The Daily True Delta

NEW ORLEANS, TUESDAY MORNING AUGUST 4, 1863
VOLUME XXVII     NUMBER 217
PORT HUDSON

ITS HISTORY, FROM AN INTERIOR VIEW,

AS SKETCHED FROM THE DIARY OF
AN OFFICER

[continued]

Spies and their Visits.

After the Essex passed down, and it was known positively that the Confederates were engaged in fortifying the bluffs of Port Hudson, it became a matter of moment to the enemy to know the extent and nature of the defences under construction and the number of troops collected at that place. It was not a very difficult undertaking to get in and out of the lines. Although it had become a military post, it was still a port of some commercial importance Considerable quantities of sugar were ferried across the river on flats to be shipped on the Clinton railroad, and thence hauled by ox teams to the Jackson railroad; salt was brought from St. Marys parish to take the same route, and tobacco came from Virginia in the opposite direction to make part of the exchange. Speculators, almost exclusively the children of Israel, were constantly passing in and out, and the gates of travel were not shut against peddlers and sojourners. The friends and relatives of soldiers were continually in and around the camps, so that it was not considered suspicious to see strange faces watching the progress of our works.

One pleasant morning two ladies crossed over on the ferry flat from the Pointe Coupée shore and directed their steps immediately to the office of the provost marshal. The elder of the twain was dressed in deep mourning, but with due regard to a display of elegance. The younger disported herself in attire more suited to a fashionable evening promenade than for travelling [sic], while her countenance, glowing with natural and artificial colors, and radiant with smiles, rivalled [sic] the gorgeousness of her costume. After such a lapse of time, speaking calmly and dispassionately, she can be said to have been “gotten up regardless of expense.” As the folds of her dress were lost to sight within the envious walls of the provost marshal’s building, a tall, stern-featured soldier from the piney woods turned slowly away, and after delivering himself of a long-drawn sigh, exclaimed, with an earnestness of tone that showed it came from the inmost recesses of his heart, “Oh! aren’t she a screamer, though!”

With all the ease and nonchalance of one experienced in the world the younger lady introduced herself and her venerated parent as refugees from New Orleans. Their tale of wrong and oppression, of individual sufferings and of hair-breadth escapes, was not soon told, though delivered with a graphic skill and a rapidity of utterance which proved the relator to possess rare conversational powers. Minutes lengthened into hours and hours rolled by unheeded by the constantly increasing auditory, whose sympathies were so keenly enlisted that some of the younger and more impressible were ready to saddle their horses and start off at a hand [hard ?] gallop, resolved to avenge that fair creature or return nevermore.

Mother and daughter expressed themselves anxious to go on and visit a son and husband who, they asserted, was battling for their beloved cause on a distant field of glory, but yet such was their fatigue they would be compelled to remain a few days in Port Hudson to rest. Escorted by gallant young officers, who exerted themselves to render the stay of their fair visitors as interesting as possible, they saw all the works then in progress, as well as the different camps, where, at dress parade, the number of troops could readily be ascertained by a looker-on. The ladies were charmingly ignorant about artillery and fortifications and after obtaining an accurate explanation of everything they saw, would protest that it was such an intricate subject and there were so many technical terms necessary they really could not see how any one could ever understand such things. “Now do tell me, how far can this thing shoot?” asked the younger one of her chaperone. The officer carefully explained the range of the gun up and down the river. “And don’t it fire any further than that tree?” asked his attentive listener. “That is its extreme range,” he answered, “at least for the highest elevation we can give it here.” “You don’t say so,” she responded, with the merriest little laugh in the world, “I am a perfect child in such matters; why I would have thought it could shoot five times as far.”

But when another day had passed, the “maid of the radiant smiles” and her mother had departed, bound, so they said, for Jackson, Miss., leaving a cloud of sadness, perhaps, over a heart or two. The presence of such charming visitors are green oases in the desert of a soldier’s live, and their absence was still being mourned when it was learned that, instead of going to Jackson, Miss., they had made their way without loss of time back to New Orleans, via Madisonville and Lake Pontchartrain. The fact was not generally known, however, and those who had so generously and assiduously helped the visitors to obtain the particulars they came to seek, hugged to their bosoms that good old motto which consolingly says: “Least said soonest mended.”

Provisioning for a Siege.

During the fall the landing at Port Hudson presented quite an active, business-like appearance. Steamboats were there nearly all the time, and provisions came in by them from Red river and from the river parishes between that place and Vicksburg. A numerous class of speculators were dealing heavily in sugar and molasses, regarding which there had grown up almost a mania with a certain class of man. The most extravagant ideas were afloat on the subject, and men came to Port Hudson with wildly-rolling [sic] eyes and feverish hands who were continually making calculations in little memorandum books throughout the day, while at night they groaned unquietly with the hogsheads of a nightmare mercilessly rolling over them. The transportation of sugar to the Atlantic States was so difficult, costly and precarious as to warrant the charging of immense profits by the successful few who got their stores through, while the balance asserted that men high in military position in the department were more interested in their share of sugar speculations than in provisioning Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Such allegations never had reference to the authorities at Port Hudson, but were directed against higher game.

