This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[642] of one of its vessels. A short time before sunset the Confederate boats came near enough to fire a few more shots, but were again driven off, this time making their last appearance as a fleet. During the fight between the forts and the vessels the army transport fleet was at anchor about three miles to the south, prepared for landing. A little after 4 o'clock the troops began to land, General Foster's brigade taking the lead, followed by Reno's and Parke's. By 10 o'clock a force of about 7500 strong had been landed. One of the two sections of a boat-gun battery manned by men of the Union Coast Guard, in charge of Midshipman Porter, was stationed well out to the front, supported by the 21st Massachusetts; the other troops bivouacked in an open field, where before morning they were thoroughly drenched by a most uncomfortable cold rain. The morning was cold and cheerless and the breakfast was poor, but the troops were in fine spirits. Foster was the first to move, the 25th Massachusetts in the advance, followed by Midshipman Porter's guns. The enemy's pickets gradually retired into an earth-work mounting three guns, situated in the center of a morass, flanked on each side by an almost impenetrable swamp, and protected in front by an open field of deep mud, in part covered by fallen trees with their limbs cut short and sharpened. General Foster, as soon as he reached the earth-work, placed his troops and the boat-guns in position, and by 8 o'clock the attack had commenced in earnest. But no effective work was done until General Reno came up and with the 21st Massachusetts, the 51st New York, and the 9th New Jersey began his effective attack upon the Confederate right. With great difficulty he penetrated the swamp, covered with its thick interwoven growth of briers, shrubs, and trees. At length he succeeded in delivering his fire from
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.