the 21st Indiana. The 4th Wisconsin, being posted quite to the left of the point of attack, was not engaged.
Colonel G. T. Roberts, of the 7th Vermont, fell early in the action, and near its close Williams was instantly killed while urging his men to the attack. In him his little brigade lost the only commander present of experience in war; the country, a brave and accomplished soldier. If he was, as must be confessed, arbitrary, at times unreasonable, and often harsh, in his treatment of his untrained volunteers, yet many who then thought his discipline too severe to be endured, lived to know, and by their conduct vindicate, the value of his training.
The Confederates appear to have suffered to some extent during the last attack, until the lines drew too near together, from the fire of the Essex and her consorts. Ransom also speaks of having shelled the enemy with great effect during the afternoon from the Kineo and Katahdin, accurately directed by signals from the capitol; but no other account even mentions any firing at that period of the day; the effect cannot, therefore, have been severe, and it seems probable that the troops against whom it was directed may have been some outlying party.
Cahill's seniority entitled him to the command after Williams fell, yet during the remainder of the battle Dudley seems to have commanded the troops actually engaged. Shortly after the close of the action Cahill assumed the command and sent word to Butler of the state of affairs.
The Confederates were still to be seen upon the field of battle. Their force was naturally enough over-estimated. Another attack was expected during the afternoon, and reinforcements were urgently called for. Butler had none to give without putting New Orleans itself in peril. However, during the evening he determined to release from arrest a number of officers who had been deprived of their swords by Williams at various times, and for various causes, mainly growing out of the confused and as yet rather unsettled policy of the government in reference to the treatment of the negroes, and to send all these officers to Baton Rouge. Among them were Colonel Paine of the 4th Wisconsin and Colonel Clark of the 6th Michigan. Since the 11th of June Paine had been in arrest; an arrest of a character peculiar and perhaps unprecedented in the history of armies. Whenever danger was to be faced, or unusual duty to be performed, he might wear his sword and command his men, but the moment the duty or the danger was at an end he must go back into arrest. Paine, who was an extremely conscientious officer, as well as a man of high character and firmness of purpose, had from the first taken strong ground against the use of any portion of his force in aid of the claims of the master to the service of the slave. Williams, strict in his idea of obedience due his superiors, not less than in his notions of obedience due to him by his own inferiors in rank, stood upon his construction of the law and the orders of the War Department, as they then existed; hence in the natural course of events inevitably arose more than one irreconcilable difference of opinion. Paine was now ordered to go at once to Baton Rouge and take command. He was told by Butler to burn the town and the capitol. The library, the paintings, the statuary, and the relics were to be spared, as well as the charitable institutions of the town. The books, the paintings, and the statue of Washington, he was to send to New Orleans; he was then to evacuate Baton Rouge and retire with his whole force to New Orleans.
At midnight on the 6th of August Paine arrived at Baton Rouge. There he found every thing quiet, with the troops in camp on an interior and shorter line, but expecting another attack. There was in fact an alarm before morning came, but nothing happened. On the 7th Paine took command and set about putting the town in complete condition for an effective defence. With his accustomed care and energy he soon rectified the lines and entrenched them with twenty-four guns in position, and, in co-operation with the navy, concerted every measure for an effective defence, even against large numbers.
Breckinridge, however, after continuing to menace Baton Rouge for some days, had, by Van Dorn's orders, retired to Port Hudson, and was now engaged in fortifying that position. Ruggles was sent there on the 12th of August. The next day Breckinridge received orders from Van Dorn, then at Jackson, to follow with his whole force. "Port Hudson," Van Dorn said, "must be held if possible." "Port Hudson," remarks Breckinridge, in his report of the battle of Baton Rouge, "is one of the strongest points on the Mississippi, which Baton Rouge is not, and batteries there will command the river more completely than at Vicksburg."
Meanwhile Butler had changed his mind with regard to the evacuation of Baton Rouge, and had directed Paine to hold the place for the present. With an accuracy unusual at this period, Butler estimated Breckinridge's entire force at 5,000 men and fourteen guns. On the 13th the defences were complete, the entrenchments forming two sides of a triangle of which the river was the base and the cemetery mound the apex. The troops stood to arms at three o'clock every morning; one fourth of the force was constantly under arms, day and night, at its station. At two points on each face of the entrenchment flags were planted by day and lights by night, to indicate to the gunboats their line of fire.
On the 16th of August Butler renewed his orders to burn and evacuate Baton Rouge. Its retention up to this time he had avowedly regarded as having political rather than military importance. Now he wrote to Paine: "I am constrained to come to the conclusion that it is necessary to evacuate Baton Rouge. . . . Begin the movement quietly and rapidly; get every thing off except your men, and then see to it that the town is destroyed. After mature deliberation I deem this a military necessity of the highest order."
Against these orders Paine made an earnest appeal, based upon considerations partly humane, partly military. He was so far successful that Butler was induced to countermand the order to burn. The movement was not to be delayed on account of the statue of Washington. However, the statue had been already packed. It is now in the Patent Office at the national capital. All the books and paintings were brought off, "except," to quote from Paine's diary, "the portrait of James Buchanan, which we left hanging in the State House for his friends." Finally, on the 20th, Paine evacuated Baton Rouge, and on the following day reached the lines of Carrollton, known as Camp Parapet, and turned over his command to Phelps.
CHAPTER IV. LA FOURCHE.
On the 22d of August Paine was assigned to the command of what was called the "reserve brigade" of a division under Phelps. The brigade was composed of the 4th Wisconsin, 21st Indiana, and 14th Maine, with Brown's battery attached to the Indiana regiment. But this was not to last, for the tension that had long existed between Phelps and the department commander, on the subject of the treatment of the negroes, as well as on the question of arming and employing them, finally resulted in Phelps's resignation on the 21st of August. On the 13th of September he was succeeded by Brigadier-General Thomas W. Sherman, himself recently relieved from command of the Department of the South, partly, perhaps, in consequence of differences of opinion of a like character.
On the 29th of September the division, then known as Sherman's, was reorganized, and Paine took command of the 1st brigade, composed of the 4th Wisconsin, 21st Indiana, and 8th New Hampshire regiments with the 1st and 2d Vermont batteries and Brown's guns of the 21st Indiana. Paine's command also included Camp Parapet. These lines had been originally laid out by the Confederates for the defence of New Orleans against an attack by land from the north; as, for example, by a force approaching through Lake Pontchartrain and Pass Manchac. They were now put in thorough order, and the Indianians, who had received some artillery instruction during their term of service at Fort McHenry, completed the foundation for the future service as heavy artillerists by going back to the big guns. In October and November the 8th New Hampshire and 21st Indiana were transferred to Weitzel's brigade and were replaced in Paine's by the 2d Louisiana and temporarily by the 12th Maine.
The official reports covering this period afford several strong hints of a Confederate plan for the recapture of New Orleans. With this object, apparently, Richard Taylor, a prominent and wealthy Louisianian, closely allied to Jefferson Davis by his first marriage with the daughter of Zachary Taylor, was made a major-general in the Confederate army, and on the 1st of August was assigned to command the Confederate forces in Western Louisiana. It seems likely that the troops of Van Dorn's department, as well as those at Mobile, were expected to take part.
On the 8th of August orders were issued by the War Department transferring the district of West Florida to the Department of the Gulf. West Florida meant Pensacola. Fort Pickens, on the sands of Santa Rosa, commanding the entrance to the splendid harbor, owed to the loyalty of a few staunch officers of the army and the navy the proud distinction of being the one spot between the Chesapeake and the Rio Grande over which, in spite of all hostile attempts, the ensign of the nation had never ceased to float; for the works at Key West and the Dry Tortugas, though likewise held, were never menaced. Though Bragg early gathered a large force for the capture of the fort, the only serious attempt, made in the dawn of the 9th of October, 1861, was repulsed with a loss to the Confederates of 87, to the Union troops of 61. Of these, the 6th New York had 9 killed, 7 wounded, 11 missing—in all, 27. In December the 75th New York came down from the North to reinforce the defenders. Finally, after learning the fate of New Orleans, Bragg evacuated Pensacola, and burned his surplus stores, and on the 10th of May, 1862, Porter, seeing from the passes the glare of the flames, ran over and anchored in the bay. The advantage thus gained was held to the end.
This transfer gave Butler two strong infantry regiments, as well as several fine batteries and companies of the regular artillery, but at the same time correspondingly increased the territory he had to guard, already far too extensive and too widely scattered for the small force at his disposal.
Toward the end of September Lieutenant Godfrey Weitzel, of the engineers, having been made a brigadier-general on Butler's recommendation, a promotion more than usually justified by service and talent, a brigade was formed for him called the Reserve Brigade, and consisting of the 12th and 13th Connecticut, 75th New York, and 8th New Hampshire, Carruth's 6th Massachusetts battery, Thompson's 1st Maine battery, Perkins's Troop C of the Massachusetts cavalry, and three troops of Louisiana cavalry under Williamson. From that time, through all the changes, which were many and frequent, Weitzel's brigade changed less than any thing else, and its history may almost be said to be the military history of the Department.
Taylor, with his accustomed energy and enthusiasm, had collected and organized a force, primarily for the defence of the La Fourche country and the Teche, ultimately for the offensive operations already planned. Butler at once committed to Weitzel the preparations for dislodging Taylor and occupying La Fourche. This object was important, not only to secure the defence of New Orleans, but because the territory to be occupied comprised or controlled the fertile region between the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya. The country lies low and flat, and is intersected by numerous navigable bayous, with but narrow roadways along their banks and elsewhere none. Without naval assistance, the operation would have been difficult, if not impossible; and the navy had in Louisiana no gunboats of a draught light enough for the service. With the funds of the army Butler caused four light gunboats, the Estrella, Calhoun, Kinsman, and Diana, to be quietly built and equipped, the navy furnishing the officers and the crews. Under Commander McKean Buchanan they were then sent by the gulf to Berwick Bay.
When he was ready, Weitzel took transports, under convoy of the Kineo, Sciota, Katahdin, and Itasca, landed below Donaldsonville, entered the town, and on the 27th of October moved on Thibodeaux, the heart of the district. At Georgia Landing, about two miles above Labadieville, he encountered the Confederates under Mouton, consisting of the 18th and 33d Louisiana, the Crescent and Terre Bonne regiments, with Ralston's and Semmes's batteries and the 2d Louisiana cavalry, in all reported by Mouton as 1,392 strong. They had taken up a defensive position on both sides of the bayou. Along these bayous the standing room is for the most part narrow; and as the land, although low, is in general heavily wooded and crossed by many ditches of considerable depth, the country affords defensive positions at once stronger and more numerous than are to be found in most flat regions. Small bodies of troops, familiar with the topography, have also this further advantage, that there are few points from which their position and numbers can be easily made out.
After a short but spirited engagement Mouton's force was compelled to retreat. Weitzel pursued for about four miles.
Mouton then called in his outlying detachments, including the La Fourche regiment, 500 strong, 300 men of the 33d Louisiana, and the regiments of Saint Charles and St. John Baptist, burned the railway station of Terre Bonne and the bridges at Thibodeaux, La Fourche Crossing, Terre Bonne, Des Allemands, and Bayou Boeuf, and evacuated the district. By the 30th, every thing was safely across Berwick Bay. For this escape, he was indebted to an opportune gale that compelled Buchanan's gunboats to lie to in Caillou Bay on their way to Berwick Bay, to cut off the retreat. Mouton's report accounts for 5 killed, 8 wounded, and 186 missing; in all 199. Among the killed was Colonel G. P. McPheeters of the Crescent regiment.
Weitzel followed to Thibodeaux, and went into camp beyond the town. He claims to have taken 208 prisoners and one gun, and states his own losses as 18 killed, and 74 wounded, agreeing with the nominal lists, which also contain the names of 5 missing, thus bringing the total casualties to 97.
Arriving off Brashear a day too late, Buchanan was partly consoled by capturing the Confederate gunboat Seger. On the 4th and 5th of November he made a reconnoissance fourteen miles up the Teche with his own boat, the Calhoun, and the Estrella, Kinsman, Saint Mary's, and Diana, and meeting a portion of Mouton's forces and the Confederate gunboat J. A. Cotton, received and inflicted some damage and slight losses, yet with no material result.
Simultaneously with Weitzel's movement on La Fourche, Butler pushed the 8th Vermont and the newly organized 1st Louisiana Native Guards forward from Algiers along the Opelousas Railway, to act in conjunction with Weitzel and to open the railway as they advanced. Weitzel had already turned the enemy out of his position, but the task committed to Thomas was slow and hard, for all the bridges and many culverts had to be rebuilt, and from long disuse of the line the rank grass, that in Louisiana springs up so freely in every untrodden spot above water, had grown so tall and thick and strongly matted that the troops had to pull it up by the roots before the locomotive could pass.
So ended operations in Louisiana for the year. Until the following spring, Taylor continued to occupy the Teche region, while Weitzel rested quietly in La Fourche, with his headquarters at Thibodeaux and his troops so disposed as to cover and hold the country without losing touch. On the 9th of November, the whole of Louisiana lying west of the Mississippi, except the delta parishes of Plaquemine and Terre Bonne, was constituted a military district to be known as the District of La Fourche, and Weitzel was assigned to the command.
Meanwhile General Butler, with the consent of the War Department, had raised, organized, and equipped, in the neighborhood of New Orleans, two good regiments of Louisianans, the 1st Louisiana, Colonel Richard E. Holcomb, and the 2d Louisiana, Colonel Charles J. Paine, both regiments admirably commanded and well officered; three excellent troops of Louisiana cavalry, under fine leaders, Captains Henry F. Williamson, Richard Barrett, and J. F. Godfrey; and beside these white troops, three regiments of negroes, designated as the 1st, 2d, and 3d Louisiana Native Guards. This was the name originally employed by Governor Moore early in 1861, to describe an organization of the free men of color of New Orleans enrolled for the defence of the city against the expected attack by the forces of the Union.
