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Updated: May 28, 2025
Take with you the twelve mortars, with their ammunition, and all the thirty-pound Parrotts the ordnance-officer will supply. Proceed to the mouth of Red River and confer with Admiral Porter. Consult with him, and in all the expedition rely on him implicitly, as he is the approved friend of the Army of the Tennessee, and has been associated with us from the beginning.
Presently the four Napoleons set forward at a gallop for the wood, while the four Parrotts wheeled to the right, deployed, and advanced across the fields, inclining toward the left of the enemy. A quarter of a mile further on these guns went into battery behind the brow of a little knoll, and opened fire.
Silently the long blue files wound into position behind the earth barriers which hid them from the enemy, coiled and ready to strike when the towering redoubt on the Jackson road should rise heavenwards. By common consent the rifle crack of day and night was hushed, and even the Parrotts were silent.
There were two lines of battle, each of three regiments of infantry, the first some two hundred yards in advance of the second. In the space between them lay two four-gun batteries, one of them brass twelve-pounder "Napoleons," and the other rifled Parrotts. To the rear of the infantry were the recumbent troopers and picketed horses of a regiment of cavalry.
It spread out by brigade and division and regiment and company, the men splashing and paddling through the Chickasaw and the swamps toward the bluffs. The Parrotts began to roar. A certain regiment, boldly led, crossed the bayou at a narrow place and swept resistless across the sodden fields to where the bank was steepest. The fire from the battery scorched the hair of their heads.
And by grace of the wisdom of that President who himself knew sorrow and suffering and defeat and unjust censure, General Grant won. Boldness did it. The canal abandoned, one red night fleet and transports swept around the bend and passed the city's heights, on a red river. The Parrotts and the Dahlgrens roared, and the high bluffs flung out the sound over the empty swamp land.
The Percy Parrotts threw open their three-roomed residence and made arrangements to sleep in the hay, while their self-sacrificing example was quickly followed by others. Neither the Cowboy Band nor the neighbors knew either rest or sleep until they had mastered a Sousa March, while Mrs.
Solon, waiting for the army moving back to the Valley, this time from the west, from the Allegheny fastnesses, he accomplished with eclat some oral arithmetic "If two Yankee Parrotts are fired every eight minutes, and in our battery we serve the howitzer every nine minutes, the Napoleon every ten, the two six-pounders every eleven, and if the Yankees limber up and leave at the end of an hour, how many shells will have been thrown?"
The guns were two 20-pounder Parrott rifles, five 10-pounder Parrotts, two bronze 10-pounder rifles altered from 6-pounder smooth-bores, three bronze and one iron 6-pounder smooth-bores, and ten mountain howitzers to be packed on mules. Some of these guns were left in position at posts, and three small field batteries were organized for the marching columns.
A battery of two thirty-pounder Parrotts was taken off one of the "tin-clads" and mounted on the bank, about half a mile back in the woods, and a mile from the fort. Captain Wilson, who commanded one of the mosquito boats, was ordered to take command of it, and Frank, at his own request, was permitted to accompany him as his aid.
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