BATTLE AT CANE RIVER.

a

265

April, 1864.

to go on to Alexandria so soon as the Eastport should be raised and the fleet be enabled to proceed. The Eastport floated on the 21st, and on that day orders were issued for the army to move; and before dawn the next morning, two divisions, the cavalry under General Arnold, and the artillery under Captain Classon, the whole commanded by General Emory, were on their way toward Cane River, in rapid march, for it had been ascertained that the Confederates were gathering on that stream, at the only ferry, to dispute the passage of the Nationals. They marched forty miles that day, so as to strike the Confederates early in the morning and force a passage for the army.

About eight thousand Confederates, with sixteen guns, under General Bee, had taken a strong position on Monet's Bluff, on the east side of Cane River, at the ferry, which was securely flanked by the unfordable stream on one side and an impassable swamp on the other. The plan was for Bee to oppose the passage of the Nationals, and draw them into a sharp engagement, while the remainder of the Confederate army, lying not far distant, should fall upon their flank and rear. Banks's quick movement deranged the plan. The Confederates were not ready for its execution. Emory was there too soon. His van drove the Confederate pickets on the west side of the river, across the stream, early on the morning of the 23d," ⚫ April. but the main position was found to be too strong to be carried by direct attack.

It was extremely important to open the way there for the army to cross the river. A failure to do so implied the necessity of throwing it across the Red River, in the presence of the enemy on both sides of that stream. Α flanking movement was determined upon. General H. W. Birge was ordered to take his own brigade, that of Colonel Fessenden (Third of the First Division of the Nineteenth Corps), and General Cameron's division of the Thirteenth Corps, and, crossing the river three miles above the ferry, turn the left of the Confederates and carry their position in reverse. The march was made wearily across bayous and swamps, and through tangled woods, and it was late in the afternoon before they reached the desired position, after carrying two strong ones occupied by pickets and skirmishers. To Fessenden's brigade was assigned the duty of assault. It was gallantly performed. After sharp resistance, until dark, the Confederates fled in disorder along the Fort Jessup road, toward Texas, taking their artillery with them. In this brilliant achievement the National loss was about two hundred men killed and wounded. Among the latter was Colonel Fessenden.

Meanwhile the main body of the National army had moved toward Cane River, and when its advance arrived within range of the cannon on the bluff, the Confederates opened fire upon them. A spirited artillery duel ensued, and was kept up at intervals a greater part of the day, while the troops were held in reserve for the purpose of forcing the passage of the river when Birge should attack. This was done, and the action lasted until dark, when, as we have observed, the Confederates fled, and the bluff was occupied by the Nationals.

In the mean time, that portion of the Confederates which were expected to fall on the flank and rear of the Nationals, were active, and greatly annoyed the rear of General A. J. Smith's column, which was covered by

266

A FIGHT ON THE RED RIVER.

the command of General T. Kilby Smith. The latter was charged with the arduous duty of covering the retreat to Alexandria. He was hotly pressed, and compelled to skirmish with the foe hovering on flank and rear, almost from the beginning of the march; and, on the morning of the ⚫ April, 1864. 23d," he had a severe engagement near Clouterville, on the Cane River, where he formed a battle-line, with General Mower on his right. Smith gallantly and skillfully conducted the engagement for about three hours, when the Confederates, repulsed at every point, withdrew. The National loss was about fifty men; that of the Confederates was estimated at one hundred, at least. On the afternoon of the following day, the whole army moved on without encountering serious resistance, and, on the 27th, entered Alexandria, after an absence of twenty-four days.

⚫ April 26.