This action was taken by Butler of his own motion. It was never formally approved by the government, but it was not interfered with. These three regiments were the first negro troops mustered into the service of the United States. At least one of them, the 1st, was largely made up of men of that peculiar and exclusive caste known to the laws of slavery as the free men of color of Louisiana. All the field and staff officers were white men, mainly taken from the rolls of the troops already in service; but at first all the company officers were negroes. As this was the first experiment, it was perhaps, in the state of feeling then prevailing, inevitable, yet not the less to be regretted, that the white officers were, with some notable exceptions, inferior men. Fortunately, however, courts-martial and examining boards made their career for the most part a short one. As for the colored officers of the line, early in 1863 they were nearly all disqualified on the most rudimentary examination, and then the rest resigned. After that, the government having determined to raise a large force of negro troops, it became the settled policy to grant commissions as officers to none but white men.
The 1st and 2d regiments were sent into the district of La Fourche to guard the railway.
Then, between Butler and Weitzel, in spite of confidence on the one hand and respect and affection on the other, began the usual controversy about arming the negro. To one unacquainted with the history of this question and of those times it must seem strange indeed to read the emphatic words in which a soldier so loyal and, in the best sense, so subordinate as Weitzel, declared his unwillingness to command these troops, and to reflect that in a little more than two years he was destined to accept with alacrity the command of a whole army corps of black men, and at last to ride in triumph at their head into the very capital of the Confederacy.
With the exception of the levies raised by its commander, the Department of the Gulf had so far received no access of strength from any quarter. From the North had come hardly a recruit. In the intense heat and among the poisonous swamps the effective strength melted away day by day. Thus the numbers present fell 3,795 during the month of July; in October, when the sickly season had done its worst, the wastage reached a total of 5,390. At the time of the battle of Baton Rouge, Butler's effective force can hardly have exceeded 7,000. When his strength was the greatest it probably did not exceed, if indeed it reached, the number of 13,000 effective. The condition of affairs was therefore such that Butler found himself with an army barely sufficient for the secure defence of the vast territory committed to his care, and for any offensive operation absolutely powerless. To hold what had been gained it was practically necessary to sit still; and to sit still then, as always in all wars, was to invite attack.
These things Butler did not fail to represent to the government, and to repeat. At last, about the middle of November, he received a few encouraging words from Halleck, dated the 3d of that month, in which he was assured that the "delay in sending reinforcements has not been the fault of the War Department. It is hoped that some will be ready to start as soon as the November elections are over. Brigadier-generals will be sent with these reinforcements." With them was to be a major-general, the new commander of the department; but this Halleck did not say.
CHAPTER V. BANKS IN COMMAND.
When the campaigns of 1862 were drawing to an end, the government changed all the commanders and turned to the consideration of new plans. With President Lincoln, as we have seen, the opening of the Mississippi had long been a favored scheme. His early experience had rendered him familiar with the waters, the shores, and the vast traffic of the great river, and had brought home to him the common interests and the mutual dependence of the farmers, the traders, the miners, and the manufacturers of the States bordering upon the upper Mississippi and the Ohio on the one hand, and of the merchants and planters of the Gulf on the other. Thus he was fully prepared to enter warmly into the idea that had taken possession of the minds and hearts of the people of the Northwest. From a vague longing this idea had now grown into a deep and settled sentiment. Indeed in all the West the opening of the Mississippi played a part that can only be realized by comparing it with the prevailing sentiment of the East, so early, so long, so loudly expressed in the cry, "On to Richmond!"
That the President should have been in complete accord with the popular impulse is hardly to be wondered at by any one that has followed, with the least attention, the details of his remarkable career. Moreover, the popular impulse was right. Wars take their character from the causes that produce them and the people or the nations by whom they are waged. This was not a contest upon some petty question involving the fate of a ministry, a dynasty, or even a monarchy, to be fought out between regular armies upon well-known plans at the convergence of the roads between two opposing capitals. The struggle was virtually one between two peoples hitherto united as one,—between the people of the North, who had taken up arms for the maintenance and the restoration of the Union, and the people of the South, who had taken up arms to destroy the Union. Of such an issue there could be no compromise; to such a contest there could be no end short of exhaustion. For four long years it was destined to go on, and at times to rage with a fury almost unexampled along lines whose length was measured by the thousand miles and over a battle-ground nearly as large as the continent of Europe. Looked at merely from the standpoint of strategy, and discarding all considerations not directly concerning the movements of armies, true policy might, perhaps, have dictated the concentration of all available resources in men and material upon the great central lines of operations, roughly indicated by the mention of Chattanooga and Atlanta,—the road eventually followed by Sherman in his triumphant march to the sea. Apart, however, from considerations strictly tactical, the importance of cutting off the trans-Mississippi region as a source of supply for the main Confederate armies was obvious; while from the governments of Europe, of England and France above all, the pressure was great for cotton, partly, indeed, as a pretext for interfering in our domestic struggle to their own advantage, but largely, also, to enable those governments to quiet the cry of the starving millions of their people.
Instructed, as well as warned, by the events of the previous summer, the President now resolved on a combined attempt by two strong columns. On the 21st of October he sent Major-General John A. McClernand to Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, with confidential orders, authorizing him to raise troops for an expedition, under his command, to move against Vicksburg from Cairo or Memphis as a place of rendezvous, and "to clear the Mississippi River and open navigation to New Orleans." Perhaps because of the confidence still felt in Grant by the President himself, although within narrowing limits, Grant was not to share the fate of McClellan, of Buell, and of so many others. The secret orders were not made known to him, yet it was settled that he was to retain the command of his department, while the principal active operations of the army within its limits were to be conducted by another. Even for this consideration it is rather more than likely he was indebted in a great degree to the exceptional advantage he enjoyed in having at all times at the seat of government, in the person of Washburne, a strong and devoted party of one, upon whose assistance the government daily found it convenient to lean.
A few days later, on the 31st of October, Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks was sent to New York and Boston, with similar orders, to collect in New England and New York a force for the co-operating column from New Orleans. On the 8th of November this was followed by the formal order of the President assigning Banks to the command of the Department of the Gulf, including the State of Texas.
This assignment was wholly unexpected by Banks. It was, indeed, unsought and unsolicited, and the first offer, from the President himself, came as a surprise. At the close of Pope's campaign, when the reorganized Army of the Potomac, once more under McClellan, was in march to meet Lee in Maryland, Banks had been forced, by injuries received at Cedar Mountain, to give up the command of the Twelfth Army Corps to the senior division commander, Brigadier-General A. S. Williams. As soon as this was reported at headquarters, McClellan created a new organization under the name of the "Defences of Washington," and placed Banks in command.
For some time after this Banks was unable to leave his room; yet, within forty-eight hours, a mob of thirty thousand wounded men and convalescents, who knew not where to go, and of stragglers, who meant not to go where they were wanted, was cleared out of the streets of Washington, and pandemonium was at an end. Order was rather created than restored, since none had existed in any direction. The Fifth Corps was sent to join the army in the field; within a fortnight, a full army corps of able-bodied stragglers followed; the fortifications were completed; ample garrisons of instructed artillerists were provided. These became "the Heavies" of Grant's campaigns. Almost another full army corps was organized from the new regiments. Finally the whole force of the defences, about equal in numbers to Lee's army, was so disposed that Washington was absolutely secure. The dispositions for the defence of the capital and the daily operations of the command were clearly and constantly made known to the President and Secretary of War as well as to the General-in-chief. Thus it was that, less than two months later, in the closing days of October, President Lincoln sent for Banks and said: "You have let me sleep in peace for the first time since I came here. I want you to go to Louisiana and do the same thing there."
On the 9th of November Halleck communicated to Banks the orders of the President to proceed immediately to New Orleans with the troops from Baltimore and elsewhere, under Emory, already assembling in transports at Fort Monroe. An additional force of ten thousand men, he was told, would be sent to him from Boston and New York as soon as possible. Though this order was never formally revoked or modified, yet in fact it was from the first a dead letter, and Banks, who received it in New York, remained there to complete the organization and to look after the collection and transport of the additional force mentioned in Halleck's instructions. Including the eight regiments of Emory, but not counting four regiments of infantry and five battalions of cavalry diverted to other fields, the reinforcements for the Department of the Gulf finally included thirty-nine regiments of infantry, six batteries of artillery, and one battalion of cavalry. Of the infantry twenty-one regiments were composed of officers and men enlisted to serve for nine months. Even of this brief period many weeks had, in some cases, already elapsed. To command the brigades and divisions, when organized, Major-General Christopher C. Auger, and Brigadier-Generals Cuvier Grover, William Dwight, George L. Andrews, and James Bowen were ordered to report to Banks.
The work of chartering the immense fleet required to transport this force, with its material of all kinds, was confided by the government to Cornelius Vanderbilt, possibly in recognition of his recent princely gift to the nation of the finest steamship of his fleet, bearing his own name. This service Vanderbilt performed with his usual vigor, "laying hands," as he said, "upon every thing that could float or steam," including, it must be added, more than one vessel to which it would have been rash to ascribe either of these qualities.
Before the embarkation each vessel was carefully inspected by a board of officers, usually composed of the inspector-general or an officer of his department, an experienced quartermaster, and an officer of rank and intelligence, who was himself to sail on the vessel. This last was a new, but, as soon appeared, a very necessary precaution. When every thing was nearly ready the embarkation began at New York, and as each vessel was loaded she was sent to sea with sealed orders directing her master and the commanding officer of the troops to make the best of their way to Ship Island, and there await the further instructions of the general commanding. Ship Island was chosen for the place of meeting because of the great draught of water of some of the vessels. At the same time Emory's force, embarking at Hampton Roads, set out under convoy of the man-of-war Augusta, Commander E. G. Parrott, for the same destination with similar orders.
For three months the Florida had lain at anchor in the harbor at Mobile, only waiting for a good opportunity to enter upon her historic career of destruction. Since the 20th of August the Alabama was known to have been scourging our commerce in the North Atlantic from the Azores to the Antilles. On the 5th of December she took a prize off the northern coast of San Domingo. Relying on the information with which he was freely furnished, Semmes expected to find the expedition off Galveston about the middle of January. In the dead of night, "after the midwatch was set and all was quiet," he meant, in the words of his executive officer,(1) slowly to approach the transports, "steam among them with both batteries in action, pouring in a continuous discharge of shell, and sink them as we went." Fortunately Semmes's information, though profuse and precise, was not quite accurate, for it brought him off Galveston on the 13th of January: the wrong port, a month too late. What might have happened is shown by the ease with which he then destroyed the Hatteras.
To guard against these dangers, it had been the wish of the government, and was a part of the original plan, that the transports sailing from New York should be formed in a single fleet and proceed, under strong convoy, to its destination. However, it soon became evident that as the rate of sailing of a fleet is governed by that of its slowest ship, the expedition, thus organized, would be forced to crawl along the coast at a speed hardly greater than five miles an hour. This would not only have exposed three ships out of five, and five regiments out of six, for at least twice the necessary time to the perils of the sea, increased by having to follow an inshore track at this inclement season; it would not only have introduced chances of detention and risks of collision and of separation, but the peril from the Alabama would have been augmented in far greater degree than the security afforded by any naval force the government could just then spare. Therefore, the slow ships were loaded and sent off first and the faster ones kept back to the last; then, each making the best of its way to Ship Island, nearly all came in together. Thus, when the North Star, bearing the flag of the commanding general and sailing from New York on the 4th of December, arrived in the early morning of the 13th at Ship Island, nearly the whole fleet lay at anchor or in the offing; and as soon as a hasty inspection could be completed and fresh orders given, the expedition got under way for New Orleans. The larger vessels, however, like the Atlantic, Baltic, and Ericsson being unable to cross the bar, lay at anchor at Ship Island until they could be lightened.
Truly grand as was the spectacle afforded by the black hulls and white sails of this great concourse of ships at anchor, in the broad roadstead, yet a grander sight still was reserved for the next day, a lovely Sunday, as all these steamers in line ahead, the North Star leading, flags flying, bands playing, the decks blue with the soldiers of the Union, majestically made their way up the Mississippi. Most of those on board looked for the first time, with mingled emotions, over the pleasant lowlands of Louisiana, and all were amused at the mad antics of the pageant-loving negroes, crowding and capering on the levee as plantation after plantation was passed. So closely had the secret been kept that, until the transports got under way from Ship Island for the purpose, probably not more than three or four officers, if so many, of all the force really knew its destination. Nor was it until the two generals met at New Orleans that Butler learned that Banks was to relieve him.
On the 15th of December Banks took the command of the Department of the Gulf, although the formal orders were not issued until the 17th. The officers of the department, as well as of the personal staff of General Butler, were relieved from duty and permitted to accompany him to the North. The new staff of the department included Lieutenant-Colonel Richard B. Irwin, Assistant Adjutant-General; Lieutenant-Colonel William S. Abert, Assistant Inspector-General; Major G. Norman Lieber, Judge-Advocate; Colonel Samuel B. Holabird, Chief Quartermaster; Colonel Edward G. Beckwith, Chief Commissary of Subsistence; Surgeon Richard H. Alexander, Medical Director; Major David C. Houston, Chief Engineer; Captain Henry L. Abbot, Chief of Topographical Engineers; First-Lieutenant Richard M. Hill, Chief of Ordnance; Captain Richard Arnold, Chief of Artillery; Captain William W. Rowley, Chief Signal Officer.
Banks's orders from the government were to go up the Mississippi and open the river, in co-operation with McClernand's expedition against Vicksburg. "As the ranking general of the Southwest," Halleck's orders proceeded, "you are authorized to assume control of any military forces from the upper Mississippi which may come within your command. The line of the division between your department and that of Major-General Grant is, therefore, left undecided for the present, and you will exercise superior authority as far north as you may ascend the river. The President regards the opening of the Mississippi river as the first and most important of all our military and naval operations, and it is hoped that you will not lose a moment in accomplishing it."
