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CHAPTER 55
Rising Red Water
pages 1097 - 1102
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page 1097 the Confederates were doing on that side.28 Three days later Banks ordered
Birge's brigade to the that side of the river, and A. J. Smith's men came
back.29
Several days later, General Mower was writing from the southern bank, asking for more cavalry.30 The next day, A. J. Smith sent a testy message to Banks's staff: "Unless you send me some cavalry, that we may know what we have to contend with, I had better retire to my boats. What is cavalry for but to reconnoiter in front of our lines?"31 The same day, headquarters sent 1,200 cavalrymen to join the 500 already with Smith. The expedition's best general, Mower, and his 1,700 horsemen would fail to discover during the next week 28. OR, I, 34, pt. III: 297. |
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page 1098 they were facing only phantom Confederate regiments around Alexandria.32 McClernand requested that Banks assign A. J. Smith's men to him, and he promised to go out and defeat the enemy with these added forces. He also volunteered his 13th Corps to stay with the gunboats if they could not go over the falls.33 Banks was apparently impressed, telling the U. S. marshal that he had more confidence in McClernand than in any officer in his command.34 It took only a few days for Smith and McClernand to "butt horns." Smith had disliked McClernand since the Vicksburg campaign. There was suddenly a great alarm soon after the return to Alexandria, with indications that the enemy was attacking Alexandria. Banks ordered all the soldiers in his two corps to retire to the entrenchments around Alexandria. There was contempt for this action among Whitey Smith's men. "Old Mother Banks is scared again,” Lieutenant Child wrote in his diary.35 During the repositioning, McClernand temporarily left his stores, forage and some equipment outside the entrenchments. Whitey Smith claimed McClernand's men set these on fire. Forage was especially needed at this time. Whereupon Smith ordered a brigade to extinguish the fires, and his men occupied McClernand's camp that night.36 McClernand had had a camp outside the fortifications because of its proximity to water. McClernand quickly inquired if Banks had ordered A. J. Smith to move in front of him. According to the former Illinois congressman, Smith had seized his supplies while his men were in the process of moving them to the rear.37 Banks's chief of staff replied only that Smith was not in his assigned location.38 Almost all the regimental histories spoke of the bad blood between Smith's "western" troops and the "eastern" troops of the 19th Corps. This was surely intensified when newspapers started arriving at Alexandria. The reports in papers from Chicago and the Midwest praised Smith's men and maligned Banks’s. Some of the most scathing accounts were from the Republican of St. Louis whose editor was supposed to have been an investor in one of the failed cotton speculations involving the expedition.39 The Republican's April 13 32. OR, I, 34, pt. I: 318. |
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page 1099 dispatch accused Banks and Franklin of running to the rear when the battle started near Sabine Crossroads and proclaimed that Banks had lost the confidence of the whole army. According to its correspondent, Banks had been most interested recently only in promoting his presidential ambitions.40 Other reports were sometimes overly favorable to Banks. The New York Herald's man at Grand Ecore, for example, described how full of admiration the men were for their gallant general.41 Prior to this report, the Herald, which had been so favorable to Banks, had for days reprinted the multiple highly critical dispatches that had earlier appeared in Chicago.42 The correspondent for the Traveller of Boston reported the troops were in good health and spirits at Grand Ecore. According to his complimentary report, the retreat to Grand Ecore was just a "strategic movement."43 Banks's most faithful editor-supporter, Samuel Bowles, was "sick at heart" over the reports from Red River, but he thought further explanation would partially exonerate the general.44 John W. Forney editorialized in his Philadelphia paper that he still had faith in his friend Banks though he would support the changes made in Banks's command.45 In one of the last favorable reports for Banks's side, a War Press article in June blamed the failure of the Red River expedition on General A. J. Smith's refusal to obey orders.46 Like Whitey Smith's men, the 13th Corps also came from the Midwest, and they found themselves somewhat in the middle—still not enamored of the eastern 19th Corps but under attack by Smith's friends. One discerning soldier provided the following description of the discord that developed: "The Western officers and men laid the blame of the repulse [of the expedition] on the Eastern generals; the infantry charged it to the cavalry; the artillery on the infantry support; the navy on the army."47 And there were also actually a few, rare 40. Cited in Moore, The Rebellion
Record: A Diary of American Events..., vol. VIII, document p. 542-8.
This article misidentified multiple officers. Whether the editor's
failed cotton adventure influenced the distorted reporting published in
that paper (and republished in Chicago and elsewhere) is unknown.
