Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 2.

[597] heeding the warning, Buchanan passed on in the Calhoun, standing on her bow with his spy-glass in his hand, in the face of a fierce cannonade from the vessel and the batteries, and prominently exposed to the sharp-shooters of the foe. Presently his acting chief-engineer, standing near him, was wounded in the thigh by a spent ball from a rifle-pit, and the Commodore said, “Ah, you've got it!” The next moment a ball passed through the brave and beloved commander's head, and he fell dead.

The Eighth Vermont was now in the rear of the Confederates, and clearing the rifle-pits, while the batteries of the Fourth Maine and Sixth Massachusetts (Lieutenants Bradley's and Carruth's), supported by Fitch's sharp-shooters and the One Hundred and Sixtieth New York, had flanked the defenses on the south side of the bayou, and were raking the Cotton with a terrible enfilading fire. She and the Confederate land forces soon retreated, the latter leaving forty of their number prisoners. Two or three times the Cotton returned to the fight and retired, and finally, at two o'clock on the morning of the 16th, she was seen unmanned, and floating sullenly on the bayou, as the nucleus of a vast sheet of flame. Having destroyed this monster and driven the Confederates from their works, the expedition went no farther, but returned to Brashear City, with a loss of seven killed and twenty-seven wounded. The latter were placed upon a raft, and towed down the bayou by a steamer in the night of the 15th, after the battle had ceased. The air was very mild and soft, and in the pale light of the moon, which rose at a little past midnight, the sufferers had a more comfortable voyage than they could have had

Raft with wounded soldiers on Bayou Teche.

in the close air of a steamer.

Ineffectual efforts to open the Bayou Plaquemine so as to capture Butte à la Rose followed the expedition to the Teche, when the enterprise was abandoned, and General Banks concentrated his forces (about twelve thousand strong) at Baton Rouge, for operations in conjunction with Admiral Farragut, then on the Lower Mississippi. The latter, on hearing of the loss of the Queen of the West and the De Soto,¹ determined to run by the batteries at Port Hudson with his fleet, and recover the control of the river from that point to Vicksburg.² For this purpose he gathered his fleet at Prophet's Island, a few miles below Port Hudson, on the 13th of March,

1863.

and on the same day Banks sent forward about twelve thousand men to divert the attention of the foe while the fleet should perform the proposed perilous act. These drove in the pickets before them, while the