VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy - Three

 

A minie' ball shattered Andre's left arm. The stinging numbness shocked his entire being and dropped him to the ground. The 37 year old knew instantly that his career as a boxer was over. Still, the handsome captain struggled to his feet. He held his sword aloft in his still strong right arm and with horse shouts rallied his company for yet another charge. Then, as the men rushed forward for the sixth time against the fortifications of Port Hudson, Captain Andre Cailloux (pronounced Cah-you) relinquished command of company K, of the 1^st Louisiana Native Guards and dropped back.

Five days after Grant threw his “forlorn hope” against the defenses at Vicksburg, Major General Nathaniel Banks repeated the tactic against the defenses of Port Hudson. And with the same results.

The Dutch origin of the phrase - “Verloren Hoop”, meaning lost heap - reflects the influence of Marquis de Vauban's competitor, Baron van Coehorn - who designed forts for the Republic of Holland. In German these units were called “Verloren Haufen” - forlorn heap. In France they were the Lost Children - “Les Enfants Perdus” - and in Norman English, they were the “avant-garde” or “vanguard”.

The troops chosen were either the best the army had to offer, or the most expendable. But from the Greeks who hid inside a wooden horse to defeat the walls of Troy, through the German Storm Troops who overwhelmed French trenches in 1918, they always represented a desperation when technology favored the defense. With a tactical advantage, such as a siege tower at Troy, such forlorn hopes were occasionally successful. But usually, as at Vicksburg on 22 May, 1863, and Port Hudson on 27 May, 1863, they failed. And in failing at Port Hudson, they failed a nation which desperately needed the very men who were being sacrificed, men like Andre Cailloux.

He was born into slavery on 25 August, 1825, on a plantation less than 20 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi. When he was five his owner, Joseph Duvernay, died, and eventually the child became the property of Duvernay's daughter Aimee and her husband, William Bailey. 

Then in June, the Bailey's sold Andre's mother, and took the child with them to New Orleans. As soon as he came of age, he was sold into apprenticeship to a cigar maker.

Andre thus arrived in the fastest growing city in the United States, with a population of 46,000 souls. In 1830 a thousand steamboats burdened with corn, cotton and tobacco from Ohio, Kentucky and Missouri, tied up along the New Orleans levee. 

Then in 1831, six miles of rails were laid to Lake Pontchartrain. Five more years and the new lake port saw 169 ocean going steamships, almost 300 sail driven packets, sloops and brigs, all transferring cargoes bound for or coming from American Atlantic ports, Europe and South America. Within ten years the number of riverboats docking at the Crescent City had doubled, and residents had topped 100,000. The number of river boats doubled again by 1850, and the city added 40,000 more residents.

Andre was also lucky in that he was African in his genes and Cajun culturally, meaning French in his language and Catholic in his religion. His new home had been founded by the French in 1718, and then occupied by the Spanish for 40 years - between 1762 and 1802. That history left slavery more plastic here than anywhere else in the America. 

Laws still forbade mixed race marriages, but were often ignored because of a shortage of socially acceptable white females. This necessitated the “Quadroon Placage –. educated black women - or quadroons - who “married” white men. These woman and their mulatto children became a middle third race. They could not vote, but they had property rights, which also meant the right to read and write, sign contracts, and for their mixed race children to inherit. By 1850 the city contained 144,000 white residents, 14,000 slaves and 11,000 “gens de couleur libres”, or free blacks.

At the age of 21, Andre Cailloux filed a petition for his manumission with a police court. Supported by his owner, the all white jury granted his petition in 1846. The very next year Andre married Felicie Coulon, a free Creole woman of color, and adopted her son. He then established his own tobacconist shop. By 1852 he had moved his business to the corner of Prieur and Perdido streets, and moved his growing family – 2 more sons - into a cottage on Baronne Street.

In late 1852, the New Orleans, Opelousas and Great Western railroad began laying tracks out of

Algiers , Louisiana – on the west bank of the river from New Orleans. By 1857 the line had reached 83 miles south west to Brashier City, where construction stopped. But still, the line into the rich delta lands proved profitable. In addition, the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad headed north from the Crescent City as far as Canton, Mississippi, before the start of the war ended construction on that line.