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page 1100 participants who thought the Federal expedition had been a success.48 Without considering the logistics of the situation, why did the Confederates not cross all their resources upriver, seize the riverbank opposite Alexandria and thereby stop the dam project. Several of the participants have observed that any Confederate operations on the opposite bank would have been to their benefit.49 On reflection, however, the Confederates initially probably had as little faith in the dam project as the Federal commanders. Even if they had made this move against the northern bank and sharpshooters put the gunboats out of action, the river was so low that many of the Federal soldiers could have waded across at some convenient spot within a few hours. Porter's first communiqué from Alexandria advised that his light-clad boats were defenseless against the hill batteries which the Confederates were expected to install on the north bank.50 Yet he told Joel Headley soon after the war he had nothing to fear from a mob of sharpshooters there. After all, he said, the fleet had 200 heavy guns to counter their attacks.51 Richard Taylor preferred to defeat the Federals through small hit-and-run engagements. He had high expectations of the inexperienced cavalrymen on the north bank under Brigadier General St. John R. Liddell, who was decidedly handicapped by lack of artillery. Liddell's raid on the northern bank on the 24th, which caused a few casualties and drove the Federals across the river to Alexandria, no doubt occasioned Banks's dispatch of troops there.52 Liddell had unsuccessfully tried at that time to get Taylor to concentrate all their efforts at Alexandria in order to destroy the Union supplies there. On May 1, the Federals made their presence felt on the opposite bank, and Liddell thereafter refused to do anything more than skirmish because of his lack of artillery. Although some of his detached men who had been burning cotton had returned, Liddell had an operational force of only 450 men. Then, after receiving conflicting orders from Taylor, Liddell resigned in frustration.53 Taylor had expected Liddell’s activities would put a stop to the dam construction. The resignation mattered little because Taylor did not commit significant resources to attacking the Alexandria area again. 48. See, for example, Edmund Miles to his
wife, May 26, 1863, Edmund Miles papers, 1860-1959, Mass. Historical
Society. |
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page 1101 While some Confederate soldiers around Alexandria were executing noisy, pretend movements on the southern bank, Taylor dispatched much of his cavalry and other detachments downriver. Their mission was to disrupt Union use of the lower end of the Red River. This project worked well. Almost all Union vessels venturing there came under fire, and on May 3 the Rebels captured most soldiers of the 120th Ohio regiment who were aboard a transport on the river.54 After that, the river was effectively closed to Union shipping for two weeks. Banks did send a brigade down to garrison the ruins of Fort de Russy the day of the capture of the Ohio regiment, but this force could not patrol the full length of the river.55 The day after Banks ordered that brigade downriver, Admiral Porter requested that soldiers be sent down. Banks's chief of staff handled the request diplomatically, implying that the brigade was being sent at Porter's request although the men already had their orders.56 They arrived at the ruins of Fort de Russy by transport.57 Taylor described his downriver operations as causing the Federals at Alexandria to be "as closely besieged as was ever Vicksburg."58 On May 7, he wrote Shreveport that the enemy was now on quarter rations in Alexandria and entirely without forage for the 10,000 animals. "We will play the game the Russians played in the retreat from Moscow," he announced.59 All captured horses are like "scarecrows," Taylor reported in a few days.60 The reality was quite different. There was a severe lack of forage, for sure, and many of the horses were not capable of strenuous activity.61 On the other hand, Federal records show there were twenty-one days of rations on hand at Alexandria beginning May 1.62 The only sacrifice demanded on the Federal side was cutting the rations to 2/3 daily amounts, except for beef, starting on May 7.63 The bluecoats at Alexandria were probably better fed than their Confederate counterparts. On May 5, there was forage in storage for only four more days, but efforts were being made to increase the supply.64 54. OR, I, 34, pt. I: 587. |
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page 1102 As mentioned, Major General David Hunter appeared in Alexandria at this time. Hunter was to have been Grant's representative with Banks until Banks landed the troops for the Mobile campaign in Mississippi.65 A messenger from A. J. Smith had wired Washington from Cairo on April 21, saying: "Banks returned to Grand Ecore, badly injured. He refused to return Smith's command. The naval force is caught in low water."66 The next day Grant had this information, and he wrote to Halleck: "I have been satisfied for the last nine months that to keep General Banks in command was to neutralize a large force and to support it most expensively." Grant asked that his West Point classmate Joseph Jones Reynolds, head of the garrison at New Orleans, replace Banks in command.67 When the war department showed these brief dispatches to Lincoln, he demurred on Grant's request until he had more information. So Grant then had Hunter immediately proceed to the Red River, as rapidly as transportation would allow, to provide an independent evaluation. Hunter (West Point, '22) had been at Grant's side at Chattanooga, and he was one of the few generals senior in rank to Banks. He only stayed one day in Alexandria, and it is unclear how many persons he interviewed. Unknown to Hunter, General Grant had already suggested the changes to the command of the Red River expedition without hearing from his emissary. Sherman had relayed the contents of Porter's explosive reports to General Halleck. Wasting no time, on April 25, Halleck sent all this news to Grant.68 Hunter's first report back to Washington may have had some effect; the second had little at all. Nevertheless, Hunter's more balanced communiqué would offset the exaggerated reports Porter and A. J. Smith had sent forward. Hunter's first, brief letter described affairs as "very complicated, perplexing, and precarious..." Obviously not aware of some of Grant's previous comments and orders in favor on the Shreveport expedition, he commented: "Why this expedition was ordered I cannot imagine." While Hunter was there, Banks told him he had opposed a campaign on the Red River. Hunter's only recommendation was that they detonate the boats at Alexandria.69 Four days later, Hunter had made his way to New Orleans. After about a half day's stay, he felt obligated to report that the Department of the Gulf was one mass of corruption, sacrificing vital interests to setting up sham governments and putting the interests of cotton speculators ahead of the lives of the soldiers. The administration of trade was also filling the enemy's country 65. OR, I, 34, pt. III: 191. |
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