IN SUMMER QUARTERS.
Before Banks parted with Grover at Donaldsonville, he left orders
for the troops to rest and go into "summer quarters" as soon as
the pending operation should be decided. Accordingly, in the last
days of July, Weitzel broke away from the discomforts of muddy,
dusty, shadeless Donaldsonville, and marching down the bayou, once
more took up his quarters near Napoleonville and Thibodeaux, and
encamped his men at ease among the groves and orchards of the garden
of La Fourche.
On the 16th of July the steamboat _Imperial_, from St. Louis on
the 8th, rounded to at the levee at New Orleans in token that the
great river was once more free. The next day she set out on her
return trip.
On the 5th of August a despatch from Halleck, dated the 23d of
July, was received and published in orders:
"I congratulate you and your army on the crowning success of the
campaign. It was reserved for your army to strike the last blow
to open the Mississippi River. The country, and especially the
great West, will ever remember with gratitude their services."
Afterwards, on the 28th of January, 1864, Congress passed a joint
resolution of thanks
"to Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks and the officers and soldiers
under his command for the skill, courage, and endurance which
compelled the surrender of Port Hudson, and thus removed the last
obstruction to the free navigation of the Mississippi River."
Admiral Porter now came down the river to New Orleans in his flagship
_Black Hawk_, and arranged to relieve Admiral Farragut from the
trying duty of patrolling and protecting the river, so long borne
by the vessels of his fleet. Farragut then took leave of absence
and went North, leaving the West Gulf Squadron to Commodore Bell.
When Port Hudson surrendered, two of the nine-months' regiments
had already served beyond their time. The 4th Massachusetts claimed
its discharge on the 26th of June, the 50th four days later,
insisting that their time ran from the muster-in of the last company;
but, being without information from Washington on this point, Banks
counted the time from the muster-in of the field and staff, and
therefore wished to hold these regiments respectively eighty-one
and forty-two days longer, or at all events until the receipt of
instructions or the end of the siege. To this view officers and
men alike objected, many of them so strongly that whole companies
refused duty. They were within their lawful rights, yet, better
counsels quickly prevailing, all consented to stay, and did good
service to the last. Of seven other regiments the term of enlistment
was on the point of expiring. They were the 21st, 22d, 24th, and
26th Maine, the 52d Massachusetts, the 26th Connecticut, and the
16th New Hampshire. These nine regiments were now detached from
the divisions to which they belonged and placed under the orders
of Andrews to form part of the garrison of Port Hudson until the
transports should be ready to take them home by sea or river.
As soon as the river was opened, Grant responded freely to all the
urgent demands made upon him for steamboats, forage, beef, telegraph
operators, and so on. He sent Ransom to occupy Natchez, and about
the 25th of July Herron arrived at Port Hudson with his division
of two brigades, 3,605 effectives, with 18 guns. Herron's command,
the victor of Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove, formerly known as the
Army of the Frontier, had been called to the aid of Grant at
Vicksburg. It came to the Gulf as Herron's division, but was
presently, by Grant's orders, merged in the 13th Corps as its Second
Division.
At the close of July, in response to Banks's urgent appeals for
more troops to replace the nine-months' men, Halleck ordered Grant
to send down a corps of 10,000 or 12,000 men. Accordingly, between
the 10th and 26th of August, Grant sent the reorganized Thirteenth
Corps to Carrollton. Ord, the proper commander of the Thirteenth
Corps, took sick leave, and the corps came to Louisiana under the
command of Washburn, with Benton, Herron, Lee and Lawler commanding
the divisions, and Colonel Mudd the brigade of cavalry. All told,
the effective strength of the corps was 778 officers and 13,934 men;
total, 14,712.
Chiefly in July and August the twenty-one nine-months' regiments
and in November the nine-months' men of the 176th New York went
home to be mustered out. This left of the Nineteenth Corps
thirty-seven regiments, having an effective strength, daily
diminishing, of less than 350 men each; in all, less than 15,000.
From these it was indispensable to take one full and strong regiment
for Key West and the Tortugas, another for Pensacola, and a third
for Forts Jackson and Saint Philip. This disposed of 2,000; 2,500
more was the least force that could be expected to do the police and
guard duty of a hostile town so great and populous as New Orleans,
containing the main depots of the army; thus the movable force of
infantry was cut down to 8,500, or, as Banks states it, 10,000,
and for any operations that should uncover New Orleans, would be
but half that number.
