Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

100
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
and ammunition were stored made it hard to tell the quantity on hand and had
to “make an entire change” in his department’s personnel. The chief of artillery
confessed that he “was unable to procure any information whatever” from his predecessor
but ventured the opinion that none of the batteries could take the field for
want of spare parts. To make matters worse, Banks’ inspector general declared that
not one of the newly arrived infantry regiments was fit for active service. Three
of them in particular had antiquated or defective weapons. Offensive operations
were out of the question in any case, for the country along the principal rivers was
flooded and driftwood blocked the main channels. 31
A Confederate force led by Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge had driven Union
occupiers from Baton Rouge in August 1862, but they had not been able to hold
the town and federal troops returned in December. The Union Army did not go on
to retake Port Hudson, some twenty-five miles upstream. The Confederates hung
on there through the fall and winter, increasing in strength from about 1,000 men
present for duty at the end of August to 16,287 at the end of March 1863. The tiny
village, which in peacetime was a shipping point for cotton and sugar, stood at the
north end of a range of bluffs from which artillery could command a bend in the
river. Breckinridge thought that Port Hudson’s position was one of the strongest
defensive sites on the Mississippi, more advantageous than either Baton Rouge or
Vicksburg. 32
Banks agreed, so when his troops, organized as the Union Army’s XIX Corps,
finally took the field they moved not against Port Hudson itself but up the Bayou
Teche toward Opelousas. In that way, Banks intended to find a route that would
allow federal vessels to reach the Red River without passing under the guns of
Port Hudson. The move would also cut off Confederate armies east of the Mississippi
from their sources of rations to the west. By 20 April, Union troops had
reached Opelousas; by 9 May, they were in Alexandria. Banks reported taking two
thousand prisoners and routing the Confederate force opposed to him, but General
Halleck in Washington urged him to concentrate on capturing Port Hudson while
Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, farther north, attacked Vicksburg. Control of the Mississippi
River “is the all-important objective of the present campaign,” Halleck told
Banks. “It is worth to us forty Richmonds.” 33
The Native Guards, meanwhile, had moved from the Opelousas Railroad to
other stations. The 1st, 3d, and 4th Regiments were with Maj. Gen. Christopher
C. Augur’s 1st Division, XIX Corps, at Baton Rouge. The 2d Regiment had seven
companies on Ship Island and three at Fort Pike, near the mouth of Lake Pontchartrain,
northeast of New Orleans. The first three Native Guards regiments were in
turmoil as General Banks conducted a purge of the seventy-five company officers
and one major whom Butler had appointed from among New Orleans’ “free men
of color.” To Banks, their race alone was enough to make them “a source of constant
embarrassment and annoyance.” When he had begun organizing the 4th Native
Guards, only white men received appointments as officers. So it would be with
31 OR, ser. 1, 15: 242, 649 (“was unable”), 676; 1st Lt R. M. Hill to Maj Gen N. P. Banks, 15 Jan
1863 (“make an”) (H–122–DG–1863), Entry 1756, pt. 1, RG 393, NA.
32 OR, ser. 1, 15: 81 (quotation), 804, 1000.
33 Ibid., pp. 299–300, 726 (quotation); vol. 26, pt. 1, pp. 8, 10–11.