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On the 24th General Green, with Major's men and such of his own as had crossed their horses, marched for Donaldsonville, sixty-five miles, and General Mouton, with two regiments of infantry, took rail to Thibodeaux and sent pickets down the line to Bayou Des Allemands, twenty-five miles from New Orleans.
So ended operations in Louisiana for the year. Until the following spring, Taylor continued to occupy the Teche region, while Weitzel rested quietly in La Fourche, with his headquarters at Thibodeaux and his troops so disposed as to cover and hold the country without losing touch.
Our brigade went ahead as skirmishers. We went through a very pleasant country. We started about seven o'clock on the morning of April 2nd. Our company was guard of the baggage train. We went through a place called Thibodeaux, a very pretty village. We stopped "a right smart way," from Thibodeaux, as the contrabands used to tell us when we inquired the distance of them.
On the west bank of the Lafourche, a mile or two above the railway crossing, and thirty-two miles below Donaldsonville, where the bayou leaves the Mississippi, lies the town of Thibodeaux, the most considerable place of this region.
The artillery of the corps was redistributed to correspond with the new organization, and the cavalry was concentrated at Baton Rouge, Plaquemine, Thibodeaux, and New Orleans, with orders that all details for orderly duty and the like were to be furnished from a single battalion, the 14th New York, attached to the defences of New Orleans.
Mouton then called in his outlying detachments, including the La Fourche regiment, 500 strong, 300 men of the 33d Louisiana, and the regiments of Saint Charles and St. John Baptist, burned the railway station of Terre Bonne and the bridges at Thibodeaux, La Fourche Crossing, Terre Bonne, Des Allemands, and Bayou Boeuf, and evacuated the district.
With his own, the 18th, the Crescent, Colonel McPheeters, and the four-gun battery of Captain Ralston in all 500 men Colonel Armand resisted Weitzel's advance at Labadieville, eight miles above Thibodeaux. The fighting was severe, and Armand only retired after his ammunition was exhausted; but he lost many killed and wounded, and some few prisoners.
The decisive resolution adopted at the Hôtel de Ville was known. All seemed lost. There was nothing before the eye but a frightful vision of anarchy and bloodshed. A general panic seized all those assembled in the apartments of Lafitte, and there was a sudden dispersion. It was near midnight; but three persons were left Lafitte, Adolphe Thibodeaux, and Benjamin Constant.
These same instructions had been given to the senior officer present before Mouton's arrival, but had been imperfectly executed. A feint on Des Allemands had induced the movement of nearly half the little force in that direction, and Mouton had scant time after he reached Thibodeaux to correct errors before the enemy was upon him.
Emory being forced to go North on sick-leave, his division was commanded by McMillan from the 17th of September until the 6th of October, when Grover relieved him after turning over the Fourth division to Beckwith. Birge, with his reorganized brigade, occupied La Fourche, with headquarters at Thibodeaux.
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