Immediately on assuming command Banks ordered Grover to take all the troops that were in condition for service at once to Baton Rouge, under the protection of the fleet, and there disembark and go into camp. Augur was specially charged with the arrangements for the despatch of the troops from New Orleans. Before starting they were carefully inspected, and all that were found to be affected with disease of a contagious or infectious character were sent ashore and isolated.
On the morning of the 16th the advance of Grover's expedition got under way, under convoy of a detachment of Farragut's fleet, led by Alden in the Richmond. Grover took with him about 4,500 men, but when all were assembled at Baton Rouge there were twelve regiments, three batteries, and two troops of cavalry. The Confederates, who were in very small force, promptly evacuated Baton Rouge, and Grover landed and occupied the place on the 17th of December. After sending off the last of the troops, Augur went up and took command. The lines constructed by Paine in August were occupied and strengthened, and all arrangements promptly made for the defence in view of an attack, such as might not unnaturally be looked for from Port Hudson, whose garrison then numbered more than 12,000 effectives. The two places are but a long day's march apart. Since the occupation in August, the Confederate forces at Port Hudson had been commanded by Brigadier-General William N. R. Beall. On the 28th of December, however, he was relieved by Major-General Frank Gardner, who retained the command thenceforward until the end. While the war lasted, Baton Rouge continued to be held by the Union forces without opposition or even serious menace.
An attempt to occupy Galveston was less fortunate. This movement was ordered by Banks a few days after his arrival at New Orleans, apparently under the pressure of continued importunity from Andrew J. Hamilton, and in furtherance of the policy that had led the government to send him with the expedition, nominally as a brigadier-general, but under a special commission from the President that named him as military governor of Texas. On the 21st of December, three companies, D, G, and I, of the 42d Massachusetts, under Colonel Isaac S. Burrell, were sent from New Orleans without disembarking from the little Saxon, on which they had made the journey from New York. With them went Holcomb's 2d Vermont battery, leaving their horses to follow ten days later on the Cambria, with the horses and men of troops A and B of the Texas cavalry. Protected by the flotilla under Commander W. B. Renshaw, comprising his own vessel, the Westfield, the gunboats Harriet Lane, Commander J. M. Wainwright; Clifton, Commander Richard L. Law; Owasco, Lieutenant Henry Wilson; and Sachem, Acting-Master Amos Johnson; and the schooner Corypheus, Acting-Master Spears, Burrell landed unopposed at Kuhn's Wharf on the 24th, and took nominal possession of the town in accordance with his instructions. These were indeed rather vague, as befitted the shadowy nature of the objects to be accomplished. "The situation of the people of Galveston," wrote General Banks, "makes it expedient to send a small force there for the purpose of their protection, and also to afford such facilities as may be possible for recruiting soldiers for the military service of the United States." Burrell was cautioned not to involve himself in such difficulty as to endanger the safety of his command, and it was rather broadly hinted that he was not to take orders from General Hamilton. In reality, Burrell's small force occupied only the long wharf, protected by barricades at the shore end, and seaward by the thirty-two guns of the fleet, lying at anchor within 300 yards.
Magruder, who had been barely a month in command of the Confederate forces in Texas, had given his first attention to the defenceless condition of the coast, menaced as it was by the blockading fleet, and thus it happened that Burrell's three companies, performing their maiden service on picket between wind and water, found themselves confronted by the two brigades of Scurry and Sibley, Cook's regiment of heavy artillery, and Wilson's light battery, with twenty-eight guns, and two armed steamboats, having their vulnerable parts protected by cotton bales.
Long before dawn on the 1st of January, 1863, under cover of a heavy artillery fire, the position of the 42d Massachusetts was assaulted by two storming parties of 300 and 500 men respectively, led by Colonels Green, Bagby, and Cook, the remainder of the troops being formed under Scurry in support. A brisk fight followed, but the defenders had the concentrated fire of the fleet to protect them; the scaling ladders proved too short to reach the wharf, and as day began to break, the baffled assailants were about to draw off, when, suddenly, the Confederate gunboats appeared on the scene and in a few moments turned the defeat into a signal victory. The Neptune was disabled and sunk by the Harriet Lane, the Harriet Lane was boarded and captured by the Bayou City, the Westfield ran aground and was blown up by her gallant commander, and soon the white flag floated from the masts of all the Union fleet. Wainwright and Wilson had been killed; Renshaw, with his executive officer, Zimmermann, and his chief engineer, Green, had perished with the ship. The survivors were given three hours to consider terms.
When Burrell saw the flag of truce from the fleet, he too showed the white flag and surrendered to the commander of the Confederate troops. The Confederates ceased firing on him as soon as they perceived his signal, but the navy, observing that the fire on shore went on for some time, notwithstanding the naval truce, thought it had been violated; accordingly the Clifton, Owasco, Sachem, and Corypheus put out to sea, preceded by the army transport steamers Saxon and Mary A. Boardman. On the latter vessel were the military governor of Texas, with his staff, and the men and guns of Holcomb's battery.
The Confederates lost 26 killed and 117 wounded; the Union troops 5 killed and 15 wounded, and all the survivors (probably about 250 in number) were made prisoners save the adjutant, Lieutenant Charles A. Davis, who had been sent off to communicate with the fleet. The navy lost 29 killed, 31 wounded, and 92 captured. So ended this inauspicious New Year's day.
The transports made the best of their way to New Orleans with the news. The Cambria, with the Texas cavalry and the horses of the 2d Vermont battery, arrived in the offing on the evening of the 2d of January. For two days a strong wind and high sea rendered fruitless all efforts to communicate with the shore; then learning the truth, the troops at once returned to New Orleans.
Orders had been left with the guard ship at Pilot Town to send the transport steamers, Charles Osgood and Shetucket, with the remainder of the 42d, directly to Galveston. It was now necessary to change these orders, and to do it promptly. The bad news reached headquarters early in the afternoon of the 3d January: "Stop every thing going to Galveston," was at once telegraphed to the Pass.
(1) "Cruise and Combats of the Alabama," by her Executive Officer, John Mackintosh Kell.—"Century War Book," vol. iv., p. 603.
CHAPTER VI. ORGANIZING THE CORPS.
Meanwhile the new troops continued to come from New York, although it was not until the 11th of February that the last detachments landed. The work of organizing the whole available force of the department for the task before it was pursued with vigor. In order to form the moving column, as well as for the purposes of administration, so that the one might not interfere with the other, the main body of troops was composed of four divisions of three brigades each. The garrisons of the defences and the permanent details for guard and provost duty were kept separate. While this was in progress orders came from the War Office dated the 5th of January, 1863, by which all the forces in the Department of the Gulf were designated as the Nineteenth Army Corps, to take effect December 14, 1862, and Banks was named by the President as the corps commander.
To Augur was assigned the First division, to Sherman the Second, to Emory the Third, and to Grover the Fourth. Weitzel, retaining his old brigade, became the second in command in Augur's division. In making up the brigades the regiments were so selected and combined as to mingle the veterans with the raw levies, and to furnish, in right of seniority, the more capable and experienced of the colonels as brigade commanders. Andrews, who had been left in New York to bring up the rear of the expedition, became Chief-of-Staff on the 6th of March, and Bowen was made Provost-Marshal General.
To each division three batteries of artillery were given, including at least one battery belonging to the regular army, thus furnishing, except for the second division, an experienced regular officer as chief of artillery of the division. The cavalry was kept, for the most part, unattached, mainly serving in La Fourche, at Baton Rouge, and with the moving column. The 21st Indiana, changed into the 1st Indiana heavy artillery, was told off to man the siege train, for which duty it was admirably suited. When all had joined, the whole force available for active operations that should not uncover New Orleans was about 25,000. Two thirds, however, were new levies, and of these half were nine months' men. Some were armed with guns that refused to go off. Others did not know the simplest evolutions. In one instance, afterwards handsomely redeemed, the colonel, having to disembark his men, could think of no way save by the novel command, "Break ranks, boys, and get ashore the best way you can." The cavalry, except the six old companies, was poor and quite insufficient in numbers. Of land and water transportation, both indispensable to any possible operation, there was barely enough for the movement of a single division. In Washington, Banks had been led to expect that he might count on the depots or the country for all the material required for moving his army; yet Butler found New Orleans on the brink of starvation; the people had now to be fed, as well as the army, and the provisions that formerly came from the West by the great river had now to find their way from the North by the Atlantic and the Gulf. The depots were calculated, and barely sufficed, for the old force of the department, while the country could furnish very little at best, and nothing at all until it should be occupied.
Again, until he reached his post, Banks was not informed that the Confederates were in force anywhere on the river save Vicksburg, yet, in fact, Port Hudson, 250 miles below Vicksburg and 135 miles above New Orleans, was found strongly intrenched with twenty-nine heavy guns in position and garrisoned by 12,000 men. Long before Banks could have assembled and set in motion a force sufficient to cope with this enemy behind earthworks, the 12,000 became 16,000. Moreover, Banks was not in communication either with Grant or with McClernand; he knew next to nothing of the operations, the movements, or the plans of either; he had not the least idea when the expedition would be ready to move from Memphis; he was even uncertain who the commander of the Northern column was to be. On their part, not only were Grant, the department commander; McClernand, the designated commander of the Vicksburg expedition; and Sherman, its actual commander, alike ignorant of every thing pertaining to the movements of the column from the Gulf, but, at the most critical period of the campaign, not one of the three was in communication with either of the others. Under these conditions, all concert between the co-operating forces was rendered impossible from the start, and the expectations of the government that Banks would go against Vicksburg immediately on landing in Louisiana were doomed to sharp and sudden, yet inevitable, disappointment.
Grant, believing himself free to dispose of McClernand's new levies, had projected a combined movement by his own forces, marching by Grand Junction, and Sherman's, moving by water from Memphis, on the front and rear of Vicksburg.
Sherman set out from Memphis on the 20th of December in complete ignorance of Halleck's telegram of the 18th, conveying the President's positive order that McClernand was to command the expedition. Forrest cut the wires on the morning of the 19th just in time to intercept this telegram, as well as its counterpart, addressed to McClernand at Springfield, Illinois. On the 29th of December, Sherman met with the bloody repulse of Chickasaw Bluffs. On the 2d of January he returned to the mouth of the Yazoo, and there found McClernand armed with the bowstring and the baton.
Where was Grant? While his main body was still at Oxford, in march to the Yallabusha, Forrest, the ubiquitous, irrepressible Forrest, struck his line of communications, and, on the 20th of December, at the instant when Sherman was giving the signal to get under way from Memphis, Van Dorn was receiving the surrender of Holly Springs and the keys of Grant's depots. There seemed nothing for it but to fall back on Memphis or starve. Of this state of affairs Grant sent word to Sherman on the 20th. Eleven days later the despatch was telegraphed to Sherman by McClernand; nor was it until the 8th of January that Grant, at Holly Springs, learned from Washington the bad news from Sherman, then ten days old. As if to complete a very cat's-cradle of cross-purposes, Washington had heard of it only through the Richmond newspapers.
The collapse of the northern column, coupled with the Confederate occupation of Port Hudson, had completely changed the nature of the problem confided to Banks for solution. If he was to execute the letter of his instructions at all, he had now to choose between three courses, each involving an impossibility: to carry by assault a strong line of works, three miles long, defended by 16,000 good troops; to lay siege to the place, with the certainty that it would be relieved from Mississippi, and with the reasonable prospect of losing at least his siege train in the venture; to leave Port Hudson in his rear and go against Vicksburg, upon the supposition, in the last degree improbable, that he might find Grant, or McClernand, or Sherman there to meet him and furnish him with food and ammunition. This last alternative appears to have been the one towards which the government leaned, as far as its intentions can be gathered, yet Banks could only have accepted it by sacrificing his communications, putting New Orleans in imminent peril, and creating irreparable and almost inevitable disaster as a price of a remote chance of achieving a great success. In point of fact, in the early days of January, McClernand, accompanied by Sherman as a corps commander, was moving toward the White River and the brilliant adventure of Arkansas Post. After capturing this place on the 11th, McClernand meant to go straight to Little Rock, but Grant rose to the occasion and peremptorily recalled the troops to Milliken's Bend. "This wild-goose chase," as Grant not inaptly termed it, cost McClernand his new-fledged honors as commander of "The Army of the Mississippi," and brought him to Sherman's side as a commander of one of his own corps; a bitter draught of the same medicine he had so recently administered to Sherman.
Had Banks marched against Vicksburg at the same time that McClernand was moving on Little Rock, with Grant cut off somewhere in northern Mississippi, the Confederate commanders must have been dull and slow indeed had they failed to seize with promptitude so rare an opportunity for resuming, at a sweep, the complete mastery of the river, ruining their adversary's campaign, and eliminating 100,000 of his soldiers.
Thus, almost at the first step, the two great expeditions were brought to a standstill. They could neither act together nor advance separately. The generals began to look about them for a new way.
CHAPTER VII. MORE WAYS THAN ONE.
Since Port Hudson could neither be successfully attacked nor safely disregarded, the problem now presented to Banks was to find a way around the obstacle without sacrificing or putting in peril his communications. The Atchafalaya was the key to the puzzle, and to that quarter attention was early directed, yet for a long time the difficulties encountered in finding a way to the Atchafalaya seemed well-nigh insuperable. The rising waters were expected to render the largest of the bayous that connect the Atchafalaya and the Mississippi navigable for steamboats of small size and light draught. Of these there were, indeed, but few, so that the work of transporting troops from the one line to the other must have been, at the best, slow and tedious, yet, once accomplished, the army would have found itself, with the help of the navy, above and beyond Port Hudson, with a sufficient line of communications open to the rear, and the Mississippi and the Red River closed against the enemy.
The Confederates had in Western Louisiana, near the mouth of the Teche, a small division of Taylor's troops, about 4,500 strong, with one gunboat. At first Banks thought to leave a brigade, with two or three light-draught gunboats, on Berwick Bay to observe Taylor's force, and then to disregard it as a factor in the subsequent movements. This, while the Atchafalaya was high and the eastern lowlands of the Attakapas widely overflowed, might have been safely done, but all these plans were destined to be essentially modified by a series of unexpected events in widely different quarters.
