VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy-Four

One Vicksburg woman remembered that June began with a “clear and unusually warm day. The men sought shelter from the sun's scorching rays beneath the shade of outstretched blankets and in small excavations and huts in the hill sides...” However she was also  forced to admit that it was not only the sun from which the besieged citizens sought protection. “We have slept scarcely none now for two days and two nights.” What was disturbing the lady's sleep were the 200 Federal artillery cannon arrayed against the city.

For Lida Lord (above), daughter of a minister, the siege meant sharing a large cave complex with up to 65 others, “packed in, black and white, like sardines in a box.” Forced underground by the Yankee guns the civilians suffered an endless lists of indignities. “We were...in hourly dread of snakes,” she wrote. “...A large rattlesnake was found one morning under a mattress on which some of us had slept all night.”

An 18 year old Confederate signal corpsman from Virginia, Edward Sanford Gregory, remembered, “...hardly any part of the city was outside the range of the enemy’s artillery. … Just across the Mississippi … mortars were put in position and trained directly on the homes of the people. … Twenty-four hours of each day....their deadly hail of iron dropped through roofs and tore up the deserted and denuded streets. …How many of them came and burst, nobody can have the least idea …”

In fact the Federal commissary had to account for every shell. On average each Yankee gun fired 14 rounds a day - an average one round every 2 minutes. But the guns moored across the river on rafts were not army weapons, but 6 ugly, brutal U.S. Navy 13 inch Seacoast mortars (above)  forged in Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania. Their squat barrels alone weighed 17,250 pounds, the carriages another ton. These were not mobile artillery, but they were unusually accurate. And they weren't aimed at people's homes. They arched 200 pound projectiles from the DeSoto peninsula and precisely dropped them, half a mile away, at the corner of Washington and First Streets, along the Vicksburg waterfront.

Their target was the foundry operated by Adam Breach Reading and his brother, C.A.. Antebellum the firm had serviced the steamboat trade, and repaired the occasional locomotive (above). 

Once the war broke out they began producing 6 and 12 pound bronze cannon. Their production was only about 2 a month and perhaps 40 in all were cast before the supply of copper was cut off. But day and night the big mortars kept pounding the site, 7,000 shells in all. Occasionally they overshot, in the process destroying the offices of “The Vicksburg Whig” newspaper, and some private homes. Such insults fell into the category of collateral damage.

And these were not the only Naval guns belching fire upon the city. In the original run passed the Vicksburg batteries on the night of 16 April, 1863, the charge had been led by the ironclad USS Benton (above).  She suffered damage that night, and a more serious injury on 29 April during the ironclad duel with rebel guns at Grand Gulf.  Over the last month the Benton had been tied up along the Mississippi shore while her engines were being repaired. But Admiral Porter was never one to let a gun grow cold.

Two 1 ton 42 pound rifled cannons from the USS Benton were off-loaded at the abandoned port town of Warrenton, 2 miles south of Vicksburg. They were manhandled to within range of the South Fort (above), where they were operated by a detachment from the 34^th Iowa Infantry, and commanded by a Missouri artillery lieutenant named Joseph Atwater,   Battery Benton began to methodically pound the South Fort into silence. 

At the opposite end of the 5 mile long Federal line was Battery Selfridge, whose weapons were navy owned and operated – operated in this case by the very brave and the often sunk, Thomas Oliver Selfridge.

The outbreak of the civil war found the 26 year old naval lieutenant, and son of a Naval Captain, Thomas Selfridge (above),  in command of the 6 gun forward battery aboard the 50 gun frigate the USS Cumberland. 

On Saturday, 8 March, 1862, the Cumberland was rammed and sunk by the Confederate Ironclad CSS Virginia. Thomas did not allow his men to abandon their guns until ordered to do so, despite their shots failing to penetrate the iron skin of the rebel ship. 

As reward for his bravery, Thomas was then given command of the first Yankee submarine, the 47 foot long USS Alligator. She broke down on a test cruise up the Potomac, and had to be towed back to the naval yard by a passing schooner (above). Disgusted with the sub, and having lost his place in the promotion line for the blue water navy, Thomas now begged a transfer to the brown water navy.