It certainly seems that large stores of provisions might have been collected at Port Hudson and Vicksburg in the summer and fall of 1862, while the river was open to us between those two points, and steamboats were running there. It may be thought that to criticise [sic] past events is easier than to forsee [sic] and provide for the future. But the necessity of having provisions stored up at Port Hudson in large quantity was foreseen by many and strenuously rued upon the attention of the authorities. Soon after the occupation Mr. H. C. Miller, who was not only holding the position of provost marshal, but displayed his energy and capacity in other important channels, proposed to build immediately a number of warehouses where twelve months rations for a considerable force could be stored. Mr. Miller’s ideas were excellent, but, fresh from private life, he was not aware of the existence of red tape, which has strangled the throat of many a well-planned campaign.

To an outsider it would seem the most natural thing in the world for commissaries from Port Hudson to buy meat and corn wherever it was found most convenient, bring it in, store it away and report the same to the chief commissary, with their vouchers. Nothing of the kind. Such a thing would be interfering with the rights, privileges and immunities of department headquarters, which, reposing in its comfortable arm-chair more than one hundred and fifty miles distant, preferred to control all the minutae of its manifold duties, saying, with a complacent smile to every subordinate locality: “Rest tranquil—we know your wants, your dangers, the peculiarities of your respective positions better than you do yourselves. Everything shall be attended to in time, sir, in time. But it must be done in the regular form, sir, in the regular form. Better for the cause to suffer, sir, than for the regulations to be infringed.”

A Narrow Escape.

Port Hudson did, indeed, have a narrow escape of being provisioned in the fall of last year. A gentleman who has not studied the army regulation better than his Bible, but who has proved himself a gallant soldier and capable officer nevertheless—Col. W. R. Miles—during one of the many mutations of office, found himself in command of the post. Not having the fear of red tape before his eyes, he determined to make good use of the brief period of his temporary authority, by sending out agents to scour the country for provisions, build storehouses to receive them, and then allow all the opprobrium and pecuniary responsibility of such audacity to fall upon his own broad shoulders. His authority, however, was interrupted sooner than expected, and Port Hudson was saved the disgrace of being provisioned in any other way than the regular, good old-fashioned, dilatory way.

Proper warehouses for the protection of corn and meat never were built. Whole boat loads of corn have laid for days and night on the landing until it became musty. A large cargo of salted pork was ruined from being packed down in the hold of a steamboat in a manner which any butcher or packer would have known must have caused it to spoil. Another large quantity of pork was salted down so carelessly it had to be issued out in a hurry to the not over-particular soldiers, to prevent its being a complete loss. Corn was stored in open sheds, without proper protection from the weather, and a great deal of that issued out was so musty and sour it brought sickness among the troops.

Without any spirit of useless fault-finding there is neither necessity or policy in concealing from any one the fact that the commissary department was grossly mismanaged from the first to last. The soldiers saw but suffered in silence as they ever have done in the Confederate army and ever will. Under-officers sometimes complained but met with no encouragement to complain again. Where the blame should individually rest is difficult to say amongst a number who were continually evading or shifting the censure, but one thing is certain, that if there had been less thought of personal comfort and more remembrance of the necessities of the soldiers it would have been more to the credit of the commissary department, and better for the Confederate cause.

It was frequently remarked, and by officers of high grade and military ability: “If Port Hudson falls, we will have to thank the commissary department for it.” Port Hudson has fallen. True, the want of provisions was not the cause of its surrender. Having held it as long as duty required, having kept Gen. Banks’ whole army closely engaged for seven weeks, after Vicksburg had capitulated Gen. Gardner made the surrender simply because, having attained all the purposes required, he would not longer continue the sufferings of the brave soldiers whose obstinate courage had held the place under such great disadvantages, nor sacrifice more lives when a continued resistance would not have altered the result of the siege, or gained any advantage to the cause. But Port Hudson was intended to have been garrisoned by twenty thousand men, and had not four of the five brigades stationed there been sent off to the assistance of Gen. Pemberton early in May, the place would have been starve out before Vicksburg fell. And even as it was the ration was so much reduced even for the lessened number of mouths, particularly during the latter part or the siege, that it was not sufficient in quantity, nor was it sufficient in quality, to support men who were undergoing such extraordinary exertion.

The Heavy Artillerists.

Two heavy artillery corps were sent to Port Hudson to manage the guns, and afterwards a battalion of light artillery, which had no field battery, as added to this service. The first to arrive was de Gournay’s battalion, which had seen service in Virginia. It was composed of four companies, one other being left on duty in the rocket service near Richmond. Two of these companies were composed of the old battalion of Zouaves recruited in New Orleans in March, 1861, of which Lieut. Col. P. F. de Gournay was then a captain. A hardy and well drilled body of men, they had seen much service in Yorktown, Va., and in the seven days fighting around Richmond, their commander having been promoted from the rank of major to that of lieutenant colonel for gallant and meritorious service.

[TO BE CONTINUED]