In the second week of January, Weitzel heard that Taylor meditated an attack on the outlying force at Berwick Bay, and that with this view the armament of the gunboat Cotton was being largely augmented. Weitzel resolved to strike the first blow. For this purpose he concentrated his whole force of seven regiments, including four of his own brigade, besides the 21st Indiana, 6th Michigan, and 23d Connecticut, with Carruth's and Thompson's batteries, four pieces of Bainbridge's battery, Barrett's Troop B of the Louisiana cavalry, and Company B of the 8th New Hampshire, commanded by Lieutenant Charles H. Camp. The 1st Louisiana held Donaldsonville and the 114th New York guarded the railway. To open the way, as well as to meet the fire of the Cotton, there were four gunboats of the light-draught flotilla under Buchanan—the flagship Calhoun, Estrella, Kinsman, and Diana.
At three o'clock on the morning of the 13th of January the crossing of Berwick Bay began; by half-past ten the gunboats had completed the ferriage of the cavalry and artillery; the infantry following landed at Pattersonville; then the whole force formed in line and, moving forward in the afternoon to the junction of the Teche with the Atchafalaya, went into bivouac. The next morning began the ascent of the Teche. The 8th Vermont was thrown over to the east or left bank of the bayou, while the main line moved forward on the west bank to attack the Cotton, now in plain sight. The gunboats led the movement, necessarily in line ahead, owing to the narrowness of the bayou. On either bank Weitzel's line of battle, with skirmishers thrown well forward, was preceded by sixty volunteers from the 8th Vermont and the same number from the 75th New York, whose orders were to move directly up to the Cotton and pick off her gunners. The line of battle moved forward steadily with the column of gunboats. Between the Union gunboats and the Cotton the bayou had been obstructed so as to prevent any hostile vessel from ascending the stream beyond that point. A brisk fight followed. Under cover of the guns of the navy and of the raking and broadside fire of the batteries, the 8th Vermont and 75th New York first drove off the land supports and then moving swiftly on the Cotton silenced her. In this advance the Vermonters captured one lieutenant and forty-one men. The Cotton retreated out of range. That night her crew applied the match and let her swing across the bayou to serve as an additional obstruction. In a few moments she was completely destroyed.
Then, having thus easily gained his object, Weitzel returned to La Fourche. His losses in the movement were 1 officer and 5 men killed, and 2 officers and 25 men wounded. Lieutenant James E. Whiteside, of the 75th New York, who had volunteered to lead the sharpshooters on the right bank, was killed close to the Cotton, in the act of ordering the crew to haul down her flag. Among the killed, also, was the gallant Buchanan—a serious loss, not less to the army than to the navy.
During a lull in the naval operations above Vicksburg, occasioned by the want of coal, eleven steamboats that had been in use by the Confederates on the Mississippi between Vicksburg and Port Hudson, took advantage of Porter's absence to slip up the Yazoo for supplies. There Porter's return caught them as in a trap.
Toward the end of January Grant landed on the long neck opposite Vicksburg, and once more set to work on the canal. Porter now determined to let a detachment of his fleet run the gauntlet of the batteries of Vicksburg for the purpose of destroying every thing the Confederates had afloat below the town. The ran Queen of the West, Colonel Charles R. Ellet, protected by two tiers of cotton bales, was told off to lead the adventure. On the 2d of February she performed the feat; then passing on down the river, on the 3d, ran fifteen miles below the mouth of the Red River, and the same distance up that stream, took and burned three Confederate supply steamboats, and got safely back to Vicksburg on the 5th. Porter was naturally jubilant, for, as it seemed, the mastery of the great river had been the swift reward of his enterprise.
A week later Ellet again ran down the Mississippi and up the Red, burning and destroying until, pushing his success too far, he found himself under the guns of Fort De Russy. A few shots sufficed to disable the Queen of the West, which fell into the hands of the Confederates, while Ellet and his men escaped in one of their captures.
Below Natchez they met the Indianola coming down the river, after safely passing Vicksburg. On the 24th the Confederate gunboat Webb, and the ram Queen of the West, now also flying the Confederate colors, came after the Indianola, attacked her off Palmyra Island, and sank her. Thus, as suddenly as it had gone from them, the control of the long reach of the Mississippi once more passed over to the Confederates.
At this news Farragut took fire. Between him and the impudent little Confederate flotilla, whose easy triumph had suddenly laid low the hopes and plans of his brother admiral, there stood nothing save the guns of Port Hudson. These batteries he would pass, and for the fourth time, yet not the last, would look the miles of Confederate cannon in the mouth. Banks, whose movements were retarded and to some extent held in abeyance, from the causes already mentioned, promptly fell in with the Admiral's plans, and both commanders conferring freely, the details were soon arranged.
CHAPTER VIII. FARRAGUT PASSES PORT HUDSON.
While Farragut was putting his fleet in thorough order for this adventure, looking after all needful arrangements with minute personal care, Banks concentrated all his disposable force at Baton Rouge. By the 7th of March, leaving T. W. Sherman to cover New Orleans and Weitzel to hold strongly La Fourche, Banks had a marching column, composed of Augur's, Emory's, and Grover's divisions, 15,000 strong. On the 9th of March tents were struck, to be pitched no more for five hard months, and the next morning the troops were ready, but repairs delayed the fleet, the last vessels of which did not reach Baton Rouge until about the 12th. On that day, for the first time, Banks reviewed his army, on the old battle-ground, in the presence of the admiral, his staff, and many officers of the fleet. The new regiments, with some exceptions, showed plainly the progress already attained under the energetic training and constant work of their officers. The degree of instruction and care then apparent forecast the value of their actual service. The 38th Massachusetts and 116th New York were specially commended in orders.
To hold Baton Rouge about 3,000 men were detached, under Chickering, including the 41st Massachusetts, 173d New York, 175th New York, 1st Indiana heavy artillery, 3d Louisiana native guards, Mack's battery, and Troop F of the Rhode Island cavalry.
All arrangements being concerted for the passage of the batteries on the evening of the 14th of March, Grover set out on the afternoon of the 13th, followed, at daybreak the next morning, by Emory, with Augur bringing up the rear. In the afternoon Grover went into camp, covering the intersection of the Bayou Sara road and the road that leads from it toward the river. Emory formed on his left, covering the branches of this road that lead to Springfield Landing and to Ross Landing, his main body supporting the centre at Alexander's plantation. Augur, on the right, held the cross-road that leads from the Bayou Sara road by Alexander's to the Clinton road at Vallandigham's. At two o'clock in the afternoon the signal officers opened communication from Springfield Landing with the fleet at anchor near the head of Prophet Island, and a strong detachment was posted near the landing to maintain the connection.
As the Confederates were known to have a force of about 1,200 cavalry somewhere between Clinton and Baton Rouge, strong detachments became necessary to observe all the approaches and to hold the roads and bridges in the rear in order to secure the withdrawal of the army when the demonstration should be completed, as well as to guard the operation from being inopportunely interrupted. These dispositions reduced the force for battle to about 12,000.
It had been intended to concentrate nearly all the artillery near the river in the vicinity of Ross Landing in such a manner as to engage, or at least divide, the attention of the lower batteries of Port Hudson; but the maps were even more imperfect than usual, and when a reconnoissance, naturally retarded by the enemy's advance guard, showed that the road by which the guns were to have gone into position did not exist, the daylight was already waning. A broken bridge also caused some delay.
At five o'clock in the afternoon Banks received a despatch from Farragut announcing an important change in the hour fixed for the movement of the fleet. Instead of making the attempt "in the gray of the morning," as had been the admiral's first plan, he now meant to get under way at eight o'clock in the evening. When darkness fell, therefore, it found the troops substantially in the positions already described, yet with their outposts well thrown forward.
About ten o'clock the fleet weighed anchor and moved up the river. The flagship Hartford took the lead, with the Albatross lashed to her port side, next the Richmond with the Genesee, the Monongahela with the Kineo, and last the side-wheeler Mississippi alone. The Essex and Sachem remained at anchor below, with the mortar boats, to cover the advance. An hour later a rocket shot up from the bluff and instantly the Confederate batteries opened fire. They were soon joined by long lines of sharpshooters. To avoid the shoal that makes out widely from the western bank, as well as to escape the worst of the enemy's fire, both of musketry and artillery, the ships hugged closely the eastern bluff; so closely, indeed, that the yards brushed the leaves from the overhanging trees and the voices of men on shore could be distinctly heard by those on board. Watch-fires were lighted by the Confederates to show as well the ships as the range; yet this did more harm than good, since the smoke united with that of the guns ashore and afloat to render the fleet invisible. On the other hand, the pilots were soon unable to see.
The Hartford, meeting the swift eddy at the bend, where the current describes nearly a right angle, narrowly escaped being driven ashore. The Richmond, following, was disabled by a shot through her engine-room when abreast of the upper battery at the turn. The Monongahela's consort, the Kineo, lost the use of her rudder, and the Monongahela herself ran aground on the spit; presently the Kineo, drifting clear, also grounded, but was soon afloat again, and, with her assistance, the Monongahela too swung free, after nearly a half hour of imminent peril. Then the Kineo, cast loose by her consort, drifted helplessly down the stream, while the Monongahela passed up until a heated bearing brought her engines to a stop and she too drifted with the current.
Last of the fleet, the Mississippi, unseen in the smoke, and therefore safe enough from the Confederate guns, yet equally unable to see either friend, foe, or landmark, was carried by the current hard on the spit; then, after a half hour of ineffectual exertion, lying alone and helpless under the concentrated aim of the Confederate batteries, she was abandoned and set on fire by her captain. About three in the morning, becoming lighter, as the fire did its work, she floated free and drifted down the stream one mass of flames, in plain view, not merely of the fleet, but also of the army, condemned to stand to arms in sight and sound of the distant battle and now to look on idly as, with a mighty flash and roar, the Mississippi cast to the heavens her blazing timbers, amid a myriad of bursting shells, in one mountain of flame: then black silence.
Thus, when at last the gray of the morning came, the Hartford and Albatross rode in safety above Port Hudson, while the Richmond, Monongahela, Genesee, and Kineo, all battered and more or less injured, lay at anchor once more near Prophet Island, and the Mississippi had perished in a blaze of glory.
Narrowly escaping the total failure of his plans and the destruction of his fleet, Farragut had so far succeeded in his objects that henceforth the Confederates practically lost the control of the Mississippi above Port Hudson, as well as the use of the Red River as their base of supplies. Save in skiff-loads, beef, corn, and salt could no longer be safely carried across the Mississippi, and the high road from Galveston and Matamoras was closed against the valuable and sorely needed cargoes brought from Europe by the blockade runners.
As for the army, it had gained some facility of movement, some knowledge of its deficiencies, and some information of great future value as to the topography of the unknown country about Port Hudson; more than this could hardly have been expected. Indeed, the sole object of the presence of the army was defeated by the movement of the fleet so many hours before the time agreed upon. This object was to make a diversion that might attract the enemy's attention and thus tend to reduce the fire of musketry on the exposed decks of the fleet, and to draw off or hold off the fire of the field-pieces that might otherwise be massed on the river front. The disparity between the relative strength of Banks's army and that of the garrison was too well known to justify the thought of an actual attack upon the works.
Such, however, was not the opinion of the government, which to the last seems to have taken for granted that all that was needed to insure the surrender of Port Hudson was a desire to attack it. Even after the surrender, Halleck, in his annual report for 1863, speaking of the position of affairs in March, said: "Had our land forces invested Port Hudson at this time, it could have been easily reduced, as its garrison was weak . . . but the strength of the place was not then known." In truth, the place was never so strong, before or after, as at this time; nor is it often in war that the information tallies so nearly with the fact. The effective strength of the garrison was more than 16,000. Gardner's monthly report accounts for 1,366 officers and 14,921 men present for duty, together 16,287 out of a total present of 20,388. Besides the twenty-two heavy guns in position, he had thirteen light batteries.
Morning found the army alone and in a bad position, either for attack or defence. Nothing was to be gained by staying there, and much was to be risked. As soon, therefore, as word came through the ever-active and adventurous signal-officers that all was well with what remained of the fleet, Banks once more took up the line of march for Baton Rouge, and went into bivouac in great discomfort on the soggy borders of the Bayou Montesanto, about eight miles north of the town.
Meanwhile, what had become of Farragut? The last seen of the Hartford and Albatross was on the morning of the 15th by the signal officers at Springfield Landing. The two vessels then lay at anchor beyond the bend above Port Hudson. Several attempts were made to communicate with the Admiral across the intervening neck of lowland. The first was on the 16th, by Parmele, with the 174th New York and a squadron of the 2d Rhode Island cavalry. Next, on the 18th, Banks, eager to advance the effort, took Dudley's brigade, two sections of Rails's battery, and Magen's troop, and joined Parmele. But for a time these efforts accomplished nothing, since it was impossible to see far over the flat and wooded country; and the Confederates having cut the great levee at Morganza, the whole neighborhood was under water and the bridges gone. Finally, on the 19th, Colonel Charles J. Paine went out with the 2d Louisiana, the 174th New York, and a small squad of cavalry, and leaving first the infantry and then most of the troopers behind, and riding on almost alone, succeeded in crossing the bend and gained the levee at the head of the old channel known as Fausse River, about three miles above Port Hudson. There he had a good view of the river, yet nothing was to be seen of the Hartford and Albatross. Again, on the 24th, Dudley sent Magen with his troop to Hermitage Landing. Pushing on with a few men, Magen got a full view of the reach above Waterloo for five miles, but he too learned nothing of the fleet. Farragut had in fact gone up the river on the 15th, after vainly attempting to exchange signals with his ships below and with the army, and was now near Vicksburg in communication with Admiral Porter, engaged in concerting plans for the future. Before getting under way he had caused three guns to be fired from the Hartford. This was the signal agreed upon with Banks, but for some reason it was either not heard or not reported.