In the reorganization of the Nineteenth Corps, thus rendered
necessary, the Second division was broken up and ceased to exist,
its First and Third brigades being transferred to the Third division,
the temporary command of which was given to Dwight, but only for
a short time. The First and Third brigades of the First division
were thrown into one; Weitzel's brigade at first resumed its original
name of the Reserve brigade, and a new Second brigade was provided
by taking Gooding's from the Third division, so that when a fortnight
later Weitzel's brigade was restored to the First division, it
became the Third brigade. The Fourth division, like the Third,
was reduced to two brigades. Major-General William B. Franklin,
who had just come from the North under orders from Washington, was
assigned to command of the First division, while Emory was to retain
the Third and Grover the Fourth; but when the Thirteenth Corps
began to arrive, Banks found himself in the anomalous position of
commanding a military department within whose limits two army corps
were to serve, one, numerically the smaller, under his own immediate
orders, the other under its proper commander. The approaching
completion of the organization of the Corps d'Afrique would add a
third element. It was therefore found convenient on every account
to name an immediate commander of the Nineteenth Corps, and for
this post Franklin's rank, service, and experience plainly indicated
him. The assignment was made on the 15th of August, and Franklin
took command at Baton Rouge on the 20th. Then Weitzel was designated
to command the First division. However, there were during the next
few months, among the commanders of all grades, so many changes,
due to illness or absence, that only confusion could follow the
attempt to tell them all.
The artillery of the corps was redistributed to correspond with
the new organization, and the cavalry was concentrated at Baton
Rouge, Plaquemine, Thibodeaux, and New Orleans, with orders that
all details for orderly duty and the like were to be furnished from
a single battalion, the 14th New York, attached to the defences of
New Orleans.
Weitzel's division, except his old brigade under Merritt, took post
at Baton Rouge, where also Emory's division was encamped, successively
commanded by Nickerson and McMillan, while Grover's division,
assigned to the defence of New Orleans, was separated, Birge
occupying La Fourche, with headquarters at Thibodeaux, and Cahill
forming the garrison of New Orleans.
At Port Hudson, after the departure of the nine-months' troops,
Andrews had the 6th Michigan newly converted into the 1st Michigan
heavy artillery, ten troops of the 3d Massachusetts cavalry,
Rawles's, Holcomb's, and Barnes's batteries; and besides these the
infantry of the Corps d'Afrique, then in process of organization,
including, at the end of August, the old 1st and 3d regiments and
the five regiments of Ullmann's brigade--the 6th to the 10th. The
return of the post for the 31st of August accounts for an effective
force of 5,427; of these 1,815 belonged to the white troops and
3,612 to the colored regiments. The whole number of infantry
regiments of the Corps d'Afrique, then authorized, was nineteen,
of which only the first four were completed. Besides these there
were two regiments of engineers, the 1st full, the 2d about half
full, and three companies of heavy artillery, making the whole
muster of colored troops in the department about 10,000. Towards
the end of September the regiments of infantry numbered twenty,
with ranks fairly filled. The Corps d'Afrique was then organized
in two divisions of two brigades each, Ullmann commanding the First
division and the senior colonel the Second. Rawles's battery was
assigned to the First division and Holcomb's to the Second. This
division, however, never became much more than a skeleton, its
First brigade being from the first detached by regiments for garrison
duty in the various fortifications.
Andrews at once took up the work of organization and instruction
in earnest, rightly conceiving it not merely possible, but even
essential, to give to the officers and men of the colored regiments,
thus formed into an army corps under his command, a degree of
instruction, as well in tactics as in the details of a soldier's
duty, higher then was to be found in any save a few picked regiments
of the volunteer and regular service. The prejudice at first
entertained against the bare idea of service with colored troops
had not entirely disappeared, yet it had so far lost its edge that
it was now possible to select from a number of applicants for
promotion, especially to the higher grades, officers who had already
shown their fitness and their capacity, while holding inferior
commissions or serving in the ranks of the white regiments. Thus
the original source of weakness in the composition of the first
three regiments was avoided, and, small politics and local influence
being of course absent, and Banks's instructions being urgent to
choose only the best men, the colored regiments soon had a fine
corps of officers. To the work now before him Andrews brought an
equipment and a training such as few officers possessed. Experience
had shown him the merit, the capacity, and the defects of the
American volunteer officer. At the very bottom of these defects
was the looseness of his early instruction in the elements of his
duty; once wrongly taught by an instructor, himself careless or
ignorant, he was likely to go on conscientiously making the same
mistake to the end of his term. Realizing his opportunity, Andrews
set about establishing uniformity in all details of drill and duty
by establishing a school of officers. These he himself taught with
the greatest pains and industry, correcting the slovenly, yet
encouraging the willing, until the whole corps was brought up to
a uniform standard, and on the whole a high one.
Stone succeeded Andrews as Chief of Staff at department headquarters
on the 25th of July.
Franklin's staff, as commander of the Nineteenth Army Corps in the
field, included Major Wickham Hoffman, Assistant Adjutant-General;
Colonel Edward L. Molineux, Acting Assistant Inspector-General;
Lieutenant-Colonel John G. Chandler, Chief Quartermaster;
Lieutenant-Colonel Henry D. Woodruff, Chief Commissary of Subsistence;
Surgeon John H. Rauch, Medical Director; Captain Henry W. Closson,
Chief of Artillery; Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey, Acting Chief
Engineer; Captain William A. Pigman, Chief Signal Officer.