In November he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander, and given command of the city class ironclad the USS Cairo, with a crew of 215 men and officers. On Thursday, 11 December, 1862, the USS Cairo was steaming up the rain swollen Yazoo river,  following 2 tin-clad gun boats, the USS Marmora and the Signal. When they suspected trouble and slowed, the impatient Lieutenant Commander Selfridge steamed ahead and ran into two torpedoes (above). The ironclad went down in  only 12 minutes, luckily without any loss of life. The "Oft Sunk" Thomas was then transferred to gun boats in less exposed positions. But he still kept pushing to get in the fight.

On 27 May of 1863, the ironclad USS Cincinnati had been sunk in 18 feet of water just north of the Vicksburg lines. Naval engineers were able to quickly raise three 9,200 pound 8 inch Columbiad cannons from the wreck. The first week in June these were mounted atop Steele's Hill, in “Battery Selfridge” (above), manned by crewmen from the USS Cairo, and commanded by its namesake. At least on land the "oft sunk" Lieutenant could not be sunk so easily.

On Saturday, 6 June, 1863, one of the Navy's mortar shells punctured the roof of the 4 story tall Washington Hotel (above, at the corner of Washington and China Street hill). Luckily the shell exploded on contact, only destroying three adjacent storage rooms. The hotel had been converted into a hospital, and as yet did not have many patients. So the only person injured was a surgeon whose leg was so mangled it had to be amputated. But the round also destroyed most the rebel morphine and quinine supplies.  The siege had not begun well for the rebel forces.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy-Three

 

The first angry crack of muskets were fired by green Yankees – with barely a month of training, and largely armed with shoddily made weapons. But these 285 men of the 8^th Louisiana Infantry of African Descent, had literal “skin in the game”.   And in broad daylight of Saturday, 6 June, 1863, they had surprised the rebel pickets around the Tallulah depot of the Vicksburg, Shreveport, and Texas Railroad. The Confederates did as the Yankees had done a week earlier at the Perkin's plantation. They retreated and reported.

However, the commander of the black Yankees, Swiss emigrant and lawyer Colonel Hermann Lieb (above) , had already achieved what he wanted. He had found the rebels and his men had drawn first blood. Now he quickly marched his under strength regiment back to the relative safety of Milliken's Bend, and set them and their companion regiments to work, building defensive positions along two levees. Lieb also called for assistance. His boss at Young's Point, Brigadier General Elias Smith Dennis, could provide only part of the remains of the battered and bloodied 23^rd Iowa Volunteers.

Three weeks earlier, in a single 3 minute charge at the Big Black River Bridge, these 200 buckeyes had l1 charged the enemy line. Eleven enlisted men and 2 officers – including their Colonel, William Kinsman - killed outright, and 3 officers and 85 enlisted men wounded - half of all Federal casualties in that battle. The shattered unit was sent to safe camps across the river to recover. The 130 survivors were now tapped to send 100 men to support the black recruits at Milliken's Bend.   Admiral Porter also promised one 1,000 pound rifle, three 9 inch smooth bore cannons and two 30 pound rifles carried by the stern wheel ironclad ram, the USS Choctaw. But the ram would not arrived until mid- morning. Colonel Lieb woke his men at 3:00 Sunday morning, and put them at the ready.

It was now obvious to the ranking rebel commander at Richmond, Louisiana, Major General Richard Scott Taylor, that the only Yankees remaining on the western shore were some “...convalescents and some negro troops.” But even if he captured Milliken's Bend and Young's Point and the entire De Soto Peninsula, he still would still not be able to directly aid Vicksburg. Lieutenant General Pemberton would not withdraw from that city. Taylor had no provisions with which to resupply the beleaguered garrison. And crossing Taylor's 4,500 men over to join Pemberton's 20,000, would merely advance the day the Vicksburg's defenders ran out of food. But Taylor had his orders, and he authorized General Walker to proceed with the assault.