Just before separating at Baton Rouge, Banks had handed to Farragut a letter addressed to Grant, to be delivered by the Admiral in the event of success. This letter, the first direct communication between the two generals, Grant received on the 20th of March, and from it derived his first information of the actual state of affairs in the Department of the Gulf. After stating his position and force Banks wound up by saying: "Should the Admiral succeed in his attempt, I shall try to open communication with him on the other side of the river, and, in that event, trust I shall hear from you as to your position and movements, and especially as to your views as to the most efficient mode of co-operation upon the part of the forces we respectively command."
With the Hartford and Albatross controlling the reach between Port Hudson and Vicksburg, as well as the mouth of the Red River and the head of the Atchafalaya, Banks might now safely disregard the movements of the Confederate gunboats. Accordingly, while waiting for Grant's answer, he turned to the execution of his former plan.
CHAPTER IX. THE TECHE.
In effect, this plan was to turn Port Hudson by way of the Atchafalaya. For the original conception, the credit must be given to Weitzel, who seems indeed to have formed a very similar scheme when he first occupied La Fourche. However, his force was, at that time, barely sufficient for the defence of the territory confided to his care. Not only was there then no particular object in moving beyond the Atchafalaya, but any advance in that direction would have exposed his little corps to disaster on account of the great facilities afforded by the numberless streams for a movement by detachments of the enemy into his rear. It was largely to prepare for an advance into Western Louisiana, as well as to defend his occupancy of La Fourche, that Butler, upon Weitzel's suggestion, had created the gunboat flotilla.
Soon after Banks took the command, Weitzel, who had opinions and the courage to enforce them, laid his ideas before his new chief. On the 18th of January, disturbed by hearing that Admiral Farragut meant to take one of the army gunboats, recently transferred to the navy, away from Berwick Bay, instead of sending more, Weitzel expressed himself strongly in a despatch to headquarters.
"With such a naval force in that bay, in co-operation with a suitable land force, the only true campaign in this section could be made. Look at the map. Berwick Bay leads into Grand Lake, Grand Lake into the Atchafalaya, the Atchafalaya into Red River. Boats drawing not more than four or five feet and in the force I mention [10 or 12], with a proper land force, could clear out the Atchafalaya, Red River, and Black River. All communications from Vicksburg and Port Hudson cross this line indicated by me. By taking it in the manner I propose, Vicksburg and Port Hudson would be a cipher to the rebels. It would be a campaign that 100,000 men could not so easily fight, and so successfully. It is an operation to which the taking of Galveston Island is a cipher and the capture of the Mobile Bay forts a nonentity."
With these views Banks was himself in accord, yet not in their entirety. The pressure of time led him to desire to avoid divergences into the Teche country. If it were possible, he wished to gain the Atchafalaya by some route at once speedier and more direct. While the explorations were in progress to discover such a route, Weitzel once more took occasion to urge his original plan. On the 15th of February, he wrote to Augur, his division commander:
"I feel it a duty which I owe you and my country to address you at this late hour in the night on the present proposed movement on Butte à la Rose and the Teche country. . . . In all honesty and candor, I do not believe the present plan to be a proper one. . . . Sibley's Texas brigade is somewhere in the Opelousas country. . . . Mouton's main body is in rear of intrenchments on Madame Meade's plantation, six miles below Centreville. If we defeat these two commands we form a junction with our forces near Vicksburg. By pursuing our success to Alexandria, we may capture General Mouton's force, and with little loss, unless it form a junction with Sibley. If it forms a junction, we will meet them near Iberia and engage them in open field, and with a proper force can defeat them. General Emory's whole division (moved to Brashear City) and my brigade can do this work. Let the light transportation, now with General Emory, and all destined for and collected by me be collected at Brashear City. Let two of the brigades be moved to and landed at Indian Bend, while the other two are crossed and attack in front. If Mouton escapes (which I think, if properly conducted, will be doubtful) we form a junction at Indian Bend. We proceed to attack and with much superior force, because I do not believe Mouton and Sibley united will exceed 6,000 men. We can defeat them, pursue our success to Alexandria and of course get Butte à la Rose; our gunboats to facilitate its fall, attacking it as they cannot accompany us farther up than Saint Martinville. I believe this to be the true and only correct plan of the campaign."
These views were unquestionably sound; they were such as might have been expected of an officer of Weitzel's skill and experience and special knowledge of the theatre of operations. Supported by the strong current of events, they were now to be carried into effect.
At the date of this despatch, Emory's division had been for several weeks near the head of the Bayou Plaquemine, with headquarters at Indian Village, endeavoring to find or force a waterway to the Atchafalaya, while Weitzel was holding his brigade in readiness to co-operate by a simultaneous movement against Taylor on the Teche. Many attempts were made by Emory to carry out the object confided to him, yet all proved failures. Bayou Sorrel, Lake Chicot, Grand River, and the Plaquemine itself, from both ends of the stream, were thoroughly explored, but only to find the bayous choked with driftwood impossible to remove, and until removed rendering the streams impassable. Two of these drifts in Bayou Sorrel were carefully examined by Captain Henry Cochen, of the 173d New York. The first he reported to be about a mile in length, "composed of one mass of logs, roots, big and small trees, etc., jammed tightly for thirty feet, the whole length of my pole." The second drift, just beyond, was found nearly as bad, and farther on lay another even worse. Moreover, a thorough reconnoissance showed the whole country, between the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya above the Plaquemine, to be impracticable at that season for all arms. After more than a month of this sort of work, Emory was called across the river to Baton Rouge to take part in the events narrated in the last chapter.
Banks returned to New Orleans on the 24th of March, and the next day ordered Grover to embark and move down the river to Donaldsonville, and thence march down the Bayou La Fourche to Thibodeaux. At the same time Emory was ordered, as soon as Grover's river transports should be released, to embark his command for Algiers, and thence move by the railway to Brashear. Meanwhile, on the 18th of March, Weitzel learned of the presence of the Queen of the West and Webb in the Atchafalaya, and as this seemed to indicate an intention to attack him, and the navy had no more light-draught gunboats to spare for his further security, to avoid having his hand forced and the game spoiled, he discreetly fell back on the 21st to the railway bridge over Bayou Boeuf, and took up a position where he was not exposed, as at Brashear, to the risk of being cut off by any sudden movement of the enemy.
On the 28th of March the Diana was sent to reconnoitre the Confederate position and strength on the lower Teche; but continuing on down the Atchafalaya, instead of returning by Grand Lake as intended, and thus running into the arms of the enemy, she fell an easy prey. The Calhoun went to her relief, but ran aground, and the Estrella had to go to the assistance of the Calhoun. Acting-Master James L. Peterson, commanding the Diana, was killed, and Lieutenant Pickering D. Allen, aide-de-camp to General Weitzel, was wounded. With the Diana there fell into the enemy's hands nearly one hundred and fifty prisoners. This gave the Confederates three rather formidable boats in the Atchafalaya and the Teche.
The movement of the troops was necessarily slow, as well by reason of the extremely limited facilities for transportation, as because of the state of the roads, but by the 8th of April every thing was well advanced, and on that day Banks moved his headquarters to Brashear. Weitzel, who had been reinforced by the siege-train, manned by the 1st Indiana heavy artillery, had already re-occupied his former front on Berwick Bay. Emory was in bivouac at Bayou Ramos, about five miles in the rear of Weitzel, and Grover at Bayou Boeuf, about four miles behind Emory. Thus the whole movement was almost completely masked from the Confederates, who from their side of the bay saw only Weitzel, and knew little or nothing of the gathering forces in his rear. So little, indeed, that Taylor, with his usual enterprise, seems to have thought this a favorable moment for attempting upon Weitzel the same operation that Weitzel had been so long meditating for the discomfiture of Taylor.
Emory marched early in the morning of the 9th of April and closed up on Weitzel, who, an hour later, about ten o'clock, began to cross. No enemy was seen save a small outpost, engaged in observing the movement. This detachment retired before Weitzel's advance, without coming to blows. Weitzel at once sent his Assistant Adjutant-General, Captain John B. Hubbard, with Perkins's and Williamson's troops of cavalry and one section of Bainbridge's battery to discover the enemy's position. The Confederates were found to be in some force in front of Pattersonville, with their cavalry pickets advanced to within a mile of Weitzel's front.
As soon as Weitzel had completed his crossing, and released the boats, Emory followed him. The four brigades bivouacked in front of the landing-place that night. The gunboats, having done the greater share of the ferriage, went back to the east bank for Grover.
Grover, who had marched from Bayou Boeuf at nine o'clock, just as Emory was arriving at Brashear, came there, in his turn, early in the afternoon. The plan had been that Grover should embark immediately, and, having his whole force on board by an early hour in the night, the boats should set out at daylight, so as to place Grover by nine o'clock on the morning of the 11th in position for the work cut out for him. With few pilots, and the shores unlighted, it was out of the question to attempt the navigation of the waters of the Grand Lake during the night. However, it was not until the night of the 11th that Grover was able to complete the embarkation of his division. To understand this it is necessary to observe that Emory and Weitzel, in making the passage of Berwick Bay, were merely crossing a short ferry, so that the boats engaged in the transfer could be loaded rapidly to almost any extent, so long as they remained afloat, and being unloaded with equal facility, were in a few minutes ready to repeat the operation. In Grover's case, however, the infantry, artillery, cavalry, and stores had all to be taken care of at once, with every provision for fighting a battle. For this the artillery was considered indispensable, and it was not without great trouble and long delay that the guns and horses were got afloat. Fate seemed to be against Grover, for after all had been accomplished by the greatest exertion on his part, as well as on the part of his officers and the corps quartermasters, a fog set in so dense that the pilots were unable to see their way. This continued until nine o'clock on the morning of the 12th; then at last the movement began.
About noon, on the 11th of April, Weitzel, leading the advance of the main column, moved forward. At once his skirmishers felt the skirmishers of the enemy, who retired slowly, without attempting any serious opposition. In the evening, Weitzel rested in line of battle a short distance above Pattersonville. Emory followed closely, and went into bivouac on Weitzel's left. The march had not been begun earlier, and the enemy was not pressed, because it was desired to keep him amused until Grover should have gained his rear, and Grover had not yet started.
After the early morning of Sunday, the 12th of April, had been spent in light skirmishing and in demonstrations of the cavalry, designed to observe the enemy, and at the same time to attract and hold his attention, word came that Grover was under way. Banks knew that the passing fleet must soon be in plain sight of the Confederates. Therefore, it was now necessary to move promptly, and to feel the enemy strongly, yet not too strongly, lest he should abandon his position too soon and suddenly spoil all. From this moment it is important to remember that, save in the event of complete success, no word could come from Grover for nearly two days. The first news from him was expected to be the sound of his guns in the enemy's rear.
At eleven o'clock the bugle again sounded the advance. The whole line moved forward, continually skirmishing, until, about four o'clock in the afternoon, the infantry came under fire of the Confederate guns in position on the lines known as Camp Bisland. The line of march led up the right bank of the Atchafalaya until the mouth of the Teche was reached, thence up the Teche, partly astride the stream, yet mainly by the right bank. At first Weitzel formed on the right, Emory on the left, but as the great bend of the Teche was reached, about four miles below Bisland, and by the nature of the ground the front became narrowed at the same time that in following the change of direction of the bayou the line was brought to a wheel, Weitzel took ground to the left in two lines, while Emory advanced Paine's brigade into the front line on Weitzel's right, placed Ingraham in his second line, and made a third line with Godfrey.
Then finding the enemy beyond the Teche too strong for the cavalry to manage single-handed, Banks called on Emory to reinforce the right bank. Emory sent Bryan across with the 175th New York and a section of the 1st Maine battery, commanded by Lieutenant Eben D. Haley. They were to push the enemy back, and to conform to the advance of the main line.
The day was hot, the air close, and the march over the fields of young cane, across or aslant the heavy furrows and into and over the deep ditches, was trying to the men, as yet but little accustomed to marches. Fortunately, however, there was no need of pressing the advance until Grover's guns should be heard. About half-past five in the afternoon a brisk artillery fire began, and was kept up until night fell; then Emory moved the 4th Wisconsin forward to hold a grove in front of a sugar-house, near the bayou, well in advance of his right, in order to prevent the Confederates from occupying it, to the annoyance of the whole line.
After dark all the pickets were thrown well forward in touch with those of the enemy, but the main lines were drawn back out of range, for the sake of a good night's sleep before a hard day's work.
CHAPTER X. BISLAND.
The works behind which the Confederates now stood to battle were named Camp Bisland or Fort Bisland, in honor of the planter whose fields were thus given over to war. The defences consisted of little more than a line of simple breastworks, of rather low relief, thrown completely across the neck of dry land on either bank of the Teche, the flanks resting securely on the swamps that border Grand Lake on the left and on the right extend to the Gulf. The position was well chosen, for five miles below Centreville, where the plantation of Mrs. Meade adjoins the Bethel Place, the neck is at its narrowest. The Teche, passing a little to the left of the centre of the works, enabled the guns of the Diana, moving freely around the bends, to contribute to the defence, while the obstructions placed below the works hindered the ascent of the bayou by the Union gunboats. The Confederate right was also somewhat strengthened by the embankment of the unfinished railroad to Opelousas. On the other hand, from the nature of the ground, low and flat as it was, the works were in part rather commanded than commanding; yet the difference of level was inconsiderable, and for a force as small as Taylor's, outnumbered as his was, any slight disadvantage in this way was more than compensated by the shortness of the line.
Along the banks of the bayou were a few live oaks; on either flank the swamp was densely wooded, mainly with cypress, cottonwood, and willow, with an outlying and almost impenetrable canebrake, while between the attacking columns and the Confederate position, on either bank of the bayou, stretched a field where the young shoots of the sugar-cane stood knee-high. This was crossed at right angles with the bayou, by many of those wide and deep ditches by which the planters of Louisiana are accustomed to drain their tilled lowlands.