While the army was making its way toward Alexandria, the navy was having a difficult passage in the same direction. The Eastport, as we have seen, was floated, but she was found difficult to manage. She grounded several times, and finally, at a point about sixty miles below Grand Ecore, she became so fast on a bed of logs that she could not be moved. Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey had offered to help her over the numerous bars, by means of wing dams; but his assistance was declined, for " no counsel of army officers was regarded in nautical affairs.” 1 Satisfied that she could not be floated before a rise in the river, and finding delay to be very dangerous, on account of the gathering of the Confederates on the shores of the stream, Porter ordered her to be blown up. The explosion and ensuing fire made her destruction complete. At the same time, more than a thousand Confederates had gathered near, and taking advantage of the situation, rushed to the right bank of the river to board the Cricket, Master H. H. Goninge, lying there. She moved out, and gave them such a storm of grape and canister-shot, while the Fort Hindman poured a heavy cross-fire upon them, that, in the space of five minutes, not a guerrilla was to be seen. Then the vessels which had been convoying the Eastport went on down the river without molestation, until they reached the mouth of Cane River, twenty miles below, when the Cricket, which was ahead, with Admiral Porter on board, received eighteen shots from as many cannon planted on the shore at a bend in the stream. Nearly every shot went through her; one of her guns was disabled, and every gunner was killed or wounded. This first fire was followed by a shell, which exploded near her forward gun, killing or wounding every man attached to it, and in the fire-room close by. Her decks were now deserted, when Porter ordered her to be run by the battery. It was done, under a heavy fire. Then, having made gunners of some negroes on board, and placed the navigation of the boat, whose engineer and pilot had been disabled, in other hands, he attempted to assist the other boats still above the battery. He found he could not do much, so he ran the Cricket a few miles down the river, to a point where he had directed the Osage and Lexington to meet him, to summon them to the assistance of the Fort Hindman and two or three other vessels. He found these fighting a Confederate field-battery. Darkness fell before the struggle ended, and the Cricket could not return. But during the gloom the other

1 General Banks's Report.

THE RED RIVER DAMMED.

267

vessels above, ran by the battery at Cane Creek, and escaped, with the exception of the pump-boat, Champion, which was disabled and burned.' After that, the vessels were not impeded on their way to Alexandria.

April 25, 1864.

The land and naval forces of the Red River expedition were now all at Alexandria. What next? Banks found General Hunter there," with orders from General Grant to close up the campaign against Shreveport as speedily as possible, for Sherman's troops were wanted eastward of the Mississippi. Hunter was sent back with a letter to Grant, telling him that the fleet was above the rapids, and would be in danger of capture or destruction if abandoned by the army, and informing him that it would require some time to get them below, if it could be effected at all. Any attempt to renew the Shreveport campaign of course was now out of the question, and all eyes were turned toward the Mississippi, as the next point of destination for the expedition. To get the fleet below the rapids was the first work to be accomplished. Porter did not believe in damming the river, except by words. Banks did, and ordered Colonel Bailey to do it. He went to work on Sunday, the first of May, with liberty to employ as many men as he might desire. Nearly the whole of the army were engaged in the business, in some way, at different times; and on Sun

day, the 8th of May, a main dam of stone and timber, and sunken coalboats, was finished. It stretched across the river, there nearly eight hundred feet in width, and then from four to six feet in depth, and running at the rate of ten miles an hour.

The work was successful. The water was raised seven feet on the rapids, and that afternoon the gun-boats Osage, Fort Hindman, and Neosho, with

1 In this affair, the Cricket was hulled thirty-eight times, and lost half her crew of fifty men, killed and wounded. The Juliet was badly damaged, and lost fifteen men; and the gun-boat, Fort Hindman, was also badly maimed. As she ran by the battery, her wheel-ropes were cut by the shot, and she drifted helplessly down the stream.

2 Admiral Porter, in his dispatch to the Secretary of the Navy, says: "The work was commenced by running out from the left bank of the river a tree-dam, made of the bodies of very large trees, brush, brick, and stone, cross-tied with other heavy timber, and strengthened in every way ingenuity could devise. This was run about three hundred feet into the river. Four large coal-barges were then filled with brick, and sunk at the end of it. From the right bank of the river cribs filled with stone were built out to meet the barges." Speaking of the break in the dam, he said it was a fortunate occurrence, for it was caused by the swinging around of two barges at the center, which formed a cushion for the vessels passing through, and prevented their striking the rocks.

268

PASSAGE OF THE RED RIVER RAPIDS.

two other vessels, passed the rapids, and lay just above the dam. But the greater portion of the fleet was still, and evinced no disposition to move. Banks inspected the work, and perceiving an immense pressure upon it, feared it might give way before the fleet could pass. He rode up the shore to a point opposite the fleet, at midnight, and sent a note to Porter, telling him of his fears, and urging him to put his vessels in condition, by lightening them, to pass over the rapids. This was not done. At five o'clock the next morning, a portion of the dam gave way. The three vessels went safely down through the sluice thus made, and the Lexington, the only one ready, followed with equal safety. Had all been ready, the whole fleet might have passed over in the course of a few hours, before the water became too shallow. The damage to the dam was partially repaired. It was also strengthened by wing dams, and, on the 12th of May, when it was completed, and the vessels above had been lightened, they all passed into the deeper water below with safety, before eight o'clock the next morning. Then Admiral Porter wrote to the Secretary of the Navy, saying: "There "May 16, seems to have been an especial Providence looking out for providing a man [Colonel Bailey] equal to the emergency. This proposition looked like madness, and the best engineers ridiculed it, but Colonel Bailey was so sanguine of success, that I requested General Banks to have it done."

