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| Guns that helped to reduce Port Hudson: first Indiana heavy artillery, 1863 this picture is another example of the accuracy and completeness with which Lytle, the Confederate Secret service photographer at Baton Rouge, recorded the numbers and equipment of the Federal forces operating in Louisiana. This body of artillery first enlisted as the Twenty-first Volunteers in 1861, and sustained the heavy loss of one hundred and Twenty-six men while acting as infantry in the battle of Baton Rouge, August 5, 1862. it served with distinction throughout the war, its number of veteran reenlistments being five hundred and three--the largest in any body of Indiana troops. In March, 1863, the regiment was changed to artillery; and in Augur's division of the Nineteenth Corps it accompanied General Banks in his first expedition against Port Hudson, as well as in the final investment of that place. Banks, who had been sent with between fifteen thousand and Twenty thousand troops to succeed General Butler in command of the Department of the Gulf, arrived at New Orleans in the middle of December, 1862, with orders from Halleck to advance up the Mississippi, and (in cooperation with Grant) to hold an unbroken line of communication by land from New Orleans to Vicksburg. When this was accomplished he was to occupy the Red River country as a basis for future operations against Texas. During the winter, Banks confined his attention to operations west of the Mississippi, with varying success. Early in March, at the request of Farragut, who had determined to run past the Port Hudson batteries with his fleet, Banks moved forward with about seventeen thousand men to make a demonstration against that place with his artillery. He did not get near enough to do this, however, and was still building bridges when near midnight of March 14th Farragut's guns began to boom from the River. |