Setting off at 6:00 p.m. on 6 June, Major General John George Walker pushed his division forward, re-capturing Tallulah after dark. A participant remembered the dramatic night time approach. “ In breathless silence...through dark and deep defiles marched the dense array of men, moving steadily forward; not a whisper was heard — no sound of clanking saber, or rattle of canteen and cup." 

By 2:00 a.m, on Wednesday, 7 June, the 1,000 plus man brigade of 39 year old Brigadier General James Morrison Hawes was approaching the Martin Van Buren hospital at Young's point, and General Henry McCulloch's 1,000 man brigade was within 2 miles of Milliken's Bend. Walker held Colonel Horace Randal's brigade in reserve at the Oak Grove Plantation.

The Yankee pickets, crouched behind a series of hedges, were methodically pushed back by the 19^th Texas infantry on the right, the 17^th regiment in the center, the 16^th cavalry dismounted on the left, The 16^th Texas infantry regiment followed in reserve.  Explained a Texan, "It was impossible for our troops to keep in line of battle, owing to the many hedges we had to encounter, which it was impossible to pass, except through a few gaps that had been used as gates or passageways."

Once through the last line of hedges, the rebels were facing the first cotton bale barricade. Behind it was the 8th, 9th, 11th, and 13th Louisiana Infantry Regiments (African Descent), 1st Mississippi Infantry (African Descent), and the 23d Iowa Infantry (white European descent), totaling 1,061 men. McCulloch drew his men into a line of battle just under a hundred yards from the Yankee line. As they did the Yankees unleashed a volley.  Ignoring the blast, McCulloch took the time to order his men, “No quarter for the officers! Kill the damned abolitionists!" With fixed bayonets, the Texans then charged.

The veterans of the 23^rd Iowa might have had time for a second volley, but that broken regiment had no more to give,. They scattered and ran for the last barricade on the final levee. The black soldiers could only muster a few scattered shots, either because they lacked the training with their weapons or the weapons failed.  General Lorenzo Thomas noted, "Both sides freely used the bayonet - a rare occurrence in warfare...two men lay side by side, each having the other's bayonet in his body. . . .A teenage cook, who had begged for a gun when the enemy was seen approaching, was badly wounded with one gunshot and two bayonet wounds. In one Negro company there were six broken bayonets." It would be the longest bayonet charge of the war.  Afterwards,  General McCulloch reported that of the wounds received by his men, 'more are severe and fewer slight than I have ever witnessed among the same number in my former military experience....This charge was resisted by the negro portion of the enemy's force with considerable obstinacy...” Some might have chosen another word, such as desperation, or even courage.

As the Confederates came over that barricade with bayonets and swinging their muskets as clubs, Yankee Lieutenant David Cornwell saw one of the Union soldiers, a “very large and strong-willed” Sergeant named “Big” Jack Jackson, charge forward “...like a rocket. With the fury of a tiger he sprang into that gang and crushed everything before him. There was nothing left of Jack's gun except the barrel and he was smashing everything he could reach. On the other side of the levee, they were yelling 'Shoot that big nigger!' Cornwell saw the Jack Jackson, “..daring the whole gang to come up and fight him. Then a bullet reached his head and he fell full on the levee.”

For over an hour the untrained Yankees struggled with the rebels, black and white skinned southerners murdering each other with abandon. Then the Yankees fell back through their own camp and toward the second levee and the second barricade. The Confederates followed , as Joseph Blessington of the 16^th Texas remembered, “bayoneting them by hundreds.”   As the Confederates gathered to storm the second barricade, the USS Choctaw steamed into view, big guns blazing.

General McCulloch ordered his men under cover behind the first levee. They looted the Yankee camp, searching for equipment and food they could not find in their own army, and they began killing any wounded black Yankees they found. It was alleged they also killed 2 white Yankee officers.  The murdering continued until McCulloch saw a second Yankee gun boat sailing up the river toward their position. Realizing he lacked the strength to crush these black men in blue uniforms, he ordered his entire brigade to pull back to the Oak Grove Plantation.

