Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[498] cavalry and a regiment of Arkansas infantry. Instead of showing any inclination to pursue or even attempting to take the ground he had lost, the enemy commenced falling back immediately, leaving his dead and wounded on the field. As night fell, Gen. Smith arrived upon the field, ordered Churchill's corps back to Arkansas to the relief of Gen. Price, and directed Gen. Taylor to follow up the enemy.

The Confederate loss in the battle of Pleasant Hill was two hundred killed, five hundred wounded, and about two hundred and fifty prisoners. The Federal loss was killed three hundred, wounded eight hundred, prisoners two thousand. In about a week thereafter our prisoners were returned, in partial payment of a deficiency on a former exchange. The Federal prisoners were sent to Tyler, Texas.

The morning following the battle, Gen. Green, with his Texas cavalry, was put in advance in pursuit of the enemy. The gunboat squadron was retreating down the river. The cavalry fired upon it at Blair's Landing, and Gen. Green was killed by the fragment of a shell. The enemy was vigorously annoyed all the way to Alexandria; and there he was compelled to make a stand, to gain time to get his boats over the rapids, as the river had fallen so much as to make it impossible to float them over. Gen. Taylor's force had been weakened too much to attack and drive the enemy from his fortifications; and “Yankee ingenuity” triumphed over the “Falls” by the construction of a tree-dam six hundred feet across the river. The boats were floated off, and the land forces passed on by the light of the burning town, which they fired as they left. It was the last act of atrocity in a career of unparalleled cowardice and crime. Along the line of Banks' march but few sugar-houses, cotton gins, or even dwelling-houses were left standing. It was said that his troops marched on their retreat “with a torch in their right hand, plunder in their left, and their arms on their backs.”

Gen. Banks, instead of winning laurels, and harvesting the wheat-fields of Texas, returned to New Orleans ruined in military reputation, with the loss of eight thousand killed and wounded, six thousand prisoners, thirty-five pieces of artillery, twelve hundred wagons, one gunboat, and three transports and about twenty thousand stand of small arms. Most of the captured wagons belonged to Steele, who, after various skirmishes in Arkansas, had returned to Little Rock with two wagons out of a train of near eight hundred, and after having lost all of his artillery. Thus ended the expedition to capture Shreveport and overrun Texas; and thus dissolved the vision of Banks' splendid empire west of the Mississippi, now practically reduced to the tenure of New Orleans, the banks of the river, and a strip of sea-coast.

We have seen that three notable expeditions of the enemy, in the early part of 1864-that against Florida, that against Mississippi and Alabama,