Such was the scene of the action now about to be fought, known to the Union army as the battle of Bisland or Fort Bisland; to the Confederates, as the battle of Bethel Place or Bayou Teche.
During the whole of the night of the 12th a dense fog prevailed, but this lifting about eight o'clock on the morning of Monday, the 13th of April, disclosed a day as bright and beautiful as the scene was fair. At an early hour the whole line advanced to within short musketry range, in substantially the same order as on the previous day. An attack by a detachment of Confederate cavalry upon the skirmishers of the 4th Wisconsin, in advance of the sugar-house, was easily thrown off, and a later demonstration by the Confederate infantry upon Paine's position in the grove shared the same fortune. Emory moved first the 8th New Hampshire, and afterwards the 133d and 173d New York, to the support of the 4th Wisconsin. At the same time Banks ordered Emory to send the other four regiments of Gooding's brigade and the two remaining sections of the 1st Maine battery to reinforce Bryan with the 175th New York on the left bank of the Teche, in order to be prepared, not only to meet a flank movement of the Confederates from that direction, but also to carry to works on that side, should this be thought best. After these dispositions had been completed the advance was steady and continuous, yet not rapid, until toward noon the last of the Confederates retired behind their breastworks and opened fire with musketry. The ditches already spoken of hindered the progress of the Union artillery, yet not seriously, while they afforded an excellent protection for the supports of the batteries and enabled the lines of infantry to rest at intervals: no small gain, for the sun grew very hot, and the march over the heavy windrows and across the deep ditches was exhausting.
The Confederate gunboat Diana took position well in front of the works, so as to command completely the right flank of Emory and Weitzel as they approached by a fire that, had it not been checked, must have enfiladed the whole line. Just as this fire was beginning to be disturbing it was silenced by a fortunate shot from one of the two 30-pounder Parrott guns, served by the 1st Indiana, posted in rear of Weitzel's left and trained upon the Diana, under the personal supervision of Arnold. The third shot from this battery, aimed at the flash of the Diana's guns, exploded in her engine room; then above the trees, whose leafage full and low hid the vessel, was seen a flash like a puff of vapor; a rousing cheer was heard from the sharpshooters of the 4th Wisconsin and 8th New Hampshire, who had been told off to keep down the fire of the gunboat; and the Diana was seen to pass up the bayou and out of the fight.
All risk of an enfilade file being thus removed, the whole Union line quickly closed with the Confederates, and the engagement became general with artillery and musketry. On both sides of the bayou the firing was brisk, at times even severe. Save where the view was broken here and there by the trees or became lightly clouded by the smoke of battle, the whole field lay in plain sight. As the course of the Teche in ascending turned toward the left, Gooding, on the east bank, had the wheeling flank, while Weitzel formed the pivot.
Gooding went forward in gallant style, his men quickening their pace at times to a run, in order to keep the alignment with the main body on the west bank. Perceiving on his extreme right, toward the lake, a fine grove or copse, Gooding threw out Sharpe with the 156th New York to examine the wood with a view of attempting to turn the left flank of the Confederate lines. These, as it proved, did not extend beyond the grove, but there ended in an unfinished redoubt. Indeed, nearly the whole of the Confederate works on the east side of the bayou, although laid out long since, had been but recently and hastily thrown up, after it became known to Taylor that Banks was crossing to attack him. In the wood, about five hundred yards in advance of the breastworks, Mouton had posted Bagby's 3d Texas regiment. The Texans held their ground so stiffly that Gooding found it necessary to send his own regiment, the 31st Massachusetts, to the support of Sharpe. Mouton supported Bagby with the left wing of the 18th Louisiana and part of Fournet's and Waller's battalions. Gooding's men carried the rifle-pits in the wood by a spirited charge, in which they took two officers and eighty-four men prisoners. His main line in the open ground between the wood and the bayou was formed by the 38th Massachusetts, deployed as skirmishers, covering the front and followed, at a distance of about one hundred and fifty yards, by the 53d Massachusetts, in like order. Behind the 53d, two sections of the 1st Maine battery were posted to command two parallel plantation roads leading up the bayou, while the third section was held in reserve. After the 31st Massachusetts had gone to the support of the right, the main line here was composed of the 175th New York. Shortly after five o'clock the 53d Massachusetts relieved the 38th, which had expended its ammunition, and was falling back under orders to replenish. When this was done, the 38th once more advanced and formed in support of the skirmish line.
Meanwhile on the left of the Teche the main body moved forward in two lines of battalions deployed, Paine on the right and Weitzel on the left, while Ingraham, in column of companies, formed the reserve for both. Paine's first line on the right, nearest the bayou, was composed of the 4th Wisconsin and 8th New Hampshire, his second line of the 133d New York and the 173d New York. Mack's 20-pounders commanded the bayou road, and Duryea went into battery in advance of the centre, between Paine and Weitzel.
Weitzel's front line was composed of the 8th Vermont and 114th New York, with the 12th Connecticut, 160th New York, and 75th New York in the second line. The guns of Bainbridge and Carruth went into battery near the left flank, and working slowly kept down the fire of the Confederate artillery in their front. When the fire of musketry became hot, Weitzel sent the 75th New York to try to gain the canebrake on the left, in advance of the enemy's works, with a view of turning that flank. Of this movement Taylor says in his report that it was twice repulsed by the 5th Texas and Waller's battalion, under Green, and the 28th Louisiana, Colonel Gray, aided by the guns of Semmes's battery and the Valverde battery. However, the counter-movement on the part of the Confederates, being begun in plain view, was instantly seen, and Banks sent word to Weitzel to check it. With this object, Weitzel ordered the 114th New York to go to the support of the 75th. A brisk fight followed, without material advantage to either side. In truth, the canebrake formed an impenetrable obstacle to the combatants, who, when once they had passed within the outer edge of the tangle, were unable either to see or approach one another, although the struggle was plainly visible from the front of both armies.
The reserve of Parrott guns, manned by the 1st Indiana and composed of four 30-pounders and four 20-pounders, was posted under McMillan to cover the left flank and the broken centre where it was pierced by the bayou, as well as to watch for the return of the Diana to activity. Toward evening the remaining guns of the 1st Indiana, two 12-pounder rifles under Cox, after being posted in support of the centre, were sent to the left to assist Bainbridge and Carruth, whose ammunition was giving out.
Banks, after gaining advanced positions in contact with the enemy, forbore to press them hard because, as has been seen, his whole purpose was to hold the Confederates where they stood until he could hear of Grover or from Grover. As the day advanced without news or the long-expected sound of Grover's guns, Banks began to grow impatient and to fear that the adventure from which so much had been hoped had somehow miscarried. He therefore became even more anxious than before lest the Confederates should move off under cover of the coming night. Accordingly, during the afternoon, although it had been his previous purpose not to deliver an assault until certain that Grover held the Confederate line of retreat, Banks gave discretionary orders to Emory and Weitzel to form for an attack and move upon the Confederate works if a favorable opportunity should present itself. The exercise of this discretion in turn devolved upon the commanders of the front line, that is, upon Weitzel and Paine, for Gooding, being out of communication, except by signal, with the troops on the west bank, was occupied in conforming to their movements. Paine and Weitzel, after conferring, resolved to attack, and having made every preparation, only waited for the word from the commanding general.
The day was waning; it was already past four o'clock; and Banks was still somewhat anxiously weighing the approach of night and the cost of the assault against the chance of news from Grover, when suddenly, straight up the bayou, and high above the heads of Banks and his men, a 9-inch shell came hurtling, and as it was seen to burst over the lines of Bisland, from far in the rear broke the deep roar of the Clifton's bow-gun. Soon from below the obstructions that barred her progress came a messenger bearing the long-expected tidings of Grover. At last he was on land and in march toward his position. With a sense of relief Banks recalled the orders for the assault and drew his front line back out of fire of the Confederate musketry so that the men might rest. To relieve the exhausted skirmish line, the 4th Massachusetts and the 162d New York of Ingraham's brigade were sent forward from the reserve, leaving him only the 110th New York.
By dawn the next morning, at all events, Banks calculated, the turning column would be in place; accordingly during the night he gave orders to assault along the whole front as soon as it should be light enough to see.
However, shortly after midnight, sounds were heard on the picket line, indicating some unusual movement behind the Confederate works. When, at daybreak, the various skirmishers moved forward in eager rivalry, they found the Confederates gone. Captain Allaire, leading his company of the 133d New York, was the first to enter the works; the regiment itself and the 8th New Hampshire followed closely, and the colors of the 8th were the first to mount the parapet, where they were planted by Paine. On the left bank, this honor fell to the 53d Massachusetts. But in truth the surge was so nearly simultaneous that the whole line of entrenchments on both sides of the bayou, from right to left, was crossed almost at the same instant.
It was nine o'clock on Monday night when Taylor learned of Grover's movements and position, as narrated in the next chapter. Taylor at once began to move out of the lines of Bisland and to direct his attention to Grover in order to secure a retreat. Just before daylight Green, to whom, with his 5th Texas, Waller's battalion, and West's section of Semmes's battery, Taylor had given the more than usually delicate task of covering the rear, marched off the ground, leaving nothing behind save one 24-pounder siege gun and a disabled howitzer of Cornay's battery.
Without losing an instant the pursuit of the retreating Confederates was begun, Weitzel leading the way, and was conducted with vigor and with scarcely a halt, notwithstanding the energetic opposition of the Confederate rear-guard, until early in the afternoon, just beyond Franklin, Emory's advance guard, under Paine, following the bayou road, ran into Grover's under Dwight, approaching from the opposite direction. Weitzel, having entered Franklin without opposition, kept the left-hand or cut-off road until he came to the burnt bridge over the Choupique, by which, as will presently be seen, the Confederates had escaped.
Gooding, after occupying the works in his front, crossed the Teche by a bridge to the west bank and fell into Emory's column behind Ingraham. The Clifton, as soon as the obstructions could be removed, got under way and moved up the bayou abreast with the advance of the army.
The losses of the Nineteenth Army Corps in this its first battle were 3 officers and 37 men killed, 8 officers and 176 men wounded; in all 224. The 38th Massachusetts headed the list with 6 killed and 29 wounded, and Gooding's brigade, to which this regiment belonged, reported 87 casualties, or 38 per cent. of the whole. In the six light batteries 15 horses were killed and 12 wounded, and one caisson of the 1st Maine was upset and lost in crossing the Teche to go into action.
The losses of the Confederates have never been reported and no means are known to exist for estimating them.
The disparity of the forces engaged was more than enough to overcome the Confederate advantage of position, for Banks had 10,000 men with 38 guns, while Taylor reports but 4,000 men with four batteries, estimated at 24 or 25 guns. To these must be added the Diana, until disabled on Monday morning, and to the Union strength the Clifton, after she arrived and opened fire at long range on Monday afternoon.
At Bisland the new headquarters flags were for the first time carried under fire. These distinguishing colors, as prescribed in General Orders on the 18th of February, were guidons four feet square attached to a lance twelve feet long, made for convenience in two joints. In camp or garrison they served to indicate the quarters of the general commanding the corps, division, or brigade, while on the march they were borne near his person by a mounted orderly, commonly a trusty sergeant. The flag of the Nineteenth Army Corps was blue with a white four-pointed star in the middle, and on the star the figures 19 in red. From this the division flags differed only in having a red ground and the number of the division in black. The brigade flags had blue, white, and blue horizontal stripes of equal width, with the number of the brigade in black in the white stripe. Thenceforward these colors were borne through every engagement in which the corps took part. Not one of them was ever abandoned by its bearer or taken by the enemy.
CHAPTER XI. IRISH BEND.
Grover's instructions were to gain a landing on the shore of Grand Lake, and then marching on Franklin, to cut off Taylor's retreat or to attack him in the rear, as circumstances might suggest.
We have seen how, instead of being ready to move from Berwick Bay on the morning of the 10th of April, Grover found his departure delayed by the various causes already mentioned until the morning of the 12th was well advanced.
The flotilla, under Lieutenant-Commander Cooke, composed of the flag-ships Estrella, Arizona, Clifton, and Calhoun, having completed the ferriage of Emory and Weitzel over Berwick Bay, was now occupied in assisting the army transports to convey Grover to his destination, besides standing ready to protect his movement and his landing with its guns.
About noon, when off Cypress Island, the Arizona ran hard and fast aground, and four precious hours were lost in a vain attempt to get her afloat. If, in the light of after events, this may seem like time wasted, it should always be remembered that all four of the gunboats were crowded with troops, while an attack from the Queen of the West and her consorts was to be looked for at any moment. Finally, rather than to put the adventure in peril by a longer delay, Cooke determined to leave the Arizona to take care of herself, and once more steaming ahead, at half-past seven o'clock, the gunboats and transports came to anchor below Miller's Point, off Madame Porter's plantation. At this place, known as Oak Lawn, Grover in the orders under which he was acting had been told he might expect to find a good shell road leading straight to the Teche, and crossing the bayou about the middle of the bow called Irish Bend. Grover at once sent Fiske with two companies of the 1st Louisiana ashore in the Clifton's boats to reconnoitre. It was midnight when, after carefully examining the ground, Fiske returned to the gunboat and reported the road under water, and quite impracticable for all arms. The fleet then got under way, and proceeding about six miles farther up the lake, anchored beyond Magee's Point.
Before daylight Dwight sent two of his staff officers, Captain Denslow and Lieutenant Matthews, ashore, with a small detachment from the 6th New York, to examine the plantation road leading from this point to the Teche. The road being found practicable for all arms, the debarkation began at daybreak.
Dwight landed first. As soon as his leading regiment, the 1st Louisiana, reached the shore, Holcomb threw forward two companies, under Lieutenant-Colonel Fiske, as skirmishers, and formed the battalion in line to cover the landing.