The rebel's limped back. Out of the  1,000 men present the Confederates had suffered 44 killed and 131 wounded and 10 missing. For the three under strength black Yankee regiments, it was a bloody disaster - 100 killed outright, 285 wounded, and 266 captured and murdered or returned to slavery.  Except those numbers deserve a closer look. Black Yankees, with barely a month of training and substandard equipment,  had not run. They had not melted away. They had stood and fought. They had inflicted almost 200 casualties on their foe, 20% of the attackers.  Given the worse of everything, they had given their best.

At Young's Point, the rebel's of Hawes' brigade drove in the Yankee pickets, but then finding themselves facing well armed and organized convalescing patients behind barricades, and three Federal gunboats providing covering fire, the Confederates withdrew without even launching an attack. For all the effort and sacrifice of men and material by Walker's "Greyhounds", General Taylor would later note “As foreseen, our movement resulted, and could result, in nothing.”

But there was a result, and even a victory.  In December of 1863, United States Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, (above) an early advocate of black soldiers, wrote a letter to Lincoln concerning the debate over their fighting ability. "Many persons believed, or pretended to believe..., that freed slaves would not make good soldiers,” he told his President. These faint hearts were worried the ex-slaves “...would lack courage, and could not be subjected to military discipline. Facts have shown how groundless were these apprehensions. The slave has proved his manhood, and his capacity as an infantry soldier, at Milliken's Bend (7 June, 1863), at the assault upon Port Hudson (27 May, 1863), and the storming of Fort Wagner (South Carolina, 18 July, 1863)."

The ground the Confederacy had stood upon had shifted. And although the lies and obfuscation used  to defend the myths about antebellum southern culture, would delay the triumph of the truth for almost another century, the fuse was at least lit.  It was already past due time for that to happen. 

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VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy-Two

 

The Hoosier pickets were not the best the Federal army had to offer, merely average. But after 2 ½ years of war, the level of average had been raised. These members of the 60^th Indiana Volunteer regiment, were veterans of Shiloh and Champion Hill. And in the early morning dark of Sunday, 31 May, 1863, when Texans in overwhelming numbers waded across the Bayou Vidal, Louisiana (above), these Hoosiers did not panic. 

The pickets sent word back to their captain, and then picked their shots. They forced the rebels to take shelter, expend their ammunition and energy. And then the Yankees fell back a hundred yards or so, to repeat the exercise.

The Texans were brave, eager and well trained. But this was their first taste of real combat, and the man who had molded their corporate personality for 8 months was 46 year old Brigadier General Henry Eustace McCulloch. The McCulloch family were distant ancestors of George Washington's.  The revolutionary war had wiped out the McCulloch family fortune, leaving them, like most Americans along the frontier, constantly being herded west by creditors. 

In 1835, when Mexican General Santa Ana ordered slavery finally ended in the state of Tejas, Henry's older brother Ben had followed their Tennessee neighbor, David Crockett, south, to defend slavery.  Only a case of measles prevented Ben from dying romantically at the Alamo with his hero. But in 1837 both Ben and Henry McCulloch sought and found new lives and fortunes in the Lone Star state as supporters of first slavery and then succession.

General Ben McCulloch (above)  would die in March of 1862, at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas. General Henry McCulloch was then given command of green troops dispatched to Arkansas. 

Not until November of 1862 did Henry (above)  relinquished the division to Major General Walker. Henry then resumed command of the division's 3^rd Brigade - 4 regiments of infantry and 1 of dismounted cavalry, supported by a 4 gun battery of light artillery, under Captain William Edgar. After some 700 miles of marching and steaming back and forth across Arkansas and Louisiana, these eager men were seeking to slice the jugular of Grant's army.