1864.

April 29.

us,

in

While the army was detained at Alexandria on account of the fleet, it was re-enforced by a large portion of the troops that had been garrisoning ports in the vicinity of Matagorda Bay, on the Texan coast. They were led by General John A. McClernand, who left General Fitz-Henry Warren in command of the remainder at Matagorda. posts had been evacuated by order of General Grant; and McClernand was soon followed by Warren, who likewise ascended the Red River, until stopped by Confederate batteries, when he fell back to the remains of Fort de Russy, and took post there. Banks had also received a dispatch from Halleck, in the name of General Grant, which directed the modification of previous orders, so that no troops should "be withdrawn from operations against Shreveport and on the Red River." But it was too late, and when the fleet was all below the rapids, and found the back-water of the then brimful Mississippi, one hundred and fifty miles distant, flowing up to Alexandria, and thus insuring a safe passage over all bars below, orders were given for the army to move. The fleet moved likewise, with the transports laden with cotton, which had been captured as prize for the navy. Caution marked the advance, for the Confederates were hovering near, and swarming on the banks below. A week before the expedition moved, the gun-boats Signal and Covington, convoying the transport Warren down the river, the three bearing about four hundred soldiers, were fired upon at Dunn's Bayou, thirty miles

e May 13.

d

May 5.

1 General Banks's Report.

2 See page 224.

3 When the fleet moved up the river, Admiral Porter proclaimed that all cotton seized within a league of that river should be lawful prize for the naval force under his command. There was but little opportunity for such seizures while the fleet was above Alexandria; but while lying there, and the army was hard at work constructing the dam for the benefit of the fleet, the Government wagons were kept very busy bringing in the staple from the neighboring plantations. In this profitable part of the public service the officers and soldiers of the army had no share. It is said that the transports were so laden with cotton, that there was no room for the Union inhabitants of Alexandria to flee, with their effects, from the vengeance of the Confederates.

END OF THE SHREVEPORT EXPEDITION.

269 below Alexandria, by a large Confederate force, at the morning twilight, and were so badly injured that the Covington was abandoned and burnt, and the other two vessels were surrendered. Of the soldiers, about one hundred and fifty were captured, and about one hundred were killed. The remainder took to the shore and escaped. Soon afterward, the City Belle, with a little more than four hundred Ohio troops, was captured by another guerrilla party, when about one-half of them escaped.

But the army in its march for Simms' Port met with very little opposition, excepting by a considerable force of Confederate cavalry, who, at daybreak on the 16th, confronted its advance at Mansura, near Marksville, where the National skirmishers and artillery, after pushing the foe back across an open prairie to a wood, kept up a fire for about three hours, until the main body came up. A battle-line was then formed, with General Emory and his forces on the right, and General A. J. Smith and his command on the left. After a sharp but brief struggle, the Confederates were dispersed, losing a number of men by capture. Among these were some of the prisoners they had taken on the Signal and Warren some days before. That evening the army reached the Atchafalaya at Simms' Port, where, under the direction of Colonel Bailey, a bridge, more than six hundred yards long, was constructed of steamboats. Over it the wagon-train passed on the afternoon of the 19th, at which time the rear of the army, composed of the command of A. J. Smith, was attacked at Yellow Bayou by a Confederate force under Polignac. He was beaten back with a heavy loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners, while the Nationals lost one hundred and fifty in killed and wounded. On the following day" the army crossed the Atchafalaya, when General E. R. S. Canby, who had May 20, arrived the day before, assumed the command of Banks's troops as a part of the forces of the Military Division of West Mississippi, to the charge of which he had been assigned. General Banks then hastened to New Orleans.

General Smith returned to Memphis, stopping on his way up the Mississippi at Sunnyside, in the extreme southeastern part of Arkansas, to seek a reported force of Confederates, under Marmaduke, who had gathered there with mischievous intent. He found them, three thousand strong, near Columbia, the capital of Chicot County, posted across a bayou that empties into Lake Chicot. He attacked and drove them away, with a loss of about one hundred men. They retreated westward, and were

1864.

no more seen in that region. Smith's loss was about ninety men. Admiral Porter, meanwhile, had passed quietly down the Red River, nearly parallel with the march of the army, and resumed the duty of keeping open and safe the navigation of the Mississippi.