Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

200
Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867
Federal shipping where the Yazoo River empties into the Mississippi
in a bloodless skirmish two weeks later, the 8th Louisiana had never been
under fire. 23
Coates’ two infantry regiments, 947 officers and men, left Vicksburg by
boat on 31 January 1864 and arrived at the mouth of the Yazoo by dark. Turning
upriver the next morning, the flotilla of six transports and five gunboats
stopped at Haynes’ Bluff in the evening to pick up a recruiting detachment of
the 1st Mississippi Cavalry (AD), eleven officers and twenty-five men. During
the night, the boats tied up and took aboard a two-week supply of wood and
steamed on in the morning. They paused long enough at Satartia, some twentyfive
miles up the winding river, for the cavalry and five companies of the 11th
Illinois to go ashore and chase a few Confederates out of the village. The next
morning, 3 February, the expedition arrived at Liverpool Heights, which overlooked
the Yazoo. 24
About 10:00, a pair of Confederate twelve-pounders on shore opened fire
on the vessels. Colonel Coates landed about half his force, an equal number
of men from both regiments. They found it difficult to maneuver effectively
among the hills that lined the river. The Confederate defenders, fewer than five
hundred men of a Texas cavalry brigade fighting on foot, held their ground,
stopping one Union advance with revolver fire at a range of about twenty-five
paces. Meanwhile, Coates had landed the balance of his force and the new
arrivals exchanged shots with another Texas regiment that Confederate Brig.
Gen. Lawrence S. Ross had sent to his left merely to watch and guard a road;
Coates thought the Texans’ presence represented a flanking movement. Toward
dark, the colonel recalled his troops to the boats and dropped downriver a mile
to spend the night and plan the next day’s operation. The fight had cost his
force 6 killed, 21 wounded, and 8 missing, most of them in the 11th Illinois. 25
Coates thought it necessary at this point to send a report to the general
commanding at Vicksburg. Officers of the 1st Mississippi Cavalry (AD) picked
Sgts. Isaac Trendall and Washington Vincent to attempt the sixty-mile journey.
23 NA M594, roll 210, 47th USCI.
24 OR, ser. 1, vol. 32, pt. 1, pp. 320–21; Main, Third United States Colored Cavalry, p. 94.
25 OR, ser. 1, vol. 32, pt. 1, pp. 315–17, 388–89; NA M594, roll 204, 3d USCC.