Taylor, when he first learned that the gunboats and transports had passed up Grand Lake, had sent Vincent, with the 2d Louisiana cavalry and a section of Cornay's battery, to Verdun landing, about four miles behind Camp Bisland, to observe and oppose the movement. This was about noon on Sunday, the 12th. In the evening, hearing of the progress of the fleet, Taylor sent a second section of Cornay's battery to the lake, and going himself to Vincent ordered him to follow the movement and try to prevent a landing. The next morning Taylor sent Reily with the 4th Texas, to join Vincent and aid him in retarding Grover's progress.
Taylor seems to have censured Vincent for letting Grover land, yet in truth Vincent was not to blame. The line he had to watch was too long for his numbers, and the Union flotilla could and did move more rapidly on the lake than the Confederate troops by the roads. When he had stationed his pickets at the probable landing-places, and taken up a central position to support them, he had done all that lay in his power. The range and weight of the 9-inch shells of the navy were alone enough to put a serious opposition to the landing out of the question, but as soon as Vincent found where the attempt was to be made, he disposed his men and guns to retard it. Two of Cornay's guns even tried, ineffectually of course, to destroy the transports: Cooke quickly drove them off.
As Holcomb's skirmishers deployed they were met by a brisk fusillade from Vincent's men strongly posted in ambush behind a high fence in the thick wood that skirts the shore; but when Holcomb advanced his battalion Vincent's men fell back on their main body and left the wood to Holcomb, who immediately moved to the edge of the clearing and held it, observing the enemy on the farther border. This was Vincent with his regiment and the four guns of Corney; and from this moment all that was happening on the lake shore passed unseen by the Confederates.
Meanwhile the landing went on very slowly, for the transports could not come nearer to the beach than a hundred yards, and, although the foot-soldiers were able to jump overboard and scramble ashore, and the horses could also take to the water, it was necessary to make a bridge of flats for the guns and caissons of the artillery. Thus it was four o'clock in the afternoon before the whole division found itself assembled on the plantation of Duncan McWilliams on the shore of the lake, with the Teche at the upper reach of Irish Bend four miles to the southward, and Charenton in the hollow of Indian Bend lying but two miles toward the southwest. There were roads in either direction, but Irish Bend was the way to Franklin, and to Franklin Grover was under orders to go.
About nine o'clock in the morning Dwight had borrowed from Birge his two leading regiments, the 13th Connecticut and the 159th New York, to support the 1st Louisiana. Grover also gave Dwight Closson's battery and Barrett's troop of cavalry. Toward noon, moving a detachment by his left, Dwight seized the bridge that crosses the Teche in approaching Madame Porter's plantation from the northward, just in time to extinguish the flames that Vincent's men had lighted to destroy it. After seizing the bridge at Oak Lawn, Barrett galloped down the left bank of the Teche and seized the bridge a mile or two below, by which the same small plantation is reached from the eastward; probably by the shell road that Grover had been told to take, and at which he had tried to land. Barrett was in time to save the bridge from Vincent, and to hold the advantage thus gained Dwight soon sent Holcomb with the 1st Louisiana, 131st New York, 6th New York, 22d Maine, and Closson's battery.
Meanwhile, the division being entirely without wagons, save a few that were loaded with the reserve ammunition, still another wait took place while the men's haversacks were being filled with hard bread and coffee. All these delays were now having their effect upon Grover's own calculations. He now knew nothing of Banks's movements or his situation. Of his own movements he was bound to suppose that Taylor had received early and full information. Moreover, the topography of the country where Grover found himself was obscure and to him unknown. Instead, therefore, of marching forward as fast as his troops could land, boldly and at all hazards to seize the roads by which Taylor must retreat, Grover now took counsel with prudence and concealing his force behind the natural screen of the wood, waited till his whole division should be fully ready.
Thus it was six o'clock and the sun stood low among the tree-tops when Grover, with Birge and Kimball, took up the line of march for the Teche. Crossing the upper of the two bridges, he went into bivouac on the right bank on the plantation of Madame Porter, and called in Dwight's detachment. Before setting out to rejoin the division Holcomb burned the lower bridge, under orders, and then marching up the left bank, crossed the upper bridge at a late hour of the night. In Grover's front stood Vincent alone, for Reily had not yet come; but in the darkness it was impossible for Grover to make out the enemy's force, or even to find his exact position.
When about nine o'clock that night, as related in the last chapter, Taylor heard the news from Reily, he supposed Grover to be already in strong possession of the only road by which the Confederates could make good their retreat up the Teche; yet desperate as the situation seemed, Taylor at once made up his mind to try to extricate himself from the toils. Sending his wagon train ahead, soon after midnight he silently moved out of the lines of Bisland and marched rapidly on Franklin, leaving Green to cover the rear and retard the pursuit. These dispositions made, Taylor himself rode at once to his reversed front, a mile east of Franklin. With him were Reily, whom he had picked up on the road below Franklin, Vincent who with the four guns of Cornay was still watching Grover, and Clack's Louisiana battalion, which had come in from New Iberia just in the nick of time. The plantation with the sugar-house, then belonging to McKerrall, is now known as Shaffer's. The grounds of Oak Lawn adjoin it toward the east and north, and along its western boundary stand Nerson's Woods, whence the coming battle takes the name given to it in the Confederate accounts. Here, beneath the trees, along their eastern skirt and behind a stout fence, Taylor formed his line of battle, facing toward the east, and waited for the coming of Grover. South of the bayou road stood Clack; on his left, two pieces of Cornay's battery, next Reily, then Vincent with a second section of Cornay's guns. The task before them was simple but desperate. They were to hold off Grover until all but they had safely passed behind the living barrier. Then they were to extricate themselves as best they could, and falling in the rear of the main column of the Confederate army try to make good their own escape. Before this could happen, Grover might overwhelm them or Banks might overtake them; yet there was no other way.
As early on the morning of Tuesday the 14th of April as it was light enough to see, Grover marched on Franklin by the winding bayou road. Preceded by Barrett and a strong line of skirmishers, Birge with Rodgers's battery led the column; Dwight with Closson's battery, followed; while Kimball with Nims's battery brought up the rear.
The head of Grover's column had gone about two miles, and in a few moments more would have turned the sharp corner of the bayou and faced toward Franklin, when, on the right, near the sugar-house, Birge's skirmishers ran into those of Clack's battalion, and the battle of Irish Bend began.
Between Birge and the concealed Confederate ranks, past which he was in fact marching, while his line of direction gave his right flank squarely to the hostile front, lay the broad and open fields of McKerrall's plantation, where the young sugar-cane stood a foot high above the deep and wide furrows. From recent ploughing and still more recent rains the fat soil was soft and heavy under foot, and here and there the cross-furrows, widening and deepening into a ditch, added to the toil and difficulty of movement, both for men and guns. On the left flowed the dark and sluggish Teche. On the right lay the swamp, thickly overgrown and nearly impassable, whence the waters of the Choupique begin to ooze toward the Gulf. Along the southern border of this morass ran a great transverse ditch that carried off the gathered seepage of the lesser drains. In front, on the western edge of the cane-field, stood Nerson's woods, where, as yet unseen, the Confederates lay in wait; while before them, like a screen, stretched a low fringe of brake and undergrowth.
Birge's order of march placed the 25th Connecticut in the advance, one wing deployed as skirmishers across the road, the other wing in reserve. Next came the 26th Maine with Bradley's section of Rodgers's battery, then the 159th New York, then the remainder of Rodgers's battery, while the 13th Connecticut brought up the rear. When he saw his skirmishers briskly engaged and by the sound and smoke discovered the position of the enemy, Birge made the reserved battalion of the 25th Connecticut change front forward and move across the field against the Confederate left. Bissell led his men quickly to within a hundred yards of the wood, where they lay down under the partial cover of a ditch and began firing. Hubbard, with the 26th Maine, came up on Bissell's left and took up the same tactics. At once the enfilade fire of the Confederate line became vigorous and annoying, until Bradley took his two guns at a gallop to the skirt of the undergrowth opposite the interval between the infantry battalions and, opening fire at five hundred yards' range, engaged for a time the whole attention of the Confederate cannoneers. Then Grover, who rode with Birge, sent in the 159th New York on the left of the 26th Maine, with orders to take the wood, while the 13th Connecticut, marching round the bend of the bayou, formed on the extreme left between the stream and the road.
Molineux promptly deployed his regiment, and gallantly led it forward at the double-quick over and beyond the left of the line already formed, until the men were within short point-blank range of the enemy's musketry; there, finding them exhausted by the rapid advance over the rough and heavy ground, as well as suffering severely from the bullets of the enemy, he made the men throw off their blankets and overcoats, lie down, and open a vigorous fire. Perhaps under the stress of this, but more probably in preparation for the counter-attack, the Confederates slackened their fire, and Molineux, perceiving his opportunity, as it seemed, was in the act of uttering the command "Forward!" when a bullet struck him in the mouth and he fell, painfully wounded, leaving the command of the regiment, for the time, to Captain Dayton. Lieutenant-Colonel Draper had already fallen, and Major Burt was with Grover, serving on the staff.
At the word the men sprang to their feet, but before the command could be carried out, suddenly came the crisis of the battle. About seven o'clock, Gray had brought up the 28th Louisiana to Taylor's aid, and with it the news that the rest of the forces from Bisland were close at hand and all was well with them. Under cover of the wood, Taylor moved Gray quietly to the left, and perceiving that his line now overlapped Grover's right, promptly determined to gain the brief time he still needed for the safe retreat of his main body by a bold and vigorous attack with the whole force he had under his hand. The order was obeyed with spirit. Out of the wood beyond the right, and from the main ditch, well in the rear of the 159th, the Confederates came charging strongly, and halting, they poured in a hot volley. Seeing that the situation was critical Dayton ordered the regiment to retire. Under a severe fire it fell back quickly, yet in good order, to the road. There it promptly re-formed on its colors, and Burt rejoining took command.
In their retreat the New Yorkers swept over the position of the 26th Maine and the 25th Connecticut and carried these already shaken regiments with them, in some natural disorder; but his lasted hardly longer than was needed for Dwight to hear and obey the command that now came back from Grover, to deploy the first brigade and take up the broken battle.
Bradley held his ground stoutly to the last moment, and when finally the choice was narrowed to retreat or capture, he retired in good order to a fresh position, and there serving his canister with coolness and deliberation, held off the enemy's advance. At this point, Rodgers, who with his centre section was in the road on the left, engaged at 800 and 400 yards with Cornay's right section, turned his attention to the Confederate infantry on the right, and crossing with spherical case-shot the canister fire of his Lieutenant, made good the check.
Almost at the moment when Taylor's left was thus roughly bearing down the right of Birge, on his left his own 13th Connecticut, under Lieutenant-Colonel Warner, enveloped in a grove, was moving steadily on the Confederate right, where Clack stood and the two guns of Cornay. Emerging from the grove into an open field that still lay between them and the enemy in the wood, Warner's men instantly replied to the volleys of cannon and small-arms that greeted their appearance and pushed on, firing as they went. More fortunate than their comrades in the direction and the moment of their attack, they pressed back Clack, drove off Cornay's guns, and took two of his caissons, a limber, and a color presented to his battery by the ladies of Franklin. Nearly 60 prisoners at the same time fell into their hands. They were still advancing when Grover's orders recalled them to the restored line of battle of the brigade.
As Birge's right retired, Dwight deployed in two lines, the 6th New York and the 91st New York in front, the 22d Maine, 1st Louisiana, and 131st New York in support, and advancing against Taylor's left flank and overlapping it in its turn pushed it back into and beyond the woods. In this movement Dwight took 70 prisoners. The resistance he encountered was feeble compared with the vigor with which Birge had been met and turned back, for in that effort the Confederate line of battle had practically gained its main object and had now only to extricate itself and make good its own withdrawal.
Birge, at the same time that he drew back the 13th Connecticut, once more moved forward his three other regiments and re-formed the brigade in two lines on Dwight's left.
Kimball, whose brigade was in two lines in reserve, brought up the 12th Maine to the support of the 13th Connecticut.
This done, Grover advanced the whole division through the woods to the open fields on their farther or western verge, and seeing the Confederates in force on the knoll beyond, to which they had retired, halted and began to observe and reconnoitre.
To cover the right flank of the last Confederate position Semmes brought up the Diana, whose injuries of the day before he had during the night partly made good by repairs. Her 30-pounder Parrott now opened a slow fire without great effect other than to add to Grover's caution.
Shortly after eight o'clock Mouton rode up. To him Taylor turned over the command of the force confronting Grover, and then rode into Franklin to direct the retreat. By half-past nine Green with the rear-guard moved out on the direct road toward New Iberia. The last of Green's troopers had not quitted the little town at the upper end when the first of Weitzel's entered at the lower end.
Some time passed before Mouton knew of this. Then for a brief space his peril was great; but fortunately for him the unlooked-for situation of affairs raised a momentary doubt in the minds of Green's pursuers. Should they go to the right or to the left? And where was Grover? After questioning prisoners and townspeople, Banks directed Weitzel to follow by the cut-off road and Emory to move up the bayou. The interval, short as it was, enabled Mouton to fall back quickly, and taking a by-way across country to strike into the cut-off road beyond the northern outskirts of Franklin. Not an instant too soon, for in the confusion Sibley had fired the bridge over the Choupique and across the blazing timbers lay Mouton's last hope of escape. Hardly had his men reached the north bank in safety when Weitzel's advance guard came in sight down the road. They galloped to the bridge only to find it impassable.
Before retiring the Confederates blew up the Diana and applied the match to all their transport steamers on the Teche save the hospital boat, the Cornie, which loaded with the sick and wounded of Bisland fell into the hands of the Union forces. Captain Semmes, who had but the day before left his battery to command the Diana, was taken prisoner, with all his crew. He and Weitzel had been friends and classmates at West Point; he now refused the offered courtesies of his captor, and a few hours later, finding himself rather loosely guarded, cleverly managed to regain his liberty.
