... it as fast as it could be occupied—Butler was anxious to give the loyal planters an opportunity to forward their sugar and cotton to New Orleans. I can, he wrote, easily hold this portion of Louisiana , by far the richest. For the rest, he was in his usual vein of over-confidence. His plan was to push forward a column from Algiers, dispatching it along the Opelousas railroad to Thibodeaux and...