By 1861 Andre Cailloux was a community leader, handsome and athletic, a boxer and a horseman, equipped with hard earned social graces and sophisticated language. Andre began calling himself with pride, “The Blackest Man in New Orleans.” In January of 1860 he opened a second tobacco shop, the same month in which Governor Thomas Overton Moore had taken Louisiana into succession.  

Moore's  Secretary of State, George Williamson, was explicit concerning the future of race relations. “ Louisiana”, Williams told his audience, “looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery...” Governor Moore asked the loyal citizens of Louisiana to show their support with a lantern in their front parlors. And in that light, and the more threatening flames of pine torch processions through the New Orleans' streets, the black residents, free and slave, saw the shadow of the noose tightening about their necks.

For the time being, free blacks in New Orleans still held the right to serve in the militia, and Andre formed a company of them, presumably to defend their city. They were called the Native Guards, but in  contrast to white militias, they were never issued uniforms or weapons. As one Louisiana artilleryman explained, "I never want to see the day when a negro is put on an equality with a white person. There is too many free niggers . . . now, to suit me...”. 

But Andre continued to drill his little black band along with the white recruits on the grounds of the Metairie race track until February of 1862. As soon as a federal fleet under Admiral David Farragut approached the head of the pass at the mouth of Mississippi River (above),  the governor informed the men of color that their help was not wanted, and they were ordered disbanded.

The governor's prudence did nothing to save the largest and richest city in the Confederacy. Farragut captured New Orleans in April of 1862. And in May, 44 year old Massachusetts political general Benjamin Franklin Butler (above) arrived with 5,000 soldiers. Butler saw slaves as property to be seized – contraband. But free blacks were an unknown quantity, unlike Jews, whom Butler hated with a passion. 

Being painfully short of men, and listening to the treaties from Andre Cailloux and others, in September Butler authorized the formation of the Native Guards in the Federal army. 

Butler's orders were that only free blacks could enlist. But with the Native Guards officered by blacks, the induction of escaped slaves began almost immediately, allowing the Guards to expand to 3 full regiments, all with blue uniforms and muskets. 

Then Major General Nathaniel Banks arrived to replace Butler, bringing with him 30,000 fresh troops. No longer in desperate need of soldiers, Banks felt less need for the Native Guards, and began replace their black officers with whites.

As the Army of the Gulf marched up Bayou Techee the guards found themselves chopping wood and moving dirt behind the lines. The lack of respect and Bank's attitude drove many to walk away until there were only about 1,500 left in all three regiments. 

Then in May of 1863 Banks was forced to bend to General Hallack's orders and return to Port Hudson. He divided his army at Alexandria in Mid May. Some , 10,000 men retreating back down Bayou Techee, to Bashear. They dug in there to guard the southern approaches to New Orleans. That freed Banks, at the head of 20,000 men, to move by boat down the Red River to the Mississippi. Stripping a division each from Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Banks now had some 30,000 men for an assault on Port Hudson, in addition to the 3 regiments of The Louisiana Guards.

Thirty Federal guns began blasting the rebel defenses from the land and the river at about 9:00 am, and about 9:30 General Sherman's division struck out from Slaughter's Plantation. By 10:00 am when that attack became bogged down, Bank's ordered the 1^st and 3^rd Native Guards to rush the northern flank of the fortifications, where the land met the muddy Mississippi. The assumption was that with the proper elan, the rebel line was certain to break somewhere.

At 200 yards, the rebel troops opened fire, in such volume that the attack dissolved into confusion, and the black Yankees took cover among willow trees. The officers – black and white – rallied the men to continue – only to have them driven back again. Again the men were rallied, and again they were driven to ground. Then finally, with the wounded Captain Cailloux (above)  in the lead, some 1,000 black men in blue uniforms reached the edge of the the ditch. Following Cailloux's sword, the men stood for an instant and then let fly a volley of murderous fire aimed at the rebel forts and trenches. Heads down, as if charging into a hurricane wind, the guards surged forward into the ditch and up the slope.

