The boys in butternut brown stood up just as their supporting cannon opened fire. The blasts caught the 48th Massachusetts regiment just as they were staking tents and starting cook fires.
And then, while the 110 Yankees were still reeling from that shock, the 400 veterans of 19th Arkansas let fly a volley into the blue clad flank.
Desperately Colonel Eben Francis Stone (above) struggled to get his still green companies into a battle line facing the new threat. But the Bay State boys wavered, and to buy time, Stone ordered a retreat of 100 yards.
It was almost 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, 21 May, 1863. The battle for Port Hudson had just begun on a flood plain 3 miles to the east, in a clearing containing a general store run by a family named Young, with a Masonic Lodge on it's second floor.
Located on a sharp bend in the Mississippi River, 140 road miles below Vicksburg, the 80 foot high cliffs of Port Hudson were the penultimate thread connecting the productive Trans-Mississippi to the rest of the Confederacy.
But on 7 May, 1863, when Federal Major General Nathanial Banks' 15,000 men captured Alexandria, Louisiana (above) on the Red River, that thread had unraveled. Confederate Western theater commander, General Joseph Johnston, thought the 7,000 men in Port Hudson could be put to better use relieving Vicksburg, the primary final connection to Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. His message to Gardner ordered him to "...evacuate Port Hudson forthwith... " But Gardner resisted because Confederate President Jefferson Davis had forbid the now isolated fort's evacuation.
The garrison was reduced to relying on a rickety rail line that only ran as far east as Clinton, Louisiana. Food, ammunition and replacements were supposed to come down that line, but little did. Complained a hungry Tennessee gunner at Port Hudson, “We are living in a swamp and drinking water out of a mud hole.” The men suffered from typhoid, malaria, smallpox, and diarrhea. But their admiration for their commander, 40 year old New York born Brigadier General Franklin Kitchell Gardner, held the command together.
Gardner (above) knew Federal Admiral David Farregut's blue water navy was now transporting Bank's 3 divisions down the Red to the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers to his north.
With that many men and that much fire power on the big river, Gardner had to worry about an assault directly on Port Hudson. But he suspected Banks would instead land his 25,000 men 20 miles to his north at the once busy river port of Bayou Sara – which might offer Gardner an opportunity.
Over looking Bayou Sara, atop a high narrow ridge, was St. Francisville (above) , “the town 2 miles long and 2 yards wide”. If he waited until Banks had committed to the landing at Bayou Sara, Gardner might, by a forced march, capture St. Francisville first, and pound the more numerous Yankees into submission. It was a long shot, but...
...And then on 11 May Gardner learned that 25 miles to his south Federal soldiers – the ex-slaves of the 3rd Louisiana Native Guards – were rebuilding a bridge just north of Baton Rouge. And on 14 May, he learned that 3 Yankee divisions had left Alexandria for Simmesport. Louisiana, on the Atchafalaya river. A day's steaming up the Atchafalaya would bring Bank's men to the Mississippi, and another day would bring them to Bayou Sarah. Even the long shot was now gone, and Gardner could feel the teeth of a blue vice closing in on him. He dispatched men across the Mississippi to slow General Bank's advance, and sent a portion of the 14th Arkansas cavalry under Colonel Frank W. Powers, south, to slow any Yankee movement out of Baton Rouge. In fact, the Yankees were not moving.
A week later, the Yankees finally moved. Coming by road were 14 regiments and 7 artillery batteries of the 1st Division under 42 year old Brigadier General Christopher Columbus Augur (above) – another of Grant's West Point classmates.
Leading the way for Augur were the 3 cavalry regiments under 36 year old newly promoted Brigadier General Benjamin Henry Grierson (above).
Following by riverboats from New Orleans was the 2nd Division of 50 year old Rode Island born Brigadier General Thomas West “Tim” Sherman (no relation to "Cump" Sherman) – with 12,000 men, enough to handle Gardner's 7,000 man garrison.
