CHAPTER XXX.

MILITARY OPERATIONS.

GENERAL MCCLELLAN's orders to the commander of the department of the gulf directed him, first, and before all other objects to hold New Orleans. To that everything was to be sacrificed. Next, he was to seize and hold all the approaches to the city, above and below, on the east and on the west, which included the seizure of all the railroads and railroad property in the vicinity. He was farther directed to co-operate with the navy in an attack upon Mobile, and, if possible, to threaten Pensacola and Galveston. General McClellan added that it was the design of the government to send re-enforcements sufficient for the accomplishment of all these purposes, as well as more detailed instructions. Circumstances prevented the sending of re-enforcements, as we have seen. Nor were particular orders respecting military movements forwarded, except that the attack upon Mobile should be postponed until the completion of some of the monitors. Whatever General Butler accomplished in his department was done by the force he brought with him, and the regiments which he raised in New Orleans.

All the objects of the expedition named in the orders of the commander-in-chief were accomplished except two. One of these was the reduction of Mobile, which was countermanded. The other was the opening of the Mississippi, above Baton Rouge, which was attempted, but found impossible without a very large increase of force. Let us dispose of that matter first.

Attempt to Open the Mississippi.

The troops were no sooner posted around the city than General Butler began to prepare an expedition to ascend the river, to occupy Baton Rouge, and reconnoiter Vicksburg, which was then looming up as the most formidable obstacle which the enemy had yet interposed to the free navigation of the Mississippi. Port Hudson had not then been fortified. Later in the year General Butler had the pain and mortification of seeing the batteries of Port Hudson rising and strengthening daily, he powerless to prevent it. He

gave early warning respecting this new position to the government. Two monitors and five thousand men, he said, could take the place in October, 1862, which a whole fleet and a large army might not be able to reduce six months later. The requisite force could not be sent in time, and it cost many thousands of precious lives to invest it in the summer of 1863. The peninsular losses paralyzed the powers of the government at the points most remote from the scene of those tremendous disasters, and nowhere was their baleful influence more manifest than in the southwest.

To procure river steamboats for transporting the troops was the first difficulty. The rebels had wisely burned all the steamboats at the levee of the city, except one or two small ones. It was known, however, that many boats had been hidden away in the bayous of the Delta; and hence the steamboat hunting to which allusion has before been made. Parties of troops went peering and floundering through the wooded swamps of the adjacent country in search of these hidden vessels. The gun-boats of the navy cruised for the same purpose along the borders of the lakes, and pushed up the tortuous streams that empty into them. Several steamers were obtained in this way, which the unwilling or timid mechanics of New Orleans were compelled to repair.

The most noted of these steamboat hunts was one achieved by Colonel Kinsman, the general's volunteer aid, serving then without pay or rank. Certain information was obtained that two of the largest steamboats belonging to New Orleans had been taken across Lake Pontchartrain, and stowed away somewhere in one of its tributary rivers. The naval vessels had sought for them in vain for several days. It occurred to the Yankee intelligence of Colonel Kinsman that the boats must have been taken higher up one of those streams than a gun-boat could navigate, and that the way to find them was to penetrate the country northward for several miles, and then sweep around the lake from one river to another, near the head of possible steamboat navigation. He won from the general a reluctant consent to this perilous enterprise. A steamboat landed him and a hundred men on the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain. They marched northward through a dense forest, for two or three days; then turned to the east, exploring all the streams, aided only by the compass and an occasional friendly negro. No traces of steamboats were discovered. The heat was intense in

those dense and lofty woods, and the men were becoming exhausted. One day, when the troops were resting, Colonel Kinsman went alone on the line of march, and came at length to the Pearl river, a stream that looked capable of harboring a steamboat. The men were brought up, and the exploration began.

At last they had caught the true scent. A steamboat of the largest size was discovered on the opposite side of the river, without a guard. A small boat floated alongside of her, and ere long a man appeared on deck. This was the critical moment; for the man could have applied the match, set the vessel on fire, and easily escaped into the forest. Colonel Kinsman took a musket from the hands of a soldier, and ordered the man to bring that small boat across the river. He obeyed. In ten minutes more Colonel Kinsman and half a dozen of his men were on board examining the prize. The boiler was empty; the "packing" of the engine was gone; parts of the machinery were displaced, and others were wanting. But, of course, among a hundred Yankees there is always at least one man who knows all about steam-engines. The needed man was there. Under his directions the troops worked with the energy of successful hunters; the packing was supplied; the machinery was put in order; fuel was collected. The most laborious part of the preparations was the filling of the boiler by means of pails. Hour after hour the men dipped, and carried, and hoisted, wondering at the slow progress of the work. But in twelve hours after boarding the vessel the engineer announced that she was ready to

move.