About a half mile behind the skirmish line, at a wooden dock called Somerset Landing, was a company detachment of the 60^th Indiana. They had been sent here in the tradition of Roman Legionaries, to listen and look for the enemy where the enemy were not supposed to be. Finding them the Yankees were to report and retreat. By circumstance the Yankees were also protecting some 300 runaway slaves, who had come into their lines seeking refuge. And a refugee was the third reincarnation of Somerset Landing in the last six weeks - since General Grant had made this stretch of Old Man River the fulcrum of the American Civil War.

People still called it Somerset Landing, even after it fell into the hands of Judge John Perkins, who already owned a plantation across the river from Natchez, Mississippi. With the addition of Somerset's 17,500 acres, and its 250 slaves, Perkins became one of the richest and most influential men in the slave states. His eldest son, John Perkins junior, eventually became a United States Congressman, and was the “oldest and best friend” of Jefferson Davis, eventually became the Confederate President, and whose plantation was just across the Mississippi. Then in 1858, Perkins junior was deeded Somerset by his then 68 year old father.

So it was no small sacrifice when John junior burned the mansion and buildings of Somerset, before they were captured by Grant's army.  Grant was then snaking his way down the levees of Tansas County, on his way to Hard Times Landing. He had no interest nor ability to confiscate any cotton. But that did not stop Perkins from burning 2,000 bales to spite the hated Yankees. Perkins also destroyed barns and out houses, denying their use to the abandoned human beings used as slaves who were now left to fend for themselves.

While advancing toward Somerset Landing that morning, one member of the rebel 3^rd Battalion recalled, “...we passed by farm after farm all deserted and the buildings going to decay.” Between the patriotic zeal of owners like John Perkins, and the careless destructiveness of the passing Yankees, by 31 May almost all the great river front plantation homes of Louisiana had been burned to the ground.

The country had been picked clean and would not support human life for at least another year.

Alerted by their pickets, the Yankees quickly abandoned their camp, retreating to the levee along the river. There, with the help of the liberated slaves, they hastily began a breastwork of scattered cotton bales. While the rebel infantry paused to loot the Yankee camp, rebel Captain Edgar brought forward his four 6 pound cannon and began to blast away at the barricade. But before Edgar's guns do do much damage there appeared on the river the USS Carondelet (above)  –a 512 ton twin stern wheel ironclad, 175 feet long, carrying seven 8 and 9 inch smooth bore cannon, crewed by 251 men, and ably commanded by 36 year old acting Naval Lieutenant John McLeod Murphy.

The Carondelet exchanged shots with the rebel cannon, killing McCulloch's staff officer Gallatin Smith, and forcing the rebels to take cover. And under that protective fire civilian ship's Captain C. Dan Conway ran his steamboat “The Forest Queen” up to the dock and evacuated the threatened slaves and soldiers. By 10:00 am, the prey had been snatched right out from under General McCulloch's nose. Within a few minutes, Generals Walker and Taylor arrived, with more troops, only to find their noose empty.

The engagement – such as it was – had cost the Yankees one soldier taken prisoner. Five abandoned slaves were also captured. It was enough to boost the confidence of the still green Texans. Captain Eljiah Petty, of the 17^th infantry wrote, “If this is all the fear, I don’t mind a battle.” But the Generals knew better. As one rebel had noted before the move across Bayou Vidal, “...there was supposed to be...(a) heavy force” -  at Somerset Landing. But there was not.

There were supposed to be long trains of wagons filled with food and ammunition, crawling along the levee - the supply line feeding Grant's 45,000 men in Mississippi. Instead there was only the desolation of burned out plantation houses and cotton fields going to weed. Walker and Taylor must have  realized what the lack of Yankees meant. There was no jugular vein on the Louisiana bank of the Mississippi River to cut. As Taylor had warned theater commander General Kirby Smith a week before, Grant had shifted his supply line. 

There should have been a system of mounted spies, gathering information of Yankee movements on the Louisiana shore. But so desperate was the Trans-Mississippi for men and horses, no such web of spies had ever been established. So General Walker's next move was into the dark - to strike north toward New Carthage. Perhaps in that town Grant would be vulnerable.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy-One

 

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 6^th 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.

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