It was then the rebel artillery let lose a coordinated volley of grape and canister, shredding the battle flags of the 1^st Louisiana Native Guards, and the assault troops. And a few yards behind the attacking line a jagged piece of shrapnel, tumbling and spinning at high speed struck the wounded Captain Cailloux in the head, blowing off a chunk of his skull, and spewing what had once been the brave ambitious man across the Mississippi River mud.

Out of the 1,000 Native Guards selected as the Forlorn Hope, 36 were killed and 133 were wounded, a casualty rate of almost 20%. The rebels did not lose a single man. General Banks told his wife, “They fought splendidly!”. Said one of the defenders, “We mowed them down, and made them disperse, leaving their dead and wounded on the field to stink."

Across the entire front, Banks lost 2,000 men on Wednesday 27 May, 1863. The following morning, Thursday, 28 May, 1863, the rebels accepted a truce and the bodies of some 2,000 white Yankees were retrieved from the field to be identified and buried with honor. But the Confederate gunners, who had suffered only 500 dead and wounded, would not allow the removal of a single black skinned corpse from the Native Guard's battlefield. Those dead would lay in the Mississippi river mud for another 47 days.

They would be far from the last last black men to die in the fight against white supremacy.

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Twenty

 

When it was all over 47 year old politician turned Major General Nathaniel Banks (above) would claim the salt was his idea. But the salt was a strategic goal, and Bank's was never a strategic thinker. The Vice President of the United States, 53 year old Hannibal Hamlin of Paris, Maine, , called the man "wonderfully cold and self (assured)".   And he did not mean that as a complement. A modern historian - Allan Nevins -  has described Banks as  "clever (and)...showy...without much depth or purpose,”  As if to prove these charges, "General" Banks was obsessed with learning tactics. 

The strategic thinker was 25 year old Brigadier General Geoffrey "Gottfried" Weitzel, a brilliant staff officer under the corpulent and corrupt Bay State politician turned Major General Benjamin Butler. In 1862 Butler, commanding  31,000 men,  was lord of the captured city of New Orleans. It was his aide General Weitzel who dreamed up the Bayou Teche operation, because,....well for several good reasons but strategically because of 144 acres of solid high ground in the middle of a Louisiana swamp called Avery Island or more traditionally, Ile Petite Anse - "the small cove".

See, in antebellum America sodium chloride was the only available food preservative. Drawing moisture out by salting beef and pork made them inhospitable to bacteria, slowing their decomposition.  The problem in the 2 centuries prior to 1860 was that there were only a few places on dry land in North America where salt could regularly be obtained in quantity, The largest and most dependable were "The Salt City" of Syracuse, New York (above), where brine springs of 78% salt fed into Nine Mile Creek...

...and Saltville, Virginia (above)  on the North Fork of the Holston River near the Tennessee state border.  In 1840, just outside of Saltville, a gold mine was sunk 210 feet deep and struck halite - solid rock salt, like that mined in Europe.  But it was never exploited because it was far cheaper and faster to evaporate salt out of either the ocean or the brine springs, than drag it up from 200 feet underground.

Then in May of 1860 pure rock salt was discovered by John Marsh Avery, just 16 feet below his Louisiana sugar cane plantation. Suddenly the Confederacy had 7 million pounds of cheap salt a year which had merely to be pried from open pits, and transported 10 miles north to New Iberia, on the shores of the Bayou Teche. General Butler ordered General Weitzel to plan the destruction of this valuable resource, but in October of 1862 General Butler was relieved.

His replacement was the shallow, ambitious General Nathaniel Banks, commander of the brand new 25,000 man Army of the Gulf.  He had recruited these green troops himself, and their training was not yet complete. Almost one third were 90 day volunteers whose enlistments were already half up. Much of their equipment had never been delivered, Some had even been issued muskets that could not fire. After struggling to get this mess straightened out - he was only partially successful -  in January of 1863, Banks sent General Weitzel and a couple of thousand men into southwestern Louisiana as far as Bashear City, on Bayou Teche and on the southern shores of Grand lake - an aneurysm near the mouth of the Atchafalaya River.