To return to Grover. The situation of the enemy's force in his front, the vigorous resistance encountered in his advance, and lastly, the information gathered from the prisoners he had taken, had convinced him that he had to deal with Taylor's whole force, save a small rear-guard, and that Taylor had already succeeded in passing him, so that it was no longer possible to cut the Confederate line of retreat. Indeed, Grover seems rather to have thought that Taylor meant to attack him. It was while careful reconnoissances were being conducted to develop the true facts that Taylor slipped away, as we have seen, having thus adroitly extricated himself from the net spread in his sight.
About two o'clock, however, as Taylor did not attack, Grover moved forward, and as he marched down the bayou road soon met Emory coming up, as related in the last chapter.
Banks, seeing that the bridge could not be made passable before morning, and that nothing was to be gained by marching his tired troops over the long roundabout of the bayou road, went into bivouac early in the afternoon, covering the northern approaches of Franklin. Grover occupied his battle-field of the morning, Emory held the bayou road between Grover and the town, and Weitzel the cut-off road.
Taylor crossed the Cypremort and having marched fifteen miles since quitting Franklin, or twenty-five since midnight, rested near Jeannerette.
Grover reported his loss during the 13th, 14th, and 17th as 53 killed, 270 wounded, and 30 captured or missing; in all 353. In the battle of Irish Bend, according to the nominal lists as complied in the Official Records, his loss was 6 officers and 43 men killed, 17 officers and 257 men wounded, and 30 men missing; in all 353; agreeing with the first statement covering the three days, yet differing slightly in the details. Of this total Dwight's brigade lost 3 killed and 9 wounded on the 13th, 1 killed and 5 wounded on the 17th, and only 2 killed and 13 wounded in the battle. Both statements seem to leave out the 1st Louisiana, which had 2 men killed and the lieutenant-colonel and 2 men wounded on the 13th. In Birge's brigade the loss in the battle, according to Grover's report, was 46 killed, 236 wounded, 49 missing; in all 312. The official reports show 16 less in the columns of wounded and in the total: these are probably the 16 wounded officers accounted for in the nominal lists. Of the regiments engaged the heaviest loss fell upon the 159th New York, in which the nominal lists show 4 officers and 15 men killed, 5 officers and 73 men wounded, and 20 men captured or missing; in all 117.(1) But this fine regiment suffered even more severely than these figures indicate, for besides having to mourn the death of the gallant and promising Draper, Molineux received a grievous wound that for many weeks deprived the regiment of one of the best colonels in the service, while of the wounded officers two were mortally hurt and died soon afterward. Birge's loss was nearly one man in four or five, for his strength did not exceed 1,500, and it is probable that his fighting line numbered not more than 1,200.
The Confederate loss is not reported. They left on the field, to be cared for by their adversary, 21 of their dead and 35 of their wounded. Among these were Gray, Vincent, and Reily.
Taylor gives the number of his infantry engaged in the charge on Birge's right as less than 1,000. The disparity of the opposing forces in that affair was, therefore, not important, and Birge's somewhat greater numbers may fairly be considered as off-set by the advantages of Taylor's position and the familiarity with the country common to nearly all the Confederate soldiers there engaged, while to their antagonists it was an unknown land. Grover's whole force was about 5,000, of all arms, but of these, though all are to be taken into account, nearly a third were in reserve, neither firing nor under fire, while another third met a resistance so light that its loss was no more than one per cent. of its numbers —hardly more than it had suffered in the skirmishes of the day before. Grover had eighteen pieces of artillery, of which but four were in action; Taylor also had four guns of which he made good use, and these, toward the close of the battle, were reinforced by the five heavy guns of the Diana, of which, however, it is probable that but one, or at most two, could be brought to bear.
The field of battle was so contracted that Taylor's strength sufficed to occupy its front, while Grover was hindered or prevented from deploying a force large enough to outflank and crush his antagonist at a blow.
Viewed from a Confederate standpoint, the issue forms an instructive example of the great results that may be achieved by a right use of small forces. If, on the other hand, one turns to consider the lost opportunity of Grover, two things stand out in strong relief: the one, the positive disadvantage of employing forces, too large for the affair in hand or for the scene of operations; the other, that bold adventures must be carried boldly to the end.
Instead of making the campaign with four brigades and twenty-four guns, as Weitzel's original plan had contemplated, Banks, for greater security, set out with seven brigades and fifty-six guns. So far as concerned the main body ascending the Teche, this excess of strength could do no harm, but it was otherwise with the turning column by the lake; for to the needless augmentation of the artillery were directly due not only the day and night first lost, but also the still more precious hours of daylight consumed in landing guns that were not to fire a shot. Two brigades of infantry, with six guns at most, landing at Indian Bend, and marching directly toward the Cypremort, and quickly entrenching across both roads at or near their upper fork, would have been enough to hold the position against the best efforts of the whole of Taylor's army, with Emory close on their heels; and thus Taylor must have been lost and the war in Western Louisiana brought to an end. Consequences many and far-reaching would have followed. Moreover, when it was determined to use more than two divisions one of these was naturally Grover's, and thus it happened that to Grover, who knew nothing of the country, was assigned the delicate duty first cut out for Weitzel, while Weitzel, who had studied to the last point every detail of the topography and of the plan, stayed behind as the third in command of the column destined to butt its nose against the breastworks of Bisland and wait for the real work to be done a day's march on their farther side.
Grover has been often criticised and much misunderstood for alleged over-caution and for taking the wrong direction after quitting the borders of the lake. Both criticisms are unjust. Generals, like other men, act according to their temperaments. In the whole war no braver man than Grover ever rode at the head of a division, nor any more zealous, more alert, more untiring in his duty. No troops of his ever went into battle but he was with them. But he was by nature cautious, and the adventure was essentially one that called for boldness. Moreover, he was by nature conscientious. That his orders, based as they were on misinformation of a date much later than Weitzel's intelligence, required him to land at Irish Bend instead of at Indian Bend, as first arranged, and to march on Franklin instead of toward the Cypremort, was not his affair. Surely no soldier is to be blamed, least of all in combined and complex operations, for choosing to obey the clearly expressed orders of those set over him, rather than to follow the illusory inspirations of the will-o'-the-wisp commonly mistaken for genius.
As for the orders themselves, they were correct upon the information at hand when they were given and the state of affairs then existing. To land at Madame Porter's and to seize the roads at Franklin was better than to go farther afield to gain the same end; for the distance was less, and while on the march Grover was enabled to offer his front instead of his flank to the enemy. But the information proved inexact; when Madame Porter's road was tried it was found impassable, and with this and the unforeseen delays it happened that the orders became inapplicable.
(1) According to the regimental history (MS.), 4 officers and 22 men killed; 5 officers and 76 men wounded; 11 men missing; in all, 118: of the wounded, 2 officers and 10 men mortally.
CHAPTER XII. OPELOUSAS.
Cooke, after detaching the Clifton to go up the Teche after the Diana, as already related, remained at anchor in Grand Lake opposite Grover's landing-place and awaited developments. He had not long to wait. The first news of Banks's movement across Berwick Bay had overtaken and recalled Taylor on his way up the Atchafalaya to bring down the Queen of the West and her consorts, the Grand Duke and Mary T, to join in the intended operations against Weitzel. Although Taylor at once sent a staff officer to urge despatch, yet from some cause more than two full days had passed before, on the afternoon of the 13th, the distant smoke of the Confederate gun-boats coming down Lake Chicot was seen by the lookouts of the Union navy in Grand Lake. At daylight the Queen of the West and the Mary T, were seen approaching from Chicot Pass. Cooke at once got the Estrella, Calhoun, and Arizona under way, opened fire at long range, and forming his boats in a crescent began to close with the enemy. Soon, however, the Queen of the West was seen to be in flames, from the explosion of the Union shells, and, her consort having promptly taken to flight, Cooke ceased firing and lowered all his boats to save the crew of the burning vessel from drowning. Captain Fuller, who had formerly commanded the Cotton, was rescued with 90 of his men, but nearly 30 were lost. Then with a loud explosion the eventful career of the Queen of the West came to an end, leaving her five guns, however, once more in the hands of the Union navy. This fortunate stroke gave the mastery of the Atchafalaya into Cooke's hands with nothing save Butte-à-la-Rose and two feeble gunboats to hinder his taking possession.
Once safely across the Cypremort, Taylor's army began to melt away and his men, as they passed their homes, to fall out without hindrance. Many were of the simple class called Acadians, with scant sympathy for either side of the great war into which they found themselves drawn, and in all the regiments there were many conscripts.
On the 15th of April, Taylor marched ten miles to New Iberia. While there, he had the unfinished ironclad gunboat Stevens, previously known as the Hart, floated two miles down the Teche, destroyed by fire, and the wreck sunk in the channel.
On the 16th he marched twenty miles, crossed the Vermilion River, went into camp on high ground on the north bank, and burned the bridges behind him.
Early in the morning of the 15th of April, Banks took up the pursuit with his united force, now outnumbering Taylor's as three to one. Weitzel led the advance of the main column on the direct road. Emory followed him, and Grover marching at first on the bayou road fell in the rear after passing the fork. The army halted for the night at Jeannerette.
On the following afternoon Banks entered New Iberia. Here the ways parted, the right-hand road by Saint Martinville following for many miles the windings of the Teche, while the left-hand road leads almost directly to Opelousas, by way of Vermilionville, now called Lafayette.
Beyond Indian Bend the lowlands, in many places below and nowhere much above the level of the adjacent waters, may be said to end and the plains to begin; and soon after leaving New Iberia and Saint Martinville the troops found themselves on the broad prairies of Western Louisiana, where the rich grasses that flourish in the light soil sustain almost in a wild state vast herds of small yet fat beeves and of small yet strong horses; where in favored spots the cotton plant is cultivated to advantage; where the ground, gently undulating, gradually rises as one travels northward; where the streams become small rivers that drain the land upon their borders, instead of merely bayous taking the back waters of the Mississippi and the Red. Near the right bank of the Teche runs even a narrow ribbon of bluffs that may be said to form the western margin of the great swamps of the Atchafalaya. Along the streams live-oaks, magnolias, pecans, and other trees grow luxuriantly; but, for the most part, the prairies are open to the horizon, and at this time, though the gin-houses were full of cotton, the fields were mainly given over to the raising of corn for the armies and the people of the Confederacy.
From New Iberia Banks ordered Grover to send a detachment to destroy the famous Avery salt-works, on Petit Anse Island, distant about twelve miles toward the southwest. On the 17th of April, Grover accordingly dispatched Kimball on this errand, with his 12th Maine, the 41st Massachusetts, one company of the 24th Connecticut, and Snow's section of Nims's battery. The extremely rich natural deposit of rock salt was, at that time, in the hands of the Confederate government, being, indeed, the main source of supply of this indispensable article for the whole Confederacy, especially for the region between the Mississippi and the Atlantic. The works required for its extraction are, however, very simple, for the deposit lies close to the surface, and has only to be quarried in blocks of convenient size. These, always as clear and beautiful as crystal, have only to be crushed or broken to be ready to use for common purposes, and when pulverized, however rudely, yield the finest table salt. Kimball burned all the buildings, destroyed the engines and implements, with six hundred barrels of salt, and marched back to New Iberia, and, on the 19th, rejoined Grover on the Vermilion. The Confederates having drawn off the detachment and the guns previously posted to guard the works, Kimball met with no opposition.
On the 17th of April, Grover, with the main body of his division, reinforced by Gooding's brigade, temporarily commanded by Colonel John W. Kimball, of the 53d Massachusetts, continued the pursuit toward Vermilion, while Banks, with Weitzel and Emory, marched to Saint Martinville, on the Teche.
Early in the afternoon Grover caught sight of Green's rear-guard of Taylor's retreating forces, then about two miles distant, and in the act of crossing the Vermilion. Before Grover could overtake them, the bridges were in flames. Dwight's skirmishers deployed on the right and left of the road, and, with the help of the guns of Closson and Nims, drove off the enemy, posted to hinder or prevent the work of reconstruction. In this affair Dwight lost one killed and five wounded. The next day, the 18th of April, was spent by Grover in rebuilding the main bridge.
Then began to be felt the need of such a force of mounted troops as on these plains formed the main strength of Taylor's little army, and the source of its safety; for Banks's cavalry, taken as a whole, with some splendid exceptions, was at this time greatly inferior, not only in numbers but in fitness for the work at hand, to the rough riders led by the restless and indomitable Green. A few more horsemen, under leaders like Barrett, Williamson, and Perkins, would have saved the bridge and insured the dispersion or the destruction of Taylor's force.
Weitzel, who, as far as Saint Martinville, had led the advance of the main column, followed by Emory with Paine and Ingraham, there took the road to the left and halted on the evening of the 17th of April at Côte Geleé, four miles in the rear of Grover. The next morning Weitzel moved up to Grover's support, while Banks, with Emory, rested at Côte Geleé to await the rebuilding of the bridge.
From St. Martinville, Emory sent the 173d New York, under Major Gallway, with Norris's section of Duryea's battery, to follow the Teche road to Breaux Bridge and endeavor to capture the bayou steamboats, five in number, that were still left to the Confederates. Five miles below the village of that name, Gallway met a small Confederate picket, and pushing it aside, soon afterward found the bridge over the bayou in flames. On the morning of the 18th he learned that four of the boats had been burned by the Confederates, and about the same time his farther advance was stopped by orders from Banks, despatched as soon as it was known that Grover had been brought to a stand. A courier from headquarters having lost his way in the night of the 18th, on the following morning Gallway found himself in the air without any apparent object. He accordingly marched along the banks of the Teche and the Bayou Fusilier, and taking the road to Opelousas, there rejoined Paine on the 1st.
On the 19th of April the army crossed the Vermilion and the Carencro, and marched unopposed sixteen miles over the prairie to Grand Coteau. Gooding's brigade rejoined Emory during the day.
On the 20th the march was continued about eight miles to Opelousas.
Just outside the town the Corps went into bivouac, after throwing
forward all the cavalry, the 13th Connecticut, and a section of
Rodgers's battery, to Washington, on the Courtableau.