Colonel Kinsman, meanwhile, with a small party, and an impressed but very willing negro guide, had been looking for the other steamboat. A remark made by this negro, when he was out of his master's hearing, greatly amused the troops:

"Master said you was whipped every time; but you comed nearer and nearer, and here you be."

The grinning exultation of the man, as he said these words, was in the highest degree comic. The troops were ready to drop with heat and fatigue, but they found strength to make the woods resound with laughter at this black man's epitome of the war. Colonel Kinsman found the second steamer, but she was far inferior to the first, and was so securely lodged, that he feared the alarm would call down upon him a rescuing party if he should attempt to bring

away both. So he returned to the larger vessel, and all the troops slept on board without disturbance.

The greatest difficulty remained to be overcome, to navigate so large a boat down a river so rapid, narrow and crooked as the Pearl. None of the party had ever commanded or steered a steamboat; none of them had ever seen the Pearl river before yesterday. But were they not Yankees? Colonel Kinsman assumed the command. The boat was cast off, and away she rushed down the swift stream. They had but about twenty miles to go, and it took them all day to accomplish the distance. The boat grounded oftener than once a mile; sometimes both ends were fast at the same time; sometimes she seemed involved in the mud and trees beyond extrication; sometimes she was turned completely around and went stern foremost for a while. The yielding nature of the soil saved her from destruction; and, toward the close of the day, she made her way to the lake, and hove in sight of a gun-boat which had been employed for a week in searching for this very vessel. The naval officers could scarcely hide their chagrin at being outdone on their own element by a party of raw recruits. Moreover, if they had taken the vessel, there would have been forty thousand dollars of prize-money to be distributed among them.

Colonel Kinsman and his party were welcomed at New Orleans as men returned from the grave. General Butler renamed the boat the Kinsman. She did good service for many months, and met, at length, the fate of steamboats in war time; she sank to the bottom of the river pierced by sixty cannon balls.

A few steamers being thus obtained, General Williams and his brigade, convoyed by a naval force under Captain Farragut, went up the river to Baton Rouge, of which they took peaceable possession. Captain Farragut, General Williams and General Weitzel surveyed the bluffs upon which Vicksburg stands. They found the town too high to be reached by guns fired from the river, and too powerfully garrisoned and fortified to be carried by assault with less than ten thousand men. Army and navy were, therefore, obliged to confess, that with the forces then in the department, Vicksburg was an obstacle in the way of the free navigation of the river which could not be overcome.

This opinion being communicated to General Butler, he devoted the spare hours of a week to the study of the position. Maps,

plans, measurements, natives of the town, engineer officers, and even works on geology were duly examined. The conception of the celebrated cut-off was the result of his inquiries and cogitations. It was a truly ingenious and most plausible scheme. Such a canal cut across almost any other bend of the river would have answered the purpose intended. But nature had concealed under the soft surface of that particular piece of land, a bed of tough clay, which baffled the project of diverting the course of the river. It happened, also, that the force of the stream at that point tends to the opposite shore, and could not be persuaded to co-operate effectually with the labors of the canal-cutters. Consequently the Father of Waters kept to his ancient bed, and Vicksburg remained a river town. For a long time General Butler lived in hopes of sending Vicksburg a few miles into the interior, and opening the Mississippi to commerce; but nature had taken her precautions, and he could not prevail.

Governing the Troops.

When the yellow fever season was approaching, the alarm among the officers of the army was such, that it amounted at times to something like panic. The general was overwhelmed with requests for leaves of absence; and when it was found that these were only granted in extreme cases, the resigning fever broke out and raged with dangerous violence. The manner in which the general met this new difficulty, which threatened to deprive him of indispensable officers, was characteristic and effectual. Take one scene as a specimen of those which were daily enacted at headquarters during the month of June.

Enter, a bluff rosy lieutenant, the picture of robust health, bearing in his hand a doctor's certificate, which declared that the lieutenant could not live thirty days longer in such a climate as that of Louisiana. The general looked at the man in some amaze

ment.

"You see, General," said the lieutenant, "that the surgeon of my regiment says, I can't live thirty days in New Orleans."

"Do you think so?" asked the general, looking him steadily in

the face.

"Well, General," replied the officer, with a manifest abatement