What Weitzel discovered was that in 1861 Louisiana had been stripped of young white males to fill out the Army of Northern Virginia. Two years later, only 3,500 effectives could be scrapped together to defend the southern half of the richest state in the Confederacy. 

They were formed into two brigades under the command of Major General Richard Scott "Dick" Taylor (above).  Like Banks,  Richard Taylor had never attended West Point, but was smart and willing to learn. Butt Taylor's only objective qualification for command was that he was the only son of the 12th President of the United States, Zachary Taylor. 

One of his two brigades was named for its commander, 34 year old Cajun Brigadier General Jean - Jacques Alfred Alexander Mouton (above). He was the West Point trained son of an ex- Louisiana Governor. 

And commanded by the alcoholic 44 year old Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley (above), was the Arizona Brigade. This was a melange of Texas cavalry regiments which never set foot in Arizona, rarely had enough horses to operate as cavalry and never operated as an entire brigade. The one regiment which did have horses was commanded by 49 year old Texan, Colonel Thomas Green. According to Yankee Admiral David Dixon Porter, when drunk Green was so fearless he was worth 5,000 men in battle.

The Yankee Weitzel's mission was cut short because President Lincoln's patience began to run short. He wanted Banks (above) to assist Grant in taking Vicksburg.  And as January 1863 drew to a close,  48 year old General of the Army Henry Wager Halleck passed along Mr. Lincoln's frustration to General Banks. Wrote Halleck, "Nothing but absolute necessity will excuse any further delay on your part." So, in February, Weitzel's command rejoined Bank's little half trained army in New Orleans.  They then sailed 130 miles up river to Baton Rouge, occupied by Federals since May of 1862.  They then marched the 25 miles north to invest the isolated southern outpost of Vicksburg, the fortress of Port Hudson.

It was an impressive fort.   Behind high packed earthen walls were 15,000 soldiers and 21 heavy cannon, blocking any advance further north up the Mississippi on land or water. After tapping lightly at the fortress, Banks, sheepishly retreated back to Baton Rouge, with nothing to show for the effort. Which is when Weitzel dusted off his Bayou Teche proposal. And in selling it to Banks, the Prussian born Weitzel must have echoed Mister Lincoln's own thinking.

A year earlier, the 54 year old Abraham Lincoln (above) had reminded his jubilant commanders, celebrating the capture of New Orleans,  of what still needed to be done. Recalling his own two Mississippi River flat boat trips, Lincoln lectured them, "I am acquainted with that region and...as valuable as New Orleans will be to us, Vicksburg...is the key." 

Sweeping his arms across a map of Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, the 16th American President explained, "Here is the Red River (above), which will supply the Confederates with cattle and corn to feed their armies....From Vicksburg these supplies can be distributed by rail all over the Confederacy. It means hog and hominy without limit...The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket." And, added Weitzel, there was now the salt.

In mid-March, Banks pulled 2 of his 3 divisions out of the Baton Rouge defensive lines and returned them to New Orleans. He garrisoned that city with about half his force. Banks then ferried the best trained and armed 10,000 men across the Mississippi to Algiers, Louisiana, where they were loaded aboard cars of the New Orleans and Opelousas Central Railroad (above). This line ran 80 miles due west through swamps to the line's temporary termination just beyond Bashear City, at Pattersonville, Louisiana. 

Here elements of the 4th Division under 34 year old Brigadier General Cuvier Grover (above) were loaded onto transports and barges on the Atchafalaya River.  They then sailed up this river into Grand Lake and past the rebels at Fort Brisland. 

Their plan was that on Thursday, 11 April, they would land 15 miles north and cut off the rebel retreat by capturing the town of Franklin, Louisiana. They would then crush Taylor's entire army between them and elements of the 1st division under 41 year old Major General Christopher Columbus Agur, who would be attacking Fort Brisland from the south.

It was not until Wednesday, 10 April, 1863 that Banks finally notified General Grant that he was no longer laying siege to Port Hudson. Banks assured Grant that the operations up Bayou Teche would be brief and productive.  By destroying Taylor's little army, he would be protecting New Orleans, and by outflanking and capturing the rebel fort up the Atchafalaya River, he would be cutting the Red River supply line and isolating Port Hudson. Having achieved all of this, Banks assured General Grant, he would be back before the gates of Port Hudson, ready to take the place by direct assault, with or without Grant's assistance, by 10 May.  It was a bold program, and it would take luck and speed to make the effort worth the effort.

