been left to my discretion, I should have reluctantly undertaken, in a campaign requiring but eight or ten light draught gunboats, to force twenty heavy iron-clads four hundred and ninety miles, upon a river proverbially as treacherous as the rebels who defended it, and which had given notice of its character by steadily falling, when, as the Admiral reports, "all other rivers were booming."

There is a better reason for the disregard of the palpable difficulties of navigation than the over-zealous counsels of the army officers in nautical affairs. In a subsequent despatch, Admiral Porter says that "all my vessels navigated the river to Grand Ecore with ease, and with some of them I reached Springfield Landing, the place designated for the gunboats to meet the army. My part was successfully accomplished; the failure of the army to proceed, and the retreat to Grand Ecore, left me almost at the mercy of the enemy." The records of the campaign do not all support the reckless and fiery ardor of this statement.

The fleet did not reach the place appointed until two days after the first decisive battle with the enemy. The Admiral occupied four days in moving one hundred and four miles, on what he calls "a rising river," with "good water," to the placé appointed. General T. Kilby Smith states that the fleet made twenty miles on the seventh, fifty-seven miles on the eighth, eighteen miles on the ninth, and nine miles on the tenth of April; total, one hundred and four miles. The failure of the fleet to move up the river with ordinary expedition, together with the fact that the gunboats were unable to pass Grand Ecore until the seventh, justified the belief that its advance had been prevented by the low stage of water, and governed the army exclusively in its retrograde movement to Grand Ecore, as it did in every important operation of the campaign. The Admiral's despatch does not mention the fact, that in addition to the "mercy" of the enemy, he had the support of General T. Kilby Smith's division of twenty-five hundred men, whose most gallant and honorable part in the preservation of the fleet of gunboats and transports is not referred to in what the Admiral calls "this curious affair between (the enemy's) infantry and gunboats." In view of the published despatches of Admiral Porter, it is proper for me to say that every position of difficulty in which the army was placed in this campaign was the immediate and direct consequence of delay in the operations of the navy. This may have been inevitable and entirely justifiable, from the condition of the river. It is not my province to pass judgment upon its operations; but the fact remains, nevertheless.

During my term of service, it has been an invariable rule of conduct, from which I have never departed, to forbear the expression of complaint upon the official action of others; but I feel it to be a solemn duty to say, in this official and formal manner, that Admiral Porter's published official statements, relating to the Red River campaign, are at variance with the truth, of which there are

many thousand living witnesses, and do foul injustice to the officers and soldiers of the army, living and dead, to whom the Navy Department owes exclusively the preservation and honor of its fleet.

The partial disintegration of the several commands assigned to this expedition was a cause of embarrassment, though not entirely of failure.

The command of Major-General Steele, which I was informed by Major-General Sherman would be about fifteen thousand men, was in fact but seven thousand, and operating upon a line several hundred miles distant, with purposes and results entirely unknown to me.

February fifth, I was informed by General Steele that if any advance was to be made, it must be by the Wachita and Red Rivers, and that he might be able to move his command by the way of Pine Bluff, to Monroe, for this purpose. This would have united our forces on Red River, and insured the success of the campaign. The twenty-eighth of February, he informed me that he could not move by the way of Monroe, and on the fourth of March, the day before my command was ordered to move, I was informed by General Sherman that he had written to General Steele to "push straight" to Shreveport. March fifth, I was informed by General Halleck, that he had no information of General Steele's plans, further than that he would be directed to facilitate my operations toward Shreveport. The tenth of March, General Steele informed me that the objections to the route I wished him to take (by the way of Red River) were stronger than ever, and that he "would move with all his available force (about seven thousand) to Washington, and thence to Shreveport." I received information the twenty-sixth of March, dated the. fifth of March, from Major-General Halleck, that he had "directed General Steele to make a real move, as suggested by you, (Banks,) instead of a demonstration as he (Steele) thought advisable." In April, General Halleck informed me that he had telegraphed General Steele "to cooperate with you (Banks) on Red River, with all his available forces." April sixteenth, I was informed, under date of the tenth, by General Sherman, that General Steele's entire force would cooperate with me and the navy. In May I received information from General Steele, under date of the twenty-eighth of April, that he could not leave Camden unless supplies were sent to him, as those of the country were exhausted; that we "could not help each other, operating our lines so wide apart; that he could not say definitely that he could join me " at any point on Red River at any given time;" and from the distance that separated us, that I could render no assistance to him an opinion in which I entirely concurred. I never received authority to give orders to General Steele. My instruction limited me to communicate with him upon the subject of the expedition. His orders he received from other sources. I have no doubt that General Steele did all in his power to insure success; but as communication with him was necessarily by special messen

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ger, and occupied from fifteen to twenty days at each communication, it was impossible for either of us fully to comprehend the relative positions of the two armies, or to assist or to support each other.