Since 2 May, when their 600 mile ride across Mississippi had ended with a parade into Baton Rouge (above) Grierson's 1,700 troopers had been resting and rearming. Starting well before dawn on Thursday, 21 May, the Yankee troopers easily pushed Colonel Power's horsemen, back. By noon Grierson's men had reached the little cross roads and clearing called Plain's Store.
Grierson did not pause here, continuing another 10 miles north to secure the crossings of Thompson's Creek. Ten miles beyond Thompson's Creek was St. Francisville. But more importantly, right behind Greierson's Midwest cavalry was Augur's 1st Brigade, the 2nd Louisiana, the 21st Maine, the 48th and 49th Massachusetts and 116th New York regiments, along with a battery of artillery. Meanwhile, Augur's 3rd Brigade, 4 regiments under 37 year old Colonel Nathan Augustus Monroe Dudley, swung toward the river to secure a spot called Springfield Landing, to receive the division of Rhode Island native, General "Tim" Sherman. 
And that, as the saying goes, cut it, - the “it” being the supply and communication line to Clinton, Louisiana and Jackson, Mississippi and, Mobile, Alabama. Federal infantry and artillery astride the Plains Store crossroads was the knock out punch to the much feared artillery bastion high above the choke point on the Mississippi (above), Port Hudson. Farregut's blue water battleships could not silence the place. But Port Hudson now became just another isolated fortification occupied by not enough men to hold it, but more men than the Confederacy could afford to lose defending it.
Still, like a punch drunk boxer, General Gardner reflexively counter punched. Learning of the arrival of the Yankee infantry, Gardner dispatched a battery of artillery and 400 men from the 32nd Louisiana regiment – 7 infantry companies and 5 of cavalry known as Miles' Legion – under 47 year old wealthy slave owner and New Orleans lawyer, Colonel William Raphael Miles. Luckily for the rebels, Miles discovered the Yankees had made a mistake.
The mistake was made by an unnamed captain or lieutenant on General Augur's staff. It was the kind of mistake made by an army stagnant for too long. To be good at moving troops and posting them into defensive positions you need practice, and repetition. And Augur's staff had done little moving in the past year. And so, after a forced march of 20 miles, this particular staff officer, charged with seeing the 48th Massachusetts Infantry securely posted a quarter mile west of the crossroads, placed the regiment a hundred yards too far forward, beyond the protection of their supporting artillery, in the woods straddling the Port Hudson road.
Colonel Eben Francis Stone (above) , the 40 year old lawyer out of the fishing village of Newburyport, may have had concerns about the position, but he never had time to express them. He placed half his men in the woods to the north of the Port Hudson road, and half to the south.
And no sooner had Stone finished this task that rebel artillery began blasting straight down the road, between them. Alerted to the threat to their front, the 3 companies south of the road were caught when the Confederate infantry opened fire on their right flank. A few moments later Stone ordered his men to fall back.
The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel James Francis O’Brien, rushed forward when the artillery opened up and had took charge of the 3 companies north of the road. O'Brien had been born in Tipperary, Ireland. But his immigrant home stood on Bunker's Hill above Boston harbor, and in the spirit of his adopted neighborhood, he ordered these men to stand where they were. Not being outflanked, they did.
The right wing of the 48th fell back to its new position in the clearing around the Plains Store, where the presence of their own artillery bolstered their confidence. And when the 19th Arkansas emerged out of the woods – 400 strong against perhaps 40 Yankees - the New England boys stood firm. Just as the rebels prepared to fire upon the 48th a second time, the 116th New York regiment, stationed to their right, charged into the rebel flank. Following Captain John Higgins, the upstate New Yorkers drove the rebels to retreat. And that quickly the threat to the Yankee line was swept away.
The battle of Plains Store cost the Yankees 15 dead, 71 wounded and 14 captured. The rebels lost in total about 90 men., some 70 of those French Creoles who surrendered saying "Viva la Republic!" But the battle ended as it began – with Port Hudson cut off, just like Vicksburg. The next day yet another message arrived from General Joe Johnston in Jackson. It again ordered General Gardner to destroy his guns and evacuate Port Hudson at once. This time Gardner was inclined to obey. But it was a day late, as the saying goes, and a dollar short.
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