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[286] Having reached the borders of Bayou Cocodue, north of Opelousas, they had divided. The Texans, refusing to proceed any farther toward Red River, had struck once more the road leading to their own State. The remainder, terribly disheartened, had remained with Taylor, who was falling back upon Alexandria. But the Confederate general knew very well that he would not be able to maintain himself in this town, and that in order to reorganize his army it was necessary to take it into the vast northwestern solitudes of Louisiana, where it would not be molested by the Federals. In the mean while, the gunboats, after landing Grover, had gone in search of the Queen of the West. This vessel was attacked and destroyed; then the flotilla, ascending as far as the extremity of the lake, carried, on the 20th of April--the day when Banks made his entrance into Opelousas—the Confederate works of Butte-à--la-Rose, which commanded the entrance of the Atchafalaya. Two gunboats, the Arizona and the Estella, took advantage of this to ascend the bayou as far as its source, and, entering the Mississippi, joined Admiral Farragut on the 2d of May. A sure and easy way was therefore open for turning the batteries of Port Hudson. The political considerations which had prompted Banks' campaign did not allow of his traversing too rapidly the country which Taylor had just ceded to him: it was important to take permanent possession of it. Far from imitating his predecessor, who, on beholding the large proprietors desert their plantations, had confiscated the whole Lafourche district by a stroke of the pen, he endeavored by equitable proceedings to reassure all those who were disposed to accept the Federal authority as a fact and resume the cultivation of their lands. But at the same time he strictly enforced the Emancipation Proclamation, and omitted nothing to bring into operation the new resources it might offer for the war. As we have already observed, this great political act, which imparted a new character to the conflict, and finally consecrated the true principles which were destined to triumph with the Federal armies, was calculated to open the way for the admission of negroes into the ranks of those armies. But there were many
Philadelphia, Jos. H. Coates and co., 1883.
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