Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 2, 2025
Like Augustus in the agony of his spirit, the sorely pressed Confederates on the east of the Mississippi asked, and asked in vain: "Varus! Varus! Where are our legions?" The enemy's advance, fleet and army, reached Alexandria on the 16th of March, but he delayed sixteen days there and at Grand Ecore.
Doubtless General Kirby Smith thought that a pontoon train would supply the place of seven thousand infantry and six batteries. I remained at Shreveport three days, occupied with reports and sending supplies to my little force near Grand Ecore, toward which I proceeded on the 19th of April.
The highest ground, called College Hill, is on the west, and here enters a road from the Sabine, which, sixteen miles to the east, strikes the Red River at Blair's Landing; while, from the necessity of turning Spanish Lake, the distance to Natchitoches and Grand Ecore is thirty-six miles.
Then, leaving at Grand Ecore the six heavy boats that had come with him thus far, he began the ascent of the upper reach of the river with the Carondelet, Fort Hindman, Lexington, Osage, Neosho, and Chillicothe, convoying and closely followed by a fleet of twenty transports, bearing Kilby Smith's division and a large quantity of military stores of all kinds.
But he had not been gone more than half an hour when a staff officer of General Banks arrived with an order to me, with which he had left in the night, for me to continue pressing on with the whole train to Grand Ecore, and with instructions if any wagons broke down to burn them, not stop to fix anything, but get everything into Grand Ecore as quickly as I could, and look out very carefully on the flanks."
In the first moments of elation that succeeded the victory, Banks was all for resuming the advance, but later in the evening, after consulting his corps and division commanders, he determined to continue the retreat to Grand Ecore. Unfortunately by some mistake the ambulances had gone off with the wagon train, so that there were no adequate means of relieving the wounded on the field.
The next day at night the main army had reached Grand Ecore and joined me there. General Banks impressed on me very strongly that, in sending me back from Pleasant Hill just as the fight was commencing, it was of the greatest importance to save what material we had left. Early the next morning, when I was distant from Pleasant Hill eighteen miles, I received a dispatch from General Banks.
A party of Federal horse crossed Cane River at Monette's Ferry, forty miles below Grand Ecore, and chased a mounted orderly and myself about four miles, then turned back to Alexandria; but I maintain that the orderly and I were not dispersed, for we remained together to the end.
The summer was whiled away in social enjoyments among the officers, in visiting those stationed at, and near, Fort Jessup, twenty-five miles away, visiting the planters on the Red River, and the citizens of Natchitoches and Grand Ecore. There was much pleasant intercourse between the inhabitants and the officers of the army.
The wounded men were brought in and placed in the best hospitals we could organize, and surgeons were left with them, with provisions, medicines, and supplies; and at daybreak we fell back to Grand Ecore."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking