The Daily True Delta

NEW ORLEANS, WEDNESDAY MORNING AUGUST 12, 1863
VOLUME XXVII     NUMBER 224
PORT HUDSON

ITS HISTORY, FROM AN INTERIOR VIEW,

AS SKETCHED FROM THE DIARY OF
AN OFFICER

[continued]

Battle of the 14th of June.

Under this terrific fire the enemy made their second grand assault upon our works, from Fort Desperate on the left to the Clinton road on the right, the fighting being principally in front of Gen. Beall’s line. From half-past three o’clock in the morning until seven o’clock the contact was of the fiercest and most sanguinary description, that rattling of musketry on our side and the noise of artillery on both sides shaking the very earth with its roar and enveloping the scene of conflict with a dense mantle of smoke. Seven distinct and separate charges were met by our men and every one ultimately forced back. In several places would companies and fragments of their regiments advance up to our very works, and leap into our ditch, but by hurling back the reinforcements which their leading officers tried in vain to bring up to these parties, a great many of them were killed and wounded, and some ninety, officers and privates, were taken prisoners by us.

One of these, a young man, who had gained our ditch at one point with but a handful of followers, on being asked why he had advanced so far without adequate support, answered that as their orders were to gain the most at all hazards, he had allowed himself to think of nothing but obeying the order until he had nearly reached it, when he looked back and was astonished to see himself with a small party, while the balance of his regiment had been killed, wounded, or driven back. As it was too late for him then to retreat, he and his companions leaped into the ditch for protection from certain death.

At Fort Desperate, Col. Johnson again had a fierce and stubborn contest. The first charge of the enemy driven back, they reformed their line of battle under a destructive fire, and advance with greater determination than ever, a large number of them gaining his exterior ditch. Buy this time he had built a cross ditch, or rifle pit, behind the main one, and here he had a reserve of sixty men posted, who could fire over the heads of the men in front and sweep the top of the parapet when the enemy undertook to scale it.

Scaling Our Works.

They selected a corner or angle of the work as the readiest part of scaling, and, suddenly a score of blue uniforms appeared over the outer crest, pushed up by their comrades. OUr men inside were waiting for them with the ball and bayonet, while our reserve in the cross ditch, concentrating their fire upon this small scaling party, swept them off the parapet as if they were chaff caught by a sudden gust of wind. Notwithstanding such an unpromising result of their first attempt, they tried again to get over; but, as before, every man who made the attempt was shot down by the unerring rifles of these Arkansas backwoodsmen, and the effort to storm Fort Desperate was given up for the time. The men in our ditches remained there until nine o’clock in the morning, when under a heavy fire of artillery and sharpshooters, they filed off through a deep gorge that led into this part of the ditch, carrying their dead and wounded with them.

The enemy had come this time prepared with hand grenades to throw into our works from the outside. When these novel missiles commenced falling among the Arkansas troops they did not know what to make of them, and the first few which they caught not having burst, they threw them back upon the enemy in the ditch. This time many of them exploded and their character was at once revealed to our men. Always equal to any emergency, they quickly devised a scheme by which they turned this new style of warfare against the parties who introduced it. Spreading blankets behind the parapet, the grenades fell harmlessly into them, whereupon our boys would pick them up and hurling them with much greater force down into the moat they would almost invariably explode.

The Attack on our Right.

Although the ground in front of our works, for the distance of nearly two miles, was covered with the dead and wounded, the attempt to storm our position had not been given over, but was to be renewed at eight o’clock in the morning at another point. This was on our extreme right, where Col. Miles had an advanced work on a ridge in front of our line. Here was a deep, broken and irregular gorge in from of our main line, filled with abattis, so as to be impassible for an infantry line of battle, while it was raked in both directions by some pieces of Boone’s battery in this advanced work. A narrow road from Troth’s landing wound down the sides of the declivity and then ascended on our side, and this was enfiladed at every turn by our artillery.

It would seem as if this was the most unpromising locality which could have been selected for an assault, and yet a strong column of the enemy’s troops came up to charge down and up this narrow road, moving by the right flank. As soon as they came in sight, moving across an open field on the plateau opposite us, our artillery opened upon them with great accuracy, bursting shell and spherical case right before and amongst them. Under this fire they fell back, but immediately moving further to our right where they were partially screened by the trees, the head of the column soon appeared on the road, led, some distance in advance, by a mounted officer.

They were now within easy range, and a destructive fire was instantly opened on them from every part of our works where they could be reached. In the face of this galling fire their column came on at a double-quick down the road until two regiments had passed the head of the road; when we checked the balance of the column, and the two regiments which were left under our fire immediately scattered umong the fallen timber in the gorge, and opened fire upon us from their places of refuge, where we had the advantage, however, of being able to fire down upon them.

As, after the heavy fighting on the 27th of May, the firing was now incessant along our line until dark, large number of the enemy, after their charge had failed and their lines broke, having seized postions close up to our works, from which they kept up an incessant fire.

Another Flag of Truce.

But on the 15th an unusual quiet reigned, apparently from the exhaustion consequent upon such sever exertion. In the evening Gen. Banks sent in a flag of truce to ask Gen. Gardner to receive medicines and delicacies for the wounded Federal soldiers in our hands. Gen. Gardner replied that he would receive all such articles, and have them used as purposed. He also took occasion to express surprise at the fact that no cessation of hostilities had yet been asked for by the enemy for the purpose of removing their dead and wounded, who had been lying on an open field—a number of them—under a hot sun, for two days.

The medicines were sent in, but still no request was made of us for a truce to remove the dead and wounded, although the enemy had been engaged during the night in carrying off their wounded as well as they might under our fire. A party of our men had gone out to succor a soldier whose appeals for water were painful to their ears, but they were fired upon by the enemy’s skirmishers, and had to return without accomplishing their charitable object. On the 16th, the effluvia from the decomposing bodies having become very offensive at our lines, Brig. Gen. Beall sent a flag of truce to the division commander in front of him, proposing to deliver his dead to him for burial. This offer was accepted, and a truce declared on that part of the lines. Our men collected and delivered on hundred and sixty odd corpses, besides which they found one poor fellow able to speak though desperately wounded, who was parched with the dreadful pangs of thirst, and whose face, neck and hands had been completely fly-blown.

A similar effluvia on our extreme left had brought sickness among the troops stationed there. One evening a small party of our men went out to look at the bodies of the negro troops lying among the willows, when they found a stalwart negro suffering the most excruciating agony from the combined effect of thirst and his wounds, which were five in number. Thinking only of his suffering they gave him some water, placed him in a blanket and brought him in to our hospital. The hand of death was upon him, however, and in two hours after reaching the hospital he died, having feably thanked the men he had come to slay, yet from whose hands only he had found succor in his last moments.

The Spade Supercedes [sic] the Bayonet.

The siege had now, on the 16th of June, continued for forty days since the commencement of the bombardment by the fleet, twenty-seven days of constant fighting on every side, and twenty-four days since the investment de facto had begun. The enemy had shown great resources, an indomitable perseverance and undoubted pluck. They had assaulted us on every side and tested every possible weak point, they had dashed up to our breastworks in broad daylight, they had stubbornly pushed their advance through the dense woods on our left, they had endeavored to creep into our lines in the darkness and to surprise us by unexpected onslaughts, but the courage and sleepless vigilance of our men had failed not for a moment. It seemed an impossibility to take Port Hudson by storm; line after line and column after column of their troops had rushed up to the very muzzles of our muskets and rifles, only to leave heaps of their slain upon the field.

It was now left to engineering skill alone to try its schemes for reducing the place. The bayonet was to give place, temporarily, to the pick and spade, and science was to supercede [sic] mere courage. Three parts of our line were selected by the enemy’s engineers as the weakest and most easily reduced by their regular approaches. These were Fort Desperate, the position of which has been heretofore described; an acute salient angle on the left of line of fortifications, defended by the First Mississippi regiment, and a projecting work extending far out on the river bluff below the town, on the right of our fortifications, called by us Battery No. 11, and by the enemy “the Citadel.”

A rifle pit was constructed by the enemy along the crest of the bluff opposite to Battery 11, running down to the river bank, which was in advance of their marine battery, the most formidable fortification opposed to us, and from which we anticipated considerable annoyance. About the same time they commenced their approaches, with zig zag ditches, in front of Fort Desperate and the position held by the First Mississippi. Lieut. Dabney and our engineers immediately perceived these operations, and commenced to meet them with counter operations, and oppose engineering against engineering.

Col. Johnson had galleries dug under his breastworks through which his men could crawl into the outer ditch and sharpshooter from that, while he also built an upper work on the top of his parapet to give a commanding position to his marksmen, enabling them to shoot down into the enemy’s ditches so soon as they should approach near enough. Capt. L. J. Girard, of the ordnance, prepared some 13-inch shells to plant outside of these threatened points, and he himself placed them in the night, buried a short distance beneath the surface of the ground, having friction primers in the vent holes, with wires attached, leading within our fortifications, so that they could be exploded under the feet of an advancing column.