Banks' artillery opened fire on Fort Brisland at 9:00am, on Friday 12 April. But General Agur's men did not emerged from the knee high sugar cane until 11:00am.  Still after a lot of long distance cannon fire and musketry and some marching back and forth, there was no direct assault on the fort. After nightfall word arrived that General Grover had finally landed a day late, and as of Saturday, 13 April, would be advancing on Franklin. General Banks ordered a dawn assault on the rebel fortress.

Inside the fort, "Dick" Taylor found himself in the role of King Leonidas at Thermopylae, except, Taylor chose the better part of valor, He saved his army to fight another day  by ordering a retreat under cover of night.  Bank's carried the abandoned works at dawn, That afternoon -  Sunday, 14 April, General Taylor fought a strong delaying action at Irish Bend (above), a mile and a half north of Franklin, which covered his army's escape..  

Taylor did not stop his retreat up Bayou Teche (above) until he reached the little town of Opelousas, 70 miles further north. After the fall of Baton Rouge in May 1862, this town of 1,000 had become the state capital - at least until the January raid by General Weitzler,  when Governor Morton had ordered the government removed even further north to Shreveport, on the Atchafalaya River.

To his credit, Banks pressed his advantage, and 30 miles north of Irish Bend, captured the town of New Iberia. And on Thursday, 18 April, 2 regiments of Federal troops arrived at Ile Petite Anse. They destroyed 18 buildings and all the mining equipment. Henceforth, General Taylor would have to get his salt - when he could - from Texas. The eastern Confederacy would now have to pay $100 for a  75 pound barrel of the precious mineral. And with each month of the war, that price would go up.

Two days later, on Saturday 20 April, General Banks achieved two more of his objectives. Tactically,, he captured Opelousas, Louisiana, The town's business leaders surrendered before the first Federal troops even entered the village. But of strategic importance was the capture on that same day of the fort Bank of the Rose - Butte a'-la-Rose - on the Atchafalaya River. This gave Banks direct access to the Red River, which joined the Mississippi above Port Hudson. Federal ships could now interdict all rebel river traffic,  No more pork or hominy would reach Vicksburg. To all intents the objectives of the entire  Vicksburg campaign had been achieved, even without Vicksburg being captured, if Banks could hold the ground he had just occupied.

The problems was Bank's 10,000 men could not hold the ground he'd won. Not the single railroad - nor the Federal Navy - could supply his men in these swamps indefinitely. The countless bayous of Cajun country meant raiders could easily outflank every fort or town, burning Federal supplies. And the further north he allowed himself to be tempted, the worse General Bank's predicament became.

It was no accident that this region was the original source of the tale of "Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby." Although Banks would press his advantage 70 miles further north - capturing Alexandria, Louisiana, on Thursday, 7 May, 1863 - he finally realized he had already over stayed his welcome.

Over the next 4 weeks, as they slowly withdrew, the Federal troops stripped Cajun country of everything that might be of use. Colonel Thomas Edward Chickering, the 38 year old piano maker from Boston and commander of the Federal garrison of Opelousas, would "virtually denude" the region, taking or destroying all "cotton, sugar, fodder, corn, livestock, implements, wagons, slaves and anything else of value." 

By the time Banks returned to the Mississippi, the Cajun counties would need at least a year to recover enough so they could support even Taylor's small army. Bank's also brought to New Orleans 5,000 "freedmen", none of whom would ever supply the Confederacy with food or equipment again, and many of whom would be wearing Union Blue within a year, fighting and dying for their right to be free.

So the salt quarry was destroyed, and the bounty of the rich land was denied to the rebels,, and thousands of recruits added to the Federal armies by what General Halleck called "these eccentric movements" by General Banks.  But Major General Nathaniel Banks did not return to capture Port Hudson until long after 10 May, of 1863, which he had promised. And as far the single minded Ulysses Grant was concerned, that was all that really mattered.

- 30 -