The column of General A. J. Smith was a partially independent command. General Sherman, in his despatch of the tenth of April, received the sixteenth, informed me that "the thirty days for which he had loaned me General Smith's command would expire on the tenth of April, the day after the battle of Pleasant Hill. General Smith's instructions, which he showed me, required him to confer constantly with Admiral Porter, the approved friend of the Army of the Tennessee. His orders were dated "Headquarters Red River Expedition, Steamer Clara Bell." He never declined cooperation with me, nor did he receive orders from me. He made no official reports of his forces or their operations. He was in no wise responsible for the results of the expedition, and may perhaps be said to have gained as much by its failure as he would from its success. When his thirty days were up, he claimed the right, at Grand Ecore, to return to Vicksburg, irrespective of the condition of the army or the fleet, and did not consider himself at all responsible for the inevitable consequences of his withdrawal, to the army or the navy, nor for that detention which their preservation demanded. That responsibility I was called upon to assume in written orders. I entertain no doubt that his official course was entirely consistent with his orders, and I cheerfully acknowledge the generous and earnest efforts of General Mower, of the Sixteenth, and General T. Kilby Smith of the Seventeenth corps, to infuse into the different corps that unity of spirit which is as essential to victory as the valor of the soldiers in actual battle. I gladly accord to the men of their commands the honor of having fought a desperate enemy, superior in numbers, with as much gallantry and success as that which distinguished the troops of my immediate command. No higher praise than this can be given to any soldiers. Alexander's troops never fought better.

The results of the position of the cavalry train, and the loose order of march by the leading column of troops under Major-General Franklin, on the eighth of April, before the battle of Sabine Cross-Roads, have been stated. A commanding officer is of course responsible for all that occurs to his command, whatever may have been the cause. I do not shrink from that responsibility. But while it was both proper and necessary for me to give personal attention to the prompt advance of all the troops and fleet from Grand Ecore, on the morning of the seventh, it was supposed that the movement of a single column of thirteen thousand men, moving in advance on one road for a distance of less than fifty miles in such manner as to be able to encounter the enemy, if he offered resistance, might safely be intrusted to an officer of the reputation and experience of Major-General Franklin, whose rank, except in one instance, was superior to that of any

one officer of the expedition, or of the department of the Gulf.

I make no complaint of the navy; but in view of its prolific despatches, long since published on this campaign, I may properly repeat a few facts already stated. The success of the expedition depended solely upon celerity of movement. The navy delayed the advance of the army at Alexandria sixteen days, and at Grand Ecore three days. It occupied four days in moving from Grand Ecore to Springfield Landing, a distance of one hundred and four miles, upon what the despatches call "a rising river, with good wa ter," where it arrived two days after the first battle and one day after the decisive battle of the campaign at Pleasant Hill. It detained the army ten days at Grand Ecore, and eighteen days at Alexandria on its return. These are not opinions; they are events. To the army they were pregnant and bloody events. The difficulties of navigation, the imperfect concentration of forces, the incautious march of the eighth of April, and the limited time allotted to the expedition, were the causes of its failure. We owe nothing to the enemy, not even our defeat. Could any one of these difficulties have been avoided, the object of the campaign would have been accomplished. But the occupation of Shreveport could not have been maintained. The presence of the enemy would have required such a force for its defence as could not have been supplied by the river, and for which no other arrangement had been made, as suggested in my despatch of the thirtieth of March. The only possible method of maintaining this posi tion would have been to concentrate at this point a force superior in numbers to the enemy, with sufficient time to pursue him wherever he should move, even if it took us to Galveston, on the Gulf coast. This was suggested as a possible result of the campaign, but it was not embraced within the original plan, and was specially precluded by orders received from the LieutenantGeneral commanding the armies.

I remain, sir,

Your obedient servant,

N. P. BANKS, M. G. V.

GENERAL FRANKLIN'S REPORT. HEADQUARTERS NINETEENTH CORPS, AND DETACHMENT THIRTEENTH CORPS, GRAND ECORE, April 14, 1804. Major George B. Drake, Assistant Adjutant General:

I make the following report of the operations of the troops under my command, from the date of their leaving Natchitoches until their arrival at this place.

The cavalry force under Brigadier-General Lee, the detachment of the Thirteenth corps under Brigadier-General Ransom, and the division of the Nineteenth corps under Brigadier-General Emory, left Natchitoches on Wednesday, the sixth inst., in the order in which they are mentioned. A part of the cavalry had already encamped some ten miles out, and the remainder,