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By the end of December the Thirteenth Corps, except Sheldon's brigade which was at Plaquemine, had been gradually transferred to the Texas coast. Thus Franklin was left to hold the line of the Teche with little more than 5,000 men of the Nineteenth Corps and about 3,500 of Lee's cavalry.
During the floods of the previous spring many steamers had been brought away from New Orleans, and with others a powerful tow-boat, the Webb, now lying at Alexandria, and the Cotton. This last, a large river steamer, was in the lower Teche in charge of Captain Fuller, a western steamboat man, and one of the bravest of a bold, daring class.
When she came to "Florida and Teche debentures, sixty-two and a half to sixty-five and three-fourths," she was startled by a sort of shrill shout. "Ay! that's a rise! Some rigging design there! I must write I must. Where, where has that harridan hid my glasses? Why, it is almost twelve o'clock! the boy will be here for the paper immediately. And the post! the post! I must catch the post.
Acting-Master James L. Peterson, commanding the Diana, was killed, and Lieutenant Pickering D. Allen, aide-de-camp to General Weitzel, was wounded. With the Diana there fell into the enemy's hands nearly one hundred and fifty prisoners. This gave the Confederates three rather formidable boats in the Atchafalaya and the Teche.
The Federal army withdrew from Alexandria on the 13th of May, and on the 23d crossed the Mississippi and proceeded to invest Port Hudson; whereupon I returned by steamer to Alexandria, directing the infantry at Natchitoches to march back to the Teche to unite with Mouton.
Weitzel, having entered Franklin without opposition, kept the left-hand or cut-off road until he came to the burnt bridge over the Choupique, by which, as will presently be seen, the Confederates had escaped. Gooding, after occupying the works in his front, crossed the Teche by a bridge to the west bank and fell into Emory's column behind Ingraham.
In the course of the next few days the eight regiments that had been left on the Teche and the Atchafalaya rejoined the army before Port Hudson, coming by way of Brashear, Algiers, and the river.
Two miles beyond Washington the Bayous Boeuf and Cocodrie unite to form the Bayou Courtableau, out of which again, below the town, flows the Bayou Maricoquant, forming a double connection with the Teche at its head. For a long distance the Boeuf and the Cocodrie keep close company, each following a crooked channel cut deeply into the light soil.
The homes of our fathers were not showy, but their appearance was smiling and inviting; they had neither quaintness nor gaudiness, but were as grand in their simplicity as the boundless hospitality of their owners, for no people were more generous or hospitable than the Acadians who settled in the magnificent and poetical wilds of the Teche country.
Before this, Captain Julius Sanford, of the 23d Connecticut, set fire to the sugar-house filled with the baggage and clothing of the troops engaged at Port Hudson. Meanwhile, for the surprise of Brashear, Mouton had collected thirty-seven skiffs and boats of all sorts near the mouth of the Teche, and manned them with 325 volunteers, under the lead of Major Sherod Hunter.
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