Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

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Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
interested as other men? We may properly demand from him whatever service
he can render.” 40
While Ullmann began to recruit his brigade, Banks issued orders to the three
divisions of the XIX Corps that had reached Alexandria on 9 May 1863. From that
town, in the middle of the state, they moved by road and river some eighty miles
southeast to the Mississippi. There, on 25 May, they met the corps’ fourth division
coming north from Baton Rouge and laid siege to the Confederates at Port Hudson.
Banks’ army numbered well over thirty thousand men on paper at the beginning of
the siege, but he reported that its actual strength was less than thirteen thousand. 41
As the Union force approached, Confederate troops hastily completed a monthslong
effort to turn the artillery post that commanded the river into a defensible fort
able to withstand assault from inland. Felling trees obstructed the attackers’ path and
cleared a field of fire for the defenders. The Confederates also dug rifle pits for skirmishers
well to the front of their main line of trenches. Port Hudson’s garrison had
been tapped to furnish reinforcements for Vicksburg, which by that time was threatened
by Grant’s army, and so numbered only about seven thousand men, roughly
one-third of the troops the town’s four-and-a-half miles of trenches required. 42
Banks wanted to capture the place at once and go north to join Grant. On 26
May, he decided on an assault to take place the next morning. The 1st and 3d Native
Guards were part of the force that marched to Port Hudson from Baton Rouge. On
the day Banks made his decision, the two regiments found themselves posted on the
extreme right of the Union line, part of a collection of brigades from different divisions
commanded by General Weitzel. These brigades were to lead the next day’s attack
on the Confederate position. It was the only part of the Union force that received
definite orders. Other division commanders were merely to “take instant advantage
of any favorable opportunity, and . . . if possible, force the enemy’s works,” or “hold
[themselves] in readiness to re-enforce within the right or left, if necessary, or to
force [their] own way into the enemy’s works.” Despite the vague wording of the
order, which left the timing of the assault to the discretion of his subordinates, Banks
ended with the exhortation: “Port Hudson must be taken to-morrow.” 43
Sunrise came at 5:00. The Union artillery opened fire “at daybreak”—one of the
few unequivocal parts of Banks’ order—and Weitzel’s infantry, fourteen white regiments
mostly from New England and New York, advanced from north and northeast
of the town about one hour later. Crossing obstructions of felled timber and ravines
as deep as thirty feet, they drove the Confederate skirmishers from their rifle pits and
finally confronted the enemy’s main line, some two hundred yards farther on. There,
the attack stalled. One regiment, the 159th New York, had spent an hour advancing
half a mile. Another, the 8th New Hampshire, had lost 124 of its 298 men killed and
wounded. At 42 percent, this was twice the percentage of casualties of any other regi-
40 OR, ser. 1, 15: 717 (“in order,” “any dogma”); vol. 26, pt. 1, p. 684 (“with appropriate”); ser. 3,
4: 205–06. Maj Gen N. P. Banks to Brig Gen D. Ullmann, 29 Apr 1863 (“active operations”), Entry
159DD, RG 94, NA.
41 OR, ser. 1, vol. 26, pt. 1, pp. 12–13, 526–28.
42 Lawrence L. Hewitt, Port Hudson, Confederate Bastion on the Mississippi (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University, 1987), p. 133; Hollandsworth, Pretense of Glory, pp. 121–22.
43 OR, ser. 1, 15: 732; vol. 26, pt. 1, pp. 492–93, 504, 508–09 (quotation, p. 509); Richard B.
Irwin, History of the Nineteenth Army Corps (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892), p. 166.