In spite of his army’s loss of courage, Banks wanted to continue the
attack. But realizing that the troops were discouraged, and that General
Steele was not coming down from Arkansas to support the Union attack on
Shreveport, Banks’s officers convinced him to fall back to Alexandria.
With this turn of events, the campaign’s goal of capturing Shreveport
was all but forgotten. Now the main concern of Banks and Porter was to
get their troops and boats out of the Red River area while keeping their
forces intact.
After Porter’s gunboats returned to Grand Ecore from their own advance
upstream, the dispirited soldiers began their retreat. Confederate
General Taylor was now in a position to do real damage to the Union
expedition. Confederate cavalry constantly tormented the retreating
Union forces along the road to Alexandria. Meanwhile, others ambushed
the gunboats along the twisting riverbanks. The river itself resisted
the Federals as the boats continually ran aground in the shallow stream.
One gunboat, the _Eastport_, was sunk by a rebel mine, refloated, towed,
run aground several times, and finally blown up by the navy, to prevent
her from being captured by Taylor’s rebels. Frank Church, a Marine
officer aboard the tinclad _Cricket_, described what must have been a
typical skirmish during the retreat:
We had not been fired upon for some time and were all sitting down not
thinking of guerrillas when we were opened on by about a hundred men.
My men sprang to their feet and fired back. I put two shots through
the front door of the house where there were several men. After I
fired three shots our boat swung around and got aground leaving us
without a breastwork. My men behaved splendidly standing up and firing
away while they were sending a perfect shower of ball and shot over
us. As we could not get any opportunity to use our rifles to advantage
I ordered my men to lay down until we swung around. I sought
protection behind the bell but some fellow saw me and fired at me—two
bullets struck the bell and I concluded I had better get somewhere
else (Jones and Keuchel 1975:48-50).
[Illustration: The tinclad gunboat _Cricket_. Courtesy of the
Library of Congress.]
Eventually, the army and its naval support made their way back to
Alexandria, where the rest of the Union forces waited. As the weary
Yankees dragged into the town, an officer recorded in his diary:
April 25—At 3 o’clock P.M., to-day, we reached Alexandria, and
encamped on the river, just above the town. The army presented the
appearance of having seen hard service, and a long campaign. The men
were dirty and ragged, some of them shoeless. Our trains were somewhat
dilapidated, the snowy covers of a month ago were dust covered, and
some in tatters; the horses and mules as nearly fagged out as the men.
How unlike the army which a month ago marched so proudly through the
streets of this town (Pellet 1866:229).
By April 28, Banks and Porter had reassembled their forces at
Alexandria. Now the low water dilemma, which had teased and threatened
the fleet throughout the campaign, became a crisis. The water in the Red
had dropped so low that portions of the rocky rapids were exposed, and
at some points, the water was only 3 feet deep. Even the lightest
gunboats needed at least 7 feet of water to pass. Ten of Porter’s
gunboats were trapped above the rapids. Unless some means were found to
get them below the rapids, they would have to be destroyed like the
_Eastport_, otherwise they would be lost to the rebels. While many
officers, including the expedition’s formally trained engineers, were
preparing for the disastrous loss of the backbone of Porter’s fleet,
Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey was proposing the solution—a dam.