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Updated: May 2, 2025
In his enthusiasm for art the classic cobbler forgot his last; but "all quality, pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war" could not make General Banks forget his politics, and he held elections at Alexandria and Grand Ecore. The General describes with some unction the devotion of the people to the "Union," which was and was to be, to them, "the fount of every blessing."
Cane River leaves the main channel of the Red below Grand Ecore, and, passing by Natchitoches, returns to the Red after a winding course of sixty miles. Except at the season of floods, it is not navigable; but the alluvion through which it flows is very productive, while the pine forest immediately to the west is sterile.
Twenty miles above Cotile Landing the Red River divides, and, for sixty miles, until Grand Ecore is reached, the waters flow in two unequal channels; the most southerly of these, along which the road runs, is known as Cane River, or Old Red River.
The Eastport, the most formidable iron-clad of the Mississippi squadron, grounded on a bar below Grand Ecore. Three tin-clad gunboats and two transports remained near to assist in getting her off; and, to prevent this, some mounted riflemen were sent, on the morning of the 26th, to coöperate with Liddell's raw levies on the north bank of the river.
Kilby Smith at once landed a detachment of his men, and was proceeding to carry out his orders with regard to opening communication with Banks by way of Springfield, when about four o'clock, Captain Andrews, of the 14th New York cavalry, rode in with his squadron, bringing word of the battles of Sabine Cross-Roads and Pleasant Hill, and bearing a message from Banks to Kilby Smith that directed his return to Grand Ecore.
Relieved of apprehension about the fleet, now at Grand Ecore, he expressed great anxiety for the destruction of Steele's column. I was confident that Steele, who had less than ten thousand men and was more than a hundred miles distant from Shreveport, would hear of Banks's disaster and retreat; but General Kirby Smith's views differed from mine.
I ought to state here that in that attack of the enemy on our left the brigade commander, Colonel Benedict, was killed, and I then assumed command of the brigade. We remained at Grand Ecore some eight or nine days, where we built intrenchments to a certain extent rifle pits. I think the whole army threw up a kind of temporary work in front."
After the affair at Blair's Landing on the 12th, the horse returned to Pleasant Hill, and thence joined Bee in front of Grand Ecore, where Banks had his army concentrated behind works, with gunboats and transports in the river, Bee occupying the town of Natchitoches, four miles away. On the morning of the 13th General Kirby Smith visited me at Mansfield.
I came up here with the river on the rise, and water enough for our largest vessels; and even on my way up to Shreveport from Grand Ecore the water rose, while it commenced falling where I left the largest gunboats. Falling or not, I could not go back while in charge of the transports and material on which an army of thirty thousand men depended."
The Bayou Pierre, three hundred feet wide and too deep to ford, leaves the Red River a few miles below Shreveport, and after a long course, in which it frequently expands into lakes, returns to its parent stream three miles above Grand Ecore, dividing the pine-clad hills on the west from the alluvion of the river on the east.
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